Hello Ladyhawke. Welcome to DS. Sorry for what brings you here, but glad you are here.

I swear by mindfulness as my single most effective therapy tool. I don't get to change my past or the plethora of psychoticks that grew from my broken childhood, but being gently, compassionately mindful of how they color my every day helps me toward living a full, rich life in the here and now.

Mindfulness is not the easiest skill set I have learned in my long life, but the gain of awareness is well worth the pain of practicing. I practice, practice, practice, ESPECIALLY on the days I don't feel like it.

OT (Off Topic)
Thank you for the reminder of the movie, "Ladyhawke." It is on my personal list of classics and it's been a while since I've watched it.

Thank you for your lightening fast reply, Arfie. What are things that you practice? I know that with practice, the force will be strong in this one.

I think you have to reassure yourself that things will be alright. You must know that as long as you take the safety measures and apply the law you will always be alright.

Mindfulness might be even tougher to explain than trust, love, prayer, meditation, etc. The mechanics of mindfulness still defy scientific measures and explanations. I suspect they always will. I love science dearly, but I do not believe my beloved science is in any danger of knowing all there is to know in the Cosmos any time soon, much less explaining it in simple, universal terms.

My own style of mindfulness begins with a daily personal inventory. What do I have to work with today? I work hard at resisting the urge to self-judge and self-flagellate over what that inventory reveals. Good, bad and indifferent, it is what I have to work with. It is not a great tragedy nor character defect when I find myself a few fries short of a happy meal. Handicaps happen.

From there, I give myself full creative license to factor in my handicaps of the day and keep myself on track as I do what needs to be done as best I can. I let the healing mysteries guide whenever possible.

Actually meditation has been explained by a neuroscientist and meditator

His name is Rick Hanson and his book is Buddha’s brain

He took the Soto zen model like vioassana meditation and explained it scientifically

We have created a self and called it an ego

He says we have one with a million zeros behind it as opportunity at a cellular level

I meditated five hours a day for five years without missing a day to try and heal
From Ptsd

Ptsd is stored in the body and also in the right hemisphere of the brain in an organ called the amygdala

We can not access this side consciously

So meditation has been detailed in specific scientific terms

I run a mindfulness blog and facilitated an in person mindfulness group for NAMI for seven years

Our trauma is stored on the right side of the brain and meditation travels to that side

In brief meditation grows our ability to focus on our breath enabling us to create a space between our fight or flight mechanism and intrusive thoughts

Meditation let’s us integrate our trauma by staying present while we are triggered

Integration is bringing old trauma into present moment

Start with one breath

It has four parts

Inhale pause exhale pause

They teach navy seals to handle fear by controlling the breath

Our breath controls our nervous system

Next time your fight or flight fires during a trigger

Let the thoughts be

Go to the body sensation

Become aware of what body part stored your trauma

Get to know e wry thing about your trauma

There are relative patterns we have have

I designed a model so you can focus and meditated easier

Here is my blog

https://cptsdawayout.com/

Thank you all for your enlightening responses! They helped immeasurably.

I am a visual person so I designed a visual model that looks like an upright infinity symbol

Counting my breaths that they taught me at the zen center never worked for me

Thoughts proliferated

I use two senses

Focus on the breath, my model and listening

I try to slow my breath and stop my heart

Then I find the lowest sound in the room

Then go below it

Finally I listen for my inhales and exhales

If I can accomplish that thoughts have no chance of getting in

We are not meditating until we reach a focused stage where the mind clears and thoughts evaporate

That when the body and mind start repairing themselves

I teach to start with one breath

Feel the inhale fill your lungs
Know this takes energy

Then the first pause happens to let oxygen absorb and create a rymthymic flow

By the time we get to the exhale, all the hard work is over
Exhaling takes little or no effort

Control your exhale and expand its duration

Then the last pause helps us not inhale the used air

The breath can activate our parasympathetic nervous system the brakes

Within ten focused breath I can dissipate a full trigger response

It took time and practice but my fight or flight mechanism does not explode anymore for ptsd

That’s half the battle

https://cptsdawayout.com/healing/

Yup, as I've posted here often, I was lucky that the same day my doc diagnosed me with PTSD 25 years ago she had me sign up for weekly Buddhist meditation classes I attended for 5 years. That was really smart of her. It worked.

Hello! My husband started mindfulness and meditation a few years ago; I started earlier. Before my PTSD dx, in fact, by sheer luck. So I can build on the mindfulness of body I learned in 15 years of yoga; I build on the breathing techniques of yoga; and I am still developing my self-inventory habits. It's my pattern to lock into panic, and interrupting that is still a struggle.

BUT... I can do it!. And then I can take a few meditation-style breaths, re-orient in the moment, and get moving. Sometimes it's "moving out of bed", granted, but hey.

Welcome:-) Healing hopes to you!

I can't tell you how helpful this is for me. Thank you all!