If you can't sleep ...

try the lying down cobbler and three stage yogic breathing. 

Alternate nostril breathing is really good.

All forward bends because they are soothing.

Also corpse pose doing yoga nidra.

Survival of the Nurtured

"How did the rose ever open it's heart and give to the world all of its beauty? It felt the encouragement of light against its beings; otherwise we all remain too frightened." Hafiz.







We are not the survival of the fittest, we are the survival of the nurtured. We had a phenomenal growth of the cortex because we needed to communicate verbally and non verbally with the members of our tribe in order to survive. This higher brain that we evolved to survive has the amazing capacities of empathy, consciousness, planning, language, thinking, discernment. Also this pre frontal cortex is matured and developed by using empathy. That part of the brain matures when we nurture and empathize and are nurtured and empathized with.




Any emotional-relational-social experiences that are processed before the brain structures that can process experience consciously are fully mature, before 2 ½ -3 years of age, those experiences are stored only in implicit memory, only outside of awareness. This includes ALL early patterns of attachment. The research has proven “beyond irrefutability” that attachment patterns stabilize in our neural circuitry by 12-18 months of age. They are stable and unconscious before we have any conscious choice in the matter and unless new experiences change them, will remain stable “rules” of relating well into adulthood.


Oxytocin is the bonding hormone that is released through touch, warmth and movement, such as breastfeeding and orgasm. Oxytocin calms the amygdala, it can spur the pre-frontal cortex to grow GABA bearing fibers down to the anydgala and quell the fear response. It is why hugs make us feel safe and bonded to the person who is helping to release oxytocin in our brains. Even just imaging someone who gave us unconditional positive regard or love, will activate oxytocin and calm us down and make us feel warm and loved.




mostly extracted from
http://www.lindagraham-mft.com/neuroscience_attachment.htm

Kriya

Kriya (in Sanskrit "action, deed, effort") most commonly refers to a "completed action", technique or practice within a yoga discipline meant to achieve a specific result. Types of kriya may vary widely between different schools of yoga. Another meaning of Kriya is the outward physical manifestations of awakened kundalini. Kriyas can also be the spontaneous movements resulting from the awakening of Kundalini energy.

Neuroscience of Attachment and Resilience

On this website there are some interesting articles, on things such as ...

Neuroscience of Attachment:
Attachment research and modern neuroscience are teaching us:


1. our earliest relationships actually build the brain structures we use for relating lifelong;
2. experiences in those early relationships encode in the neural circuitry of our brains by 12-18 months of age; these patterns of attachment become the “rules” for relating that operate lifelong, the “known but not remembered” givens of our relational lives.
3. when those early experiences have been less than optimal, those unconscious patterns of attachment can continue to shape the perceptions and responses of the brain in old ways that get stuck, that can’t take in new experience as new information, can’t learn or adapt or grow from those experiences. What we have come to call the defensive patterns of personality disorders. What one clinician calls “tragic recursive patterns that become encased in neural cement.”

Fortunately, the human brain has always had the biologically innate capacity to grow new neurons – lifelong – and more importantly, to create new synaptic connections between neurons lifelong.

Attachment research explains how therapy, by providing the very same experiences in adulthood that create secure attachment in early development - presence, attunement, empathy, affect regulation, reliable reciprocal communication and practical help - help create the internal secure base in clients that is the foundation of all mental and emotional health.

Attachment-based therapy helps clients literally re-program their brains and heal from the maladaptive relational-emotional-coping strategies we term personality disorders to the flexible, adaptive, cohesive, integrated strategies that support the emergence of a fully authentic Whole Self.

Resilience:


The foundation of resilience - the development of capacities to cope - rests in the experiences of our earliest attachment relationships, where we procedurally learn to repair ruptures in relationship, regulate our emotions, and gel a stable yet flexible sense of self -- or not.

When clients consistently have trouble coping with their lives in adulthood, they may lack the foundation of resilience - the unconscious internal secure base that comes from early secure attachments. Therapy needs to do - and can do - more than help such clients explicitly learn how to think, how to make decisions, how to plan, how to look for options. Therapists need to - and can - provide a safe, empathic, attachment relationship - re-parenting, if you will - where clients recover capacities of self, relating, regulating and coping that are the true foundation of resilience.


Linda Graham
http://www.lindagraham-mft.com/articles.htm