Practice · The Prep For Prosperity Garden
Grounding & emotional regulation
Ways to come back to the present when you have drifted, and worksheets for noticing what helps.
These are steadying tools, not trauma processing. If one makes things worse rather than steadier, stop, and bring it to your next session.
Free to everyone
Open to anyone. No sign-in needed.
5–4–3–2–1 grounding
When you have gone somewhere else and need to come back
- Name five things you can see, out loud if you can.
- Four things you can physically feel — chair, floor, fabric, air.
- Three things you can hear.
- Two things you can smell.
- One thing you can taste.
It works because it makes your senses do the talking. The point is not to feel calm; it is to be here.
The butterfly hug
When you need bilateral steadying and you are on your own
- Cross your arms over your chest, hands resting near your collarbones.
- Tap slowly and alternately — left, right, left, right.
- Keep the pace slow, roughly one tap per second.
- Let your attention rest on something neutral rather than on the distress.
A self-administered version of the bilateral stimulation used in EMDR. Use it for soothing, not for processing a memory on your own.
Containment
When something has surfaced and this is not the moment for it
- Picture a container — a box, a vault, anything sealable. Yours, and sturdy.
- Put the material inside it. Not to get rid of it: to hold it until session.
- Close it deliberately. Notice that you are the one closing it.
- Bring your attention back to the room: feet, seat, sound, light.
Containment is a setting-aside, not a suppression. It works because you know when you are coming back for it.