Training

 There's an opportunity my husband and I have currently to reinvigorate our marriage via the introduction of a third party, for a time. It wouldn't be anything permanent at all; just some 'training' for want of a better word, on both sides of the equation.

Individually, we have both been quite open and optimistic about this idea, but as the time draws nearer to commit, we are discussing it in all its complexity. I think this is a normal and healthy thing to do, if for no other reason than it could easily go horribly wrong.

At the end of the day, we are both reasonably conservative people. We have not had the experience of multiple play partners, of play parties, scene events, or even munches. The desire for any of that has not been there, so there's a little apprehension in partnering with someone with differing experiences and views. On the other hand, what conservative person would you ever expect to find who could partner you in such an endeavor?

My husband has brought up the fact that there's a real possibility that a girl trained by a third party could 'fall' for that person and think about that person long after the training is complete. I agree. I suspect many girls have found a training experience profound enough to have feelings for the trainer. 

I was initially concerned about this as well, but I am now confident that this would not happen. I can't go into why I think this in this journal (which can be read by anyone. Oh, hello!), but let's just leave it at the understanding within myself that I've developed enough strength of character to not allow that. I see the motivations and intentions clearly, the professional approach adopted many times over, and this 'professionalism' keeps emotions clean and tight.

I would suggest that for some couples, they need to really consider it as a possibility, however. The question has to be asked, why aren't you training the girl yourself? Deity thought the idea unnecessary for his girl, but in his union, he was far more attuned to what he wanted to achieve; had thought about it and made it a study. 

We have asked ourselves this question and came to the conclusion that first time round, we sort of made it up as we went. We didn't really know what we were doing in any sort of detailed approach. We're looking for something sustainable, something that uplifts us both and provides a lot of joy, and this arrangement seems like a way to get the thing up and running with a sort of neutral third party who can professionally set the thing up for success. So far, so good.

Let me preempt the next comments by saying that I've grown a lot as a person in the last several years. The events of our lives demanded that, but so too did I seek out paths for growth. 

I am a kinesthetic meditator and perhaps a kinesthetic learner. I hate reading instructions and would rather just be shown how to do something, so that explains my choice of interests and study, at least partially. I have been aware of that for a long time.  In my meditative state and in my imagination or in a trance, I now know, I am living the experience. I am not watching myself. I am part of the experience. 

I have often wondered why I get such strong messages from my body and maybe that explains it. I have done hundreds of hours of formal dance training and I have always been someone who has gone to movement classes - step classes, or aerobic training or weight bearing classes, Pilates and Yoga. Maybe it's all this, combined with meditation, I don't really know, but I get very strong bodily responses.

I am aware of a trigger point still sitting in my body; a land mine that sit there that can go off when triggered. I am excruciatingly aware of it, because when it is triggered, the experience disrupts both my body and my state of mind. I get angry first, a gut reaction that wells up from the pit of my stomach and wants to verbally 'vomit' all over the person who has incited the trigger.

I think the landmine is about justice, I didn't bloody do anything to incite the trigger words and I'm not going to lie down and take it. Except, I do. Once the anger has subsided a bit, I get incredibly sad, and that sadness takes me to the floor. But you can't keep me down on the floor for long because I need to move, and so I revert to anger because anger has some fluidity about it. Anger gets you up and going.

It's this landmine that sits in my body that makes me especially wary of any sort of 'training' process. I strongly suspect that if I felt a sense of injustice or disrespect (and that's likely to happen in a training process, right?) I strongly doubt I could resist telling the offending party to get f**ked and to hit the road.

So, I did some reading about training a submissive this morning - the conditioning, the positive and negative reinforcement, the operant conditioning, the intermittent reinforcement. Nothing caused me more distress in the past than intermittent reinforcement, which I think is a form of evil. Yet, this is all part and parcel of the training process, so it seems. Do I want that? Is that all necessary to get to the highs of wonderful intimacy and pleasure?? I'm no expert but it sounds so manipulative and not always in a good way.

