SPOTLIGHT | A Guided Practice to Reduce Stress & Build Safety Through Contact Points with Dr. Liz Stanley

Experience the "contact points" meditation with Dr. Liz Stanley, a practical guided exercise that integrates seamlessly into your daily routine and can transform your stress resilience and self-regulation. Liz Stanley, PhD, is the creator of Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT®), speaker and award-winning author of Widen the Window and Paths to Peace. As a U.S. Army veteran, she holds degrees from Yale, Harvard and MIT. She’s also a certified practitioner of Somatic Experiencing, a body-based trauma therapy. Liz shares how MMFT combines the warrior traditions, mindfulness and somatic therapy to aid in self-regulation and building resilience. Through her guidance you'll experience this foundational practice directly, a technique designed to help the nervous system find its equilibrium, perfect for those wanting to strengthen their somatic container and reinforce their embodiment.

Liz introduces the science behind MMFT, highlighting its ability to expand our window of tolerance to stress by nurturing attentional control and fostering a sense of safety. She illustrates how participants can re-regulate their nervous systems and turn on recovery modes, even during the busiest of days! Whether you've got five minutes or just a quick 30-second pause, Liz demonstrates how this practice can seamlessly integrate into daily routines, offering a sanctuary of safety and wellbeing. 

Check out Liz's longer guest episode with us, Widening Your Window of Tolerance to Stress & Trauma for Mindbody Health. 

elizabeth-stanley.com

Enjoyed the episode?
Rate & review on Apple Podcasts
Follow on Spotify or YouTube  

Train in Energy Healing
Step into your mastery. Learn to facilitate deep, precise, and truly transformative healing experiences.
Registration now open - our next EHT-100 Training begins March 2026, live and online. Discover the training →

Find Your Energetic Blueprint
Not sure where to start? Take the quiz: What’s Your Field Type?
Reveal your strengths and learn how your energy field shapes your life and relationships.

💌  info@fielddynamicshealing.com | Website 

We’d love to hear your thoughts — reply or reach out anytime.

Thanks for tuning in and connecting to the field.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:04

Welcome to the future of wellness exploring self transformation and holistic healing to unlock your inner potential. Hosted by Christabel Armston and Keith Parker. Hello and welcome to this Spotlight episode. Today, I'm joined by Dr Liz Stanley, creator of MFIT Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training. Liz Stanley, phd, is a speaker and award-winning author of Widen the Window and Paths to Peace. As a US Army veteran, she holds degrees from Yale, harvard and MIT. She's also a certified practitioner of somatic, experiencing the body-based trauma therapy. Today, liz will be guiding us through a practical mind fitness exercise and it's a pleasure to welcome you back to the future of wellness, liz.

Speaker 2 0:56

Thank you so much for having me, Christabel. It's so nice to be here with you.

Speaker 1 1:00

So firstly, I wonder if you'd be happy to share a brief introduction to the purpose of MFIT and its relevance really in this modern world.

Speaker 2 1:09

Yes, so MFIT really evolved from my own experience with stress and trauma and then my own recovery process. Main goal is to help us begin to widen our window of tolerance to stress arousal, and to do it in a gradual, trauma-informed manner. It is very focused on self-regulation within our own mind and body and then in the way that we're interacting with the world around us, and it comes from three different lineages the warrior traditions, mindfulness-based training and the body-based trauma therapies, traumatic experiencing being one of them, and the self-regulation techniques that come from those. So it includes didactic understanding of how the mind and body work through stress, trauma and resilience, but then a series of exercises to help the survival brain, which controls our stress arousal, help it to perceive safety, so that we can down-regulate and have more capacity to meet challenges in the future.

Speaker 1 2:20

And you mentioned there that sequence of exercises. I understand today you're going to be guiding our listeners through the first exercise in the MFIT sequence, called the contact points exercise, to direct attention of the felt sense of contact, I think, as I understand it, between the body and surroundings. So I'm assuming this is encouraging a sense of safety grounding stability, grounding stability.

Speaker 2 2:41

Yes, absolutely Doing all of those things.

Speaker 2 2:46

So MFIT is cultivating two core general skills tolerance for challenging experience, both within us and around us, as well as the capacity to direct and sustain attention on chosen target objects and, when the attention gets pulled in other ways, to be able to notice that and redirect where we want to in an intentional way.

Speaker 2 3:09

So this attentional control and tolerance for challenging experience are the two core skills we need to really help support the body with re-regulation.

Speaker 2 3:19

As we talked about in the longer episode we recorded, wherever our attention is being directed it has these ripple effects through the way that our survival brain is perceiving safety or danger and then that is affecting whether it's turning on stress arousal through our nervous system in our body or if it's turning that off by recognizing safety. So the contact points exercise is really the first exercise in beginning to show the survival brain. We can be choosing where we're putting our attention and we can be putting it in a direction that helps the survival brain to perceive safety. So it's a really critical first step to this kind of re-regulation process. And the nice thing about the contact points is our body, because we're on a planet with gravity, our body is always in contact with something and when we're directing attention to the felt sense of that, that weightedness, that support, that grounding that is enough to help our survival brain really feel stable and safe and that is the posture we need to turn on recovery.

