If you are looking for a new therapist and are curious if combining mindfulness and therapy is a good fit for you, consider the four reasons below on how mindfulness could help you get to where you want to go.

At Flourish!, the vagus nerve is the connector between our treatment models in psychotherapy and our nutritional services and programs. By working with clients to develop vagal tone so they can regulate their cognitive, emotional and social behavior response they can accept the body’s anxious response—rather than resist it—ensuring healthy communication and processing during stressful times. Eating the right foods to ensure healthy digestion and elimination also plays a big role in developing vagal tone.

Once the body has encoded an experience as a threat to survival it is remembered and stored within the limbic system, which allows it to be recalled easily and quickly as opposed to long-term memory.

If the experience stays in the limbic system, for a variety of reasons, then this past experience can be triggered, or ‘lit up’, months or years later with something as small as a sound or a smell, and the victim can feel like the trauma is happening all over again, even though it is not.

Practicing mindfulness can help you shift from internal “why” questions and into your body’s sensations or experiences that are occurring in the present moment and this can give your brain the vacation it is craving. Curiosity can be the key to connect you to the here-and-now, improve relationships with others and yourself and release you from the annoying dialogue in your head.