My husband reminds me that I loved letting go into a submissive sexual mindset. Maybe it's worth it to experience some discomfort around these issues to get to where I want to go. Maybe.

We are both very comfortable with soft strategies. No problem there. I like the idea of an ankle bracelet, for example, that I wear when I want sexual attention. It's a sweet strategy to avoid miscues.

There's already been a lot of attention given to my independence. It's a bit galling, honestly, since I have become more and more independent of my husband all the time. Since he remains a workaholic, I had no choice but to be independent in various ways and that's bedded down. I really hope we're done with that subject material. Any more independent and I may as well call myself a single girl.

In this particular case, hypnosis is bound to be part and parcel of this process. Whatever I say or write now is likely to be overridden by the wonders of hypnosis used for sexual persuasion. It's not a fair playing field. Is that a good or bad thing? I am not completely sure, and I am smiling as I write this.

Here's the thing. We don't fit the usual model. We're mature adults. We're devoted to one another. We don't easily agree to the entry of a third party and we're probably relatively non-compliant. If we don't agree or like something, we aren't afraid to say so. For me, it has to feel right. I will mull anything and give it it's fair consideration, but if my body screams out to me 'this isn't right', I can't ignore those signals.

So, we're not easy, we get that. Perhaps, at some stage, I can review these thoughts and report that my concerns were ill founded, or that I don't even remember these objections. (Did I write that?) I hope so.

Gently, gently.

 There's something about the one-year anniversary of an event that stirs the emotions. There is a real temptation to relive the event, and if it was sad, to be sad all over again.

I lost a very special friend in Deity. He was the place I went to for comfort and support. Whilst I felt, and rightly so, that it would not be good policy to share some of my inner thoughts with people in my life on the ground, he would listen to me say anything. 

That's not to say he didn't challenge me on occasion but what I got out of it, on reflection, was someone who offered me unconditional love. I had flaws. He had flaws. But he saw that as all to be expected of a human being. So, he forgave quickly. On my end, I could be upset about a conversation, but conflict wasn't something that he felt stood in the way of a good relationship.

So, disagreeable words were said. That was then. Now let's get on with being good friends. This was his policy. To this end, any disruption in communication was, by and large, simply waited out. He saw women, I think, as sort of flighty and driven by emotions, and it was a process with an end.

The hypnotic sessions my husband has had, shook things up and out. He feels so much lighter, and this has enabled dialogues never before had, now even encouraged. So, this morning I said to him that it was about the time when Deity died last year, and it has brought up a lot of emotions. 

Since I have never been able to share with him, or anyone, what actually happened I was afforded the opportunity to tell a living soul that while he was holed up in a hotel I would call him, check in as to whether he had eaten; remind him of the number he could call to get some food delivered.

I was talking to him one day when he told me he had fallen in the street and not one person had come to his aid. He checked to see that he had all his teeth. This was the same man who had begun an organisation at the grass roots and turned it into a national organisation; the man who had made dozens of strong friendships but who was now alone and with no access to his own money.

Alcohol, or any other substance taken to excess is so often self-medication for intolerable emotional pain and anxiety, and so it was. It was incredibly personally painful to watch and yet I felt there was no choice. I never have, and I hope I never will, go through such a gut-wrenching personal sorrow to see him drink himself to death. Yet, as he reminded me, this was his decision to make, not mine.

He was a bit of a devil. It's one of the first things I said to him.  He was also a lot like an angel. He had a foot in both camps and let's be honest, I loved that. 

It's these experiences with Deity, along with other knowings that currently make me quite wary of dominant men generally. It wouldn't be wrong to say that I have an antenna out for those that 'play'. I pick things up in conversation and I bristle. Not that I have hardly any conversations with dominant men, but on the odd occasion, for particular reasons.

