This week I'm giving you another somatic practice called 'anchoring in blue'. This is a grounding exercise designed to steer you through the emotional waves of divorce towards more peace and self-assuredness. In this episode, you'll learn to reconnect with your body's own language and find calm in the midst of divorce storms.
Use the art of anchoring in blue to anchor yourself as you deal with everyday stressors and complicated triggers that are constantly occurring during your divorce. The more somatic and grounding practices you have, the better off your healing process will be taking you into your new, beautiful life after divorce.
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Grief and trauma are the two biggest struggles women deal with as they go through their divorce. It's highly likely that you are experiencing both and don't even realize what you're feeling. I'm here to tell you that it's okay for you to grieve your marriage (even if it was shitty) and it's normal to be experiencing some kind of trauma (which is essentially a disconnection from yourself - your mind, body and soul). I can help guide you through the grief in all of the forms it shows up so you can heal. I can also teach you how to ground yourself in healing so you can ease through the trauma. Schedule your free consult by clicking here.
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Full Episode Transcript:
You are listening to the podcast Becoming you Again. I am your host, Karin Nelson, and this is episode number 153. Welcome to Becoming you Again, the podcast to help you with your mental and emotional well-being during and after divorce. This is where you learn to overcome the grief and trauma of your divorce. We're going to do that by reconnecting with yourself, creating lasting emotional resilience and living a truly independent life so that your life can be even better than when you were married. I'm your host, Karin Nelson. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so glad you're here. Today I am doing another grounding exercise. This could also be considered a somatic exercise, because we're kind of allowing ourselves to be in our body, allowing ourselves to reconnect with our interoception, which basically means you are opening up to sensing those signals that are coming from inside your body, those internal signals that are telling you whether you feel safe inside your body or whether you feel distressed, or whether you feel unsafe inside your body right, whether or not your nervous system feels aligned or dysregulated, anything like that. And so I'm going to walk you through this exercise in just a minute. Basically, what we're doing today, I'm calling it anchoring in blue. That is what my trauma-informed coach referred to it as, and the reason that I'm going to teach you how to do this is because I truly believe it is very important for you, as you're going through a divorce, to be able to create and establish safety inside your body while you're going through many, many stressors that pop up during divorce. Like you can use this in your regular life as well, once you're through your divorce, once you've been working through your grief and all of those things. But because there are so many triggers and daily stressors that women go through as you're going through a divorce, I think this knowing this practice, knowing other grounding practices, other things that are going to support you as you are on your healing journey is vital. So, again, I've taught you a couple of other grounding and somatic exercises in previous podcasts. This is just one more to kind of add to your own toolbox and see if this works for you. The very interesting thing about grounding practices and somatic practices is that not everything works for everyone, and that's okay. Like there's not, that doesn't mean you're abnormal. It doesn't mean you're doing something wrong if something doesn't resonate with you and your body. So that's why, if you are open to trying something and seeing how it works for you. I would recommend it Again. If you're not open to that, that's okay. Nothing wrong with you. I want to normalize that. However you're doing it, you know you best, so trust that, okay. So again, I'm calling this one anchoring in blue. It's just a practice to be able to help you establish that safety within your body and so when you do feel stressors, you can. That would be like being in red, and learning to anchor in blue is like that intraceptive regulation of going from your red, where you're feeling a distressed signal in your body, to blue, where you are able to establish that safety. Do you know what thoughts, images and movements support yourself when you need to return to your safety? This can be the practice that can help you get there. Do you know how to calm yourself down after you've been in a fight with your ex, after you have had a deep, meaningful emotional cry and now you want to reintegrate and realign your nervous system? Do you know how to create that safety after you get a text or an email or a phone call from your ex or their lawyer or one of your children or anything like that? That is triggering, but the idea of being able to anchor into your blue, which I'm going to walk you through and describe exactly how to do that in just a minute. Anchoring is very important because it's exactly what it sounds like, right when you think of a boat and an anchor. You were in the boat, you put the anchor down to keep you, your boat, secure doesn't mean the boat isn't going to rock within the waves or feel the movement of the water, but it's just going to keep you securely in a place so that you're not floating off into the distance and letting life take you where it will. We're going to anchor into this blue so that you feel secure and you can handle the daily stressors and the daily ups and downs with much more ease. If it's possible, I would suggest doing this in a quiet place, not while you're driving, and where you can kind of just pay attention. So if you are in a space where you can do that, great. If not, maybe pause the podcast and come back later when you're in a space where you can kind of focus and really allow yourself to go into your body and feel what's going on, all right. So I want you to think about what blue might look like for you. Remember, blue is calm. Blue is safety. Blue can look like fun, it can look like play, it can look like music. It can look like a safe space. For me personally, my blue is sitting on my lawn in my backyard under a giant tree on a warm summer day watching the sunbeams shine through the leaves on the tree, with one of my cats sitting on my lap and I'm petting my cat and I'm listening to the leaves rustle and I'm watching the sunbeams come through and I am just so warm and complete and safe and enveloped in this space. So that's what my blue looks like. What does your blue look like? Is there a space, a time, a place, a moment where you feel safe and think about this on a scale of one to ten? As you start to think about your blue, when you go to this place, when you visualize it, when you think about it, when you imagine yourself there or you put yourself there on a scale of one to ten, how do you feel? Obviously, ten is the most safe you could possibly feel. One is not safe at all. Where, on that scale, are you Now? What I want you to do is I want you to go to a very low level red stressor, maybe like a two to a three on the scale of one to ten. This could be anything. This could be getting a text from one of your children about forgetting their homework. This could be sitting in traffic. It depends on you and what you decide is stressful. But just take yourself to imagining feeling being in that low level stress red area that's just like a two or a three on a scale, and just kind of imagine that for a minute. Feel what it feels like in your body. Notice any sensation, changes from when you were in your blue to your red. And when you're ready, I want you to allow yourself to go back to your blue. Whatever that was for you, wherever that is for you, take yourself back to your blue and just notice that scale on one to ten. Does it stay the same as it was the first time you went to blue? Does it go up? Does it go down? Is it easier to get back into blue? Is it more difficult? Do you not notice any difference at all? Just notice the changes. Notice what's happening in your body and allow yourself to stay in that blue as long as you need. Breathe, notice, feel. The key to being able to anchor in blue is to add as much imagery, as many words, as many sensations or emotions that you can bring into your experience and your practice to help you create more ease when you go from those red stressors that you're going to be experiencing throughout your life, especially throughout your divorce, and being able to anchor into your blue in the moments when you need. Use this angry and blue technique to help you create calm. Create that anchor that you need to know that you are safe in the here and now and that you are capable of navigating the waves that you may be feeling in your daily life as you are in your boat with your anchor deeply tethered to the ground beneath. All right, my friends, that is what I have for you today. I hope you find this helpful. Thank you for being here and I will talk to you next week. Hi, friend, I'm so glad you're here and thanks for listening. I wanted to let you know that if you're wanting more, a way to make deeper, more lasting change, then working one-on-one with me as your coach may be exactly what you need. Together, we'll take everything you're learning in the podcast and implement it in your life, with weekly coaching, real life practice and practical guidance. To learn more about how to work with me one-on-one, go to KarinNelsonCoaching dot com. That's www. Karin N-E-L-S-O-N Coaching dot com. Thanks for listening. If this podcast agreed with you in any way, please take a minute to follow and give me a rating. Wherever you listen to podcasts and for more details about how I can help you live an even better life than when you were married. Make sure and check out the full show notes by clicking the link in the description.