Listening to trauma expert Dami Charf talk on the subject of „orientation“ the other day, I thought that her suggestions on how to orientate correlate directly to Natural Breathing.
“Orientating myself, looking around the space where I am, releases me from being stuck in traumatic states. With orientation in the present moment, I can arrive in the actual situation and the body can relax.”, Dami Charf said.
Orientation can be looking around the room, or naming or touching objects, silently or aloud. Dami Charf advised to keep orientating oneself until a reflective inhale comes, which signals that the body has reset itself.
Once I‘m back in „neutral“, I can reassure myself that everything is well. The more I go into detail with orientating, the more I can perceive from my environment. Perception helps me to get out of a negative past narrative and arrive fully in the physical world, with what‘s happening here and now.
In my breath teaching, for example, when touching a body part, it helps to name it or to say out loud one’s association with that body part or with the sensation of the touch. So I could be touching my knee and say: „knee“ or I could name its function: “joint”, or the sensation „bony, round…“, for example. This helps to arrive in the body more fully and not to stick with ideas about the body or past experiences. And, it also helps to not hold or manipulate one’s breath during the exploration.
As far as I know, Dami Charf’s work is only available in German but hopefully this will change.