I wrote this for my husband several years ago. I must have been worried about him when I wrote it, so I’m thinking it may have been when he was laid off and we were about to have our third child. I think my plan was to read it to him while he was relaxing, to take him through a process of visualization to help free him from some of his stress. I imagined it would be like one of the hypnosis techniques I learned in my hypnobirthing class I took when pregnant with my first child. In short, I thought it would be great!
He, however, thought it was crazy. He listens to me talk about all sorts of things he never knew about until we fell in love, but I guess asking him to lie on the couch and visualize anything was taking it too far. And so I folded up my little meditation and stuck it in a book, where it remained until I happened upon it today.
I’m including it here in case it can be of use to anyone. You could read it to someone as a visualization exercise, as I intended to do. Or you could read it with a particular person in mind, as a way of sending them support or praying for them. Or you could read it to yourself, to help yourself work through a struggle.
I love you, and I wish you all the best. I wish for you a protective covering of the warmest, safest, softest substance, which comes down on all sides around you and keeps you safe. You can still see through this protective covering—you can still see the outside world and all of its bright lights—but you are safe inside. You are aware of the sounds and expectations outside the covering, but inside the sounds are muffled and the expectations seem far off and distant.
Within the covering, you breathe easily. You open up, relax, let down. You put your feet up. You are totally at ease, and yet you are not sleepy. You look straight ahead with clear eyes. You do not feel any fear, only calm.
The parts of you that have been hurt, the wounds that you have kept buried and bandaged beneath layers and layers for so long, these parts start to heal here beneath this protective covering. The warmth and safety of the space begin to heal the wounds, and the bandages start to fall off one by one, falling to the ground, as they are no longer needed. As the bandages fall, you feel a weight lifted, and a feeling of being loosened. The constricted parts of you start to expand until they feel totally freed. You are no longer contained—you are loosed.
As the pressure lifts, emotion follows in its wake. The pressure lifts, you take a deep expansive breath, and suddenly you feel emotion well up behind your breath. It does not have a name, a label; it is simply emotion that was trapped with your wounds beneath the bandages. You may feel that the emotion is welling up too quickly, that you may drown, but do not fear. The emotion will not stay—it is only passing through you and over you. Breathe deeply and allow calm to fill you up with each breath. The emotion is simply washing over you like water rushing around a rock in a stream.
When the emotion has all washed over you, it will leave you and your healed wounds cleaned and refreshed. You have been washed clean and can start anew. You feel fatigue in your body and spirit from the experience, but it is a good, satisfying feeling. You can rest now, and when you awake, you will feel completely refreshed and new, able to see all the colors and lights of the world without squinting, to open the door to a new day without fear, and to breathe deeply and fully of life.
© Amy Daniewicz and Beneath the Trees
Amy Daniewicz 