Speaker 1 4:28

You mentioned there, Liz, about downregulation of the nervous system. What benefits might participants experience in doing this practice?

Speaker 2 4:38

So in my experience, when we've done all of our neuroscience and stress physiology research studies, this is the exercise that most of our study participants use the most often. Some of them, the only thing they did outside of the course itself was this exercise once a day, and the recorded version for the course is about five and a half minutes, so they weren't doing a whole lot of practice. But doing this every day creates a bit of an attentional refuge so that the survival brain begins to know oh wait, I know this, I am feeling safe here, I can downregulate. It is available to us at any point. We don't have to spend five and a half minutes. We can do it in 30 seconds as a little touch in between life activities. We can do it for a longer period of time, but it's really helpful as a transition in the day between different activities. It's also really helpful at bedtime. Lying in bed, feeling the whole backside of the body in contact with the bed and the weightedness there, it can help us fall asleep very easily as well.

Speaker 1 5:46

Wonderful. And that brings me to a final question before we get going with the guided practice, which are there any particular guidelines for practice, for participation, liz, or even how best to practice?

Speaker 2 5:56

Yes, great question, christabel.

Speaker 2 5:59

I would say the most important thing is to know that the mind does wander off and there isn't a way that the mind wandering means that we're doing this poorly or incorrectly or something.

Speaker 2 6:13

The most important thing is, whenever the mind wanders, to notice that it's wandered and then, without any judgment, without any blame, without any story, just notice, okay, it wandered, and then choose to redirect back to this contact point, whichever one that you'll go to, and the mind can wander many, many times and that doesn't mean you're doing it wrong.

Speaker 2 6:36

It actually is part of this cultivating of attentional control and reminding the survival brain by what we're focusing on. We are stable, we are grounded, we have support and that is a very important thing for it to understand and perceive in this felt way that it can help then turn on all of these unconscious survival brain processes towards down regulation. So we're always in contact with something. We can always be using contact points in the background of awareness, as we're talking right now. In the foreground of awareness, you and I are talking, christabel, but in the background of awareness I am noticing the backs of my legs in contact with the chair and there's always that availability. Once we use it regularly. It becomes kind of this refuge for the survival brain to remain settled as we're moving through the different ups and downs of the day.

Speaker 1 7:37

Okay, well, we look forward to experiencing this. Liz, I shall hand over to you now for the guided practice element of the episode over to you now for the guided practice element of the episode.

Speaker 2 7:50

Okay, thank you. So, wherever you are finding a comfortable posture, this might be seated and, if you're seated, both feet flat on the ground, bringing your spine so that it is upright yet relaxed. And if you're seated, you might raise your shoulders up by your ears and then you can allow them to drop and let your arms come to rest comfortably, hands on your legs and your lap. If you are lying down, allowing the feet to open out away from the center of the body, and lying with the arms by your side, palms facing up, and if you're standing, finding a standing posture where you have the knees slightly bent, not locked, legs not locked, and really locating a posture where your feet, your weight, is evenly spread across those feet. So, whichever posture you're in, just taking a moment to arrive in the posture, arrive in the body, and that might mean starting with the recognition oh, I'm seated, I'm standing, I'm lying down, just noticing the experience of the body in this posture, if the eyes are open and it feels comfortable for you, you can close the eyes and if not, just gazing softly a few feet in front of you, not focusing on anything in particular, just a soft gaze and taking a moment to scan through the body for any places of tension or tightness, places where you might be holding or armored up, places where you might be holding or armored up, and not trying to change this in any way, but sometimes, as we bring body parts into awareness, just the awareness of the tension allows it to begin to release or unwind. Begin to release or unwind, starting with the forehead, scanning across the forehead and the eyebrows into the eye sockets, down across the cheeks and facial muscles Into the jaw, allowing the tongue to float freely in the mouth, scanning across the upper back, neck and shoulders and down the backside of the torso, and then shifting attention to the upper chest, the, the belly to be soft, shifting attention to the forearms and hands, noticing the temperature of the hands and if the fingers are clenched in any way. Again, not trying to force relaxation, but just allowing any shifts that might want to happen on their own. Shifting attention down to the glutes and the large muscles in the upper legs places where we often are unconsciously holding tension into the knees and calves and shin, and then down to the ankles and the feet, checking in with the toes. Checking in with the toes, allowing them to be unfurled, and then, when you're ready, really directing attention to the bottoms of the feet in contact with the floor.

