Pause · Listen · Ground · Reset
Slowing down is one of the hardest things many of my patients and clients deal with. Take a few minutes to listen to some of my favorite guided exercises to relax your nervous system and refocus.
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Practices you can use
This part of the library is here to be used.
These are short guided practices for different moments and different kinds of experience: visualization, breathing, body awareness, grounding, and ways of working with attention. Some are meant to help settle an activated nervous system. Others create a moment to notice what is happening internally. Some offer ways of relating differently to physical discomfort.
You don't need to be in therapy with me to use them, and there isn't a particular order to follow. Choose something that seems useful, find a place where you can give it a few minutes of attention, and see what happens.
I'll continue adding practices here over time.
These recordings are educational resources and aren't a substitute for psychotherapy, medical care, or individualized treatment. If a practice increases distress or physical discomfort, you can stop at any time. Physical pain can have many causes; new, severe, or unexplained pain should be evaluated by an appropriate healthcare professional.
Settling & Regulation
Peaceful Place
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A guided visualization for creating a place you can return to when you want to feel a little more settled.
You'll imagine a place—real or imagined—that feels peaceful, safe, or simply comfortable enough to let your system soften. We'll spend some time developing the sensory details of that place so that it becomes easier to return to later.
This practice is adapted from Laurel Parnell's Peaceful Place exercise. My version uses visualization without bilateral stimulation or tapping.
Good for: settling, grounding, preparing for rest, or creating an internal resource you can return to when things feel busy or activated.
Extended Exhale
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An eight-minute guided breathing practice for helping an activated nervous system settle.
When we're anxious, stressed, excited, or simply running a little too fast, the sympathetic branch of the nervous system can keep us mobilized. Lengthening the exhale is one way of inviting more parasympathetic activity—the part of the nervous system involved in slowing down, resting, and recovering.
We'll gradually extend the exhale and then spend some time there, giving the body an opportunity to remain in that quieter state rather than immediately moving on.
Good for: anxiety, feeling amped up, mental busyness, transitioning out of a demanding part of the day, or simply wanting to come down a few notches.
Checking In
Five-Point Check-In
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A short guided practice for noticing what's happening before deciding what you need.
We'll check in with five parts of your current experience: mind, body, emotions, energy, and breath. The point isn't to change anything immediately. It's to take stock.
Once you've noticed what's there, you'll have an opportunity to respond. Maybe your body wants to stretch. Maybe you need movement. Maybe your breathing wants a little more room. Maybe nothing needs to change at all.
This practice is adapted from Ariel Schwartz's Five-Point Check-In.
Good for: transitions, starting or ending the day, reconnecting with yourself when you've been on autopilot, or those moments when you know something feels off but aren't quite sure what.
Working With Pain & Discomfort
Progressive Muscle Relaxation
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A guided practice using cycles of muscle tension and release to help the body notice the difference between holding tension and letting some of it go.
We'll move gradually through different areas of the body, intentionally contracting and then releasing muscle groups. Rather than trying to force the body to relax, the practice gives you something concrete to notice: this is tension; this is release.
Good for: physical tension, stress, settling before sleep, or noticing where you may be holding your body more tightly than you realized.
Attentional Pendulation
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A guided experiment with how attention influences our experience of physical discomfort.
You'll begin by noticing an area of discomfort and then move your attention between that sensation and an area that feels neutral or relatively comfortable. From there, we'll experiment with giving discomfort our full attention, dividing attention between different sensations, and moving attention back and forth.
The goal isn't to convince ourselves that pain isn't real or to make its physical cause disappear. It's to notice something more specific: does the experience of pain change when the way we attend to it changes?
Sometimes the answer is yes. Sometimes it isn't. The practice is an opportunity to find out.
Good for: exploring your relationship with ongoing physical discomfort and experimenting with attention as one part of the experience of pain.