Trauma Informed and Resiliency Focused, Compassion Infused Meditation and Mindfulness

Stillpoint Visions creates a soothing and comforting container within which you are empowered to cultivate resilience and lean into your own (sometimes hidden) pockets of support and resources.  

A place of inclusiveness for all, Stillpoint recognizes the common humanity we share within a diverse and complex framework of individual strength and vulnerability. It is from here that we can learn humility, develop courage, and engage our creativity to build the capacity for greater buoyancy.

Our ability to sit with difficult emotions, and to process experiences can vary from moment to moment. Recognizing our own limits, boundaries and flexibilities allows us to discover our own inner processing space through self awareness and radical choice. 

Welcome home to yourself.

A Sight Anchor for Calming

A Sound Anchor for Calming

A Touch Anchor for Calming

A Taste Anchor for Calming

Creating a Sacred Space

Cultivating the Soil for Change

Meeting Your Wise Guide

Kimber

Neuro-Trauma Informed Mindfulness

AFGHANISTAN

ALAND ISLANDS

ALBANIA

ALGERIA

AMERICAN SAMOA

ANDORRA

ANGOLA

ANGUILLA

ANTARCTICA

ANTIGUA AND BARBUDA

ARGENTINA

ARMENIA

ARUBA

AUSTRALIA

AUSTRIA

AZERBAIJAN

BAHAMAS

BAHRAIN

BANGLADESH

BARBADOS

BELARUS

BELGIUM

BELIZE

BENIN

BERMUDA

BHUTAN

BOLIVIA

BONAIRE, SINT EUSTATIUS AND SABA

BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA

BOTSWANA

BOUVET ISLAND

BRAZIL

BRITISH INDIAN OCEAN TERRITORY

BRUNEI DARUSSALAM

BULGARIA

BURKINA FASO

BURUNDI

CAMBODIA

CAMEROON

CANADA

CAPE VERDE

CAYMAN ISLANDS

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

CHAD

CHILE

CHINA

CHRISTMAS ISLAND

COCOS (KEELING) ISLANDS

COLOMBIA

COMOROS

CONGO

CONGO, THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE

COOK ISLANDS

COSTA RICA

COTE D'IVOIRE

CROATIA

CUBA

CURACAO

CYPRUS

CZECHIA

DENMARK

DJIBOUTI

DOMINICA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

ECUADOR

EGYPT

EL SALVADOR

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

ERITREA

ESTONIA

ETHIOPIA

FALKLAND ISLANDS (MALVINAS)

FAROE ISLANDS

FIJI

FINLAND

FRANCE

FRENCH GUIANA

FRENCH POLYNESIA

FRENCH SOUTHERN TERRITORIES

GABON

GAMBIA

GEORGIA

GERMANY

GHANA

GIBRALTAR

GREECE

GREENLAND

GRENADA

GUADELOUPE

GUAM

GUATEMALA

GUERNSEY

GUINEA

GUINEA-BISSAU

GUYANA

HAITI

HEARD ISLAND AND MCDONALD ISLANDS

HOLY SEE (VATICAN CITY STATE)

HONDURAS

HONG KONG

This is a practice I learned from Bridgette Christiansen. Come join me in five breaths, three things you are grateful for, and one intention for your day. 

5-3-1 Practice

This is a micro-practice of mindfulness using three breaths.  It is great anytime, anywhere, but can be especially useful to start your day out, or during transitions throughout your day. 

Three Transitional Breaths

This practice will focus on centering from the dimensions of length (dignity), width (relationship), and depth (your history and your path forward). Once you have completed this practice, it is an ideal place from which to make a centered decision or move out into the world. 

A Centering Practice

This meditation will lead you in a neuro-somatic experience of listening to, embodying, and noticing how you respond to standing FOR yourself. You are enough and you are worthy. Always have been.  Always will be.  

I Am Enough

This is a relaxation breathing exercise meant to stimulate the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system, to help you feel more calm, relaxed, and centered.  This is a great breath exercise created by Jill Miller that is meant to practice anytime and to do when you are feeling overwhelmed or stressed.  

Vagus Nerve Breath (mmm...ahhh....ooo)

Allow your breath to roll like an ocean wave, letting stress, grief, or fear wash over and out of you...this is a practice best done in the morning or daytime.  It will help you to reduce stress and anxiety.  Some do feel dizzy or lightheaded when first practicing, so it is best to practice on your back with knees lifted when you are learning. Slow your breathing or stop the practice if you feel short of breath or lightheaded.  Credit to Mindful Yoga Therapy. 

Rolling Breath

Identify one small habit that you can change now that will help you to live within your own values and beliefs, to feel better and to be happier. 

Change One Thing Today

Breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth stimulates the vagus nerve, curing the sympathetic nervous system to begin helping you to relax. This meditation will help with concentration, focus, and centering. Want to know more about soft belly breathing? Check out the Center for mind-body medicine. 

Sweet Soft Belly Breathing for Stress

Try this Sight-Anchor meditation to engage your unique inner resources and wisdom. Mindfulness and meditation build our resiliency and can be one of the most effective tools for healing. It can also be surprisingly activating and difficult for those who have experienced prolonged stress or trauma. When our nervous systems have been over-activated, focusing on the breath as a meditative anchor can be difficult. Let this help you to find that anchor. 

