by Janis Harper
How do you look after yourself as a mother? How do you find a few minutes a day in your hectic schedule looking after everyone else to turn that care onto yourself? And what do you do? Take a bath? Have a glass of wine? Read? Try to nap? All good options, for sure. But sometimes when we “try to relax” our mind keeps buzzing, which keeps us in a state of overwhelm. Sometimes we need a little self-healing time.
This is an arts-meditation adapted from my new visionary novel, “Jonas and the Mountain: A Metaphysical Love Story” and podcast.
Close your eyes. Imagine that it’s just you sitting in a room. Just you, alone. There’s no one else here. It’s just you in a room by yourself. You don’t have to think of anyone else. All relationships fall away. Take a deep breath and let it out slowly. You have no thoughts of anybody. Why should you? It’s just you. Feel the relief that comes with knowing that. Ahhhh. Breathe deeply through your nose from your belly, up through your lungs, and out through your mouth. What a relief. It’s just me.
Feel the beautiful calm in the space around you right now, for these few moments. Sink into that calm.
Now, very gently, feel what’s inside of you right now. Is there a place where something uncomfortable or painful is living? If so, find it now, in your body, in what you imagine to be inside your body-self.
Look at it if you can, and notice whatever images or sounds are attached to it. Don’t relive an experience. Just observe it as it exists inside of you right now, in whatever form you see it taking. Let’s stay with the observation for a few minutes.
What does it look like? What color is it? What is its shape? Does it have a texture? If words come out of the feeling in your uncomfortable area, say the words; if there are sounds, make the sounds. If you want to make a movement, a gesture, do so. If you want to write or draw, go ahead. Let your body speak to you in whatever way it wants. Listen and watch carefully for its messages, then express them in whatever way feels right. Do this for a few minutes, then stop. Keep breathing.
Now breathe fully; feel the breath throughout your entire body. Concentrate on your full breath for a few minutes. Breathe in “here,” and breathe out “now.”
Janis Harper is the author of the visionary novel Jonas and the Mountain: A Metaphysical Love Story: An eastern mystic, a western psychic, and a broken man who falls in love with them both at the holy mountain of Arunachala in South India. More than an unusual love story, Jonas and the Mountain is a quest for the deepest truth, an excursion into the nature of reality. It also contains teachings and expressive arts activities that the reader can use as self-exploration. Listen to Janis take you through more activities on her 8-episode podcast, “Jonas and the Mountain Journeys”: https://sacredstories.com/category/podcast/jonas-journeys/
Janis Harper is an expressive arts therapist and writer, musician, and actor. Her writing can be found in literary journals and anthologies, including two creative nonfiction anthologies that she conceived and edited: Body Breakdowns: Tales of Illness and Recovery and Emails From India: Women Write Home. Music from her 2015 folk-roots album Better This Way is available online. Janis’s lifelong passions for the creative arts, metaphysics, spirituality, and philosophy come together in Jonas and the Mountain. Although she has published mainly nonfiction, she considers this novel to be the truest work she’s ever written.
For more: https://janisharper.ca
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