Speaker 2 13:35

If you're standing or seated, or if you're lying down, the backs of the heels in contact with the surface where you're lying, you might notice pressure or heat, coolness, tingling, achiness, dampness, dryness, itching. So the focus of attention is on the felt sense of the contact, not thinking about the contact, but noticing the felt sense and sensation of the contact. That is the language of the survival brain. So, focusing on the sensation of the contact. And if the mind wanders off, that's okay, just notice it's wandered and then choose to redirect attention back to the sensations bottoms of the feet with the floor. If the mind gets a little dull or bored, you might rouse some curiosity and investigate are the sensations the same under both the left foot and the right foot? Are they different in any way? Are they similar underneath the toes and the heels, or is it different front to back? So, over and over, directing attention to the bottoms of the feet in contact with the floor and then, when you're ready, shifting attention up to a second contact point the backs of the legs and the sits, bones in contact with the chair or whatever surface you're sitting on, once again noticing the sensations of this contact Might be pressure, tingling, hardness, softness, itchiness, achiness or numbness. Once again, you can investigate with non-judgmental curiosity are the sensations the same under the left leg and the right leg or are they different in some way? And if the mind wanders, just notice it's wandered, without any fuss or any blame, any judgment, choose to redirect over and over again back to the sensations at the contact point.

Speaker 2 17:34

And now, shifting attention to a third contact point, this time the hands in contact with the legs or in contact with each other, and here you might notice heat or coolness, sweatiness, tingling, pulsing. You might notice the feeling of the texture of the clothing on the hand. When should the mind wander off? That's okay. Simply begin again noticing the sensations at the contact point. If you've been having challenge connecting with the sensations and felt sense at your contact point, there's a couple things you can do. You might rub your hands, palm facing down, up and and down your thighs and generate some sensations in the hand. Or you might push your feet into the floor and notice the felt sense of that pressure. Or you might adjust your posture a little bit underneath your legs and notice the felt sense of connection there and now. Whichever of these contact points you were noticing sensations most strongly feet with floor or backs of legs with chair or hands with each other in the lap pick one of these three contact points and let that become your target object of attention for this next period of practice.

Speaker 2 19:58

And whenever the mind wanders off and it will, that's what minds do, that's okay. Simply notice it's wandered and, without any judgment or blame, choose to begin again paying attention at your chosen contact point survival brain. That we are stable, grounded, supported and safe that's a very important attentional cue for the survival brain to get. It's the posture it needs to be able to recognize safety and turn on recovery. We can begin again in any moment when the mind wanders off. Just simply start again noticing sensations at your chosen contact point. And now widening the attention.

Speaker 2 21:55

Anything shifted in the body during this short period of practice. You might investigate your energy level. Has that shifted? Has the body's temperature shifted? You might also investigate a sense of tension or relaxation and settledness. Has that shifted in any way?

Speaker 2 22:25

It may, it may not, no right answers and then checking in also with the mind and noticing the quality of attention right now.

Speaker 2 22:40

Is the mind more collected, more focused, alert?

Speaker 2 22:48

Is it more calm or is the mind more distracted, more agitated?

Speaker 2 22:57

Are there any emotions present?

Speaker 2 23:02

Again, no right answer, just getting a sense if anything shifted in the mind and body.

Speaker 2 23:12

And then, when you're ready, if the eyes were closed, opening the eyes and moving the head and neck to orient to your surrounding, taking in colors and textures around you and moving the head and neck enough to take in at least a couple of the corners in the room where you are and as you're orienting to the space, seeing if it's possible also to have some awareness in the background of attention with the contact points.

Speaker 2 23:50

So you might have background attention with the legs touching the chair or the feet touching the floor, even as you are orienting this movement of head and neck to orient to the room, paired with attention to the contact points. This is a very important posture for the nervous system to downregulate. It's a wonderful way to end the exercise and then you might check in and see if there's any other movements the body would like to make to get more comfortable, any stretches and, as you make them notice, any feelings of relief or settledness or support that come from honoring the body's needs in that way and then take that grounded, settled stability out into the rest of your day.

Speaker 1 25:03

Thank you so much, Liz, for that wonderful guided practice and for sharing your time and expertise today. I'm committed here at the Future of Wellness to sharing tools for self-discovery and well-being, and it's been a real honor and pleasure to collect for this spotlight episode. We will, of course, be sharing some details of where to find you and your work, along with a link to your longer guest episode you recorded with us earlier this year in the show notes.

Speaker 2 25:32

Thank you so much for spending time today and reaching out and including me. It was a pleasure to be here, Christabel, and to see you again. I really hope that this is helpful for our listeners.

Speaker 1 25:50

Thanks for being a part of the Future of Wellness. Be sure to subscribe and leave a review. It helps us reach more people and to make great episodes like this one. Learn more about field dynamics and why we think the future of wellness matters. Check us out at energyfielddynamicscom. See you next time.