Is it common, I don't know if it is or not, to refer to a woman, with submissive inclinations, a 'subject'? Deity used to say to me that I put too much stock in words; read too much into them. But, subject? Is that really necessary, and if it is, what does that say about the person using the word? I try not to judge, but seriously?

I have never had a moment's interest in the kink scene. It's not the way I want to express myself. So, there's a lot of material out there that simply isn't relatable to me.

I am starting to wonder if the term 'submissive' actually describes me. From the get-go, I wanted a marriage that remained, however long, a passionate coupling. I wanted to support and be supported. I wanted to create a loving family. I am starting to wonder if the kinkiness is starting to fade, and if mutual happiness and exploration in all sorts of ways, including sex within intimacy, is my aspiration. 

Gently, gently.

Prana

 It is no burden for me to be in silence, as readers of this online journal would already know. To the contrary, it is required, if I am to find my bliss. 

I am fortunate beyond words to have a home close to the ocean to which I can sometimes travel and live in silence for a few days at a time. Yesterday on the highway whilst travelling here I passed a sign that said that the road where I would pass was closed. I rang my husband in the car, and he rang the local store who confirmed there had been an incident three hours earlier. 

Google Maps told me to take a diversion, away from the coastal road and up to the high country, so to speak, along gorgeous countryside and eventually through a forest.

The incident was of course, most unfortunate, but it provided me with the delight of new terrain; beautiful green verdant land and then the wonder of driving through a forest almost alone. I couldn't make out why there were so few cars, but it was almost as if God looked down and said, 'No, no, it's fine, I knew you needed this.'

With maybe half an hour to the house, I saw a glimmer of the ocean, and my heart skipped a beat. I have been travelling to this part of the world all my life and yet it felt for the first time. The ocean was still and the softest blue. 

Once descended, I came to the Great Ocean Road, turned left and was reminded that in this stretch of the Road, it hugged the ocean, the beach, reminding me of stretches of road that led to the Coromandel Peninsula in New Zealand, where I went for a meditation retreat.

I am not sure if the world had gone quiet with so few people on a weekend out and about, or if it was I who had gone quiet. What I want to convey is that my mind had become 'a beginner's mind' and it was as if I was seeing everything for the first time.

I stopped off at the General Store for a few necessities and then to the house. When I arrive, I can never resist walking first around the garden. I said out loud, 'I love it here so much'.

Last night, I didn't want television. Instead, I went through the many CDs in the house, boxing the vast majority of them to give to charity. As much as I might pine for a John Denver tune every now and then, I can find that on Spotify. So, instead, I turned onto my saved tunes on Spotify and danced and danced.

Although I had bought food, I wasn't in the mood for it and instead drank red wine, some goat cheese on dried rice crackers, and an apple.

Every last thing I did was to savour my soul. It almost wasn't a decision. It was innate; intuitive. 

This morning I unpacked some books I had brought down and discovered I had brought a book about readings for yoga teachers, so I took it to back to bed and read the following:

'What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.' Crowfoot, Northern American.

And this, by Osho, the person by whom I entered the world of meditation and quiet contemplation:

"You can enter yoga, or the path of yoga only when you are totally frustrated with your own mind as it is. If you are still hoping that you can gain something through your mind, yoga isn't for you."

And how about this by Deepak Chopra:

In this short life, 'we have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share. This is a precious moment, but it is transient. It is a little parenthesis in eternity. If we share with caring lightheartedness, and love, we will create abundance and joy for each other and then this moment will have been worthwhile.'

Later today, my husband will undergo hypnosis and I have confidence that he will eventually be unburdened from a worried mind. He takes his responsibilities seriously, and of course as adults we must take our responsibilities seriously, but there must also be regular time for the unburdening of the mind. 

He's a good and kind man at the core. You can put down your burdens in nature, and he can put down his burdens in nature, but it's exciting to think that he could, quite simply, put down his burdened mind and rest more completely in wonder and a state of peace. This is how you heal.

