Re-connecting with ourselves
First, we have to find us
To begin today’s post, I suggest you listen to this song to set the mood.
You can just let it play while you read if you like.
This is Ancient Mother by Robert Gass and On Wings of Song.
As you listen, add your own name to the chant. Remind yourself that the life force that flows through you is the same one we call Goddess and God.
So what is this about re-connecting with ourselves? It was inspired by my reading of The Body Keeps The Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D.
This wonderful book, which everyone should read, provides deep insights into our inner goings on. People who have experienced trauma, especially childhood trauma, can disconnect from parts of themselves. Some experience this in a literal way, where parts of their bodies have actually gone numb. But for others, perhaps for most, the disconnect is internal, emotional, and involves our self-identity.
Over time, we forget who we were before the traumatizing experience. We fill in the gaps by seeing ourselves only through our relationships. We see ourselves through the lens of the people closest to us. Our well-being becomes dependent on how those relationships are going. When one of them is off, it throws us into a tizzy, because it breaks off a piece of who we think we are. Now, we must be someone else, someone in this relationship with this person.
This made more sense in the book, but the doctor also offers a solution. He says we should spend time trying to quiet our minds, to focus on the here and now, and to breathe in a pattern that includes long, slow exhales.
This state of mind, this quieted, relaxed, slow-breathing state, he says, is the state where we are most able to rediscover the parts of ourselves we have left behind.
What he’s describing…
This is exactly how I meditate. I quiet my mind, focus on the moment, and breathe slowly, with longer exhales than inhales, a pattern that lowers the heart rate and blood pressure. I often feel myself connect with my higher being, my non-physical counterpart, the bigger part of me that’s also the Whole, and my Source, and my Goddess. Sometimes I feel as if a bigger me is super-imposed over ordinary-sized me, and she always looks like the Millennial Goddess by Oberon Zell, aka Te Fiti from Moana.
But I had never meditated with the intent of going inward.
Today, when I meditated, I tried to turn my focus inward toward smaller me, and the bits and pieces of me, tucked into my inner cracks and crevices. I found a lot of resistance there. I got a sense of my body and tried to send my awareness out along my limbs, to the tips of my fingers and toes and up to the top of my head.
I traced my fingertips from a spot between my eyebrows, straight up over the top of my head, and down to the base of my skull in the back. There’s a strong connection between that line and our sense of ourselves, our identity, Dr. Van Der Kolk says in the book. So I ran my fingertips along that meridian with gentle pressure, just to say hello and maybe stir it to attention. Hello, Me.
I experienced a sense of colors pulsing from my heart, out through every part of my body in psychedelic waves. I’m sure there’s blacklight poster art of this. Or was, back in the seventies.
But I didn’t encounter any hidden pieces today, and that’s okay. Meditation isn’t therapy, though it can be therapeutic. I just relaxed into the experience with the notion of going inward.
A brief Deep Dive
There’s really no inward or outward, though. I was talking to my two littlest granddaughters about ants yesterday. I pointed out an ant carrying a cut leaf back to his village, and the girls were amazed, and looked for other bugs, and found them, and the eight-year-old remarked, “There’s a whole world down there!”
And I replied, “What if there’s a whole bigger world with people looking at us and saying “Aw, look at those cute little ants?” They ran with that notion, inventing larger and larger worlds all looking at each smaller world as cute little ants, and the next smaller world, they could only see with microscopes, and the next smaller world, they probably couldn’t see at all. And then I threw in, “What if it goes the same the other way? What if these ants are looking at an even smaller world, and saying, ‘Aw, look at those cute little ants?’” Blew their little minds. (As a mystical, magical grandmother should.)
But isn’t that how it must be? Mustn’t there be no end in either direction, larger or smaller. And the words “larger” and “smaller” are not necessarily or only in size, but in other ways? Vibration or density or levels of consciousness?
Everything in existence is a fractal. This is one of many permutations of the words I believe will someday be seen as the key to all science—maybe to all existence.
“As above, so below. As within, so without.”
Back to the meditation
If you’re a reader of this blog, you’ve probably had some trauma in your life. So if this can help heal and release it, then I imagine just like me, you’d like to give it a try yourselves. So here’s a quick my how-to.
Choose or orchestrate a time when you won’t be interrupted. Turn off the phones, etc. You only need 15 or 20 minutes.
