Tag Archives: mindfulness

Bessel van der Kolk on the pandemic, courtesy of NICABM

This short talk was a free resource posted by National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine or NICABM on March 31st, in response to COVID-19. It reviews how core knowledge and tenets in the treatment of trauma can serve broader populations in this moment. Bessel van der Kolk is an internationally, renowned trauma therapist and author of The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. He speaks about the natural feelings of helplessness, distress, and lack of agency that arise in the midst of unpredictable life circumstances like a pandemic and offers practical suggestions about self-care and resources.

**Alert: van der Kolk comments briefly on national politics. Hopefully, whatever one’s political or apolitical leanings, the core resources and therapeutic messages can be received.

Here is the link:

breathing in deep, breathing out slow

mini-meditation

breathing in calm, breathing out ease

Our lives are constantly tumbling forward into the future, and the only way back to here and now is to stop. Even a few moments of suspended activity, a mini-meditation of just being still, can reconnect you with a sense of aliveness and caring. That connection will deepen if, during those moments, you intentionally establish contact with your body, breath, and relax.

~Tara Brach, True Refuge