READ THIS TEXT ALL the way through first. You may then decide to improvise your own induction, use the instructions printed here in italics as a general guide, tape-record yourself reading them (with appropriate pauses to stretch them out to about twenty minutes) so that you can be guided through each meditation by your own voice; or go on this journey with a trusted partner who will read the induction aloud to you, then ask you questions afterward to strengthen what your conscious mind has learned—and then reverse roles. Find the way—and the words—that suit you.
The induction that follows serves as a signal to your deeper, unconscious, back-of-the-mind self that it is to be your guide. Your conscious, front-of-the-mind self will be only a passenger on this journey, but because you are doing something new, that conscious self may be skeptical at first:
• Do you feel that you simply don’t have time to meditate? Remember all the ways it will more than pay back the time by helping you work more efficiently and benefiting your health, as well as taking you on an inward journey. (I’ve listed some books that go into these results in more detail.)
• Do you fear that you can’t concentrate? Don’t try to shut out distractions; just let any thoughts come into your mind, observe them as they float through—and then let them go.
• Do you feel you become less real if you are not acting, responding, or being responded to? Remember that as you sit quietly, you are an active part of the universe. “Unlikely as it seems,” as Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explained, “the tiny air currents that a butterfly creates travel across thousands of miles, jostling other breezes as they go and eventually changing the weather.” Like the air moved by a butterfly, even your breath travels miles and links you to all things, large and small.
• Are you afraid of what you may discover if you turn inward? Your unconscious self can be trusted to take care of you. It is the part that always protects you, even when you are asleep. As it sends up feelings and images, the conscious and observing mind will become more interested—and trusting.
• Do you feel skeptical about this process, or about whether it’s right for you? Then just proceed as if you believed.
Have a notebook with you in which to jot down your impressions after each of these voyages, even if they are only in phrases and fragments. Later, your conscious self will discover associations, patterns, and insights that may help you to understand events in the past, how they are shaping your present, and how you would like them to shape the future.
In the early morning or other quiet time, take a half hour for yourself, find a comfortable chair that supports your back, and turn off the phone and other distractions. If this is impossible where you live, find a public library, religious space, or other quiet place for you (or for you and your partner) to absorb instructions like these:
Sit with your back supported, feet flat on the floor, hands resting on your lap with palms upward.
Now bring your consciousness to one part of your body at a time, tensing each area as hard as you can, then just letting go. Feel the heaviness in each part of your body as you let it go—completely. Start with your toes … feet … calves … thighs … then the muscles of your torso … shoulders … arms … hands … then your face. Tensing each area—then letting go. Now feel your head balancing easily over your shoulders. Let your body center itself.
Inhale deeply and slowly. Feel your ribs expand and your belly push out as you slowly inhale—then exhale the air more slowly than you breathed it. Do this six times—with consciousness. Feel the cool air as you breathe it in, and the warmer air as you breathe it out. Feel your body become larger with each inward breath and smaller with each outward breath.
Now forget about your breath completely and just feel the balance as you slowly close your eyes. Relax your eyelids, your forehead, relax your jaw. Let your mind “settle.” If thoughts float up to the surface, don’t resist them or pursue them. Just observe each one as it arrives—and then let it go.
Ask the back-of-your-mind to imagine a safe place. It may be a room you once knew or a place you once cherished. It may be a place you’ve never seen before except in this imagination of it—a beach, a mountaintop, a sunny room. As images come, trust them. If they don’t come right away, just relax and wait. If they still don’t come, imagine what a safe place would be like if you could imagine it.
Look around at this special place. What colors do you see? Run a hand over a surface near you: How does it feel? Are there special smells in this place? Are there tastes that seem part of this place? Can you feel the sun, the air, a breeze? What sounds do you hear? Notice which of your senses is the clearest or comes most quickly. Those are the strongest bridges to this safe place. You will be able to recall those feelings in everyday life when you need to feel safe. When you visit this place again, you may want to spend more time imagining with other senses and strengthening them, too.
Now just relax and be in this place. Nothing can happen here except what you wish to happen. If anything unwelcome appears, you will imagine it away. Only good things can happen to you here. Your unconscious is taking care of you. It has brought you to this special place of peace, restfulness, safety, and discovery.
