My Birth Story
I always thought I would be ‘good’ at giving birth. I pictured myself like a Buddhist monk, going within and breathing through the pain. I somewhat delusionally was looking forward to it. I like challenges, particularly endurance exercise and I am pretty good with pain. I once held my arms over my head for an hour, focusing and meditating through the ‘discomfort’.
I’m also not naive to the reality of childbirth, a year earlier I witnessed my nephew's long, tiring arrival into the world. I just figured when it was my turn, I would do it differently :)
Plus I'd been prepping.
A couple of years ago I did a 10 day silent retreat, meditating for 11 hours a day, body aching but managing the pain with total focus, traveling so far into it that it became just sensation and space.
Surely these skills would transfer?
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My Journey into Massage
Whilst working there I gained a keen interest in the way the mind affects the body which lead me to explore different forms of meditation, such as Vipassana and breath-work. During a 10 day silent vipassana retreat where we meditated for 11 hours a day - I felt pain in my body like I had never felt before - even the soles of my feet hurt! As the retreat progressed I would scan my body, resting on knots of pain, kneading and ironing them out with my mind until they were gone. Needless to say this took a lot of focus and I haven’t quite replicated it. Although, with moderate pain such as stomach cramps or headaches I still find I can access a lot of relief by giving up my resistance and putting all my attention in the area and exploring the pain.
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Making Friends with Mara
This was all part of an exercise to get in touch with the Inner critic and what in Buddhism they call Mara. Mara, or the Inner critic is the way that we talk to ourselves about ourselves, like a running commentary in the back of our minds telling us how we are doing at all times. Chiming in with comments like ‘I can’t believe you did that!’ ‘Do you remember when you said this?!’ 'You’ll never be as good as them’ etc.
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Happy Shoulders
7,755 I estimate that this is the number of bodies I’ve massaged over the last 11 years. I would say 30 percent of my knowledge was gained through training, but the rest was gathered through my fingertips. When I meet someone for the first time I generally ask them what the problem is, although there is usually no need to; most bodies follow a similar pattern.
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How to Meditate
It is really important that, as a beginner you have somebody else holding the space for you, whether that is in person or a recording, so that you can fully relax and let go into the experience. Even now I still sometimes use my own recordings to help me to move more deeply into meditation, this way I don’t have to check the time or think about what to do next.
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