Semi-retreat and baby steps

The current semi-retreat I am on is going well. Although some days I get in close to an hour of practice and other days it is longer. I also want to add to my list of practices from a previous post (yoga, qigong, meditation, Dharma practices): add body scan meditations and good mother messages.

Good mother messages are what we learn about as an antidote to babies either misunderstanding birth trauma and feeling neglected, unloveable and / or less-than-safe or rarely, babies actually are less-than-safe (which breaks my heart, no seriously, this hurts to contemplate). Anyway..

Here some typical good mother messages, although I have seen lists of at least 50 different messages: “I love you,” or “I want you,” or “You don’t have to be afraid any more,” or “I love you for who you are, not for what you do.” These messages are all geared toward repairing early trauma and restoring health to our little ones (inside). Of course, if we are parents of babies, then it is really really good to be saying these messages to our kids!

It is recommended to say these good mother messages to pictures of ourselves as babies everyday for at least a year. I still haven’t gotten to that lofty threshold. The longest I said them was six weeks I do believe. But I just wanted to mention that this practice would be good to do at any point – a form of metta practice as it were (loving-kindness meditation).  Who knows what we might discover doing these?

The list that I work from has 15 Good Mother Messages on it, which is pretty comprehensive, but some people re-work it and make the message much more personal.

At present, I am noticing some resistance to doing these messages (which might be just the reason TO DO them!), so I might not get to it tonight. But at some point this month, I will add it in.

Thanks for reading,

km

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