Revisiting guided meditation

Now that Pickle is six months old, I've been contemplating a return to work.  

I have been self employed for most of the past 17 years, working long hours as an IT consultant but I don't think I want to go back to that life.  

Pickle is too precious to me to only see on weekends!

Over the years I have kept a few journals.  Sometimes I write out what is churning in my head.  Other times I brainstorm possibilities for the future.  I tried many different types of guided meditation while trying to conceive and sometimes made notes on these.

Today I was leafing through an old journal today looking for what my Australia work ideas were and came across some notes on a meditation I did when I was still reeling from losing Poppy a few days earlier.

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The notes say

"I just did a meeting my spirit guide meditation on YouTube.

In the meditation I walked along a road, sealed, but with no cars.  The tunnel was like a train tunnel and the gate was a metal one like outside houses in London.  I wasn't aware of the surroundings.

I didn't *see* my guide but as I asked questions in my head, answers were given - like in a proper conversation.  

I need to keep my head clear of monkey chatter so I can pay attention to my guide.

• Her name is Alia like my friend.  
• I need not to worry about having a child.  She will come to me.  I don't need to do anything different.  
• My goal is to teach people - love and forgiveness.  I can carry out my goal in any way I choose including working in personal change or IT.
• I need to go to Australia.  I need the sea and she said that I know that.
• My guide will help me.  "Of course Lisa, that is what I am here for".  She will help with the physical tension and releasing energy blocks.  I need to open my chakras and allow my intuition to develop."

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I don't have a clear recollection of even doing this meditation.  To be fair I was pretty upset at the time.  It is interesting to me to see in retrospect that according to my subconscious, all those things I did to try to get pregnant were unnecessary.  

If only I listened to myself...

I am glad we are in Australia, I do need to be near the sea.  

I am thrilled Pickle came to us and wonder if I should be figuring out how to work towards my goal rather than how to return to work.

Meditation

Stillness and reflection in the Okavango Delta

The first time I heard about meditation I was ten years old.  My Mother had just given me a book for my birthday called 'Meditation for Children'.

Although an avid reader, I was unimpressed and uninterested in this particular book.  I didn't like my Mother telling me what to do, especially if it was in any way related to her hippy ways, and it lay on a shelf disregarded, for years. I don't actually remember what happened to it.

I guess my Mother could see what was going on with me and was trying to do me a favour.  

While I'm pretty happy with my brain, it has seen me through some complex and difficult situations, I do have one of those minds that churns incessantly.  So in my head, I think meditation is something I should do, and would benefit from.  

If nothing else, I could do with conditioning myself to trigger the relaxation response.

I've tried to learn to meditate a number of different times in my life, with a number of different methods.

• In my early 20s I bought a transcendental meditation cassette tape which had you repeat a mantra for 20 minutes.  
• Inspired by a recent visit by Sri Chimnoy during my first stint working in London, I set up a small shrine with a candle to meditate on in the morning before I left for work.
• When I was living in San Francisco I attended several terms of meditation classes at a 'church' that I eventually felt was a bit too cult-ish for my comfort. 
• I've taken meditation workshops at Tibetan Buddhist temples.
• I tried various guided meditations on YouTube in the interests of reducing stress while I was trying to get pregnant.
• When I first lost Poppy, a friend recommended the meditation podcast 'Emotional Ease' to help with the merry-go-round of incessant self recriminatory thoughts I was suffering.
• When I was pregnant with Pipkin, I listened to a meditation iPhone app while travelling to work on the tube in rush hour.  I find crowded tube trains extremely stressful.  Don't you?

I'm sure there are other times I've tried to start a meditation practice that I don't even recall.  I can honestly say I've learned something from each attempt, but I haven't ever stuck with it.

The problem is, when I try to meditate silently, my internal voice kicks up a big ruckus and I usually terminate the session after a couple of extremely uncomfortable minutes of conflicting internal dialogue.  I mean, I know the point is to keep doing it until my internal voice calms itself (learned helplessness maybe?) but I just don't.

I have more success with guided meditations but get bored with them very quickly and drift off into my own thoughts. 

The other problem is that I like my bed too much to get up any earlier in the morning than I have to, and evenings are about dinner and spending some quality time with Mr Duncan. 

I know.  Excuses, excuses.

I think the closest I've actually come to finding any peace in meditation is during yoga classes, when I am focussed on my breathing and my body is automatically responding to the teacher's instructions.  

It took me years of regular yoga practice before I could even quiet, though not halt, the chatter in my brain during Savasana.

I was recently recommended a website called Buddhist Geeks by an ex-colleague.

Not that I'm particularly buddhist, but I am a little bit Silicon Valley and he wanted to draw a parallel with how I coach my software teams to deliver and the practice of mindfulness.  

I had a click around and found an interesting podcast about behavioural design and how to build positive habits.  One study showed that even finding time for a two minute meditation each day, was more beneficial in establishing a regular meditation practice than setting aside more time less regularly.

I know that I will benefit from meditation if I manage to make time and space in my life to practice it.  So I decided its time to dust off the headspace meditation app I downloaded when I first got my iPhone and never really used past the first week.  

