A prompt bank organised by the moment you're in, not by which model it came from.
Tags mark the source: S follows Selvam's emotional embodiment structure, IST follows Clairvision sourcing, both works in either frame. Everything is written in my own words, not quoted. Adapt the phrasing — delivered verbatim, any of it will sound like a script, which is its own kind of defence-inducing.
Finding the situation
Emotion stays alive by staying tethered to something specific. Come back here whenever it goes flat.
When did this start being a problem for you? What else was going on in your life around then?
What changed around that time — work, a relationship, where you were living?
I'll say those back to you. Notice which one you react to most.You're watching for a body response, not asking them to choose analytically.
Which part of that is hardest to think about?
Say that last bit again — there was more in it.
What's the worst of it? Not the whole thing — the specific worst part.
When they can't name an emotion
Selvam's workaround: drop beneath the named emotions to the bad-feeling itself, which he treats as always available and almost never asked about.
You don't have to name it. Where does the bad feeling sit?
Never mind which emotion. Is it a bad feeling or a good one? Start there.
What's the awfulness of it like, as a body thing?
If you had to put a hand where you feel worst right now, where does it go?
Is there anything under the anger? Anger's usually covering something more exposed.Only if anger is their habitual response rather than the live emotion.
What's here right now? Not what you think about it — what's actually present.
Supporting the emotion
Support is the primary intervention, not the preamble to one. Most defences stand down when defending stops being necessary.
Of course that's there. Anyone would feel that after what happened.
Who do you go to when you feel bad? Bring them in here for a moment. What happens?
Imagine telling them what you're feeling right now. Does it get any easier to stay with?
If someone else were carrying this, what would their face look like? See if your face can do that.
Let a sound come with it if one wants to.
I'm not going anywhere. Take your time with it.
When a defence shows up
Name it without treating it as opposition. It arrived for a reason and it has a job.
Something just came in there. That's fine — let's have a look at it.
Are you holding your breath? What happens if you let it go?Simple physiological defence — awareness alone usually releases it.
Notice what showed up right as we got close to that.
That shutting-down is doing something for you. Any sense what it's keeping away?
We can slow this down. We don't have to get there today.
What's the not-wanting like? Where is it?The refusal becomes the object rather than the obstacle.
Stay with the part that doesn't want to.
Is it that you can't feel it, or that you'd rather not right now? Both are fine answers.
Locating it in the body
Ask with the situation still in the room. Cold, abstract body questions rarely motivate anyone to go looking.
As you hold that situation — where is it strongest in you?
Does it have an edge? Where does it stop?
Which part of you has none of this in it at all?Useful both as a resource and as a map of where the defences are holding.
Is it only inside you, or does some of it feel like it's outside the body too?
Local expansion
Widen into the immediate neighbourhood. Never concentrate into the area — that raises energy in the emotion and the defence together.
Let your awareness widen past the chest to take in more of that whole area, so it can be part of this with you.
Put your hand there — not to calm it, but to help the area open so the feeling has more room.Say the intention aloud. Unstated, self-touch defaults to soothing.
See whether the area right next to it can take some of this too.
Not into the middle of it. Around it.
Area-to-area expansion
When local expansion produces too much intensity, or simply doesn't move.
Widen out to your belly as well. Hold both at once, or go back and forth between them.
It won't feel identical down there. Look for any of the same quality.
One hand here, one hand there — not to settle it, but to connect the two areas in this.
Can any of it reach your legs?
When it stays at the perimeter
Accessible but shallow — they can trace the shape and not get inside. Pushing for depth is the reliable way to keep it a shape.
Don't try to get into the middle. Give the outside of it more room.
What's the edge itself like?The boundary becomes the phenomenon rather than the barrier around it.
What's the not-going-further like? Where do you feel that?
If part of it is outside your body, let your awareness go out there too.
Bring the situation back in for a second. Say the hardest detail again.A flat, shape-like feeling has often come untethered from what generates it.
Sourcing — the IST register
The discipline is brevity. Every extra word invites the mind back in and hands the encapsulation its material.
And now?
What do you feel now?
Stay with that.
What's that like?
Say nothing. Hold the space.Frequently the correct intervention. When it stalls, become more established rather than more active.
Is anything else here with that?
When it's becoming too much
Integration used mid-cycle, to keep the work inside the window and let you process in short cycles instead of one long one.
Let's set that in the background for a minute. Not gone — just behind you.
Find somewhere in your body that feels easier right now. Rest there a moment.
Where in you is untouched by this?
Now open out to your whole body, and your whole energy. What's better than when we started?Stay here longer than the other moves. Energy especially.
Let's stop there for today. That was enough.
Integration — checking what shifted
Not an after-session phenomenon. It happens live and it's a resource you can spend.
What's different in that area now?
Is it more bearable than it was ten minutes ago — even if it isn't any smaller?The target outcome is tolerance, not reduction. Ask for the right thing.
Did anything ease up on its own while we were working?
What's different in your body from when you sat down?
Testing whether they're actually in it
Fluent description with no autonomic movement is representation, not contact. Ask directly — most people can tell you.
Are you feeling it, or thinking about it?
Say that again, and notice what your body does while you say it.
Where were you just then — in it, or watching it?
How much of it are you letting yourself have right now — some of it, or all of it?
When they challenge the premise
The objection is often empirically defensible. Ask before interpreting, and mean it.
What happened the last time you did feel it?
Have you tried this before somewhere? How did it go?
What made you decide it doesn't help?
I'm not attached to this. Want to test it for thirty seconds and see what happens?
If this doesn't move anything, we go a different way. That's a real option, not a consolation prize.
There's a good chance not feeling it has been protecting something. I'd rather understand that than argue with it.
Things not to say
Just let it go.Names an outcome with no action attached. Reads as an instruction they're failing.
Where do you feel that in your body?Asked cold, without a situation or support in place, this rarely motivates anyone to actually go looking — Selvam's point.
Breathe into it. / Notice whether it's warm, cool, tingling, moving…Breath, movement and detailed sensation tracking are on Selvam's exclusion list: all three can regulate the emotion away exactly when you're building capacity to hold it.
So this is really about your mother.Interpretation mid-contact hands the mind its preferred escape — narrative. Both models refuse it.
It's okay, it's okay.At peak intensity this reads as a request to stop. If you mean you're still here, say that instead.
That sounds like grief.Naming it for them substitutes your category for their experience. Wait.
Let me explain why this works.Psychoeducation belongs before or after, never during. Mid-session it's a sales pitch.
Go deeper. / Really get into it.Concentrating into a defended area raises energy in the emotion and the defence together — more pressure, no more access.