Breathe yourself bigger
For when a feeling is big right now: find where it shows in your body and breathe yourself bigger than it, with the room around you. About three minutes.
6 steps, drawn from 4 books on IFS.
Checked: each step was read against the book passages it rests on, and stays inside them.
Read every step first
- Find where it is. Something big is here right now: anger, panic, dread, a rush to act. See where it shows in your body. The chest, the throat, the jaw, the hands? Just find the place. You do not have to change it.
- Grow with the breath. Breathe in as if you are growing, as big as the feeling and then a bit bigger. Let each in-breath make more room around it. If this stirs things up, skip it.
- Feel the room. Feel your body in the room: the walls around you, the floor, the space above your head. Breathe as deeply as is comfortable, for a couple of minutes. If breathing deeply is too much, breathe normally instead.
- Bigger than it. Notice whether there is a you that is bigger than this feeling, here alongside it. Even a little space between you and it counts. You do not need it to leave.
- How loud is it now? The same scale you used at the start. A drop is worth noticing, and no change is fine too: you made room for it instead of being swept along.
- Back to the room. If it feels true, thank the feeling for whatever it allowed you to do today. Then look around and find three things you can see.