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Grounding When Activated

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I'm going to share a soothing practice called the butterfly hug. So every once in a while, I like to offer very practical exercises you can do. And this is one of those. The butterfly hug is a self administered, bilateral stimulation method.

I know it's a, it's a mouthful, but it helps us process trauma and also settle our nervous system. It's often used in EMDR therapy and also different tapping modalities. So I want to do it with you. You can start by taking your hands like this, crossing your thumbs. Placing it right around the chest.

And what you'll notice is that the fingers just gently rest around the collarbone, right here. If this is uncomfortable, you could also replace it and just have the hands resting on the shoulders. And you might see where this is going and where it gets the name the butterfly hug, as that this does create the image of a butterfly. And what we do here is we just tap back and forth. Let the right fingers tap, and then the left fingers tap.

And as you're doing this, you're just breathing. You might notice different images or thoughts or sensations arise in the mind and body. And what this is doing is settling your nervous system as you experience these different things that might otherwise be activating. It helps to desensitize the nervous system response to these otherwise activating thoughts, emotions, sensations, images. If you want to try the other version, you can as well.

Sometimes you can just do this soothing motion on the shoulders, the arms. And if you're watching this and going, I'm not going to do something like a butterfly hug. I really encourage you to try it out. There's some, nobody needs to see you doing it. And there's something very soothing about it.

So if you're experiencing and navigating some trauma or just intense emotions are arising in your practice, this is something that you can pause and do periodically. And you can research it a little bit more. Google butterfly hug, if you want to understand its particular relationship to trauma. But it's a practice that I tend to share with my students as a grounding exercise that they can use. And it really goes a long way for settling the nervous system and just helping to desensitize some of that emotional charge in relationship to the different thoughts, emotions, and images that might arise in the mind.

So try it out, the butterfly hug. Feel free to share it with friends. Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.

Cory Muscara

4.7

Grounding When Activated

Personalized support for learning how to integrate mindfulness into your life. Delivered fresh everyday by our world renowned experts. Choose meditation duration:

Duration

Your default time is based on your progress and is changed automatically as you practice.

Hi, welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, I'm going to share a soothing practice called the butterfly hug. So every once in a while, I like to offer very practical exercises you can do. And this is one of those. The butterfly hug is a self administered, bilateral stimulation method.

I know it's a, it's a mouthful, but it helps us process trauma and also settle our nervous system. It's often used in EMDR therapy and also different tapping modalities. So I want to do it with you. You can start by taking your hands like this, crossing your thumbs. Placing it right around the chest.

And what you'll notice is that the fingers just gently rest around the collarbone, right here. If this is uncomfortable, you could also replace it and just have the hands resting on the shoulders. And you might see where this is going and where it gets the name the butterfly hug, as that this does create the image of a butterfly. And what we do here is we just tap back and forth. Let the right fingers tap, and then the left fingers tap.

And as you're doing this, you're just breathing. You might notice different images or thoughts or sensations arise in the mind and body. And what this is doing is settling your nervous system as you experience these different things that might otherwise be activating. It helps to desensitize the nervous system response to these otherwise activating thoughts, emotions, sensations, images. If you want to try the other version, you can as well.

Sometimes you can just do this soothing motion on the shoulders, the arms. And if you're watching this and going, I'm not going to do something like a butterfly hug. I really encourage you to try it out. There's some, nobody needs to see you doing it. And there's something very soothing about it.

So if you're experiencing and navigating some trauma or just intense emotions are arising in your practice, this is something that you can pause and do periodically. And you can research it a little bit more. Google butterfly hug, if you want to understand its particular relationship to trauma. But it's a practice that I tend to share with my students as a grounding exercise that they can use. And it really goes a long way for settling the nervous system and just helping to desensitize some of that emotional charge in relationship to the different thoughts, emotions, and images that might arise in the mind.

So try it out, the butterfly hug. Feel free to share it with friends. Thank you for your practice. Let's settle in for today's meditation.

Cory Muscara

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Cory Muscara

4.7

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Cory Muscara

Available everywhere.

Access on the web or in our mobile app.

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