April, 22, 1997 – Weird Old Women Who Wear Purple!
Today I went to Leslie Davenport to work on my sleep problem. She led me in a hypnotherapy session which focused on deep relaxation and then led me into several visualizations that seemed to help me recover my ability to let go and allow myself to sleep. The tape recording was messed up, however, so I am going to have to reconstruct the session from memory while it is still fresh.
From focusing on deeply relaxing my physical body she went into deeply relaxing my mind through a technique of unraveling a loosely woven fabric of burlap or some similar substance. The purpose of this was to unravel the mind from it’s objects of attention. Next, we went deeper with a count down followed by a visualization of a relaxing place. I chose China Beach in Point Lobos State Reserve.
The final scene was a library in my mind in which there were books of a positive nature on the right side of me and books of not such a positive nature on the left. The books on the left were stories about stress, illness, heartaches, pain, suffering, and the like. I took each of these books one by one and placed them in a receptacle which was then taken out of the library for good!
I came out of the session feeling very relaxed and as if I had taken a nap. I’m sure there was more to the session, so I’m going to ask Leslie about it and try to recover the tape.
Later, I went to see Gail Teehan. She did a Feldenkrais session on twisting of my spine, which was very good. She also showed me exercises for my back and knees. While we were working together, she spoke about how much Feldenkrais has helped stroke victims. During the discussion, she mentioned that she thought she’d be around to be a weird old lady dressed in purple! I love doing work with Gail, but I won’t see here until May 15 because she’ll be in Feldenkrais training.
In the evening, my wife and I went to separate support groups at the Center for Attitudinal Healing in Sausalito. The support group I attended was the “Life Threatened” and my wife attended the “Care Givers” group. I first contacted The Center for Attitudinal when my son had Wilm’s tumor back in 1976 and spoke with the founder, Dr. Jerry Jampolsky. Later, 1987 or 1988, my wife and I completed the Volunteer Training, but we got busy with our young children and never did much with the Center.
The support group was different from the others I’ve been attending in that it started and ended with everyone holding hands and one of the facilitators offering a message of hope. I enjoyed that aspect. When I had an opportunity to share, I really felt supported. Everyone was interested in my meditation of “healthy… free” and invited me to teach it, but as time was limited, I’ll have to wait until another opportunity presents itself. I think people felt inspired by my story.