Psychotherapist Linda Graham joins the Indie Spiritualist for a discussion around the importance of strengthening our resilience, and creating new patterns of response to trauma.
Linda Graham, MFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist and mindful self-compassion teacher. She integrates neuroscience, mindfulness, and relational psychology in her international trainings, conferences, workshops, and webinars. Linda is the author of Resilience: Powerful Practices for Bouncing Back from Disappointment, Difficulty, and Even Disaster. Learn more about her at lindagraham-mft.net.
Strengthening Resilience
Chris welcomes Linda to the show and asks about her path in life. Linda talks about her journeys as a psychotherapist and as a practitioner of mindfulness meditation, and how the two together came together. They discuss Linda’s book, Resilience, and the importance of strengthening our resilience so we can better surf the many waves of life.
“Resilience is a core outcome of many of the other practices that we do when we’re mindful of our experiences and our reactions to our experiences.” – Linda Graham
Sharon Salzberg and Raghu Markus explore emotional resilience on Mindrolling Ep. 337
Hand to Heart (27:45)
Linda shares her ‘hand to heart’ practice, a powerful tool to help calm us down. She and Chris discuss how we can really change our brains and create new patterns of responding to trauma. Linda talks about how conditioning the brain is all about small experiences repeated many times.
“It’s actually more effective if you meditate for ten minutes every morning rather than waiting for the weekend and meditating for an hour. So, little and often, small experiences repeated many times. And that’s what will install the new neural circuitry.” – Linda Graham
The Power of Touch (41:17)
Chris asks about ways for people to come out of their ‘reptilian’ brain. Linda explores how the nervous system can hijack the prefrontal cortex – leading the classic fight, flight, or freeze response – and how the power of touch can help regulate the nervous system. She ends with a note on how our personal resilience can help affect change in the world as a whole.
“Touch actually is the fastest way we have to regulate our nervous system.” – Linda Graham
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