It takes just one minute to literally get a get in touch with inner experience, using a little ball. It could be a tennis ball, or, even better, one of these squeezable little stress balls (easy to find on the internet, search for squeeze balls or stress balls).
Essentially, this is a tool for the exploration of mindfulness and embodied experience in therapy. It helps clients practice a mindful shift from ‘being in their heads’ (i.e. processing information mostly through their intellect) to availing themselves of the resources of their whole being (including embodied awareness).
Instead of telling people to ‘not be in their heads’, it is much more effective to help them find a different focus. I generally do this by giving clients a small rubber stress ball, in order to provide a quick and easy way to help clients shift from mostly relying on mental processing to availing themselves of embodied awareness as well.
See also:
– A 25-minute video about using the embodied mindful pause in therapy. For ease of use, the video is divided into several short clips, each of which has a transcript. See video.
– Embodied object relations: This provides a description of a session in which the embodied mindful pause was used as a way to explore experientially the process of making meaning. See: Somatic mindfulness.