Do you notice feelings? What is it about this place that makes you feel safe? Are there absences of things that give you that feeling? What other images, feelings, and associations do you notice? Let your conscious mind observe the gifts your unconscious is bringing you.
When your thoughts slip out of this place or you simply feel enough time has elapsed, you are ready to return. When you are back in your daily life, you will know that this place of peace and well-being exists within you. It will always be there whenever you need it. You will awaken feeling refreshed, centered, strong, and peaceful.
Inhale deeply and slowly as you count to six. Then exhale as you count to three. Do this several times—and feel the energy returning to your body. On the last count of three, open your eyes slowly. You have visited the home of your true self.
After you have done the first exercise for a few days—or whenever your curiosity signals that it’s time—go through the steps of the induction above, but this time, you’re going to ask your inner child of the past to join you. Read through this additional stage of induction below, and record, remember, or share it—and then add it to the first stage.
Take a moment or two to be aware of your feelings about today’s adventure. Are you fearful of this meeting? Or eager for its discoveries? Is this child a familiar part of you, or someone you’ve tried to forget? The emotion is less important than your ability to feel it.
Allow an image of your inner child to float to the surface from that back-of-the-mind. Trust whatever comes: a shadowy figure, an image from an old photograph, a version of the child you’ve never seen before, an infant, a teenager, a little child who runs to you, one who ignores you or turns away.
Before you reach out to this child, ask yourself what emotions she or he evokes in you. Do you feel happy or ashamed? Angry or impatient? Indifferent or affectionate? Awkward or at ease? Judgmental or accepting? Once you have sensed this, ask another question: “Am I feeling this way toward my inner child because my mother, father, or other caretaker felt this way toward me?” If so, take some time to understand that you did not invent this feeling, it was given to you. It isn’t yours. It can be changed. Stay with these thoughts for this first meditation or come back to them for as long as you need.
Invite the child to be with you—but respect the child’s response. If she or he isn’t ready yet, that’s fine. Explain that this is a special place where you do only what you wish. Your inner child may have been forced to pretend in the past, and it’s important that this doesn’t happen here. Try waiting until the child speaks to you—and if the child isn’t ready yet, just stay there quietly and observe this child of the past. There will be a next time. There’s plenty of time.
After the child does talk or come to you, see if he or she would like to be hugged or to sit on your lap. Feel the warmth and weight of the child’s body, its contrast in size with yours, a small hand in your hand, the texture of skin and hair. Take a moment to be aware of the emotions this evokes in you—and in the child.
If the child comes to you easily and is open and happy, you might say: “I am your friend from the future. I’m here because I love you. I want to learn from you.”
If the child is shy, unhappy, or afraid, you might say: “I’ve come from the future to help you and love you. I will protect you. Just tell me what you want and need.”
At any point along the way, one of you may sense that you’ve come as far as you want to for today. That’s fine. Assure the child that this special place will always be here. Whenever you need it. If the child is troubled or lonely, you might leave a part of yourself to comfort the child—and tell him or her that you are doing this. If the child has a spontaneity or other qualities you feel you have lost, you might ask a part of the child to stay with you after you return.
As your time together ends, remember that whatever you have thought, learned, or felt here is now part of you. The child is also part of you. You will come to know, trust, and help each other.
Take some energizing breaths, inhaling more slowly than you exhale. Count to six as you breathe in, count to three as you breathe out. On the last count, open your eyes. Look at your hands and imagine that a child’s hands are inside them. You are one and the same person—but different. You can protect and care for your inner child.
Don’t forget to make notes of your thoughts, impressions, associations, and feelings.
Meeting one’s inner child is an experience both common and unique. Instructions like the ones above will change spontaneously when you are with your child, but some ritual does help. So does meeting regularly. If you find that you resist—for instance, if you fear that revisiting the past will imprison you there forever, or if you feel weaker than your inner child—follow the additional suggestions in the next exercise. Or just wait. Curiosity will tell you when you are ready.
Your child may appear in the safe place you’ve imagined, or in rooms the child knows that your conscious mind had forgotten. Eventually, you will bring your child into the present and show her or him where you live now: an important step in bringing the parts of your life together. You will recognize feelings (or absences of feelings) that protected you in childhood but aren’t necessary anymore.
