Hi! Welcome to my website, Gentle Strength Therapy-I am so glad you are here. I decided I needed to begin a website and blog because of my passion for doing therapy, especially EMDR. Today I am in Michigan, in my hometown, providing EMDR Basic Training (through EMDR Consulting) for eight therapists. It is raining, beautiful, and they are doing so much work to learn and navigate through EMDR.
I decided I wanted to make a website and blog so I could reach my clients (and potential clients) more than just through our regular therapy sessions. So much of what we do as therapists and clients extends beyond the walls of the counseling office. I would like this blog to be a resource for when you get stuck, or need a little boost, or just need a gentle voice to tell you that it is okay to rest. Because it is. Sometimes, we need rest. There will be times to pull up your inner strength (even if you feel like you don’t have any right now), and we will look at that too. But for now, if you are here and reading this, I would just like you to rest. Let me show you a way.
Read through this exercise. Let’s take a little rest. Close your eyes… Take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds. While you hold your breath, notice what comes into your mind. Just notice. Pay attention. Then let the breath go and notice the thought or feeling. Does it change? Take another breath. Hold it for a few seconds. What are you noticing there? Does it feel ok to hold it? Does your brain want to let it go? Do what feels important for you. Take another breath. Think about your favorite color as you hold your breath. What things are that color? Picture them as you let it go. Breathe in the color and the thoughts and hold them. Breathe out the color and the thoughts as you let it go. Think of a word: gentle, rest, quiet, peaceful… Feel that in your body. Breathe in and hold the word in your mind. Feel it in your body. Rest. Let go of the breath. Feel the rest. Feel the gentle rest in your body. Breathe in, rest. It is okay to rest for a moment. It is okay. Sometimes being you is hard, and you need rest. Breathe in, rest… Breathe out, rest……. Just breathe, rest. In…. rest…. Out…. Rest… notice your body when you say that, feel that, hear that… Just notice…….
Sometimes it is important to slow down. To pay attention to what your body and heart are saying to you. What needs some of your attention? Not all the busyness of your day, like the laundry and dishes and work and the car repairs and the screaming kid. But the inner part of you, the part of you that is screaming to be seen and heard and valued. We need to pay attention-not to shut it down, but to acknowledge the importance of needing to acknowledge what is being held or restricted or shut down or pleading to be known, to be understood. What if we listened? What if you listened? There is a voice in there. It just gets hidden. It gets pushed away for ‘later’, a later that never comes. And right now, in this moment, the ‘later’ is right now. Just slow down for a bit, rest, give a little space to hear, to notice, to see what is needing to be seen. There is nothing to “do with it,” except just to notice. Notice if it is in your body anywhere. Do you feel tension? Heaviness? Pain? Lightness? Joy? Just notice whatever it is, and give it some time and space for it to exist. Just for a minute or two, or thirty.
What did you notice? Write about it in a journal or draw about it on some paper. What looks important? What feels important? Share it if you like. Maybe let someone else see it. Share your experience. So much of what we do is all alone. Maybe, just for a moment, you could let it be seen and not be alone in it.
