Help to stabilise

Pendulation is a key technique from Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing (SE).  SE is a therapeutic approach that is informed by our biology and our inborn ability to heal from trauma.  I originally learned this technique from Pam Stockton, who specializes in SE.  Like the hand-over-the heart technique, this technique is about noticing a feeling in your body and noticing how that feeling changes.  

Here are the steps:

• When you are feeling distress, start by noticing how you feel physically, somatically.  Where do you feel the distress?  What does it feel like?  Take a moment and let yourself fully experience this.  Special Note:  If you feel that you might become overwhelmed by focusing on the distress directly, focus on just a little piece at the edge instead.  

• Now scan your body and find a place that feels neutral or calm.  Maybe there is a place that is free from…

This technique incorporates your five senses to help you bring yourself back into your body and the present moment. By the end of the exercise, you should feel more reconnected to the here-and-now as well as calmer.

• Make yourself comfortable

• Take a few deep breaths before you begin

• 5: Notice five things you can see in your immediate vicinity (e.g., I see a pen, I see a cup, I see a plant, a table and a book).

• 4: Find four things you can touch and feel around you. (e.g., I feel the ground under my feet, I feel my hair on my neck, I feel the chair I’m sitting in, I can feel the softness of my t-shirt).

• 3: Acknowledge three things you hear (e.g., I hear cars, I hear my stomach rumbling, I hear the wind).

When you experience stress and anxiety, you move away from deep breathing (or diaphragmatic or belly breathing) to shallow or chest breathing. Shallow breathing is when you take in a limited amount of air into your lungs using your chest rather than your diaphragm. Most people who breathe with their chests do so throughout the day and are generally unaware of the way that they’re breathing and the effects it can have on them. When you continue breathing shallowly, your body stays in a constant state of stress – stress results in shallow breathing and shallow breathing results in stress, reinforcing the habit of being and feeling stressed.

Instead of shallow breathing, what you want to breathe deeply. Deep breathing is when you breathe using your diaphragm which pulls air into your lungs. In contrast to shallow breathing where our chests rise and fall, with deep breathing, it’s your belly…

• Sit fully into your seat, with your back against the chair or sofa you’re sitting in.

• Place both feet flat on the floor.

• Place a hand on your belly.

• Inhale through the nose so your belly expands.

• Relax and gently breathe out through your mouth. Exhale fully.

• Then breathe in again through the nose feeling the cool air in your nostrils