CRADLE YOUR FEARS LIKE A BABY
HAVENING is a technique I have used to help frontline workers deal with workplace stress: doctors, nurses, paramedics, ambulance crew and military personnel.
It’s a brilliant form of psychosensory therapy that uses touch to soothe body and mind.
It was created by Dr Ronald Ruden, an expert in neuroscience, who discovered that patterns of repeated touch to parts of the body combined with specific e ye movements and visualisations have a rapid, reliable and predictable effect on our feelings.
The patterns of touch used in Havening simulate the way your mother comforted you as a baby, by cradling you in her arms. The soothing action of being held becomes hard-wired into all infants.
Havening combines these patterns of reassurance with sequences to break down the associations that triggered unhappy feelings. As a result, in just a few minutes we can reduce the intensity of an emotion and become calm.
The technique is not merely a distraction. Studies have shown that when we use Havening, we reduce stress chemicals in our body and change the way our brain processes thoughts and feelings.
The effect of the specific sequence given here is to reset the way your brain interprets and responds to stress. Over time, it can actually alter for good the neural pathways in your brain.
Practise these eye movements, body touches and visualisations until you know them off by heart. You can then use them any time you need to banish unhappiness.
To start, pay attention to the discomfort you are feeling and rate its strength from one to ten, where ten is the most powerful. Then follow these steps: 1. CLEAR your mind, or think about something nice. 2. CROSS your arms, place your hands on the tops of your shoulders and close your eyes. 3. STROKE your hands down the sides of your arms from your shoulders to your elbows, down and up, again and again. 4. AS YOU stroke the sides of your arms, imagine walking on a beautiful beach. With each footstep in the sand, count out loud from one to 20. 5. KEEP your head still while you keep stroking your arms and move your eyes, while still shut, laterally to the left and to the right. 6. CONTINUE stroking your arms as you imagine walking down some stairs and count out loud with each footstep. Aim for 20 steps. 7. OPEN your eyes. If the feeling has moved significantly up the scale of one to ten, you have changed your state of mind. But if the unhappy feeling has not been reduced enough, repeat the sequence.