Becoming aware of our inner resources and senses can help us to calm, center, and think more clearly by engaging the parasympathetic nervous system. This increases relaxation and improves your ability to feel more in control of yourself.

Meditation builds an increased capacity for resilience and is one of the best tools for healing from trauma. Meditation can also be particularly challenging and sometimes activating for those of us who are living with sustained stress (such as living through a pandemic, experiencing historical trauma, or learning about crimes against a whole group of people) or who have a history of trauma.  Working with internal resources, or external resources can help to make meditation more accessible. You can do this as a stand-alone activity, and you can also come back to it as a practice of pause during any other meditation to find your footing and then return to the meditation practice from a more resourced, available place.  

Activating Your Personal Resources

When you are in rough seas, emotionally speaking, there are ways to ride the waves, through urge surfing, finding your voice, and noticing your anchor.  

An Anchor in Rough Seas

This is a concentrative breathing exercise meant to help you calm your central nervous system.  It's great for times in which you are experiencing stress, anxiety, anger, or fear. It's also best to practice it when you are feeling neutral or good and to do so several times so that when you need it you are easily able to remember and access it.  

4-Square Box Breathing Exercise

The Pursed Lip exercise can be helpful when you feel stressed, tense, or agitated.  The more you practice it when you are feeling calm, the more accessible and useful it will be to you at times of stress or anxiety.  We often learn a breathing technique believing that it will be helpful in times of tension or anxiety but then find that this isn't the case at all!  If you have had this experience, I encourage you to try the breathing exercise when you are feeling good - many times - until you can easily access it without thought, at times of stress.

Pursed Lip Breathing

This is a Yoga Nidra practice in the mindful yoga therapy tradition. The word 'yoga' is misleading if the only kind of yoga you have experienced feels like stretching or exercise. This will feel much more like breathwork, meditation, and moving into being from doing. Nidra means sleep. Give yourself over to rest, presence, and being in this space where all parts of you are welcome and encouraged to move into greater ease, rest and, perhaps, sleep. They say that Yoga Nidra is equal to several hours of sleep so even if you don't actually fall asleep, this practice can help to reset your nervous system, helping you to feel more relaxed and at peace. Thanks and credit to Suzanne Manafort and Mindful Yoga Therapy. 

Sleep Deep Meditation

Negative thoughts can take the steam right out of us. They can derail our plans, make us feel bad, and create problems in relationships. This meditation will guide you to specific ways of noticing, questioning, and living with negative thought patterns so that you can shine a light on them and allow them to naturally burn off. 

Shining a Light on your Thoughts

This meditation invites you to identify a body of water that has been meaningful in your life, then leads you into a journey of discovery and interconnectedness with all beings through the water. 

The Interconnectedness of All

When we are stressed, have experienced trauma, or are living in sustained difficulty, it can be difficult to find a sense of hope. It's even more difficult to fully embody hope. Inspired in part by Elizabeth Stanley, this practice will help you to discover your connection to your own body, to feel grounded and secure, and to find hope within your body. 

Where Hope Resides

Present-moment focus can be increased by using your sense of smell. You may want to collect an essential oil or your favorite tea. You could also imagine homemade bread baking in the oven, or the cookies your grandma baked for you after school. Whatever feels right for you at this moment will work to help increase your awareness, focus, and attention. 

Great for a daytime pick-me-up or if you need to work on a project at work but are feeling sleepy. Depending on the scent you use, this can also help you to calm, center, and relax as well. 

A Scent Anchor for Grounding

We often think about the seeds that we want to plant for new growth to begin in our lives, but cultivating the soil before we plant is equally important. This meditation will lead you to think about what you want to plant, and what needs to happen before you begin the planting process.  

A meditation for sleep, leading you via a path to where the 13 grandmothers tend the Spirit Fire. A place of releasing the old, recognizing your worth, and relaxing into a deep and peaceful sleep. 

13 Grandmothers Spirit Fire

This is a breathing exercise for relaxation and to reduce stress. You will breathe into a count of 4, hold for 7 seconds, and then breath out for 8 seconds.  

4-7-8

A short micro-practice for daily use or to be used anytime, anywhere. Attune to others and practice compassion in less than three minutes. 

Attuning to Others

This breathing exercise can help to engage the parasympathetic nervous system, helping you to calm, relax or even get to sleep.  You can also practice this breath when you are feeling great so that you can easily use it when you are feeling stressed.  

Diaphramatic Breathing

Creating an internal space is a wonderful way to relax and feel more deeply rooted in yourself.  The more you listen to this track, the more you will create a safe trait within yourself as a way of regulating the body and emotions in stressful situations. If you create a body anchor by placing your hands or arms, in the same way, each time you listen to this meditation, you will remind your body to relax each time you engage the body anchor in real-life situations.  This is also an excellent way to go to sleep each night. 

Is alternate nostril breathing something that can stimulate your light (or sun) side? Can it engage the dark (or moon) side? Traditional tantric and yogic systems of understanding and our latest understanding of neuroscience have a lot in common! Learn how similar they are and practice several different types of alternate nostril breathing. You'll gain an understanding of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and how you can regulate these to improve your mood, maintain health and get better sleep!

Science of Alternate Nostril Breathing