Meditation for Trauma: Why and How to Meditate
- Lisa Shouldice
- 6 days ago
- 10 min read
Meditation for Trauma: Introduction
Have you tried meditation? You’ve likely heard you should, it is great, right?!
But why should you meditate? How do you find the right one for you?
Meditation, simply put, calms our central nervous system. Over the long term, with regular practice, it can actually change our anxiety threshold so it takes more anxiety-provoking information or overwhelm to create a physiological anxiety response. Sounds great right?
So in order to determine which type of meditation is right for you, you need to consider a few things. Read on!
What is Your Goal?
Different types of meditation exist, in part, to support you in reaching various goals.
Do you need to relax?
Do you want to reach spiritual enlightenment?
Is self-insight important to you, self-knowledge?
Pain management?
Emotional healing of trauma?
This goal begins to focus the search for your perfect meditation type.
Can you sit still?
Is the idea of sitting quietly, looking out the window as the snow falls a lovely thought? Or does it sound like slow torture?
You may like the idea of meditation and crave the positive benefits but feel sitting still is impossible. Perhaps a walking meditation is a good start.
If you like the idea of a silent retreat in nature you will find the right option below as well.
Do you want to feel connected to your God, Creator? Or simply feel the refreshing rejuvenation that meditating about /in nature provides?
If you want to connect and build spiritual skills you could try a transcendental meditation, huge in the 1960’s, to meet these goals.
Guided or Unguided?
The final piece I recommend considering as you determine the right approach, expanded on below, is whether you feel you need a guide to help you reach your goals or whether you prefer simply soft music, unguided.
Most meditation types can be either guided or unguided, but Vipissana is always guided by an experienced practitioner, as a guided example.
All of the types integrate with each other and can be used in many different ways as you get the feel for it.
I have presented the meditation types below as I use them in therapeutic sessions as a trauma Psychotherapist My Website or have found these approaches help my clients and myself reach personal goals.
As a result, the emphasis is on the meditations that build self-sight, work to heal the body and mind and calm/regulate the central nervous system. It is by no means exhaustive, and I am not a meditation expert.
Meditation for Trauma: Mindfulness
I find the idea of mindfulness to be an increased awareness to either something you are doing, observing, which can include your internal state. This is with the goal to relax, slow down and get to know your internal emotive world, depending on the meditation.
Therefore, mindfulness is really an umbrella term that is included in almost all types of meditation.
Below are some common ones and big favs of mine.
Body Scan
is usually a guided meditation that leads you slowly through each body part, bringing awareness to it, clenching or tensing that body part and then releasing that tension completely. It takes 10-15 minutes.
This a wonderful choice if you hold tension in your body or somaticize feelings. It helps release tension as well as train the body over time to feel the difference between a tense and relaxed state. We often do not realize how often we are tense until we bring awareness to this. Many of us carry tension in the jaw or thighs, without even realizing it.
This is a good one to complete an intense workout.
Nature
there are a myriad of meditations that use the 5 senses through a mindfulness practice to create and heighten mindful awareness of a nature scene. We have so many positive associations to being in nature. And when we are actually in nature there are gases released from the decaying earth that relax and heal us.
Sit under or picture your favourite large deciduous tree.
Look right up at it. Focus on the wind high up in the tallest small branches at the top of the tree. Watch them move in the breezes. Listen to the whispers in the new leaves, what are they trying to tell you? Watch the light glint off the branches, in the indirect light. Notice the green moss growing on the tree's trunk. Breathe in the fresh air and feel the muscles in your shoulders release their tension and that tension leave you. Look up and feel the breeze clear out your eyes, ruffle your hair. Feel the breezes take away your negative thoughts. Feel the large branches hug you, holding you in an embrace, keeping you safe and held. Send out gratitude for this time, these moments. Feel refreshed, rejuvenated, reinvigorated, renewed…rejoice.
Begin with guided and you can eventually create some favs to use on your own and as needed.
