Profound Stillness

At the end of her session, Frances described the feeling she had, not as deep peace or quiet tingliness, although those are great descriptors, but she said she was feeling a profound stillness. I love that phrase, and as we talked about it a little bit later, we discussed how important that experience is for people who are suffering with any kind of short term or chronic trauma to their systems. 

What seems to be most important for traumatized individuals in their process of returning to balance and healing is to be able to have easier access on a regular basis to a state of interoceptive clarity. This means being able to be aware of what they're feeling at any moment in their body--what their inner experience is, what they are sensing in different parts, the quality, the mood, and emotional tone of it. And then to have ways to modulate that experience toward more ease and calm, toward a more regulated breathing pattern and a clearer state of mind. 

Even after they have one or more significant experiences of deep peace, they will still need tools to get themselves there again and again. They’ll need sensed movement that anchors the feeling and helps them recall it at any time and in any situation. They’ll need various simple, easy, movement and self-touch rituals to repeat when needed in order to find their way home to a state of profound stillness in their core.  Even if only momentary at first, with practice, these simple rituals provide the key to recentering themselves back in the moment and in their body. 

My own experience of profound stillness has ebbed and flowed throughout my life and my work. Sometimes my nervous system has stayed keyed up for too long for me to have quick and easy access to stillness, profound or otherwise. But at other times, it's a regular, reliable place I can sink into. It's very rewarding for me, and particularly accessible when I set aside time in meditation. When I settle into a mid-day nap, I practice giving in completely to gravity. This inner permission allows a flood of relief to flow through me. These practiced moments in my day provide a nurturing refuge from my busy mind, and reconnection to a softened, expansive feeling of profound stillness

Milton Trager would have called this feeling “Peace” or “Hook-up”. There are perhaps lots of other ways of describing this felt experience. The words should not be something that gets in the way. It's a powerful experience -- not a sentence, nor a paragraph in a book.