Mrs. D is Going Within by Lotta Dann

Author:Lotta Dann
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2017-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

My feet are actually a hive of static activity!

A few hours later I’m lying on the bed in my motel room with my shoes off and my eyes closed. I have a couple of free hours before I need to front up at a local cafe and bare my soul to a large group of women. I am listening to Mark.

He tells me to bring my attention down to my breath in my abdomen, and to notice as my abdomen stretches when I breathe in and falls away when I breathe out.

I do this.

He tells me to gather my attention and move it down my body to my feet.

I do this, too.

He tells me to notice what sensations are in both my feet when my attention arrives here. In my toes, the soles of my feet, the heels, the top of my feet.

I concentrate hard on my feet. There’s nothing going on there, I think.

But then I notice a slight hum of energy, followed by an awareness of the pressure on both heels where they come into contact with the mattress. And there’s a very slight itch in the little toe of my right foot. OMG! My feet are actually a hive of static activity!

I carry on like this right round my whole body, really concentrating hard on all the sensations in each body part and connecting with them. For the first time ever, I’m totally immersed in this process. Maybe it’s because I’m away from home and there are no distractions. Maybe it’s because I’m nervous and don’t want to think about the talk I’m about to give. Or maybe it’s because my faltering yet determined attempts thus far to get into mindfulness have at last led me towards better concentration.

Whatever the case, as Mark guides me around the parts of my body, I am fully alive and alert to all of them. It feels really good. Calming. And quite intriguing actually. There are loads of subtle yet noticeable sensations in my body. It’s significantly more pronounced, this connection that I feel to my body, as I lie on the bed alone in a motel room in a tiny town far from home.

After fifteen minutes of body-scanning, Mark signs off with one final, encouraging message: he tells me to let myself be just as I am, complete and whole, and to rest in my awareness at each moment.

I take a deep breath, sit up and actually say out loud to the empty motel room, ‘Amazing.’

It is amazing. It’s hard to translate this experience into words, but I feel like I have just had a real ‘coming home’ to my body.

I wouldn’t call it a monumental breakthrough or anything—no way. It was far more subtle than that. But it was something new. Something a little bit deep. Something a little bit exciting. And certainly something very grounding. Incredibly grounding, actually.

I feel calm as I shower and get dressed into the ‘new’ black dress I got for the talk from a second-hand shop.

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