Cultivate a Healing State by Noticing What's Good

The late afternoon light is shimmering though the leaves outside the window at the studio. They are colored orange, yellow and brown, and it feels like fall in the best way. The light shimmers against the hardwood floors, too. As I notice this and the sun on the leaves, I feel a sensation of spaciousness and openness in my body. My breath drops down into my belly. It feels good to just take in this moment. I’m aware of feeling nothing bad or unpleasant in my body for the moment and I feel content. I’m also aware of how simple this moment seems and how valuable, because it has not always been this easy for me and my nervous system to feel ok.

I’ve worked to cultivate my ability for noticing and then to be with the sensations I notice in my body. In this moment, I’m not waiting for the next bad thing that could happen, I’m not on edge from a stressful moment that happened earlier in the day. I’m here and noticing what feels good.

This experience of feeling good is crucial for nervous system health. If you have a history of trauma, it can be hard to notice the good. Our nervous system developed to keep us safe and is prepared for fight, flight or freeze. It is attuned to notice what is wrong. The signals that something is (or could be) wrong get wired into our responses and patterns, and we learn to respond really quickly to what is wrong. This is great for actual danger but not so great for all the smaller stressors we are always experiencing in our modern world (emails, social media, the news and the overall busyness of life).

Our nervous system can become so wired to be on high alert for danger that we can’t relax, we can’t settle after experiencing stress, and we might plan for worst case scenarios or look at life from a pessimistic view point. While this is very common and a strategy for survival, healing comes from learning to orient more toward things that feel better — or things that don’t feel quite as bad.

Often this can feel unfamiliar and challenging, and it's a slow process of offering your nervous system a new experience and different options. Over time, we can strengthen our awareness of what feels better to allow our nervous system to soak into those feelings (thereby healing potential of the parasympathetic nervous system).

If you would like to explore this in your life, please reach out for Somatic Experiencing coaching.