I meditate daily and am starting to shift towards leading other people in meditation. Most of my progress was in a group setting with someone that didn't specialize in trauma but that I knew well and was able to give participants a lot of one-on-one attention.
For me, the biggest thing was taking notes about what did and didn't work for me and comparing that with the grounding methods that were most helpful. That gave me some general rules to use to modfiy whatever method I was trying to make it more likely to be successful. One of my big things is that anything involving going down is going to freak me out. Knowing that and always changing it to going up instead made meditation a lot less scary.
It was also helpful in getting me to break things down into pieces and see what parts of it went right instead of writing the whole experience off as a failure. Also, figuring out what went wrong was also kind of a success. It helped me look at the whole thing more positively, because beating myself up for not being good at something never helps me get better at it.
I feel like body scans are a really good starting point. The basic structure is easy to modify if something is or isn't working. I also like that there are a lot of little opportunities for success. If you manage to relax even one body part a little, you have accomplished something. I think it also helps that it is predictable.
For me, the biggest thing was taking notes about what did and didn't work for me and comparing that with the grounding methods that were most helpful. That gave me some general rules to use to modfiy whatever method I was trying to make it more likely to be successful. One of my big things is that anything involving going down is going to freak me out. Knowing that and always changing it to going up instead made meditation a lot less scary.
It was also helpful in getting me to break things down into pieces and see what parts of it went right instead of writing the whole experience off as a failure. Also, figuring out what went wrong was also kind of a success. It helped me look at the whole thing more positively, because beating myself up for not being good at something never helps me get better at it.
I feel like body scans are a really good starting point. The basic structure is easy to modify if something is or isn't working. I also like that there are a lot of little opportunities for success. If you manage to relax even one body part a little, you have accomplished something. I think it also helps that it is predictable.