Meditation and mental health

 I have been asked to lead a meditation for a group of people who are training in Mental Health. I thought it might be of help to someone reading here too if I try to pull some thoughts together here.

- Meditation isn't about following a set of rules. Just as in a yoga class, you are likely to be told to follow your own instincts and to make the class your own, so it is with a meditation session, either in a group or alone. If you don't feel comfortable at any time following your breath, put your attention on something else - the sounds outside the room, the parts of your body connecting with the seat or meditation cushion; whatever will allow you to be present.

- We need to feel grounded in a meditation, we need to be in our bodies. As much as we might use visualization, or manifesting, or any other sort of mind state in a meditation, we also need to be aware of our feet on the ground, so to speak. Should thoughts or internal mind states overwhelm, it's right to return to the body sitting in meditation. What parts of the body are in connection with the meditation seat or cushion? Where are the hands and what are they feeling? How do the feet feel? What feels comfortable in the body and what feels uncomfortable, and can I float between the two states? Do I feel light or heavy, and can I feel both light and heavy at the same time? Whatever the questions you use, be curious about the body's experience and you will start to re-ground yourself.

- Be aware that as much as you can experience relaxation in the body, the more likely it is your mind will begin to relax and be restored. Put plenty of time into relaxing your body. Take some long deep breaths, perhaps holding the breath for a second or two before letting all the breath go. Repeat a few times before you return to your natural state of breathing; what feels right for you. Place your attention on various parts of your body, a body scan. It's wonderful when you can be guided through this, but you can guide yourself when alone too.

-Curiosity and kindness towards oneself are key. Whether one has been meditating for decades or whether this is the first time, there will be meditations where difficult material comes up in the mind. It may be a racing mind, or thoughts may spill over one another, or there's a nasty memory, or doubt about a decision, or an argument plays itself out all over again. The possibilities are endless. 

Thoughts can be troubling. Yet, if one can get curious about the material being generated by the mind in stillness, it becomes more like watching a movie. We feel some distance from the material, making the material, however that goes, far more tolerable. We can channel and train our thoughts to some extent of course, but we can't really make the mind think only wonderful and beautiful thoughts and not unpleasant and disturbing thoughts. So, knowing this, that we don't have a well thought out perfectly written script for the mind to follow, we can simply get curious. What's going on for you today, mind? You may find you let out a little giggle at times at how warped the mind can be. So be it. We're human.

Whatever the material going on, always be kind to yourself. Nothing is more important than this. Congratulate yourself, over and over, if necessary, for showing up for yourself in this way and in having the courage to do so. Be patient with yourself, too. If the meditation last three minutes only, well done you. Maybe next time you will be comfortable for sitting still and meditating for four minutes. This isn't a race. This is, purely and simply, time with yourself.

About being kind to yourself, take any instructions you are given by a meditation guide or teacher with a grain of salt. If someone requests that you keep your eyes closed, and at some point you desperately want to open them, then open them. Maybe look about the room, until you desire to close them again, or to focus on a point in the room. We are all different and especially those who are currently not experiencing good mental health, we need to honour where we at today.

- It's very important to understand that, as much as it might be good to have our minds focus on the breath, our minds are meant for variety, so I think it's inevitable that our minds are going to wander. If that wandering leads to a happy memory, or the love of another person, or what we are thinking of having for dinner, then it's all good. Who is to say thinking about lunch choices is a bad thing? When ready, feel back into the breath, or the sounds outside the room, or the feel of your tongue sitting on the roof of your mouth; whatever. Come back home.

Keep returning back home as often as you can. No judgment. Start again as often as necessary. There's nothing wrong with that.

- According to the Internal Family Systems model there are 8 Cs and 5 Ps that make up the Self; your happy and healthy you.

