Emily Race-Newmark: [00:00:00] Welcome to This is How We Care, a podcast where we look at what it means to embody care, not as an individual practice, but a collective one, and to see what kind of world emerges from this place.

Thank you for being here. I am your host, Emily Race.

This grounding practice is brought to you by Mike Sagun.

To listen to our interview, you can check out that separate episode wherever you tune into our podcast. 

Giving yourself a couple moments to transition into a space of receptivity, perhaps turning off other distractions just for the next seven minutes or so. Giving yourself that gift, if you are able

With that, I'll turn it over to Mike, who will guide us through this practice.

Mike Sagun: For us listeners, wherever you are, find a comfortable, upright, seated position somewhere. If you're [00:01:00] driving, be mindful about this practice. And we're going to actually start with our eyes open. This is a settling practice that I do with my clients. And what we're first going to do is we're just going to allow our eyes to guide us in this space that we're in.

So if you're driving, just look ahead. But for us that aren't driving and we're in a safe, comfortable space, start to let your eyes guide you around the space that you're in. And see if your eyes can guide you to an object, maybe a part of your room. And you could even use your body to turn, so that you can see more of your room. And let your eyes guide you to something in your space that brings a sense of, "Ahhh," or like a, "Ooh, that feels nice," or, "Ooh, that's beautiful," or, "Oh my gosh, that brings up a really beautiful memory of me and this person." 

And so give yourself a few moments here, just to scan your [00:02:00] room and. Let your eyes guide you there. And Emily, once you've landed on that place, go ahead and just keep your eyes there.

And if once you found the listeners, if you found something that is bringing you that sense of, "Ah, that feels nice," just keep your eyes on that thing. And so I'm going to share what I'm looking at. And then Emily, maybe you can share what you're looking at after me. After I share what I'm looking at, I'm going to also sense into my body and notice what comes up in my body in sensation or even emotion. 

And so right now, I'm looking at this plant, it's a ficus lyrata or fiddle leaf fig tree that's sitting on a shelf. And I can see the light coming through my frosted glass, and it's beautiful. And it reminds me of how much I love getting my hands dirty and being in the garden, and I love my plants. I just saw this huge breath come in as I'm looking at this and I can feel my chest [00:03:00] expand. I can feel my back lean up against my seat a little bit more.

I could feel my butt feel more grounded into my seat. And so Emily, what is it that you're looking at, and what are you noticing that's coming up in your body?

Emily Race-Newmark: It's so funny. So we're moving so the room is pretty bare, but I landed on a stack of towel bath towels, and it's bringing up the memories of when we pull our daughter out of the bath and wrap her in a burrito, as we call it. And just like this very joyful moment. And I'm feeling in my body just that pure childlike giggling, playful laughter.

Mike Sagun: Yeah, I could even hear it in your voice.

Emily Race-Newmark: Yeah.

Mike Sagun: And so for you listeners, notice what that object, or that thing, or maybe even that light like myself, what that does for your internal experience. What it does for your somatic experience. And just take a few rounds of breath here, just to notice that.[00:04:00] 

And notice what your body wants to do. And so, right now, I can feel the corners of my lips come towards my ears, like in a big smile.

And maybe for you, there's a sinking that happens into your seat.

Or maybe if you're doing something, and you're being active while you're listening to this, maybe there's an opportunity just to pause. and feel. And then the last thing I want to do is I want to go a little deeper inward. So if this feels okay with you, if it feels safe for you, and you feel private, place one hand on your heart and the other hand on your belly and then gently close your eyes.

And as [00:05:00] you breathe normally, in through your nose, out through your nose, gauge and sense into your level of safety right now. How safe do you feel in this moment? I'm going to give you a scale, so a scale of one to five, one being: "I'm terrified, I'm stressed, I'm frightened. I want to run." And five being: "I feel so calm and I'm at ease, and I feel really good and safe here."

Where are you on that scale?

Just breathe into that. And you might even notice that your mind might want to get in the way and give you a, "Well, you're at home, and you're in your favorite chair and you should be at a four, but you're at a two." See if you can let go of that "should", and come to the two. [00:06:00] And really acknowledge that your level of safety right now is at a two or a three.

You don't have to understand why, or even try to analyze it. Just notice that right now, in this moment, that's your level of safety.

And then the last thing that I want to do is see if you can make any slight adjustments, either in your environment or in your body to increase that number by half a step or a full step. So right now we're recording this and I'm feeling at a three.

I can feel the lights on me and know that there are listeners that are going to listen to this. And so as I breathe, in order for me to get to a [00:07:00] three and a half or a four, I'm going to allow myself to take deeper breaths. Maybe breathe more deeply into my belly, maybe breathe more deeply into my butt and my feet to feel more grounding here.

And maybe for you listeners, maybe it's closing your shades. Or maybe it's just making some organizational adjustments in front of you, or maybe it's just planting your feet on the ground.

And then when you're ready, go ahead and gently release your hands and gently open your eyes and go ahead and resume what you're doing. And the idea here in this settling practice is that our external environment, our world outside of our boundary of our skin outside of [00:08:00] our body impacts our internal experience, whether we are conscious of it or not.

And so what this also does is it gives us agency in our lives. To create subtle adjustments to improve our level of safety. That we can take care of ourselves in these moments where we're feeling at a one, two, or three. And we can increase our level of safety in our bodies. I hope that helps. 

Emily Race-Newmark: Thank you for listening. If this practice brought up questions or discomfort for you, I recommend that you head over to pateron.com/thisishowwecare, where we discuss with Mike, why we may want to be at a higher number than we were in that practice and how to work with certain discomforts in our bodies that are difficult to sit with.

You can also continue with us on this journey by heading over to the full interview with Mike wherever you listen to this podcast.[00:09:00] 

Hope to see you there.