Cup your hand. Place a small photo of you at any age in your hand. Place your other hand over the photo. Close your eyes. Begin breathing.
With each breath send love to the you in the photo. Love for the child you, the young adult you, the mature you. Fill your cupped hands with love’s breath.
Now bring your cupped hands as close to your heart as you can.
Imagine sending the photo of you into your heart. Allow this image of you to rest there, held by your heart.
Breathe. And when you sense that your heart will take good care of you, open your eyes, lower your hands, and return to your day.
Practice Note: In this self-care minute, we hold ourselves by holding a photo. Please read “hands” as a metaphor for all the ways our bodies can hold something. Please practice in the ways best for you.
This practice is influenced by author and retreat leader Joyce Rupp in her book Boundless Compassion: Creating a Way of Life.
Take a moment to notice where your body is in your space, in your environment.
Notice your feet against the soles of your shoes or your bare feet on the flooring or your heels and legs against the couch. Notice the heat of this meeting between your feet and what they wear and perch upon. Or the coolness. And, notice the gentleness or roughness of the carpet, upholstery, socks, air. Notice.
Notice where your arms are. On the table. Or against your body. What does that feel like? This meeting between your arms and something else?
If sitting, notice your derriere in your seat. Is your seat soft, hard, warm, cool?
These noticing are through your skin, your largest organ, interacting with the external environment. Now, let’s move our attention inward. I invite you to travel inside your body. To the middle of you, to your bones.
Sense your bones.
Sense the bones in your feet traveling into the bones in your legs.
Sense your hip bones.
Sense your rib cage.
Sense your spine.
Sense the bones in your arms, shoulders, neck, and jaw.
Sensing your bones, I invite you to travel inside your bones. For now, just pick one bone, like your jaw bone or a bone that seems to want your attention. Travel into the living essence of this bone. Into the marrow. Into where blood cells are made.
Describe to yourself what being inside your bones feels like. What looking at your body from inside out is like.
Is there anything you would like to ask your bones? If so, ask.
Listen for a response. A response can be nothing or it can appear in images, felt senses, or words. As you listen, be gentle with yourself. Take note.
And breathe asking the universe or God to remain curious with you about your bones.
Now, slowly move back toward the outside of yourself, out to your skin. To get there, travel through the rest of your body—your organs, tissue, bodily fluids. And when you are back in your skin, so to speak, I invite you to open your eyes and return to the room.
Based on a practice originally written for Wartburg Seminary’s Trauma-Informed Worship class, September 18, 2023.
Please shift this practice to meet the needs of your body.
How like a widow she has become…she weeps bitterly in the night, with tears on her cheeks. Lamentations 1:1-2
Reflection
Limbs fall limp. Eyes drop focus. Mind escapes into sleep. Allowing a few moments of respite.
Until roused by repeated visions and racing words. Breaking in with images and their clinging emotions. Bringing tears, sighs, tossings, and turnings.
Yet some nights the moon rises high mid-mind race. Light filters through closed window shades. Asking for breathing in of its essence. And a breathing out of sleeplessness’ broken record. Inhaling in and out once, twice, as long as it takes for buttock muscles to loosen. Cascading into other muscles letting go.
Until morning wakes. Sunlight slipping in after moonlight. Opening another day for what is possible in healing. Through a compassionate word here. A challenging one there. A few questions to think about. Not fully healed. Something though. Enough to keep going.
Healing Practice: Breadcrumbs
What keeps you going? Write down who and what gives you enough to want to do the work of healing.
Start just with one something. Add another something. Maybe two. Over the coming hours and days, collect five. Name them breadcrumbs. Follow them on your path into healing and restoration.
Prayer
“Restore us…” God, “that we may be restored.” In our restoration give us hope in you, in our now, in our future. Amen. (Based on Lamentations 5:21)
Before, during, and after we care for others in the aftermath and afterlife of traumatic experiences we care for self. Self-care is foundational in the care of others. When we do not care for ourselves, we inflict violence upon ourselves. And we risk causing others additional harm. Here’s a small moment of self-care, a micro minute surrounding your soul with goodness and love to use at any time in your day.
Begin breathing in through the top of your head. Thank God for your head.
Now allow your breath to slip down into your shoulders. Breathe in and out from your shoulders. Thank God for your shoulders.
Let your breath slip into the back of your neck and between your shoulder blades. Breathe in and out from the back of your neck. Then breathe in and out from between your shoulder blades. Thank God for your neck and upper back.
Now allow your breath to slip into your stomach. Breathe in and out from your stomach. Thank God for your stomach.
Let your breath to slip down into your hips. Breathe in and out from your hips. Thank God for your hips.
Now allow your breath to slip down into your knees. Breathe in and out from your knees. Thank God for your knees.
Let your breath slip down into the soles of your feet. Breath in and out from your feet. Thank God for your feet.
Breathe now through your whole being beginning in your feet, traveling through your body, and out the top of your head. Thank God for your body.
Continue breathing until you are ready to return to your day.
Lord, hear my prayer, listen to my cry for mercy; in your faithfulness and righteousness come to my relief. Do not bring your servant into judgment, for no one living is righteous before you. The enemy pursues me, he crushes me to the ground; he makes me dwell in the darkness like those long dead…
I shall be like those who go down to the pit…
Psalm 143: 1-3, 7 NRSV
MEDITATION
The afterlife of traumatic experience wants us to feel confused, shamed, and guilty. These remains from what happened to us take over every cell in our bodies, settling in for an extended stay while we beg for relief, mercy, safety.
Healing, in the form of trauma recovery, removes this confusion, eradicates our shame, and brings guilt back down to a usable size. Healing reforms our crushed postures into expanded ones. Healing helps us see, feel, and hear God’s mercy.
PRAYER
God, hear my prayer. Listen to my cry for mercy. Relieve my agony. Give me courage to heal. Amen.
Jennifer Ohman-Rodriguez 