“If you carry joy in your heart, you can heal any moment.” ~Carlos Santana
Are you wondering what glimmers are? If so, you are not alone. I have been leading self-nurturing workshops on glimmers for the past year, and most people have never heard of them. Deb Dana, a clinical social worker, coined the term “glimmers” in her book The Polyvagal Theory in Therapy in 2018. Although the term glimmers has not yet become a household word, I hope you help me remedy that!
The fact that more people do not know about glimmers may be influenced by the negativity bias in our brain which supports remembering the negative more easily than the positive. Negativity seems to stick to our brains like Velcro and positivity seems to slide off like Teflon according to psychologist Rick Hanson. Evolutionarily this was helpful for our survival when remembering something like a poisonous plant or where dangerous places or animals resided. Since many of us do not live in constant danger like our ancestors, our brains’ negativity bias is no longer needed for our daily survival and may actually be feeding our sense of overwhelm, burnout, and chronic stress.
The Power of Looking for Glimmers
That is why learning about glimmers is so powerful as it refocuses your brain on the positive. You see glimmers are fleeting, positive experiences that bring up feelings of calm, happiness, and connection. They are the opposite of triggers which bring up negative feelings associated with previous experiences. Instead, glimmers promote a sense of calm, joy, and safety. Glimmers settle your nervous system and remind you that all is well and you are safe.
There is abundant research highlighting how important it is to settle your nervous system. If you have been living with high levels of stress, you can probably personally attest to the negative impacts of chronic stress on your mind, body, and spirit. You can’t help but feel unsafe when living in an activated state of fight/flight/freeze. Overtime living in chronic stress leads to serious health problems and can rewire your brain leaving you more vulnerable to anxiety and depression. Imagine having a powerful tool to settle your nervous system in an ongoing way to remind you that you are safe?
Cultivating a Glimmer Practice
Cultivating a glimmers practice will empower you to settle your nervous system, ground yourself, and remain open hearted. When you consistently nurture yourself in this empowering way, you will rewire your brain to look for the positive in your life. Deb Dana wrote that glimmers are “micro moments that begin to shape our system in very gentle ways.” Engaging with glimmers regularly helps calm the nervous system, activates the parasympathetic nervous system or rest and digest state of being, and promotes feelings of joy, gratitude, and safety.
Identifying Your Glimmers
So what are your glimmers? What brings you a sense of joy, peace, and calm?
When I asked workshops participants many responded: nature, beauty, pets, feeling supported by family and friends, dancing, music, a lovely cup of tea or coffee, flowers, sunsets, kindness, creativity, walking, watching the clouds, writing love notes, meditating, visualizing people’s faces you love, breathing, listening to rain, walking in a forest or on the beach, feeling grateful, and so many more.
Connect with Your Glimmers
Here is a lovely way to connect with your glimmers. Take a moment and pause. I invite you to place your hand on your heart, breathe in deeply and tune into what is a glimmer for you in this moment? What evokes a sense of peace, calm, and safety for you? How could you honor that right now?
I have found that cultivating glimmers requires me to remember the positive influence they have on my life. Remember we are always working against the negativity bias in our brain. To support myself, I have expanded my self-nurturing practices of mindfulness, gratitude, and joy to reinforce glimmers in my day and I invite you to do the same.
When you practice mindfulness or paying attention on purpose to your experiences with curiosity, compassion, and non-judgement, you will notice things you might have overlooked or taken for granted. This will allow you to connect with your glimmers. When you bring mindfulness to your experiences, it will help you notice what experiences bring you peace and calm and which do not. When you intentionally give yourself your own kind attention, you will also notice when you are feeling stressed and unsettled and can make an empowering choice to invite in a glimmer!
The more you engage in your life with mindfulness, the deeper your self-awareness, self-compassion, and gratitude will grow. Gratitude practice is another way I connect with glimmers. To practice this, identify three things you are grateful for today. That list will guide you to the glimmers in your life, since often the things we are grateful for make us feel happy, grounded and nurtured. Engaging in a gratitude practice also allows us to savor what we are grateful for and opens us to what is going well in our lives. When we focus on the positive things in our lives, we feel more peaceful and joyful. When we pause to acknowledge those small fleeting experiences of peace and joy, we celebrate another glimmer!
And speaking of joy, the practice of writing a list of things that bring you joy and giving yourself permission to engage in them regularly will invite many glimmers into your day! Nurturing a joy practice will nurture your glimmers practice and provide you with a joy reserve. You can begin taking pictures of things/people/experiences that bring you joy and then looking back at them can become a glimmer. You can also identify symbols, like a heart, to remind you that you are safe and loved.
Glimmers as a Self-Nurturing Practice
When you engage in your life from this deeply nurtured place, you will feel the benefits of your glimmers practice. Mindfulness, gratitude, and joy can help you uncover your glimmers, highlight your glimmers, and support you in cultivating an expanded self-nurturing practice. And over time those micro moments of joy will help you feel more present, safe, and joyful, changing your life for the better.
May you embrace the healing power of glimmers as you nurture peace, love and compassion in the world from the inside out!
Sending you so much peace, love and gratitude, Kelley