They are: compassion, curiosity, clarity, creativity, calm, confidence, courage and connectedness. Presence, patience, perspective, persistence and playfulness. It is notable that meditation can both foster and reinforce all these qualities. 

- Finally, while there are many styles of meditation to be explored, I think the one to really experience is a meditation based on the work of people like Joe Dispenza. This sort of meditation will take you to a place of nothingness, where you are surrounded by deep space all around you. You're nothing; you don't have roles to fulfil, and no one expects anything of you. You remove all the troubled thoughts, all the dis-ease, even disease. My personal feeling is that time spent in this mind state is transformative.

- And to end, meditation will not cure mental illness on its own. Maybe somewhere someone was healed by meditation alone, but the suffering of the mind requires a skilled therapist to assist that person. Meditation does however allow an openness of mind over time, an ability to be with the mind, and to explore the content of the mind. It's a wonderful adjunct to those in the field assisting those looking to overcome troubling mind states.

The hypnotist

 It's quite the task to try to describe in an online journal post the changes that have occurred in the past few weeks. All I can do is try.

I have undergone hypnosis. The first two sessions were foundational sessions where we worked on issues related to my childhood and the repercussions of things that didn't happen back then (as opposed to things that did happen).

I will try to put it as simply as I can. There was a 'part' of me that was left behind in my childhood, fragmented, not assimilated into my sense of Self. By the end of the first session, this had been completely healed. Three hours later, I was a new, much happier, lighter person. I can't begin to describe to you in words the relief I felt to have this monkey off my back.

We worked on my ability to say NO when I needed to, to love myself as much as I love others. Many things. It was a reworking of my belief systems. 

In the second session, it was about the inner child; that part of me that needed to be rescued, loved and cherished by me. She lives within me now; is praised and loved. How she flourishes with this sort of attention!

And then onto my sexual identity and sexual responses...

I am, authentically and naturally a sexually submissive woman who wants to serve, loves to serve. I radiate in praise and in being a 'good girl'. I don't need or want anything nasty in my life. But I do feel safe and loved in the submissive role led by a loving dominant man.  I want to be in a position to offer my strengths, to be of service, and to that end there is equality. We would, in an ideal scenario serve and love one another equally well.

Just to know this to the tips of my toes feels wonderful; to have clarity, to see it all clearly. This has been the greatest gift.

Girls just want to have fun

 The Parts work of IFS (Internal Family Systems) can be very useful for those with codependent behavior patterns. 

Codependents - people who tend to be enmeshed with other people - can be thought of quite simply as people who are trying to control their world. This can be due to circumstances in their childhood where parts of them were subdued as a protective mechanism to stop them from experiencing hurt.

Consider the young child with all the parts of the plural mind intact. The child displays curiosity and creativity. The child feels connected to at least one adult in his or her life. There's also the display of a degree of courage and compassion. There's clarity about what he or she wants.

As time goes by, the world interfaces with children and sometimes they get the idea that some core elements of the Self need to come up to the fore and some elements of the Self needs to be subdued. It's a protective mechanism we employ when things are not right. 

In my case, I probably felt the need to employ some behaviors and thoughts to protect myself from being hurt or feeling rejected, or lonely. A sense of being independent thus came to the fore; being able to manage on one's own; to please those adults in one's life who found it convenient and agreeable that I was able to manage independently of them.

If you have needed to people-please, competency is good in the eyes of your care givers, but they may not have wanted you to be too good, lest they felt not good about themselves. So, competency in the child there may be, but maybe not great self-esteem; maybe very weak boundaries.

Over much time, and when the adults in one's adult life also appreciate this independent, people-pleasing, weak boundary competency, those elements of oneself become over-used; tired.

It shouldn't come as a surprise when such a person reaches a point when he or she wonders what it is all about.

The solutions require those other parts that make up the Self to rise up and give those Parts that have been overworking for many a year a break. 

Which Parts you say? Well, with all this hard work and giving the other folks lots of space to go off and achieve while you do the work of caring for them, connection could well be in need of some attention along with creativity, not to mention confidence.

