A–UDIT
Begin to assess your felt sensations and identify their messages.
Our experiences and emotions manifest as sensations, exhibiting characteristics such as tension, contraction, pain, elevated heart rate, shortness of breath, buzzing and other visceral affects. As these sensations are identified, we can begin to ask the body what it’s been holding, what it needs, what it’s trying to alert us to, and how the energy and emotion it’s storing can be acknowledged, processed and released. This is how we learn to reclaim our emotional, physical and psychological state.
Nervous System
Your nervous system acts as the control center and communication coordinator for your mind and body. When external or internal stimuli is received during an experience, the NS acts as a transmission line to relay messages between the mind and body, allowing parts of the body to respond or react.
When our experiences and life events go unprocessed, energy gets backlogged in the body, clogging up the transmission lines, distorting messages and creating disconnection. In the Audit stage of the Rare Equation, we consider what our NS is signalling and how we can consciously work with that signal to regulate and shift our state of consciousness.
Autonomic Nervous System – The Body’s Gear Shift
The ANS controls involuntary functions, such as heart rate, digestion and respiratory rate. It has the ability to rev you up to go fast, or rev you down to go slow and to do this it shifts between its two branches: the Parasympathetic (PNS) and Sympathetic (SNS) states.
The SNS is responsible for the “fight or flight” response – activating or Up-Shifting your body’s reaction or response. While the PNS is responsible for “rest and digest” – deactivating or Down–Shifting. Both are necessary for facing and coping with stresses, big or small, and essential for overall wellbeing and sustaining homeostasis.
Get a Read on What You Need
In the first stage of the Rare Method, Reconnect, we are aiming at getting reacquainted with the body and its language of sensation. This process establishes safety and trust, and refines communication and expression between the body and mind. In Audit we watch for the NS signals, reading our current state and asking ‘What do I need in this moment?’. Do I need to Up–Shift, Down–Shift, or Be–With my current state?
AUDIT MEDITATION
Make note of anything that stood out or called out to you during the meditation. Messages, memories, sensations, visions, feelings, etc.
JOURNAL
Return to the current or recent experience you're working with:
- What was my state leading up to the event?
- How did my state shift during the event?
- What was my state after?
- What did I need instead?
NS RESPONSE EXAMPLES
Here are some examples to help you better understand the ANS respons
- I hear a loud bang! I duck and feel my heart jump and race (SNS activated). Quickly I realized it was a car backfiring across the street. It’s safe to relax (PNS deactivation), I need to Down-Shift my current state.
- I hear a loud bang! I duck and feel my heart jump and race (SNS activated). Quickly I realize I’ve wandered into a construction zone. I’m not safe, I need to Up-Shift and get out and fast!
- I’m watching my favorite feel-good movie on the couch. My friend calls, she’ll be here in 15 minutes to grab me for the party. I realize I lost track of time, I still have to get dressed, I need to Up–Shift my energy and get going!
The above are simple examples however, when practiced and understood, the Rare Method process can help you work with states of anxiety, overwhelm, low motivation by helping you unlock and release deep seated emotions and unprocessed events that keep you looping in the same reactive or non-reactive patterns.
PREPARE TO R–ECALIBRATE
- What feelings, emotion or energy would you like to acknowledge and release?
- What might your body need to do or stop doing to release this energy?