As the pandemic continues, it’s not uncommon for clients (and sometimes practitioners) to become overwhelmed by feelings of despair.
So in the video below, Peter Levine, PhD, shares a quick, simple exercise that your client can use if they begin to feel overwhelmed by despair.
Have a listen.
Do you have clients who could benefit from this exercise? What approaches have you used with clients who are feeling despair as the pandemic continues? Please leave a comment below and let us know.
If you found this helpful, here are a few more resources you might be interested in:
How to Help Clients Transform Helplessness into Hopefulness
What Can Help COVID-19 Frontliners Who Are Exhausted and Overwhelmed?
When the COVID-19 Pandemic Leaves Us Feeling Helpless, with Bessel van der Kolk, MD
simpel and very usefull,thanks for that Information Dr.Levine
Carmen Rosenbaum ,Therapist,Germany
Thank you very much. It is clear and easy to do. Ik could feel how mijn belly stersfull was. With this excersie it became soft again.
I used it just a moment ago at the dentist…
Been in a lot of pain due to their poor handling of a machine breaking down. Helped with both the pain & the frustration!
Thank you, Dr Levine!
You helped me calm my inner tiger! 🙂
Lovely!
nice
Thank you! Simple. Brief. Focus on breath. Effective! Wow!
Cats comfort themselves by purring like this!
Ha! I love your cat wise
comment, it’s so true!
It is funny I was just looking at my cat and thought the same thing like purring
How lovely Thanks
I’ve always found this very helpful
Thank you Peter ??
Excellent. Thank you ??
Thank you Peter Levine. Thank you Ruth Buczynski. So many things pile on each other as this pandemic and crazy political/world events unfold without let-up plus whatever is going on in our individual lives — Even if you and yours are spared the worst. I will use and share this exercise.
In my experience, if I do these exercises by myself they only lead to more separation. If I do them with someone who can meet and hold my experience, I feel met and so does the trauma. So, is it really the exercise or is it the appropriate person who can hold what is going on for me and attune to that?
I agree with you. We need to be witnessed in our feelings. To be met as you call it. Healing and growing in the presence of others is powerful and lasting. And rathe than increasing separation it creates connection
Thank you for that. I like very much the way Peter Levine communicates with his listeners. Of all the presenters at the last course “How to work with clients who are stuck” I was very taken with the way he spoke (and of course the content!)
I’ve found in the past that slow breathing has helped me enormously in times of stress, but adding the sound while breathing out improves the experience.
Following my husband’s suicide , with four small children and few resources, at that time, I had many periods of l….let’s call it sheer terror as to how Id cope, and deep slow breathing did help .
(Fortunately I had robust physical health and a stubborn nature , and huge love for my children ,which pulled us all through, but
it gave me first hand experience and understanding of PTSD, Depression etc, to apply to starting a care home for psychiatric clients , from which I retired after 30years.) How I wish in retrospect at my most vulnerable that I had available the help of someone like Dr Levine !! Thanks so much .Happy Christmas to you .
What a beautiful story of post traumatic growth, Denise. Wow, thank you for your wonderful work and for sharing this story!
Eyes open or closed?
Thank you Peter — the technique of the sound vibrating in the belly is wonderful — I am going to teach it (Among others, I work with front line medical workers).
Will use with myself and as needed with clients. I have been in intermittent despair.
Thank you.
loved it – so so useful many thanks
I can’t make my stomach feel any kind of vibration. My vibration sensation is trapped in my throat. What am I doing wrong?
Try to really focus on your stomach and on really pushing the sound and breath down there – I’m feeling it very lightly in my stomach- mostly in my throat – so really bring your awareness down to your stomach as best possible may help
A wonderful source of assistance that validates and enhances other information about the power of breathing
I do have to smile sometimes when I see science catching up with yoga as in this sounding and breathing exercise. I’m also aware of yoga catching up with science. Charlie Stevens, Cork Ireland
Hi Charlie! So incredible seeing your name here as I scroll down! Hope you are doing well…love, Tatiana, once from west cork, now in Barcelona.
