Guided Meditation 11.
1 Transforming Savage Self-Sabotage Before you begin,
Choose the statement from the list in the book just above this meditation that packs the greatest emotional punch for you.
Or use one of your own that you often hear repeated by your default mode network and that you find painful to receive from yourself.
Begin with your hands this time.
Move and flex your fingers.
Rotate your wrists.
Can you let your consciousness enter your hands?
If you can,
Follow the sensation of being inside your own skin,
Up your forearms to your elbows,
Up your biceps to your shoulders.
Do your shoulders attach to your torso?
Is your torso bringing any breath in and out?
Do you have a heart beating in your chest?
Can you feel your heartbeat?
Hold your breath for a count of ten,
And then check again to see if you can sense your own beating heart.
If you can catch your heartbeat sensation,
Invite your attention to stay with it.
If you can't find your heartbeat in your torso,
Bring your attention back to an alive sensation in your breathing.
As your attention wanders,
Gently and with warmth,
Invite it back to the sensation.
Take your time with this,
Giving yourself three or more minutes to be in the wandering dance of attention to breath and heartbeat,
And kind attention to where your attention goes.
You can pause the recording for this time.
Now,
Say the statement that you have chosen.
As you say it aloud,
Allow yourself to notice how your body responds to hearing it.
Maybe you feel a collapse,
Some tearing in your eyes,
A heaviness throughout your body,
And if these sensations were emotions,
What might they be?
Maybe there is exhaustion,
Discouragement,
Hopeless despair?
Is there a longing for self-love?
Or is there a need for acknowledgement of the enormity of the exhaustion,
Discouragement,
Or hopeless despair?
Is there anger or impatience?
Do you need to have a sense that somebody else knows and understands how long you have been struggling with this?
Do you ache for change and transformation?
Just for a moment,
Would you like to inhabit someone else so that you could have a rest from yourself?
Is there sadness?
Does it feel like the sadness will never end?
That there could never be enough tenderness and care in this world to bring you back from the enormity of the sadness?
Is there confusion?
Do you wish to experience crystalline clarity?
Is it scary to hear the cruelty in your own words?
Do you need gentleness?
After you guess some feeling and need for yourself that feels true,
Say the initial statement again.
See what happens with your body this time.
Maybe you feel a burning in your abdomen now,
Which might be horror and shame,
For example.
And maybe beneath these emotions there is a need to be supported,
To be precious in someone's eyes,
Or just to be loved.
Or do you need acknowledgement that those things seem like a fairy tale?
Again,
Stay with your feelings and needs guesses until you feel a change in the tension in your body.
Repeat this process,
Maybe running this meditation a number of times,
Taking it in small chunks,
Just going until you get a shift in your body sensations.
Eventually your body will no longer react to the statement.
Each time you repeat the process,
Notice the changes in your body's message about what it is like to say the words that you have been using to explain your pain to yourself.
Once your body is fully relaxed,
Stop and see if there is a different truth that your body likes better.
How would you change these words to make them more true for you now?
