Before we begin.
Welcome.
And I hope you find this meditation helpful where we will focus on enveloping ourselves in a safe space before moving on to deeper work around our emotions.
Some things before we begin that belong to you and not to me.
You can keep your eyes open or closed.
Or resting on one spot.
Nothing here needs your eyes shut.
You can rock,
Sway,
Bounce a knee,
Pace,
Stim,
Keep your hands busy in any way you wish.
None of that is an interruption to this.
Allow it to become part of your practice.
Allow that movement,
That stimming,
To be your anchor.
I also will not ask you to control your breathing.
For many people,
Especially neurodivergent people,
Focusing too much on the breath undermines the work that we're going to do.
I'm going to describe a place.
You're welcome,
Sid.
But seeing is not the point.
And many people do not see pictures at all.
You can hear it,
Feel it,
Or simply know it is there.
The way you know the layout of a house you have lived in without picturing it.
Knowing works as well as seeing.
Everything I describe can be changed,
If I put something in your place that you do not like.
Remove it.
You are not a guest here.
This is a place where you belong.
Later on,
We will turn toward feelings.
Not with the intention of fixing them.
Nor with the intention of getting rid of them.
If at any point.
.
.
This becomes too much.
Come back to this place that we build together,
Or stop altogether if need be.
Or open your eyes and look at something ordinary in the room you're actually in.
Or use your stimming as an anchor to keep you feeling safe.
But if need be,
Leaving is allowed and it's not a failure.
Chapter one,
The way in.
We are before the place at the door.
This door is in front of you.
It does not lead anywhere that you have to go.
It leads somewhere that belongs to you.
Notice how you know it is there.
Some of you will see it.
Some of you might feel the handle.
Some might just be told by yourself that it exists.
And that is enough to be getting on with.
Open it when you want to.
There's no wrong moment to enter this space.
Chapter 2 The Room Here is what is inside until you change it.
A small room.
Small enough to see all of at once,
Nothing behind you that cannot account for.
There is one window along the far wall.
The light coming through is late afternoon light,
Low and warm,
The colour of weak tea.
You find somewhere to sit or lie down that takes your weight completely.
Perhaps a chair with arms,
A bed,
A heap of cushions on the floor.
Find something that means you do not have to hold yourself up.
The temperature is right,
Not too warm,
Not too cool.
It is quiet in the way that suits you.
For some people,
That is total silence.
For others,
Silence is unbearable.
And quiet means a low hum,
Rain of bars,
A fan,
Or one piece of music.
Set it to whatever your body mind wants.
And there is one texture in here that you like.
Perhaps it's on a blanket or some smooth wood.
Maybe the feel of cold metal.
Something with a sense to it that you can run your thumb across.
Puts it within reach.
Chapter 3,
Making it Yours.
Here's the point where things can change.
If the light is wrong,
Change the light.
If the window should look out onto a street or the sea or nothing at all.
Change what it looks out onto.
If the room should have no window,
Take the window out.
Construct the room that feels right for you and your mind.
At one thing that is yours.
An object,
A book,
An animal,
A person you trust,
A smell,
A sound,
Anything you want in the room when nothing is required of you.
And now the door.
You decide about the door.
Is it locked so that nothing comes in?
Or perhaps it's open because locked doors feel worse.
Both come from a sense of safety.
They are just different people's sense of safety.
Whatever you choose is valid.
And this is the part that matters more than the furniture.
Safe doesn't necessarily mean pleasant.
Safe means you are in charge of what happens here.
Safe means you have autonomy to do what you will with this room.
Chapter 4 Being In It Hopefully by this point you've constructed a sense of what the room that you feel safe in looks like or feels like,
Or perhaps it's just a space that you know.
Perhaps it's not a room at all.
Perhaps you are visualizing an outdoor space.
That's okay.
Visualize what brings you peace and safety.
Visualize an environment where you could just be.
Sit or lie.
If you're in the room,
Stand by the window.
Take up as much room as you want.
There is nothing to perform in here.
No one is reading your face.
Nobody is going to ask you how you are and expect the short answer.
If any part of you is being held.
Jaw,
Shoulders,
Hands,
The muscles around your eyes.
You can put that down for a while.
Slacken your jaw.
Allow your shoulders to drop.
Tense your hands and arms and legs.
Really tense them and then release.
Soften your focus with your eyes,
Close them if it helps.
We are focusing on laying down the stresses and tensions that we carry in our body parts.
Chapter 5 the weather outside.
Perhaps we're already outside.
Or if we have constructed a room,
We're looking out of the window.
Or if you took the window out but you're in the room put the window back for a few minutes and remove it again at the end.
Outside there is weather.
The weather does what it likes.
It arrives without asking.
It is sometimes violent.
It is never permanent.
It is never part of the building.
That you exist within and feel safe within.
And that is what we're going to do with our feelings.
Not argue with them.
Not talk ourselves out of them.
