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Meditations for Trauma & Dissociation
What your purpose in all of this is, is to help you develop the ability to meditate and become mindful. Noting that mindfulness and dissociation are rival brain functions, people who dissociate often cannot meditate – one is about the removal of awareness, while the other is about total awareness. Meditation is a front-lobe activity, while trauma is a back-brain, limbic activity – they are just really different. Over time, your desired outcome is for the front lobe to become thicker and to work well.
Control Where You Think From
Your goal is to “build up” the places in your brain that can and will help you regulate. These “muscles” are at the front of your brain, kind of right between your eyes, inside, under the bridge of your nose. The number-one important factor is to see the images from the front, between the eyes, within your “mind’s eye” – sounds a bit different, but we do have control over where we think from and where our awareness is.
The following meditations have been utilized in a thesis study: Each builds upon the next according to the individual’s personal affect tolerance. Please go slow, do what you can and what you like. The importance is where you see the images, not necessarily what the images are, so use images that are neutral or pleasant, as these are proven to work best.
A Tool to Help You Learn to Calm Down
Warning: This is a tool to help you learn to calm down and to help you learn to regulate. This, like any other intervention, needs to be taken with caution and consideration of what it is doing to you or your clients. Learning these meditations could take a long time. Go slow, if you do not like a certain image, change it to suit what you like. Change the candle image to an iPod light image.
Go Slow & Take Little Steps
Follow the concept of the window of tolerance. Do not keep doing the same thing if it makes you feel bad or worse – only do what is neutral or what feels better. However, with that being said, you are leaning something new and often this new thing is hard. It would be like trying to run a 10 km race tomorrow. You need training, you need to build up your lung capacity and your muscles, and you need to train every day. Meditation and these meditations are exactly the same. For best results, go slow, take little steps, be consistent, and soon you will be able to meditate and soon the ability to be mindful will take shape.
I send you my deepest respect and gratitude. Your investment in you will always pay off.
With Love,
Christine Forner, Associated Counselling
Meditations for Trauma and Dissociation
Christine Forner’s Meditation CD is now available! To purchase a CD, please email Christine at cf@associatedcounselling.ca.