🔼: [[Practices 🕯️]], [[⭐️ Community Care]], [[⭐️ Self-Care]], [[⭐️ Rest and Restoration]], [[🛠 Pendulation Toolkit]] #### 🕯️ Resourcing Resourcing is connecting with a resource, setting us up with support before or as we move forward. Resources can support us in our day-to-day and help us face challenges without getting overwhelmed. A resource is anything that pleases or is at least neutral to our senses, anything that helps restore or support us, anything that gives us a sense of ease, comfort, steadiness, grounding, balance, peace, safety, or being centered, cared about, or looked after. It’s something regulating which helps us come into emotional equilibrium. Lifeguards carry a floaty thing because they know the panic a person feels when they’re afraid they might drown can make it challenging for a lifeguard to help them. The same is true the [[💡 Parts|parts of us]] who carry big [[⭐️ Emotions]]; to Resource is to carry a floaty thing, it makes us more [[💡 Resilience|resilient]]. Resourcing is as foundational to healing as it is to day-to-day living. We want to resource as much as we can, as present-day supports can be a massive aid to tending to past wounds and facing current stressors. But it’s also worthwhile for its own sake — we need no excuse to lean on our resources, and we can never have too many. So go for several, because why not? --- ###### Resource Menu A resource can be a foundation to stand on, a handhold, or a soft place to fall, a lap to crawl into, a cocoon to rest in. Resourcing can look like finding pockets of rest, what I call "[[🔑 Stand in the bright spots|🔑 standing in the bright spots]]," which can be an enormous respite in times of stress or suffering. We might give ourselves and all [[💡 Parts|parts of us]] all the [[☀️ Compassion]] we can muster, taking whatever opportunities we have to give ourselves the ease we deserve. If they’re available, we might [[⭐️ Community Care|⭐️ lean on our friends and communities]], our [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘|🕯️ Meditation practices]] ([[👤 Tara Brach|Tara Brach]] especially), [[☀️ Compassion#🕯️ Compassion Practices|🕯️ Compassion Practices]], [[🕯️ Movement Practices 👟|🕯️ movement]] (especially walks [[⭐️ Outdoors]] and [[🕯️ Tension & Trauma Release Exercises (TRE)|🕯️ TRE]] or [[🛠 Wavy Wiggles]] to let any somatic stress or energy build-up dissipate), [[🕯️ Journaling]], or [[🕯️ Breathwork 💨]]. It is a gift to learn how to support ourselves, but we do not ever have to hold anything alone or unsupported, even if we can’t be in touch with someone in the moment. What qualifies as a resource is very broad. We can invite the energies of teachers, helpers, friends, trusted others, communities, animals. We could be grounding through our feet on the floor as we walk, in our legs and back while we sit, resting in our [[🛠 Sacred Space]], bringing to mind an ancestor, [[⭐️ Co-Regulation|⭐️ finding comfort in the company]] of someone who gets us or a pet. We can call on someone, something, even some place who has our back and ask them to come with us and support us in hardship or joy or in supporting whatever [[💡 Parts|part of ourself]] is hurting, especially if we’re feeling [[💡 Overwhelm|overwhelmed]] or not able to meet it heartfully. We can call on one person or several people in such a place, standing at our back, whether they’re alive or an ancestor. When life’s challenges feel heavy, just turn around. Turn around and look, know, and take them in. Community transforms the way we meet our challenges. The stakes might be lower than we may think, when we remember that we have so much on our side. Write and speak their names like a spell to call on when you need them. <iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/wtdffxj7pNE?feature=oembed" height="113" width="200" style="aspect-ratio: 1.76991 / 1; width: 100%; height: 100%;"></iframe> > “*One of the things I do when I step up on this stage, when I stand up to translate, when I go to teach my classes, when I go to direct a movie, I bring everyone who has ever been kind to me with me. Black, white, Asian, Spanish-speaking, Native American, gay, straight, everybody. I say, ‘Come with me, I’m going on the stage. Come with me, I need you now.’ Long dead, you see? So I don’t ever feel I have no help. I’ve had rainbows in my clouds.*” > — Maya Angelou A resource for one person might do nothing for another. We can read the list below and notice how body and mind respond or resonate (or don’t). - [[🛠 Anchors]] - [[🛠 Sacred Space]] - Animal companions - Animals, the forest, the sky, the earth, all have it – [[🔑 Presence is non-dual]], and the more ways we have to connect to this energy the more stable the connection becomes. [[🔑 Trust your experience and intuition|🔑 Find what works for you]]. - [[⭐️ Rest and Restoration]] - [[👟 Walking]] around your neighborhood, light exercise - Connection with others - a soft blanket - the smell of tea - lighting a candle - What would (person I respect, admire, look up to) do? - Making or taking in books, music, films, artwork. - Connecting with spirit/source – prayer, church, shamanic journeying, [[🕯️ Meditation 🧘|🕯️ Meditation]] groups, [[⭐️ Outdoors|⭐ Nature]], spirit in all things - [[🛠 Ideal Parent Figure Protocol]]. - Nourishing the body with food. - Connecting with a place - Connecting with culture/tradition – rituals, holidays - Consider some of your favorite moments in life. Consider what some of your resources might be and really give yourself permission to bathe in them. We never have to wait for life to be intolerable, any time is a good time. Slow down and really soak in it. [[🔑 Let the good land]]. Consider making a personal list and keeping it somewhere visible, not in a computer file or in a journal, somewhere you’ll see it regularly without having to think to search for it. %% [[🔑 Go at your pace]]. Imagine a food you feel really nourished by and that you like. - Feeling cared for. Pendulation: - Think of a memory where you felt supported - Think of a slightly stressful thing from the past week or two, a 3-4/10 just feel into the edge of it %% [^1]: https://www.embodiedyou.com/blog/nurture-nervous-system-resource