Just watch them from somewhere.
As though they are weather.
Arriving perhaps violently,
But never permanently.
Chapter 6 What is here now?
Ask yourself without urgency.
What am I feeling in this moment?
If a word turned up.
Use that word.
If no word turned up.
Which can be very common for neurodivergent people and is not a deficit.
Try describing it instead of naming it.
Is it a heavy feeling or a light feeling?
Is it moving fast or slow?
Perhaps it is sharp or dull?
Is it hot?
Cold?
Tight,
Buzzing,
Flat,
Loud.
If nothing at all turned up,
No word,
No description,
Nothing,
Then nothing I can find is the honest answer.
And honesty is what we are after here.
Stay with the not knowing.
It is a real state,
Not an empty one.
And it is a starting place for us to do the work on understanding ourselves.
Chapter 7 where it sits.
Feelings have addresses in the body.
Not always the ones we are told about.
Where is this one that you're feeling right now?
Do you feel it in your chest,
Throat,
Stomach,
Jaw,
Perhaps your hands,
The backs of your legs?
Is it behind your eyes or everywhere at once?
Or perhaps nowhere that we can distinctly locate?
Whatever you found.
Do not do anything about it.
We are not softening it.
Or breathing into it or sending it light.
We are just observing it as the weather through the glass.
Chapter 8,
Watching It Move.
Keep your attention on it.
On the emotion or the sensation that you're feeling and notice something specific.
It is not holding still.
Even in the time we have been looking.
Something has shifted and changed.
Perhaps it has moved a little or changed shape.
Perhaps it got stronger,
Or even quieter.
He could have briefly disappeared and come back.
That is simply what feelings do.
They are events like weather that come,
Occur,
And pass.
Watch for the next change.
Do not try and make it happen.
Just be there when it does.
Anything that changes on its own was never permanent.
It only felt permanent while you were inside it.
Chapter 9 The One That Does Not Move We're moving into an armistice parliament.
Because the version of this meditation that skips it would be a lie.
Some feelings do not shift while you watch them.
Grief does not.
Lung distress does not.
Buying out may not move while you observe it.
At least not perceptibly.
Some states sit underneath everything for months,
And being told to observe them until they pass is insulting when you already have been observing them for years.
The impermanence of emotions and feelings is not a promise that suffering ends this afternoon.
It's a smaller,
More reliable claim.
That the texture of a feeling will change,
Even when the feeling stays.
It is heavier at four in the morning and lighter after food.
It has thin patches.
Nothing in a nervous system runs at one constant level,
However constant it seems from inside.
All feelings change or come to pass eventually.
So if what you are holding is one of the long ones.
Do not look for it to lift.
Look instead for the small movements in it.
That is all the impermanence you need in order to know you are not welded to it for eternity.
Chapter 10 The Other Direction Now the same rule,
Running the other way.
Bring to mind something small and good.
Not a great joy,
A small one.
Perhaps a particular sound.
Something you are looking forward to.
An animal you like.
A thing you know a great deal about and can talk about forever.
Notice whether anything moved when you did that.
It could be a faint signal.
It might have lasted no more than a couple of seconds before slipping.
That fading is the same rule.
And it's worth knowing plainly.
The good ones do not stay either.
Which is not a reason to hold them tightly.
It's a reason to notice them while they're here.
And to expect them back.
Because they come back the same way the weather does.
Chapter 11 the room stage.
I want you to come back to the room or the space we constructed.
Perhaps the chair in the room.
Or the light in the outdoor space.
Think about the textures within reach.
The things that you added to this space.
Everything we have just watched happen.
The space we are in,
The room we may have created,
Did not change while it was happening.
You are not the feeling you are having.
You are not necessarily an anxious person or an angry person.
You are most certainly not a person who is too much.
You are the thing that was still here while all of that moved across the.
.
.
Cloth.
Whilst it came into our awareness.
As we watch through the window from our space.
And the room does not need to be owned or deserved.
Were held together by effort.
It exists because you built it.
This space is yours and it will remain here for the next time you need it.
Hold this space within you.
And revisit it when you need to process and observe.
Chapter 12 Coming back.
We finish now.
Slowly.
Take one thing from the room or the space with you,
Maybe the warm light,
Or the weight of a chair,
A texture,
Or the fact of the door being locked or unlocked being your choice.
Choose one.
And hold on to it.
You do not have to tidy up.
Leave it exactly as it is.
Nothing here will go stale.
Face the door.
Go through it and close it behind you if you want it closed.
Come back to the actual room you were in now,
In your own time.
There's no countdown.
You might move your fingers,
Stretch,
Make a sound.
You may get up and pace,
Or stay exactly where you are for another few minutes.
Whatever you are feeling now is not the same as what you were feeling 20 minutes ago.
And it will not be what you are feeling later today.
That's not instability.
That is emotions doing exactly what they do.
Visiting and passing.
Thank you for sitting with it.
