Up, over and out

Wishing you all a very happy (though belated) new year!

Although the very start of 2011 got off to a somewhat dramatic start (staying with friends on New Years's Eve, we overdid the raw garlic in the Baba Ganoush which then passed through my milk to Benjamin who proceeded to be violently sick through the night!), I'm pleased to report that since then, things have been good. Actually, they've been better than good, they've been great. For a start, I've been sleeping for a couple of months now (don't know why, don't care, just want to enjoy it). I also took a  mini-break to Bordeaux last week with Benjamin to visit some wonderful friends I lived with in Spain in 2002 and hadn't seen in a long time. Although the nights were very disturbed (Benjo's definitely a home boy!), I cannot express how good it was to be there, exploring a new place with old friends. This Spanish word doesn't translate too well, but the best word to describe my few days in Bordeaux was 'fuerte', roughly meaning intense. Suffice it to say that it was a small injection of spice and adventure into my veins and I needed that.

I've felt over the past couple of months something shifting inside me. Is it a delayed reaction to the mindfulness techniques I learnt with Guy Meadows at the Insomnia Clinic, which I continue to practice? I'd like to add that I'm not naive enough to think that just because I'm going through a good period, my insomnia will not return. Nor do I think that it necessarily will either. I know that the spectre of my insomnia will sit on my shoulder for many years to come, whether imagined or realised. But when I said that something is shifting inside me, what I mean is that I'm reclaiming a part of myself that has never left, but has been deeply buried for some time, and that is firstly, that I am a social being (honestly, I've forgotten this far too frequently!) and secondly, I have the opportunity to be creative.

I've started seeing a psychosynthesis counsellor (more of that later) and she asked me during my first session what two of the most important things in my life are. I didn't have to think for too long...I said my family, and what I mentioned before: the opportunity to be creative. And by this I mean that I  need to indulge in what drives me, and that is to write. My Women's Writing Wheel project, although far from perfect or completed (I'm currently testing it out with 10 guinea pigs), was in my head for a long time before it metamorphosed onto the screen, and to now see it up there, and to see stories appear before my eyes, is incredibly exciting for me. I feel like a teenager, besotted with a first boyfriend who wants to sneak constant glances at her mobile phone to see if any texts have come in: this is me, stealing moments on the laptop to see if any new stories have come in. Take a sneaky peak here to have a look at Women's Writing Wheel. The associated blog I've also started, Mother Writes, is generally all geeky stuff to do with creative writing and books but if you're interested in seeing it, please let me know and I can send an invitation for you to view it.

Back to the psychosynthesis...I'd never heard of this form of counselling before it was recommended by some friends. Essentially, it deals with harmonising all elements of our personalities and psyche through greater self-knowledge. Many methods are used including creative visualisation, free drawing, writing and meditation - so basically, my kind of thing. At the moment, we're doing some guided meditation and visualisation exercises, not to dig out and expel my insomnia (I'm done with that), but to gently explore my sub-personalities and sit beside the part of me that can't sleep. Sometimes it feels a little strange to be going when I really am fine at the moment, but then I think that actually it's good to be seeking support from this place of positivity, rather than a place of angst and desperation, which I've visited many, many times over the past 5 years. I'm going to do six weeks with the counsellor and see how I feel after that.

As for new year's resolutions, both Andy and I have decided that we'll do yoga at least once a week. I'd love to do it every day but I need to be realistic and accept this is highly unlikely! It's been a long time I've really done yoga and I cannot adequately express how it makes me feel: I am opening upwards and outwards and finding a rhythm and flow from a place deep within me. It is utterly absorbing and liberating. I also love the ritual I create around yoga. The right smell (incense) and the right sound (there are many sounds that work for me, but right now, I'm in love with the Indian flute music of Ronu Majumdar.)

No doubt I will be back at some stage to report how me and my sleep are getting one, but for now at least, I've decided to stop writing this blog in order to concentrate on Women's Writing Wheel and my other blog. So I'm going to leave you with the beautiful sound of Ronu Majumdar. Click here to listen.

Lots of love and light to you all,
Rebecca
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