Meditation for Trauma: Calming
These meditations focus on calming the central nervous system and begin breaking down the cortisol released when stressed or triggered. There are also myriad ways to do this.
Breathing
meditations bring awareness to your breath, connecting within yourself, outside the frenetic external world. It also introduces various ways of breathing that calm the system and deepen relaxation.
Inhale to the count of 4, hold at the top, exhale slowly to the count of 8. Try to keep your chest still, breathing though your belly. You may have to push your belly out like a balloon to facilitate these bigger belly breaths. Keep inhaling to the count of 4, hold, exhale to the count of 8. Feel your lungs expand. Now keep breathing, focusing on the entry of the breath into your nose, in and out, until it feels like you are breathing in a slow circle.
Sound
meditations are great if you are very alert to sounds and want to use it to your benefit, create positive associations. It usually uses metal bowls, gongs and bells. Once a gong has sounded you listen until the vibrational sound stops. Vibrational sound actually lingers for a long time when you are listening with your whole mind. Vibration is very soothing and embodied.
Meditation for Trauma: Insight
These meditations are a favourite of mine as it builds self-awareness while in a calm state. This relaxed but also alert state is the space we can learn about our current feelings and patterns and also rewire and reshape new ones. As a Psychotherapist, I find this both and effective and healing.
Loving Kindness Metta
is about teaching us unconditional love for ourselves and others. The idea is to feel you are both doing something to influence the energy of the universe as well as practice self-care.
It can reduce stress and increase social connection. It can help us move through hard emotions, such as anger, letting them flow through us aiding emotional processing, leading to resilient mental health.
1. Sit or lie in a comfortable position.
2. Self-compassion Choose a few positive mantras.
I am safe.
I am loved.
I trust in the benevolence of the universe.
Repeat them to yourself for approximately 2 minutes.
3. Loved One Move to sending these same messages to a loved person that loves and supports you. Visualize them and repeat these same chosen phrases.
4. Neutral Person Choose a neutral person that you do not have strong feelings for. Practice the same process. Visualize them in your mind's eye and send them love, by repeating the same chosen mantras.
5. Difficult Person Choose a person you find difficult or challenging to feel positive feelings towards. Visualize them and send them positivity through these same chosen mantras. You many really have to take some time with this one.
6. Universal Loving-Kindness End with universal love by picturing all of these people, loved, neutral and challenging and send them love and peace, healing, using these same mantras.
7. Take your time to come back into the world, bringing loving, peaceful energy with you to begin or continue your day.
Observation includes sitting quietly, deep breathing and allowing your emotions and thoughts to come naturally without force. You simply note and observe letting them come and go, flow through. Over time you learn to be nonreactive to your thoughts and feelings as you are calm and relaxed.
Check-in
bring your awareness to your upper belly, under your chest sternum. This the first, nonverbal brain developed in utero. It is where we experience feelings and intuitive experiences. Search this space, quieting your system. What do you experience here? Do you see a visual picture? What is the texture here? It is tight? Is there movement? It is stagnant? Ask your body what it needs today to take care of you. Simply attend to what comes up.
Nte. We never feel nothing. It is not how we are wired to survive. You may feel calm, content or numb/dissociative. But there is always something here to attend to. Give it time and get to know this part of yourself.
Meditation for Trauma: Silent or Zen
This approach encourages self-observation and the insight that develops from this, allowing personal transformation, learning new patterns.
Vipassana
is an intensive meditation that begins with a 10-day silent retreat. It includes staying at a retreat centre and an experienced Vipissana meditation guide. It includes group and individual meditation. It is then possibly followed by 3-day retreats to maintain gains. Immersive self-observation with the goal of personal transformation is sought. Vipissana Retreat
Meditation for Trauma: Focused Attention
This type of meditation trains the mind to ignore distractions and results in better emotional stability. This is a great type if racing thoughts are often an issue for you or you struggle with affect regulation.