Thank you Peter…lovely feeling after the large breath and vuuuuuu…
Thank you. I’d like to know more about what’s behind why this seems to work. What’s the origin of this ‘vuuuuu’ and why does that sound resonate and seem to help.
Thank you, Peter! I am going to work with this.
Thank you Peter for all you have given to us!!!!
Thank you Peter, I am a Early childhood educator (4_5 years old) and I practice yoga and also teach to these children. You are absolutely right! Breathing exercises are one of the best techniques to help to calm body and mind. Thank you very much:)
Excelente, muchisimas gracias!!!!
Thank you – I work in health care as a mental health provider I will spread this gift to us.
This really is powerful! Thank you, Peter <3
This is a great exercise, I’m going to try it myself and also give it to people who might benefit. Thank you Peter.
I do that a lotttttttt with my patients, since i follow Peter . and it is very powerful and easy . . we do other breathing exercises like breath in along the “more comfortable side” of the body and breath gently out all along the uncomfortable side breathing infrom feet to head and out from head to feet etcetc ;
Thank you, Peter, for bringing this up in these days. Almost no SE session in my practice without this wonderful and gentle exercise. It perfectly works for Mums and Babies as well. Babies immediately notice the shift of their Mums – helps both to get into contact again when things are overwhelming. Great regulation tool.
Barbara, HP Psych, SEP, SSP Provider, Germany
Thank you so much!! This was very helpful for me!!
Peter Lavine’s kind spirit, knowledge, and experience are such a gift to humanity.. Thank you for this simple and yet very efficient exercise.
What a kind man Peter Levine is. It’s obvious he truly cares for those who come to him for help. He has a profound understanding of the human emotional makeup.
I’ve been using Marty Seligman’s “3 Good Things” and I have one client who let me know “On the days when I don’t use it, things aren’t as well for me”. And, she’s using it twice daily – as I tasked – once each morning and again each evening. I augment the task just a bit by asking clients to also pair the exercise with Peter Levine’s “Felt Sense” exercise. So that is for each “good thing” to “feel it” in the “felt sense way”, as they reflect on it.
Amazing Brenda, thank you for sharing!
Thank you. A little trouble doing this since I am congested ( cold weather has this effect ). I do practice “ha breath “. This is similar.
This is very similar to yoga breaths, and/or what I’ve always practiced of breathing in ‘blue’ and breathing out ‘black’ …. thank you for this.
Hi W.! It’s very interesting what you wrote about the breathing exercise. I’m curious, could you explain more on what breathing in “blue” and breathing out “black” means? Thank you
It combines pursed-lip breathing with a vibratory chant or sound
Used for thousands of years to slow down incessant thinking. Hijacked by religions… but effective none the less 🙂
YES – so interesting as it also is a way of massaging the vagus nerve system. Wonderful for people to get such a simple and effective ‘tool’ for grounding and keeping our bodies in a parasympathetic state. I appreciate Peter’s work so much for it’s breadth, if that makes sense?
Thank you so much Peter ,for all these things ideas thoughts ,feelings ,reflections lessons….. which you share with ongoing compassion and generosity.
Thank you.
Astrid Hoang-Brown, Psychotherapist
London
Thank you, Peter.
Interesting….I just did this yesterday as the breathing warm-up with my small community singing group (which has had to move online). I chose it specifically because of the darkness of the days right now and the heavy continuous rain, as backdrop to the confusion and stress struggling to conceptualise and deal with Christmas – a time that has always been about families coming together. These people are not on the front lines as your example, but probably suffering in their own way, as many are.
Thank you Peter Levine, from Australia. This exercise is great. Much appreciated. Wishiny you all Happy Hannukah or Happy Christmas. Dec 2020
Excellent advice and wisdom shared here. I did the exercise and yes, felt the difference. Thank you for this information.