Meditation and Visualization, for those who can’t simply sit and still the mind

Meditation, we all know its beneficial and we all know how amazing it can be for bringing harmony and a centredness back into our lives, but do we do it? Nope, or not enough anyway. I certainly don’ do enough of it.

A few weeks ago a saw a blog someone had written about meditating on forgiveness and I fully intended to give this a go. Did it happen? No. Well yes and no.
I made an alteration, and here’s how and why I found meditation plus visualization works more effectively for me.

Since returning from travel, Marcus and I have been starting a business, looking for work, paying off debts, living with parents and so yes we’ve had some stressful and worrying times and this has affected our moods and outlook.

But last week something changed. I couldn’t be bothered, I was tired of this game of negativity circling around us so when a bad mood came, I refused to give in.  Of course the worries were still there and, being me,I awoke at 5am, thinking.

As I laid there in bed, I decided I would attempt this meditation.
I closed my eyes and remembered the idea of meditating on forgiveness and I tried, but it didn’t click. So I thought more deeply.  Suddenly a saying sprung to mind, something about holding on to hot coals only burns you…

So I combined the two.
I visualized a hot coal in my hand and this coal was something needing forgiveness I quietly whispered why blame was useless, I whispered forgiveness and I let the coal go, it felt great.

I then repeated the process for each little thing, forgiving each mistake I had made, each thing Marcus had done which annoyed or hurt me, and I forgave the universe for all the unlucky things that happen.

I spent a little time then being grateful and allowing the positive things to flow back into my mind. To remember all the things negative thinking had displaced.

Afterwards I lay there, half asleep, I had a dream/vision of goddesses, welcoming me back.   I visualized the norse goddess, Freya, Luna of the mooon,  Gaia the earth goddess, and others I do not even know, supporting me and becoming me, it was a most enlightening experience.

Now I’m not saying these goddesses actually graced me with their presence, but maybe each is a mere reflection of a part of myself I had lost. I imagine Freya to be my strength, she brings to my mind a feminine power and hardiness. I imagine Luna to be my calmness and togetherness, and the other divinities t represent other aspects, my belief and faith in the future and in love, my connection with the earth and grounding, my wisdom and my energy.
I felt renewed and for the first time in so long I can barely remember, I felt myself. My actual self, not the version of myself I had recently been, not the weak, self pitying part of me, lacking in confidence and power.

I’m not sure if I had just reached a point where I was ready to find inner strength, whether the meditation was so fantastic or whether the full moon fuelled my enlightenment and I really don’t care what it was, it worked and when Marcus awoke and I explained my experience, he also seemed lightened. Like the weight of my negativity was also lifted from his shoulders.

It has been such a blessing and I feel so much more confident and happy, Marcus seems to have picked up on some of this as well and we are having a much more positive time, even though nothing has changed. The things which worried and stressed us are still there but they are not coming between us and our happiness. My being lighter and freer, seems to have really benefited Marcus almost as much as me. Its win win!

My meeting with Taoism.

It seems, without realizing what I was doing, I have often been connected with Taoist practises. I have come across and used microcosmic orbit, I’ve practised self massage although more specifically for lymphatic system, or even on the whole body but not knowing where to focus my attention or why I was feeling better for It I have practised body brushing, mostly for my skin but also for the way it makes me feel. I have relied on inner smiling again without being specific to areas, to et me through some tough situations.

I have in many ways been channelling my chi without realizing that’s what I was doing.

So I would say this is the reason I was drawn to the course which gave me my first knowing meeting with Taoism. Somewhere inside me I was searching, I was discovering in whatever way I could and the divine/fate/destiny, whatever you want to call it, gave me that last hint and put me on the correct path to discovery.

I heard about Taoist practises through my partner/ex (its complicated), he has been doing a rather monumental journey of self discovery and upon hearing about his experience with Taoist practices I was instantly drawn to this ancient way of life. Although of course his first experience was male orientated and focused purely on male practices.

I will just say here, although men and women do a lot of the same practise, we also have a variety of different focus. Of course we are physically, emotionally and often energetically different so the fine tuning to our feminine/masculine sides needs separate work. It would be very difficult for the man to use the infamous jade egg for instance 😉 ha ha or indeed to practise womb breathing! But even more subtle than this, Its important to be able to express our feminine/masculinity and learn in a way which celebrates our differences and allows us to tailor our practise to our energies and also to use our chi to help balance our hormones in specific ways. This is another aspect we often differ in our needs, or a lot of the time anyway.

Anyhow, I am running away from my own journey here. About 3 months ago I was having a terrible time, if you follow my blog you will have read/sensed the collapse of my world as I knew it and witness my rebuilding. Well it was during my strive to rebuild I was browsing the internet, and came across the jade circle website. Having clicked, I instantly knew I needed to take the course! In fat I signed up for two consecutive weekends doing the basic and next step courses.

So…here I am!

I came to the magical green Isle of Ireland, and I met with the jade circle ladies last weekend. The connection with the ladies was fantastic, to be surrounded by such strong femininity and to be able to embrace and celebrate that so openly and unashamedly was such a mind opening experience.
It was as if we were already sisters, we shared so much including the start of an incredible journey into self discovery and…well I feel like I want to say control of ourselves and our lives, but in actual fact its more that we learned to lose the control, to allow the divine to guide us, to listen to our bodies, our intuition, our spirit and our chi, our life force, our energy.