Mantra Transcendental
became trendy in the 1960’s as it reduces stress, allows creative flow and aids spiritual development. It is a focused meditation that begins with the process of choosing a few Mantras (to focus on) that support positive thoughts and healthy goals. You repeat these in a relaxed state to internalize and strengthen their power in your life and mind. Ex. I move forward feeling safe and trusting in my ability and resourcefulness. Experienced practitioners recommend 20 minutes, twice daily.
Picture object
chose an object to completely focus your mind for during this focused meditation ex. Apple, a candle completely immersing your entire mind on this object, avoiding all distractions, letting intrusive thoughts simply come and go. Start with guided to learn the basic premises.
Try one here:
Meditation for Trauma: Visualization
I love visualizations both in healing therapy sessions as well as on your own. There are many options from containment exercises to learn internal boundaries to spending time in a peaceful scene. This includes relaxation and can focus on bringing/changing something from your mind to your life. This is a very flexible type, here are a few that I use often.
Safe space
identify a safe space. It can be your yoga room, backyard or even fictional, in deep space, on your own planet. Then sit, relax and visualize it in as much detail as you can using all 5 senses. Hang out in this space, get to know it intimately. The fist time you create/get to know this place give yourself about 45 minutes. It will then be easy for you to access it when needed and it take only a few minutes, moving forward. This is a visualization you will want to return to often, it will get easier to access every time you do it.
Bubble
this is protective visualization to keep negative or incompatible energies out of your personal orbit. The first time you do this meditation you will be creating a bubble around you and it will take some time.
Picture a bubble around your physical body. Explore it and use your 5 senses to bring it to life. Describe it to yourself visually. What is made of? Is it permeable? What colour is it? What is the temperature? What does it smell like in here? Ex. Fresh baked bread Can you hear anything? E. Music
Get creative and change it until it until it feels perfect. Then, in the future, you can go through a shorter visualization to place this bubble around you before you enter an energetically challenging space. Ex. A family holiday dinner, a toxic workplace. Use it often to build and maintain its power.
Meditation for Trauma: Healing
These are meditation practices used to heal the mind and body. These can treat/manage PTSD symptoms, depression...and even physical ailments such Multiple Sclerosis or any chronic pain.
Chakra
works with the main chakras from the ancient Hindu and Tantric traditions. I begin with the basic chakra to cleanse and get to know your various energies.
In a relaxed position go through each Chakra starting from the top, down through your body.
Picture a coloured light for each one.
Pink above your head for spiritual connection to the universe
Purple on your forehead for your inner/healing connection(s)
Blue for your throat, the voice chakra
Green for your heart
Yellow on your belly for your soul/self Chakra
Orange for the sexual/fertility Chakra
Red of the root Chakra that grounds you at your lower back
Then picture a coiled spring rotating through you, cleansing any dark, old energy, first going in through your head down into your body while picturing each colour chakra, then the other direction starting from your bottom, up through your body to your head, rotating in the opposite direction.
Enjoy the feeling of relaxation and cleansing.
Yoga Nidra
works to decend the practitioner into a deep relaxed state between waking and sleeping that withdraws us from our senses. It is commonly used at healing retreats and healing centres. It refers to a combination of breath, body scan and visualizations to relax, connect and heal the body, mind and spirit.
Meditation for Trauma: Movement
This is the prefect meditation for those who find being and sitting still hard. This is a focused meditation that focuses on the physical movement of the body in a mindful way.
Walking
turn inward as you walk so you can mindfully focus on every part of your body as you walk. Begin walking slower than usual. The breath going in and out of your lungs, your feet hitting the ground feel it move forward place it on the floor, heel first shifting your weight forward…, your heart rate increasing, the natural speed of your gait…simply refocus your thoughts to your body…
Tai Chi
is an ancient practice that combines slow, flowing movement and focuses on deep breathing in a relaxed yet alert and focused way. You will need to take a class, get an instructor and learn this type before you can practice on your own. This is wonderful if physical ailments plague you.
Want to try Mindfulness therapy techniques? HILLARY
Want to try visualizations to heal and gain self-insight? DESIREE
Want to bring spirituality into your therapy, including non-verbal processing? LISA
Lisa S.