I 'took ten' in the park when I was early to a lunch meeting yesterday and I felt SO much better.  Given I wake naturally at stupid o'clock in the morning and take my temperature before going back to sleep, I'm going to try to spend ten minutes with the app in the morning.  Then I'll go back to sleep.

Mr Duncan won't even notice.

If that doesn't work, I'll have to take the brute force approach and enrol in a 10 day silent Vipassana retreat per the little hints I've been finding in my reading lately.

Hypnotherapy for fertility blocks II

Nightfall in Namibia

So after I made the appointment with the hypnotherapy practitioner I found out that Mr Duncan had 'failed' his medical for the Australian visa we have applied for.

Also that the baby I lost at 15 weeks in May had Trisomy 13 and they wanted to test us for translocation - in case either of us had passed the chromosomal defect on. 

Given one of my motivations for making the appointment in the first place was to discover if there was something in my mind stopping my body from holding on to my babies, this was actually quite a relief.

I'm not proud.  

I had a total meltdown the night before the appointment and turned up tired, emotionally exhausted and hungover.  I also felt guilty as I'm supposed to be healing my body, not getting drunk to avoid dealing with my overwhelm.  

So while I had a clear intention which I discussed with the woman when I made the appointment, I was just a complete mess when I turned up.

It didn't help that the therapist thought I was there for past life regression.  

But given the new information and new stressors, my original concern that I was somehow letting go of my babies because I had 'blocks' to holding them to term was no longer valid, we agreed to just let the session flow...  

A bit touchy-feely for me, but I was in no condition to argue.

I shouldn't have worried. This is what came up for me:

My subconsicous mind is

1. afraid of not being good enough, not able to have a baby
2. afraid I might not be able to take care of a baby
3. concerned there wont be enough money to give the baby the life it deserves
4. worried I dont deserve it

The therapist asked to speak to any parts of me that needed to be heard.

There was a part of me calling itself 'Malevolent' who is extremely disdainful. 

Malevolent is strong and has a masculine voice.  

Malevolent just gets on with it and takes care of stuff that needs taking care of when Lisa is overwhelmed.  

Malevolent resents having to do this and gets its revenge by making Lisa worry.  By causing Lisa physical pain like the frozen shoulder that mysteriously materialised after my last miscarriage.

Malevolent doesnt trust Lisa to take care of herself even though she's now an (extremely) capable adult.

There was also a part of me who was very little and vulnerable.  She couldnt tell us her name, she was too shy and spoke very quietly.  Maybe she was 3 years old, she wasn't sure. 

No one was taking care of her.  

Who was going to take care of her if Lisa had a baby?

Most interesting!

In the session, the therapist dealt with all of the concerns that came up and then invoked mother earth metaphors to lead me into a future progression of a successful pregnancy (note, not birth).

It all took less than 1.5 hours and I went home to sleep the rest of the day.

I've been feeling a bit more sane since.
 

Hypnotherapy for fertility 'blocks'?

Last week I made an appointment to see a Counsellor/Hypnotherapist.  

I have been worrying, given how difficult it was to get pregnant in the first place, and the two consecutive miscarriages, that somehow my mind/body connection was working against me.  

That maybe I was blocking myself somehow and preventing myself from having a baby.

Why would I think that?

I had an unconventional childhood.  

By the standard of todays more child-centric world I think my sisters and I were probably quite badly neglected but this was the 70s and no-one intervened -  although it was clear that neighbours and the parents of friends were keeping an eye on us.  

In retrospect I can see my mother was depressed and overwhelmed bringing up three small children on welfare after her husband left her for another woman.  

She was a diabetic with a drinking problem and her way of dealing was to not deal.

Block it out and blame everyone and everything else.  

Do not take any responsibility for anything at any cost.  

In the absence of anyone else taking responsibility (my older sister would get angry that my mother wasn't acting the way proper Mothers' were supposed to and storm out, my younger sister just cried) I took a lot on my shoulders.  

I dealt with stuff, but resented it and clearly remember swearing to myself I would never allow myself to be in the same situation - responsible for children without the wherewithal or money to keep them safe and happy.

I studied and practiced hypnotherapy when I lived in New York in the early 2000s. 

In sessions with former clients who came to me for their fear of public speaking, the root of that fear would most often be a time when they were young and said something that people laughed at which made them feel embarrassed.  

They would swear to themselves they'd never put themselves in a situation which made them feel like that again which manifested as the fear of speaking in public.  After resolving this conflict in our sessions the fear would be gone.  

You see the parallel?

So I was looking for something quite specific.  

There are many hypnotherapists who can give you relaxation and guided visualisation sessions but I wanted someone proficient in more interactive techniques.  

It was really tricky to determine from the websites I reviewed whether or not the practitioner had the skills I was after.  

Eventually I phoned one who offered past life regression - not because I wanted that, but because regression requires the interactive skills I was looking for.

Unfortunately he was a out to go abroad for some time, but referred me to a colleague who I called and made an appointment with.