Day 4: Self Attunement
"The practice of nonjudgmental, agendaless presence [is] the foundation for safety and co-regulation."
― The Heart of Trauma: Healing the Embodied Brain in the Context of Relationships by Bonnie Badenoch
In days 2 and 3 we invited you to notice and relate with the other-than-human world – and in doing so, to feel how this nourishes you. We invited you to slow down to feel yourself being drawn to and impacted by an other-than-human person. In today’s practice we’re offering you the opportunity to become aware of a common way in which we make ourselves unavailable to what is wildly well around and within us by mis-attuning to, or being critical of, our internal experience. If we are not resiliently present in ourselves it is hard, if not impossible, to be present with and available to anything in the world.
Attunement is two-fold. The first step of attuning (to self or other) requires that we acknowledge what is happening within us in the moment – without judgement or the expectation that it should be anything other than it is. The second step to attunement is that we nourish what is happening in the present moment with empathy and acceptance, by acknowledging that it makes sense that we feel this way.
We might even say, out loud to ourselves, ‘ah...it makes sense that I feel angry (sad, scared,….) about this.’ We do not have to understand why we are experiencing whatever it is we are experiencing. We have only to acknowledge that if we are feeling it, it makes sense. Even if it goes against logic or reason. If we feel sad, it makes sense. Something in us has remembered something that has activated the emotion of sadness.
If we were super-sleuths of embodiment and tracking, we would know exactly why we felt sad in the moment. But most of us aren’t super-sleuths. In fact, many of us have been actively taught to expect rather linear present-moment emotions based merely on what is superficially occurring exactly and specifically in this moment. This is not how eros works. And it’s not how the nervous system, memory or embodiment work. These systems work in complexity with past experience and present moment to imagine, or even predict, future outcomes.
It always makes sense that we feel exactly how we feel in any given moment. Front-loading our present-moment experience with self-attunement by acknowledging this allows us to be present to everything that is happening all around and within us, so that we can be nourished by it even while we might be feeling something that is uncomfortable or even distressing.
Take several moments throughout the day to slow down and acknowledge how you’re feeling, emotionally and physically. Place a hand on the location in your body where that feeling is most alive, take a deep full-belly breath that expands your chest and your stomach, and say (aloud if you can), “It makes sense that I feel this way.” Say this a few times, becoming more convincing and empathic as you repeat this very simple and very powerful attunement practice. It’s important that you allow for all the layers of feeling, sensation and emotion. If you’re frustrated that you feel sad, the frustration must be acknowledged too. If you’re impatient that you feel scared, the impatience must receive attunement in addition to the fear.
