10–15 Minute Trauma Practice

Babette Rothschild, Bessell Van der Kolk, Janina Fisher inspired. You can do the whole thing, or chose from favorites. It’s useful for eco-grief from watching ecosystems destroyed. Or what I call ecodeath syndrome, a feeling of sickness and dis-ease when surrounded by concrete and areas barren of much life:

1. Orienting & Micro‑Anchor (2–3 minutes)

Sit comfortably.

 Name aloud 3–4 sensory details:
“I hear ___. I feel ___. I see ___. I smell ___.”

If it’s actually safe, say out loud, “And I’m safe here, I’m safe here.”

If it’s not a safe environment, ecosystem, etc., add an agency statement:
“This place feels unsafe, and my body knows it. I am not trapped. I am taking steps to leave or heal this ecosytem. I am moving toward safety.”

2. Pendulation (3 minutes)

Bring to mind something painful (climate grief, collapse, isolation). Notice where it lands in your body.

Then shift to something soothing (memory of a safe area, a tree, a breath).

Move gently back and forth: distress → resource → distress → resource.

This teaches your nervous system it can touch the pain without drowning in it. 

3. Embodied Discharge (2–3 minutes)

Stand or sit and shake out your arms, legs, spine. Let your body tremble.

Do compressions on your body, squeeze arms, legs, feet, hands, etc.

Press your feet firmly into the ground, push as if to stand, then release.

This helps release stored trauma energy. 

4. Parts Dialogue (3–4 minutes)

Say, for example, if in an unsafe ecosystem: “A part of me feels hopeless. Another part of me knows I’ve survived before. A part of me longs for healthy community and a healthy ecosystem. Another part of me is taking steps toward it.”

If helpful, call on resourced parts: “The part of me that (is empowered)… and knows how to endure. The part of me that worked with (doing something empowering)… and knows how to connect.”

This reduces shame and creates inner compassion.

Here’s a short script combining the tools (as an example, with Eco-Death Syndrome:

“I hear the sounds around me. I feel my body in the chair. I see the light in the room. I feel my hands on the keys.
This place is unsafe, and my body knows it.
I am not trapped. I am taking steps to leave. I am moving toward safety. I am working on Earth restoration.
A part of me feels overwhelmed. Another part of me knows I have survived before and can act again.
I can hold both truths: the grief of collapse, and the fact that I am here, now, with choices.”

5. Closing Containment (1–2 minutes)

If overwhelming thoughts remain, jot them on paper. Fold it, put it in a drawer.

Say: “I’ve stored this. I can come back later if I choose. For now, I am here.”

End with one grounding breath, noticing your body supported by the chair or floor. 

Beginning Uses of Voice Dialogue (Hal & Sidra Stone)

Core Principles

The Selves: We all have many selves—protector, pleaser, inner critic, visionary, wounded child, etc. None are “bad”; each developed to help us survive.

Disowned Selves: Parts of us we push away or deny. They often carry energy we need to reclaim.

The Aware Ego Process: The stance of awareness that can listen to each self without fusing with it. This is where choice and freedom emerge.

Facilitation: In practice, you “speak from” a self, often by physically shifting chairs or positions, then return to center and reflect. 

How to Use It

If someone is carrying the unbearable weight of seeing ecological collapse clearly, while others deny it. Voice Dialogue can help you separate the voices inside you so you don’t have to carry it all as one overwhelming mass. 

Step 1: Identify the Voices: (for example)

The Seer: The part of you that sees the collapse with terrifying clarity,—grounded, unsparing.

The Carrier: The part that feels responsible for holding the grief, rage, and blindness of the group.

The Refuser: The part that says, “I will not carry this for them. I will not carry blindness for the group.”

The Vulnerable One: The part that may feel unsafe, sick, alone, longing for community.

The Aware Ego: The position that can hear all of these voices, honor them, and choose how to act. 

Step 2: Dialogue

Move (literally, if possible) into a different chair or space for each voice. And this is just an example, feel free to say as much as feels right.

Speak as that voice, not about it. For example, but say whatever is true in the moment for you:

The Seer: “This ecosystem is in collapse. I can feel it. These people are not doing anything, and many animals and people will suffer or die.”

The Carrier: “I’ve been holding this for everyone, and it’s crushing me.”

The Refuser: “I will not carry blindness for the group. That is not my role.”

The Vulnerable One: “I feel unsafe here. My body is sick. I need out.”

