Nervous? Try Grounding Hands...The Everywhere Solution

More real estate is devoted to our hands than our feet in our brains so let's use it! Come with me as I explore different coping skills that use this easily accessible approach. Grounding hands are neurologically more supported than our feet so let's use them. 

Thank you for sharing your time with me Sunshine! Your spark is important, You Sparkle!

@Emanate.Love.with.Emily  

Emanate Love: Solution-focused mindset training. Sustainable solutions that provide lasting results through the power of our stories. 

Transcript

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Good morning, Sunshine, and welcome back to the Eminate Love Podcast. Today we're gonna jump right into a cool story I had with a friend at the local art museum. But before we get to that story, I want to start with some SOS breaths because they help me ground. And I think they'll help you too. I want you to picture in your mind a triangle, and as we breathe in for the count of three, we're gonna go up one side of the triangle, and then we're gonna hold that breath for the count of three and go down the second side of the triangle. And then we're gonna exhale, and when we exhale, we're gonna exhale to the count of six on that third leg of the triangle. So we're gonna breathe in on one leg, hold it on one leg of the triangle, and then exhale on one leg of the triangle. Okay, ready, sunshine? Let's breathe in. Hold two three and exhale. Two, three, four, five, six. Okay, we're gonna breathe inhale to the count of three. Hold two three and exhale to the count of six. One, two, three, four, five, six. I wanna hear you breathe. I wanna hear you push the air out. Breathe in. Hold and exhale. Last time, let's breathe in. Hold and exhale. Good sob, sunshine. Hopefully, you have a nice scent of something near you. I just put on some of my favorite oils, hellochrism, and a little bit of frankincense, and some winter grain. I find them grounding to my limbic system, my nervous system. It helps wake me up. So today I'm gonna share a story about the art museum, where I do a lot of volunteer work in my community. And I was talking to the director of the education department the other day, and she's such a nice person, and she asks me about crowd control when you have different school populations come through the art museum. Um, some of the groups are a little more different, and they struggle to keep their hands to themselves. And that's understandable because who doesn't want to touch artwork and who doesn't want to feel their way through the museum? And I thought to myself, well, they probably just need a really highly desirable object, even a gift, given to them at the beginning of the tour and presented to them in a way such that they might hold on to this object and prefer it over touching everything that they're shown. And I even suggested a love shark, some of the toys that I've actually created and used with lots of different populations, and um, many people come up to me and ask me what they are, where they can buy them, and how they can get them. And these are just things that I've made. And she really liked the idea. So I wanted to start with that because our hands are something that we need to keep busy, and historically we did. We did a slightly better job, perhaps, without our cell phones, right? The cell phone actually falsely fills the need of touching something, and it might be soothing in many regards for many people, but I actually find other objects more soothing. And one of those objects that I find soothing is a small seashell, about the size of a quarter. It was a gift that I was recently given, and it's pink, it has a few little spider-like um projections, kind of like the spider conch seashell that I talked about in an earlier episode for grounding. But this quarter-sized seashell actually came with me to a recent event that I went to that was more emotionally challenging. I went to an event to support a friend, and I decided to carry this seashell with me because it's very small, unnoticeable to anyone, and yet it felt very soothing to hold it through the entire situation. And do you know why? Because our brains actually devote more real estate to our hands than they do to our feet. So when people say grounding and use your feet, those are the traditional ways that we think about grounding. But the new ways to think about grounding that are actually even more direct and easy and accessible are your hands. So just because your hands have all this real estate devoted to them in the brain is a really good reason to pay attention to them. Now, another area that has a lot of real estate in your brain is your lips, which is why chewing gum and biting our fingernails feels very soothing at times. I know that I was guilty of nail biting as a young child. It was very soothing, and touching something to my lips did often feel very good, but there's so many other things you can do. You could chew on a pen, you could chew on something soft or hard. There's so many objects to choose from. You could hold one of your favorite little rocks up to your lips, because rocks hold cold energy, and they feel as cold as an ice cube sometimes, and they're transferable and transportable more so than an ice cube. And yet, if you've ever tried like a dialectical behavioral therapy program, DBT, they do suggest ice cubes for cooling. But I would argue that a rock or a small stone is better. I've used those with many of my clients, in fact, even rocks that I've put in the freezer and suggested people use on their morning commutes. A beautiful, nice cold rock that you can hold in your car while you drive. You can touch your face with it, touch your hands with it. It's just a small pebble, something that is nice and cool to the touch, that is soothing. And these are just some of the soothing things that I recommend to people that ask, that want real results that work instantly because their nerves are a little bit frazzled. And I love being able to offer different pieces of success that I've experienced with my own nervous system. As I've had to learn different ways to soothe over the years, and as I age and as I come into new abilities and new challenges in my