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Show Notes

In this episode, I’m sharing a gentle somatic practice recorded during the Spring Equinox — a time when the light is returning and the pace of life begins to pick up again. As we transition out of winter, our bodies may still be craving the slowness, darkness, and reduced sensory input that supported rest during the colder months.  

This episode offers a simple, accessible practice for creating moments of sensory rest — even as the external world becomes brighter, busier, and more stimulating. Through supported touch and intentional positioning, we explore how to give the eyes, jaw, and ears a break from their constant work, allowing the nervous system to downshift and receive support.

Rather than trying to force relaxation, this practice invites you to notice contact, support, and subtle shifts in the body. As each sensory area is given time to rest, we explore how slowness and ease can emerge naturally when there is less being asked of the system.

This episode is an invitation to build small pockets of rest into your day — to remember that your senses don’t always need to be “on,” and that even brief moments of reduced input can offer meaningful nourishment for your nervous system.

Timestamps

00:00 — Recording during Spring Equinox & seasonal transitions
02:00 — Why our bodies may crave rest as light and activity increase
03:30 — Setting up for the practice: supporting the head and hands
04:30 — Covering the eyes: creating darkness for true visual rest
07:00 — Noticing the muscles around the eyes soften
09:00 — Expanding awareness to the rest of the body
10:30 — Slowly reintroducing light with eyes closed
11:30 — Supporting the jaw and noticing contact
13:00 — Letting relaxation emerge through attention, not effort
15:00 — The role of the jaw, throat, and communication
17:00 — Transitioning to the ears: cupping and softening
19:00 — Letting the ears rest from listening
21:00 — Noticing habitual effort and allowing new patterns
22:30 — Transitioning out of the practice
23:30 — Reopening the senses धीरे and integrating the experience
24:30 — Carrying the effects of sensory rest into daily life

Submit your questions for the Q&A [here]

Photos and links from this episode:
www.mindandmountain.co/podcast

Transcript 

Sarah 0:02
Hello, co regulation conversations, folks, good to be back with you today. I have a somatic practice for you that I'm choosing to record for us all today because of the time of year that we find ourselves in. Of course, this practice, you could do this any time of year, but I think of especially during this spring time of year, it's actually Spring Equinox as I'm recording this, as the light returns and the pace of life increases, our bodies might still be craving some of the slowness and the restfulness that we had available during the winter season and inside of these transitions, it feels potentially really helpful to bring in some intentional practice around Accessing rest and accessing these moments when our senses have less work to do, like they do when it's dark out and when there's less stimulus, and our sensory organs have less that we ask from them, some of the way that we're actually able to slow down and rest more in the winter, potentially. So this practice is a way of playing with those same environmental circumstances, and we're just going to build them for ourselves. So to do this practice, I would encourage you to set yourself up in a way where you can lean your body onto your hands and let your hands also be supported. So like one of my favorite ways to do this is facing backwards on a chair, where you can have your forearms on the back of the chair and then lean your head into your hands, or else, maybe you set yourself up on like the the couch or a chair or something like that, with a pile of pillows on your lap so that your arms can be resting on something, and then your head can come forward and lean your head into the palms of your hands. So we're just going to be cupping the eye sockets with your hands and leaving your eyes and eyelids inside the space at the palms of your hands. So hit pause here if you need a little moment to find your position. But then once you're here, we're just allowing the head and the neck and all of the muscles of the face to rest gently into the hands.

Sarah 3:41
So ideally here you have a pretty dark place for your eyes to rest, maybe even completely dark.

Sarah 3:53
And we know that our eyes actually only are a fully able to rest in complete darkness. So here we are looking to create that dark place with the support of the hands and

Sarah 4:27
and just taking some time here, we want to let the eyes have a chance to Notice that there is nothing asked of them right now,

Sarah 4:46
there's so much that our eyes do for us during the day, especially those of us who have access to sight.

Sarah 5:04
In humans, the site is our primary sensory organ,

Sarah 5:17
one of the main ways we differentiate between what things feel good and what things don't, what things feel safe and what things aren't.

Sarah 5:37
So here in this moment, what we want the eyes To receive is this opportunity to rest, receive some support.

Sarah 6:05
And feel what it's like to not have anything asked of them. I

Sarah 6:55
as we give this some time, you might notice the way that those little, teeny, tiny muscles that surround the eye, that hold the eyeball in place,

Sarah 7:18
that are in charge of blinking and moving the eyelids and the eyeball

Sarah 7:31
that all of those muscles are also receiving, this support, this darkness,

Sarah 7:45
And this opportunity just to slow down and rest and

Sarah 8:15
relaxing back into this little pocket of time that we created Where there's nothing that we need from the eyes.