Here's where Deity shined. He wasn't one for psychological mumbo jumbo, but he saw when a girl thought too much and worked too much.

He devised tools to help her lose her mind and focus on pleasure for a time.

Connected. Cared for. Curious. Confident. Courageous and Clear.

Yes, for sure, someone with codependent tendencies needs to work towards interdependency (meeting each other's emotional and physical needs in relationship) but I think it bears reminding that balance of core elements of Self is vital. 

To put it simply: Girls just want to have (some) fun. 

Befriend yourself.

 It might be a confronting thought for some people. I know it was for me, until I embraced the wisdom therein. It's this. Regardless of companions along the way - spouses, children, extended families, business associates and random people we meet as we go about living out our days - we walk the path of our individual lives alone.

We carry on a dialogue with ourselves, critique ourselves, berate ourselves and tap ourselves on the back. Regardless of what we say to other people, we know internally how we are doing; if we are proud of ourselves, or scared, or lonely, or fearful, or if we know it's time for something new.

In essence, we compete against no-one but ourselves. Really let that statement land.

We can keep eternally busy and maybe these thoughts may never come up. But, they will. They do. We all, at the least, have dark nights of the soul whether we choose such reflections or not.

I try to keep it simple here in the journal; try to narrow it down to one idea even when my brain is flooded with thoughts. So let me tell you about the pain in my left shoulder area; this almost constant nagging pain that has been there for years.

It's an injury, I am told. It's arthritis, I am told. It's where you hold your emotional pain, I am told. There's some truth to all this analysis.

Yet, something deep in the psyche whispered to me that I had some power over the pain. What gave me hope was that in a deeply relaxed state at a retreat a few years back, I left the retreat pain free.

When I returned to my life, the pain returned with me, but what I had realized was that injury or not, arthritis or not, mental pain or not, it was possible to be pain free.

I read widely and so I can't say exactly where my inspiration stemmed from exactly, but a few days ago I found myself in conversation with my body. It was a yoga-free period as I nursed a sore back muscle and instead of going to a class, I was doing some simple yoga movements at home. 

I found myself saying internally, 'It's okay body. You and I are on the same team. You don't need to keep giving me signals. I'm looking after me now.'

I cannot take full credit for the vast improvement in my shoulder area since I did have an acupuncture treatment last week. Still, something's changed, profoundly changed in my relationship with the pain. To not get too weird, I acknowledged it; acknowledged what it might be doing to help me, in its strange sort of way. I talked back to it, offered to be in consort with it, and in doing so, found relief, a truce of sorts.

To see myself as the star of my own life; as the one walking solo through my own life (together with companions, of course) was to remove anyone else being responsible for my well-being. This provided me with a lightness of being. (Note: I should say I have been listening to Worthiness recordings from richsmithhypnosis.com and highly recommend them)

I can honestly say that if I had an easy sort of path, someone who offered me the kind of attention and affection I have always craved, a comfortable life, I would have stayed in my comfortable lane. What reason would there have been to leave? Who can blame those with blessed lives for thinking that life is about being comfortable; more and more comfortable?

I once asked a wise woman what I should do now? At my stage of life, what would make a difference? She suggested I should not feel burdened by a need to seek to do more; if something comes, let it come, she said, but don't force it.

I took that advice, awaiting patiently a sign of where I could do better, or more. After trauma, first you have to heal yourself. Then, you can take your healed self beyond. That's the stage I am at; actively seeking to venture further and further outside my comfort zone; to see what I am capable of.

It's some old saying, isn't it - that the solution lies within?

A recent acquaintance likes to say, 'If you can't be happy without her, you can't be happy with her.'

Using fewer words, I suggest, 'Befriend yourself.'

Befriend all parts of yourself and be comfortable with the truth: that you are a work in progress, as you should be, and always were.