Exercise one: making contact with the vulnerable child
If you are in quite good contact with your vulnerability, you can make contact with it directly and easily. This is possible in the following way:
- Adopt a comfortable position.
- Close your eyes and follow your breathing.
- Let new earth energy flow inside your entire body, which ‘flows’ to the universe through your crown. Then let the universe’s energy re-enter via your crown. This creates an ‘open, vertical connection’ in yourself.
- Then focus on your vulnerability: your pain, your worries, your anxiety, etc. Continue to watch your breathing while you do this.
- Look at that vulnerable boy or girl in yourself. Put it on your lap and see what it looks like. How is it dressed, how old is it, how big or small? And what is this child doing? Is it looking at you or not? What is it like to have your vulnerable child on your lap? What does it want or need from you? Can you meet this need?
- See whether you can strike up a conversation with your vulnerable child. Perhaps being together in silence is enough.
- You can write down your experiences, perhaps through Journal Writing. You can also work with clay to shape this or explore the outcome in a Dialogue session.
Exercise two; How do you take care of the vulnerable child?
Here are some questions mentioned by Hal and Sidra Stone to explore your vulnerable part and if you are treating your own vulnerability respectfully
- What do you do that you don’t really want to do?
- What don’t you do that you really wish you could do?
- When did you last do something you didn’t really want to do, just to keep the peace?
- When did you last quit doing something you really liked doing because you wanted to satisfy someone else.
- When have you forced yourself to go beyond your physical limits: by continuing to work long after you were already exhausted; by skipping meals; by forgetting to take a break even though you needed one; by sitting for hours at your desk without changing positions; by not getting enough sleep?
- When have you neglected your own feelings while you: made love; were in pain; felt discomfort; felt afraid; felt shy; felt overwhelmed?
- Must you always do something; are you unable to simply be with a suffering person because you need distractions from how emotionally stirred up that makes you feel?
- All these behaviors are ways to put a lock on one’s armor, not to embrace vulnerability. What would happen in your life if you let vulnerability more present?