Sarah 9:18
And maybe noticing, as we spend some time with this that there are other parts of the body that are also Enjoying this slowness and support,

Unknown Speaker 9:38
maybe muscles along the spine. Change shape, down the neck, in the throat.

Sarah 10:06
We'll be moving next to supporting a different part of the body. So before we do, just notice what it's like to be here in this dark place.

Sarah 10:25
And taking it really slowly, I invite you to keep your eyelids closed and just super slowly start to remove the hands from the eyes, just letting in a little bit of light, bit by bit, noticing how the Light enters, even while the eyelids are closed and

Sarah 11:02
just taking that nice and slow.

Sarah 11:09
The next place I'd encourage you to bring your hands is to your jaw line, so seeing if there's a way that you can find some support For your jaw with those hands in their supported way.

Sarah 11:44
And just letting the jaw receive the support of the hands here,

Sarah 12:01
feeling the areas of the skin the body, where the hands are, here in support.

Sarah 12:22
And rather than, like, intentionally, like talking to the jaw and trying to get it to relax here, let's see if we can't let the attention just gently land in the areas where there is contact between the jaw and the hands,

Sarah 12:47
noticing the contact and the support.

Sarah 13:04
And then just trusting that, if the attention is here in the experience of support, that the softening And the relaxation may occur. At the body's right pace.

Unknown Speaker 13:52
Yeah, feeling the support

Sarah 14:02
and noticing any little shifts that might be happening in the jaw or any other parts of the head, you might also notice ways that your neck or throat or spine are also a part of this process receiving something

Sarah 14:52
here. Acknowledging the jaw and the throat and the way that we use voice and facial expressions for so much in our daily lives, communication,

Unknown Speaker 15:31
keeping ourselves safe,

Sarah 15:38
and that here In this moment, there is nothing more that the jaw and the throat and the mouth, nothing more that they need to do at this moment.

Unknown Speaker 16:33
And from here we'll make one more transition in just a moment.

Sarah 16:43
Hmm. So again, nice and slowly removing the

Unknown Speaker 16:53
hands from the jaw and just feeling what it's like to

Sarah 17:03
to be in this part of the body as the support changes, we can keep in our awareness the memory of that support, And in a way, it might continue to exist there as we let the hands move toward the ears, and now we are letting the ears settle in to a moment here where They also get this chance to rest,

Sarah 18:01
letting the hands cup the ears,

Sarah 18:11
and I know I'm still speaking to you, but I'm going to speak a little bit Less here, so as the ears get a chance to receive some warmth

Unknown Speaker 18:26
and some touch from your hands, they also get the chance to

Sarah 18:38
rest from the work of hearing, The work of listening.

Sarah 19:00
And for these few moments here, there is nothing more that these ears need to do.

Unknown Speaker 19:19
Just rest back and receive.

Unknown Speaker 21:07
No need to effort or strain.

Sarah 21:19
Sometimes when we take these intentional breaks with our senses, we might notice some habits that our body's been in with sustaining attention or sustaining effort.

Unknown Speaker 21:45
Then the opportunity to shift that pattern,

Sarah 21:55
even if it's just into conscious awareness and

Sarah 22:05
or maybe releasing some of the muscles, muscle holding that might happen as part of that, and then just Giving the body a chance to rest back and enjoy what it's like to have a different experience,

Sarah 22:35
the potential for a new pattern.

Sarah 22:47
And here, as you're ready, we'll start to transition, lifting hands gently away from the ears. Eyes and seeing what it's like

Sarah 23:11
to have our hands move away from the head and readjust.

Sarah 23:34
You're welcome to stay with us for as long as you wish, and when you're ready to come back,

Unknown Speaker 23:50
just nice and Slowly, let the eyes start to move toward and open.

Sarah 24:04
Way of looking, maybe first looking down a bit, so things are kind of soft, but as you're ready, just you know, take your time and work your way back into opening up those senses again, letting in a little bit more input, noticing how that is, and just trust that this break that we just gave to the senses had an impact, and even if you need to go and continue to engage in a sensory way with the world, this nourishment that just landed is something that your body will carry with you, and you can return to this anytime.

Sarah 25:03
Okay until next time, take really good care of yourself, and I'll see you again.