Practice Review and Floor Exercise

This week we are using our Take-Home Tool as an opportunity to become familiar with navigating your practices. Anything that creates familiarity for the brain, lessens stress trigger responses, which lessens your cravings for addictive substances. Being comfortable with our format will help you focus on the work.

To begin this practice, I would like you to select a question from the Journal Section of your program. You can do this by opening a new tab or by navigating on this same tab. Once you’ve selected the question you want, come back to this question and write your answer below.

Once you’ve answered the question above, go to the bottom of this screen and select “Finish Practice.”

After selecting the “Finish Practice” button, return to the main home page by selecting the logo at the top left-hand corner of your screen. This should take you back to the home screen. After returning to the home screen, select “My Program.”

From the “My Program” screen, scroll to the program you are using for your practices and select the blue drop-down arrow. Do you see your practice there? How easy was it for you to navigate throughout the site? Please write your answers below. Also, please feel free to send us a message if there is anything you would suggest to improve our site, by returning to the home screen and selecting the “Contact Us” menu.

Sometimes joining a session is stressful when you’re not sure of exactly how to get there. For many of us learning to navigate virtual sessions is a new thing. Try going to the Live Google Meet link under resources and joining the session now. No one else will be there, but you can look around and become familiar. You can also save the session to a calendar if you would like to join us for the next event.

Do you think you’ll likely join our meetings or do you have another option you prefer? What is it you like about what you’re already doing? What do you think you might experience if you join our session.

Watch the meditation video (this will take about 30 minutes) and answer the question presented in the practice.

What are you ready to release today?

How comfortable was the meditation practice? Have you struggled with meditation in the past? If so, was this practice easier? Would you be likely to use the meditations we offer every week to help accelerate your process?

Now that you’ve had a chance to review what it’s like to navigate a week of practices, I would like to share with you a Take-Home Tool to help you manage stress. As we move further into the program, I’ll talk about the effects stress has on addiction. As many of you probably already know, it is significant, but it will take some time to review. Therefore, I would like to offer you a few tools to begin reducing your stress now. As we continue, I will continue to give you detailed practices designed to affect the specific brain functions associated with addiction. For today, we will begin that journey by using the tool of Lying on the Floor.

I realize this may seem like a silly thing, but it works well. When the body is in a state of distress, the brain purposefully buckles our knees and shuts down our conscious response systems. We usually experience this state only when fainting or passing out. The reason the body does this is to enter a recovery state. Lying on the floor is a clear message to the brain to regulate breathing, reduce blood pressure, heart rate, and glucose released when in stressed states. 

When doing this practice, you can lie on the floor in your house or the grass outside. Use a yoga mat if necessary. Your position doesn’t matter, but it must be relative to what your brain considered the ground. The carpet of a third-floor apartment is fine, but it can’t be on a bed or a couch. The brain has memories associated with furniture that are not restricted to recovery states.

Lying on the floor for even five minutes can make a significant impact on your health, but if you can do the full twenty, even better. As a quick tip, this is a good practice to use while listening to soothing music or to the guided meditations provided every Sunday at 7:00 pm. However you decide to try the practice, notice how you feel when you first lay down, and then write notes below describing how you feel when you get up.

How much impact does lying on the floor have on your stress?