Centering practice to work with old GUNK

Whether it happened as a child, an adult, as a civilian or during military service, whether you call it trauma or adverse experiences, it's all the same stuff.  I call it GUNK.  It keeps us from being the person and the leader we want to be.  The best way I've found to begin to work with the gunk is this basic 30 second centering practice that I first learned from Wendy Palmer at Leadership Embodiment.  Centering acts like a clutch in a car.  It disengages the mind for just a second to allow a person to shift to a new action that is not the default.  Try to shift to a new pattern without depressing the clutch and you'll grind the gears and end up with a mess.

If you do this twice a day (after you wake up and before you go to bed) for about 45 days you will begin to notice a difference.  Your nervous system begins to calm down and work through your gunk in the unconscious, without your conscious mind needing to do anything.  If twice a day seems impossible, start with once a day and build up.  Here's the centering exercise:

• Stand with feet flat on the floor, shoulder width apart, and arms hanging by your side 
• Regular inhale up the back lengthening the spine
• Regular exhale down the front softening the chest
• Slowly turn your head to one side, then the other, taking in your surroundings
• Straighten your arms and fingers at your side and put about 6 inches between hands and body. 
• Think of something that makes you smile
• Ask yourself, "what would it be like if I had a little more ease?"
• Settle and allow shoulders to drop

As you become more practiced, you can streamline this to "up, down, expand, settle."