Then return to center (the Aware Ego) and reflect: “I hear you. I honor you. I don’t have to be only you.”

Step 3: Integration

From the Aware Ego, you can choose:

To let the Seer speak truth, but not be consumed by despair.

To release the Carrier from its impossible burden.

To empower the Refuser to set boundaries.

To care for the Vulnerable One with compassion. 

Why This Matters

Voice Dialogue doesn’t deny the reality of collapse. It helps you not collapse inside it. By giving each part a voice, you stop fusing with just one (the Seer, the Carrier) and reclaim choice. You can say:

“Yes, the ecosystem is collapsing. Yes, people are not talking about it. And I am not carrying that blindness for them. I can feel it, name it, and still choose my next step.”

Leading-Edge but Timeless Attachment Work

1. Continuing Bonds

Old models of grief said: “Detach, move on.”

Newer models say: “Maintain a living bond.”

You don’t have to let an ecosystem or anyone you’ve lost drift “out there.” You can carry them in here—as an internalized secure base. Image and feel the love you have for them as close to you as feels right.

2. Attachment Figures as Inner Resources

In attachment theory, a secure figure provides soothing, regulation, and perspective.

Even after death, you can internalize their gaze, their voice, their presence.

Example: “When I remember this friend’s clear eyes, I feel steadier. I can borrow their clarity when mine falters.”

3. Timeless Practice: Internal Secure Base

Close your eyes. Picture the ecosystem or person.

Imagine them beside you, or around you if an ecosystem.

Let your nervous system register: “I am not alone. I am accompanied.”

This is not fantasy—it’s attachment memory, a real neural imprint. 

4. NLP Reframe: Inside vs. Outside

If you imagine the person or ecosystem as “out there,” or “gone,” it can feel like distance, absence, abandonment.

If you bring them “inside”—in your chest, your heart, your marrow—you carry them as part of your living system.

This shift changes grief from loss to continuing presence.

Why This Matters

Trauma isolates. Attachment heals.

When you consciously internalize a secure figure, you’re not “pretending”—you’re activating the same neural pathways that once regulated you in their presence.

This is both cutting-edge neuroscience and timeless human practice (indigenous ancestor veneration, Christian communion of saints, Buddhist lineage practice).

Again, many of us have attachment not just to people, but to place, to ecosystem, to the living web itself. Attachment theory usually speaks of caregivers, but the nervous system doesn’t limit itself that way. For many of us, the old‑growth jungle or forest is or was an attachment figure—an environment that regulates or regulated you, mirrored you, and held you in its vast intelligence.

Deepening Attachment to the Ecosystems

1. Attachment as Regulation

Just as a child regulates through a caregiver’s gaze or touch, we can regulated through the forest, river, or jungle’s presence.

The sounds of insects, the smell of earth, the birds—these can be co‑regulators, steadying the nervous system.

That’s why someone might miss it like a person. It can be, or was, a secure base. 

2. Attachment as Bond

John Bowlby said attachment is about proximity, safety, and a sense of being held.

Ecosystems can offer that: a womb of sound, smell, and sentience.

Even when it was difficult, it was real—not denial, not blindness. That honesty itself is attachment. 

3. Continuing Bonds

Just as with people, we can carry the places we love/loved inside.

The ecosystem is not fully destroyed—it exists as energy, as memory, as imprint in your nervous system.

When you recall the butterfly’s and birds, you’re not imagining—you’re activating that bond. 

Practices for Attachment to Place

Internal Secure Base: Before sleep, picture the forest or river, the hum of insects, the smell of wet earth. Let your body feel: “I am held.”

Sensory Anchoring: Use soundscapes (ecosystem recordings), natural scents (earth, resin, wood), or textures (stone, bark) to re‑activate the bond.

Dialogue with the forest or river: As you did with the butterfly, let the ecosystem speak. Voice Dialogue can extend to place‑beings. Each voice carries wisdom.

Bone Marrow Rooting: Imagine the jungle’s intelligence sinking into your bones, as if you are carrying its ageless ecosystem within you.

A Closing Image for Sleep

As you drift, imagine yourself in the womb of the forest:

The air thick with life.

The chorus of frogs, insects, birds.

The pulse of roots beneath you.

The birds flying overhead, and the symphony of sounds.

Not idealized, not easy—but alive, sentient, timeless. A secure base that still lives in you.