Dress comfortably. Ditch the bra, for Goddess sake! Have bare feet or cushy socks.
Choosing a pleasing location. I like to be outside near moving water or wind chimes. I like to be inside, with a waterfall or crickets sound effect playing on my phone.
Try to account for distractions ahead of time, especially for outside meditating. I bring a hat, in case the sun comes out or a fly decides to buzz my face, a shawl or blanket in case of a cool breeze, my phone for timing, sound off, and soft cushions. I find my comfortable position before I begin.
Find a soft sound to help you hold focus. It should be boring and repetitive, like running water or a steady wind.
That’s all prep work though. The meditation part is as easy as…
1, 2, 3.
Set your timer. Get comfortable. Hit START.
Breathe in for a slow count of three, and out for a slow count of five the entire time.
When thoughts come, and they will, gently shift your focus back to the sound. Continue this for fifteen or twenty minutes. This is basic, silent meditation.
Now we need to tweak this basic meditation to one designed to reconnect with our true selves, and maybe to begin the hunt for those lost bits we’ve buried, or hidden away, or left behind.
Once settled into basic meditation, imagine your awareness spreading throughout your body. Feel your toes, and feet and legs, your fingers and hands and arms, and so on. Don’t make this an effort. Don’t force it, allow it. Just gently shift your attention to each area and that’s all it takes.
When you’ve touched base with all your body parts, imagine turning your focus inward, moving through your layers of skin, fat, muscle, through organs and bones, inward and inward and inward, silently calling out your own name as you go. See if you find anything, feel anything, hear or see or sense or touch anything.
Journal afterwards. Keep track of how you feel, and anything unusual that comes up in life during the time you are doing this particular kind of meditation. All things are connected so everything’s a clue.
One Caveat
This exercise might open up old wounds. You might find your mind wanting to re-visit traumatic events from the past. I don’t advise going there. That’s not the idea. The idea is to find pieces of ourselves, not to relive the trauma that made us leave them behind. If you find your thoughts wandering in that direction, this exercise might not be for you. If you can steer them back, fine, but if not, it might be better to opt out. This is mediation, not therapy.
I also want to add that we have anti-depressants and other medications for a reason. They are just additional tools we can use to reach our ultimate goal, which is to feel good.
About that feel-good goal
We all want to be happy, to live lives filled with joyful experiences, pleasing conditions, flowing abundance, and kind, loving people. But our past trauma can be like Donkey Kong sitting on our shoulders, hurling barrels at all those things we want.
Our trauma causes us to self-sabotage and put obstacles into our own paths. We throw up roadblocks to our own well-being and don’t even know we’re doing it.
These little wounds we’ve picked up along our paths cause hundreds of our behaviors. What scares us, what makes us feel safe, what pisses us off, what we can’t stand, our favorite and least favorite everything, why we react in a given way to certain people or situations, every phobia, every nightmare, every time we snap at someone and later wonder why, and on and on.
Wouldn’t it be nice to get a handle on all our knee-jerk reactions?
Wouldn’t it be even nicer to release our subconscious grip on the things that are holding us back? The things we have put in between us and our happiness?
This is not your daily meditation
I recommend a daily silent mediation. (That’s the part under the “1, 2, 3” heading.) It tunes up our connection to our higher selves and as a result, we know what we need to know, our intuition is sharper, our “luck” is better. Things line up for us. Our health improves, blood pressure goes down, stress levels and the inflammation they cause are reduced.
This is different. This is a focused meditation, where the meditation period has a goal. It’s not the same. I’d do it at a different time as my daily silent meditation, and I wouldn't do it every day. Once or twice a week should be plenty. This is deep work. We should take our time with it.
I plan to try it out myself twice a week for the next few weeks, just to see what I can learn, and whether I can find any parts of little Peggy Sue (my childhood name) that got left behind.
I’d love to hear about your experiences with this exercise if you decide to try it, too!
Post-Script
This blog and my foodie blog (EatLikeYouGiveaShit.com) are my side gigs. My main gig is as NY Times and USA Today bestselling novelist Maggie Shayne. I’ve made my living writing fiction since 1993, and have published more than 100 stories, won 21 industry awards, and have sold more than 8 million copies of my novels. This series, The Immortals, is one of my favorites.
Just click the button or the image to learn more about my novels on my website.
