Monday Morning Meditation for Moms | Expand Your Window of Tolerance with Grounding Visualization

Transcript

Good morning. Happy Monday morning meditation for moms. Welcome back. So, I asked y'all, what do you want to focus on this week? And I gave you some options and you all decided you wanted to work on nervous system regulation. So, I want to talk about something very specific today. I want to talk about the window of tolerance. Are you familiar with this? Have you heard of it before? So the window of tolerance is like the area in which you are able to tolerate your current experience. And at the top there's like increasing discomfort. like you're able to tolerate this increasing discomfort before you go into some sort of nervous system fight orflight type of response like hyperarousal or even hypoarousal where you kind of flatline and um go into like a freeze uh state where you kind of just like flat affect you're protecting yourself by no longer engaging in what's happening. So this window of tolerance, this space in which you are able to tolerate something is like you have a cup and it's just filling up and when it gets to the top it's it's full. But to go beyond the window of tolerance would be like your cup is literally you're just pouring the liquid into the cup and the cup is absolutely overflowing like it cannot contain it cannot handle the current circumstance. So, what we want to try to do with nervous system regulation is increase our window of tolerance so we're able to withstand more discomfort than we were prior. Okay? So, it's like we're trying to just make our cup a little bit bigger. Just think, okay, this is a 4 oz cup. We want it to just be 5 o. You don't have to think about trying to get to like hold everything, right? because that would be too hard. That in itself, trying to expand your window of tolerance too rapidly, that itself would be overwhelming and take you into disregulated state. Okay? So, if we're thinking about nervous system regulation, we're just thinking about how can we expand our container, expand that cup, expand that window just a little bit, just enough to help you handle and experience what's currently happening to you without going into a nervous system dysregulation type of state. So, for me, like let's say my kids are all yelling at the same time. That is super super dregulating for me. So, it's about finding tools that you can employ in that moment to help you withstand whatever feels disregulating so that you can come back to yourself and your container just feels like a little bit bigger. It feels like you can just hold all that's happening a little more easily. And so, we're going to go through a little practice today. And basically it's just about connecting with your physical experience to take you out of like the mental experience cuz a lot of times the dysregulation that we have have happening in our lives is sensory overload or um like too much happening in our mind. So, if we can come back to grounding into our body, grounding into our breath, um coming up with a couple affirmations to just like bring us back to the present, we're going to be able to expand our window of tolerance, expand our container in order to hold all the things. All right? So, I want you to get into a comfortable position. I actually really would love it if you would sit in a chair with your feet flat on the floor or stand up so that your feet are flat on the floor because a lot of times when we're disregulated, we're just trying to um come back to this current moment. Okay? So, I want you to feel your feet on the floor. That's going to be an integral part of the practice. Okay? So, feet flat on the floor. roll your shoulders back and imagine like a mildly stressful situation. So for me that might be um one kid is crying and I'm trying to like make my coffee very mild but still stressful because my kid is crying whenever my kids are crying like it's just hard you know you know mom life. Okay so one kid is crying. I'm trying to make my coffee. That's my scenario. Maybe you pick a different one. And just imagine like you're an outsider looking. Let it not be. Don't pick like a big scenario. This is a small scenario. Small scenario. Okay. All right. So, envision your scenario like you are um a camera up in the corner of the wall like you're just observing from the outside like a TV show. Okay. Envision the situation. Take a little sigh. Take a breath. And notice what feelings are coming up in your body. Maybe you notice your heart or your breath. Maybe there's thoughts circling in your mind. Just kind of noticing how your body is responding to this scenario in your mind. And as this is happening, I want you to begin to feel your feet on the floor. Feel your big toe, your second toe, third, fourth fifth the ball of your foot, the outer line of your foot and how it's touching the floor, your heel, and even the lift of your arch. Feel your breath coming in your body. and leaving. Keep your awareness on your feet and let your breath flow in and out. This bringing awareness to your feet should help you ground into the present moment, which should help lengthen the space between the stimulus and your reaction. So that hopefully instead of reacting, you can mindfully respond. Bringing one hand to your heart. You're envisioning the same scenario. And instead of grounding into your feet, feel the touch of your hand over your chest. Feel the movement of your breath as you breathe in, pressing into your chest. Your chest pressing into your hand. As you exhale, the gentle fall of your chest. Let this touch point also be a way for you to ground and anchor, creating just a half of a second between the stimulus and your reaction. [Music] So that you can respond to the situation instead of reacting. Visualizing how we navigate these moments of overwhelm dysregulation stressors triggers. Visualizing how we can respond differently will help us employ these skills in real time. If you've ever heard of athletes practicing visualization for like basketball players practicing visualization for their um oh they're where they stand at the line and they shoot the baskets and all the guys are next to them. I have no idea what that's called. I'm I don't know that was it free throw. Anyway, visualizing can really, really help you in real life situations. It can help change the patterns of how you do things. So, continuing to visualize how bringing your hand to your chest might help you slow down your response, anchor you in. Okay, we're going to do it one more time with one more practice. You're visualizing this scenario and you're going to take your hand and you're going to take your thumb to the base of your first finger and as you breathe in you'll slide your thumb up to the tip of your finger and slide it down as you exhale. So breathing in, breathing out like that little like tiny violin joke that people do kind of like that. So breathing in and breathing out. So using touch points, physical touch is a really great way to anchor us into the current moment. And our hands and feet have a lot of nerve endings. So they tend to be very powerful ways to anchor. And that's why we're using hands and feet. Breathing in, breathing out. So imagining the scenario and instead of re reacting you'll slide your thumb the ba to the base of your first finger all the way to the tip of your first finger and then back again on the exhale. And let this grounding practice slow that reaction time. Expand your window of tolerance. Expand your container. When you're ready, letting your hands relax to your sides or your lap and just taking three normal breaths. Beautiful job. So practicing practicing these grounding practices, these grounding techniques, these ways to expand your container to be able to hold better the current moment. When we practice these on the small things every day, when we get to the big things, our capacity is going to be so much larger. So the more we practice it with the little things, the more we expand our ability to tolerate challenge, discomfort, intensity for the bigger events, right? Like like child birth or parenting in general. Um so keep practicing every day. You are totally capable of doing this. This is a skill. This is not something that everybody is born with the ability to do. It's something we all have to practice. And if you have a history of having different traumas in your life, that can shorten or shrink the window of tolerance little by little. So if you have a history of being super disregulated, your window of tolerance might be smaller than somebody who's been practicing this for a while, right? So give yourself some grace. It's a skill. It takes practice and you are totally capable of doing it. You've got this. You're amazing.