life, there's just a few good things. One is your hands. Now, another thing you can do is, as I always say, use what you wear to help you soothe. So I have a pair of gloves that I call summer gloves, and they're very lightweight, they look like the kind of gloves you'd get at a dollar store, and they're actually semi rough, they have a slight grain to them that feels very soothing, almost like a sugar scrub. And when I wear these gloves, just touching my forearms with these gloves on feels so soothing. It's super soothing. And I know it's a little bit challenging to talk about touch and self-soothing mechanisms on a podcast when we don't really have the visual component or even the actual tactile component. If we were in a class together, which I've done hundreds of classes with lots of clients and groups, and groups are what I thrive with. I love groups because there's a lot of power in a group, and the tactile experience of a group is super empowering. It can really change and activate the TNT the parts of the brain that are the most important. And when we're looking at self-soothing with our hands, it's important to know what soothes us. Is it soft things? Is it firm things? Is it a little bit of both? I have a book, it's more of a journal, but I use it when I go to meetings at times, and it has sequence on it, like mermaid sequence. It's very soothing to rub back and forth and to change the colors on it from pink to white to blue. And not only is it soothing, but it's something that I can actually use to take notes. And so that's a book that I recommend you have if you need to take notes and go to a meeting where you have to sit for long periods of time. It's like having a teddy bear without the teddy bear. And I recently recovered one of my notebooks with paper because I was given a gift bag for a gift from a dear friend, and she knows I love all things tactile. And so she gave me this beautiful gift bag with imprints of roses and all types of flowers engraved into the paper of the bag. So I kept the bag and I cut the bag into pieces and I put it wherever I need soothing, wherever I want to feel that object. And so I put it on journals and books and things that I carry with me, even folders. Nothing like a good folder that's covered in high-quality paper that feels super soothing. Because when you go to a big important meeting, often all you have is a paper and a pen. Because if you're gonna be prepared when you go to any meeting, you're gonna take notes. You're gonna bring a notebook and a notepad. And I say, make that notepad tactilely soothing. Add a few studs to it with stickers. I have these bubble stickers that are so soothing. They look like studs, but they're bubbles, and they're stickers all in one. And adhes they adhere to almost anything. So I've put them on a I put them on a lunchbox lid, I put them on paper. They're just very soothing, and I've even put them on hearts and made tactile hearts out of them. You can't use your hands enough for tactily soothing things. There's so many ways to do it, and paper is just the beginning. It doesn't need to be big or expensive to be replicable, sustainable, and to be a truly awesome solution. So think about the things that might soothe you. Start to notice what you touch and what you want to touch. Go back to that inner child that wants to touch, that wants to enter the store and touch everything in sight. That's what we did as kids. We walked into a store, our parents told us don't touch anything. We promptly obeyed them, right? Because we were all really good kids. And then we forgot that that was our natural impulse, that that was our natural inclination, and that was going to soothe us. That was gonna be our way of exploring through the world, was through our hands and our lips. Now, the oral sensation of the lips is so powerful. It's something that we soothe with food, right? At times, if we're if we're having a tough moment, we might reach for something that's cold, that's smooth. We might reach for something that's warm and hot, like a tea or a coffee. And what is it about the coffee? Is it the coffee itself? Is it the reaction after the coffee, or is it the actual heat on our lips that soothes us? There's so many things to think about, right? Now, those are just a few of the tactile things that I love to talk about when I think about our hands, our lips, and the brain space that's devoted to them. And although the feet are something that we traditionally ground with, and they are an important grounding mechanism, we can't always take our shoes off, and we can't always feel the earth beneath our feet when we need it most. So let's use our hands because they're usually accessible to us, and we take them wherever we go. The last thing I want to finish with is a fun little story of a beautiful woman named Tanya that I met over the last week, and she was helping me in a store, and I told her about my podcast, because she was asking me about what I do to soothe or some different things, and I just pretended as though I was talking to her like I'm talking to you right now, and I said, Well, good morning, Sunshine. How are you doing? And I talked to her like I talked to you in this podcast, and she almost broke down in tears, and I said, Well, what what's going what's happening for you right now, Tonya? And she said, You know, I gave my name myself the name Sunshine after I grew up and moved away from home because I had a chaotic childhood. And sunshine was the name I gave myself. And in that moment, I felt connected to her. I felt a soul connection, and it was beautiful to connect with a complete stranger who had been a complete stranger up until this point of this last week, and to have an instant connection. It was beautiful, and I loved it, and I was grateful for it. And I asked her if I could share that story, and she said that I could. And I want you to know that there are people out there waiting for you. Yes, you, Sunshine. There are people waiting to meet you today, people waiting to hear your voice, to hear your story, to hear a piece of your story. So start your day with your smile and let your smile lead you through the day because many people need you, Sunshine, and you're gonna have a great day. Go get 'em.