We discovered ways of assessing our hormonal balance, how and when to balance the yin with the yang. We connected with our bodies and spirit, we learned all about healing sounds, self massage and womb/kidney breathing as well as some qi gong and microcosmic orbit.
We also connected with the jade egg, learned the first steps of practise with this and how to treat our bodies, to worship our sacredness and be the goddess we all have inside us.

OK so now I know I’m starting to sound a little…well…fluffy. It can’t be helped, Taoism is something best felt and not described. It feels anything but fluffy. It can be the most grounding experience, it makes you feel and see things which are very real. It really does help to discover the power we have within us.

And don’t worry guys, the men have just as profound practises and this weekend had a class of their own with Kris, Anamartas partner. Anamarta was the beautiful goddess who showed us the way in our first course via Jade circle (you can find them online and facebook).

Next weekend we meet as a mixed group to recap, to take the practises to the next level and to learn a little about the opposite sex, we must of course understand their energies as well if we are to have harmony in our relationships. Don’t worry though, you can just learn by yourself, if your partner isn’t ready to do the course of even if your single, the learning will benefit you immensely and prepare you for your next relationship. As well I must say that this system is useful for same sex couples as well. We all have yin and yang and every relationship has a balance of both, same sex couples may have the balance a little more evenly but the energies will still be there and can be worked on and understood.

I will write more about particular practises in future blogs, this was a general introduction on my introduction with Taoism.

Basically I feel like I have come home. This way of life really calls out to me and I intend to take this further, to journey as far as I can into this and maybe even one day help others find their connection to Taoist practises as well. Who knows what the future holds! 😉

Time to focus on the journey and on manifesting the life I desire, and am meant to live.

Losing my rock climbing v platess

So I am in Wales, visiting a friend and after doing Snowdon, my next Welsh challenge was to rock climb. My friend and her friend who I went with are both instructors and so I was able to partake in safe hands without having to go in some big group of people and wait ages to take turns etc…boring!

So we went to some slate rocks an they gave me a debrief, set up and away we went. The first one was relatively easy, a warm up and was rather enjoyable. The second was hard. After watching Kate struggle up certain parts of it, and she’s a good climber, I was sure I would barely make it up a quarter of the way but with their great encouragement (and at certain points I think Damien was actually pulling me up on the rope), I made it relatively near to the top. Id say just past 3 quarters up.

It wasn’t easy, even with the help. I had to stop and assess where I could go next a few times, mentally prepare myself to push up or to get my leg on a certain grip and there were times my hands were so damn cold I couldn’t even feel if my fingers were still attached any more, never mind if they were gripping anything and there was a lot of doubt but surprisingly not as much fear as I thought there would be. Of course I didn’t really look down and I knew I was safely roped on but I still expected to have some fear, especially as it was rather high and the grips were quite hard at time, hanging on to cracks and nooks where I couldn’t have thought it possible to get grip. I suppose in comparison to my 65 foot tree climb in Australia where we had no ropes, safety nets or trained professionals helping, it was still a little tame on the danger front but still a challenge and something outside of my comfort zone.

Another experience tackled well, no tears, no failure, no embarrassment. Another survival skill to add to my apocalypse set I have been growing over the last year along with chicken beheading, tackling mountains in both tropical and snowy temperates and of course learning to hand-wash clothing properly…Boy that one will be important when the zombies come for us!

My Snowy Snowdon experience!

After finally arriving home just a few weeks ago, I haven’t had the chance to trek much, in fact not at all and I hadn’t done much trekking really since spring last year. As you can imagine my experience with Snowdon was hard and I was not prepared!

First off we had to park further down the valley as all the damn people were in the way! Fools! So we parked and started walking, It was damn hard but the sun was shining and it was real warm. Vest tops ahoy I fact. The initial hour or two was actually nice.

The third hour brought the best views and the beginning of the realization I may have bitten off more than I could easily chew.

By the end of the third hour it was so very cold and getting quite misty, I was tired, teasy and I imagine, not very good company at all! The talking stopped and I just had to get the head down.
The last hour up was very hard, lots of snow, lots of wind, lots of incline and by the time we reached the top I was so over the whole experience.

Looking back its funny, I was ready to strop for England!

The decent was initially fun, very deep and steep snowy mountain meant lots of fun slipping and sliding down, although this did cause me big knee issues and I was in a hell of a lot of pain on the decent.

We arrived at the car just after dark, 6 and a half hours of trekking and I was done. Had my full blown quasimodo walk going down, my determined, stroppy aggressive face on and a shroud of aggressive air surrounding me.

It took about an hour before I actually smiled at the though of what I had done and that actually there were fun parts. The lesson to learn here though is not to be a cocky bastard and assume I can just tackle anything without being properly prepared. Just because I did a lot of trekking before, doesn’t mean I can just jump In and safely do anything now.

I must get out trekking again, I did not like feeling so weak and pathetic!