Containing touch

A tool to settle your nervous system

It’s Mental Health Awareness Week here in the UK. So in a series of short articles I’m sharing a set of simple exercises/tools that can help to resolve symptoms arising from anxiety, stress, shock, and trauma by helping to settle your nervous system.

I shared an initial set of tools in an article I published in mental health awareness week last year.

• The first tool this year — ‘centring in 3D’ — is here
• the second — ‘the physiological sigh’ — is here
• the third — an example of containing touch — is below
• the fourth — the ‘voo sound’ — is here
• the fifth — holding your anchor — is here.

When we’re feeling anxious or overwhelmed, people commonly lose connection with their body. Touch can bring us back to our bodies and instill a sense of containment. Moreover, boundaries can often be broken with trauma, and working with the body can help people to recover their sense of boundaries.

In the tools I shared last year, I shared two examples of containing touch, two ways to hold yourself that many people find settling and soothing.

Here is another way to hold yourself, which can have a similar effect:

1. To start, have both feet flat on the ground.
2. Be still for a moment and feel your connection to the ground.
3. When you’re ready, place a hand on your forehead and your other hand on your chest over your heart area.
4. Key in to what you feel inside, sensing what is going on between your two hands. (You can eyes open or closed, whichever feels right for you.) Track any changes.
5. Keep your hands there for as long as is comfortable — could be a few moments, could be 5–10 minutes, or until you feel a shift.
6. Move your upper hand from your forehead to your belly, keeping your other hand where it is on your chest.
7. Again, keep your hands there for as long as is comfortable, could be a few moments, could be 5–10 minutes, or until you fell a shift.

In doing this exercise, you become aware of what’s happening inside your body and develop a sense of your body as a container.

printable-2-step-self-holding.pdf (new-synapse.com)

Peter Levine, who developed Somatic Expreincing, demonstrates this exercise in this video.