Even without this meditative trance state, you will be able to comfort the child, to reexperience feelings, or perhaps to experience them now as you couldn’t then, and to know that painful past events were not your fault. You deserve to be loved and cared for—and you always did.
Reentering the past as your own protective parent doesn’t change it, but it can change your emotional response to past events. The traditional benefit of hypnosis is remembering what the conscious mind has repressed. Self-hypnosis offers that—and also the activist benefit of self-empowerment and intervention.
After all, no one—not therapist or friend or even parent—knows the experiences, feelings, and needs of your inner child. Only you do.
In meditation, you have met your child—your inner children, really, since they will come to you at different times and ages. Whenever you need the creativity and spontaneity of childhood—or a childhood self needs your comfort and protection—you can find them within.
But your present self also travels toward the future. That is a place not only of safety, but also of hope, dreams, and the greatest strength of your true self. If you let it, that true self will lead you. For this, you no longer need to visit rooms of the past. Instead, you will sense all the powers of nature within you. Thus, once you have gone through the first step of the induction as usual, you will add the passage below—or whatever version of it you prefer. Read through it first to see if you would like to make changes. You will be conjuring up your own magic place in nature.
Ask that back-of-the-mind part of you to imagine a beautiful natural scene that you would like to be part of: the ocean’s edge, a pine woods, a mountain view, a river at sunrise, a moonlit field—whatever images arrive. There is a path or a road on which you have been traveling. It stretches out in front of you farther than the eye can see: it is your life’s journey. Take a moment to use your senses and feel this place: breeze, ocean spray, sun, starlight, the scent of flowers, the sound of water—whatever comes to you with pleasure.
Now imagine there is a figure on the path ahead of you, walking where you have not walked, seeing what you have yet to see. It is your future self: wiser, more evolved, more productive, stronger, at peace—whatever you would like to be. This is your best self, your guide, who is leading you on life’s path.
Pause to observe everything you can about this person. How does she or he look? What is her manner? What emotions does she elicit in you? What bond do you feel with her? How is he or she different from the self you are now? or the same? How does this future self feel toward the child in you? How does the child in you feel about this future self?
Now imagine that you are that future self, and you are looking back at yourself as you are now. As the future guide, how do you feel about this present self? Do you want to help him or her? What do you want her to know? What important things must she do or understand before becoming this best and future self?
Pause and think about the self-wisdom your future self is giving you. Let the conscious part of your mind take note of this gift from the unconscious. If it’s too much to absorb now, ask your unconscious to store it up and give it to you at exactly the right time.
As your current self, say: “I will become you.”
As your future self, say: “I’ll always be inside you.”
Leave a part of yourself to stay on this path, walking into the future, becoming more and more what you wish to be.
Let the scene fade from your imagination, breathe deep and energizing breaths, as before, and slowly open your eyes.
Note in your journal what seemed most important, surprising, wise. Make a new section for this future self. You will be visiting each other often.
There are many ways of meeting your future self. Imagining a figure ahead of you on life’s path is one way. You might also think about a desired future event and imagine your future self within it. Or imagine a protecting future self who advises you in hard times, celebrates in good ones, and is always there for you to ask: What would my guide say?
The remarkable thing is that contemplating this best self will bring out those qualities in you and enable you to do seemingly impossible feats. For instance: If you have been stopped from visiting your inner child by a screen of fear—if you simply cannot go back as your present self—try asking your future self to visit that child. You will send back all your strengths, and your future self may be able to comfort that child of the past in a way you cannot yet do in the present.
Imagining yourself being led by both is the balance of past and future. Your child self brings you spontaneity and creativity. Your future self brings you wisdom and strength. Many people call on one or the other for help with a problem at hand—or remember both each morning as a guide to the day.
Herbert Benson with Marion Z. Klipper. The Relaxation Response. New York: Avon Books, 1976. Eastern meditative techniques combined with Western scientific proof of effectiveness by a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School: a simple how-to book with both graphs and poetry.
Joan Borysenko and Larry Rothstein. Minding the Body, Mending the Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988. Meditation as part of emotional and physical self-healing by a cofounder of Harvard’s Mind/Body Clinic: her self-rescue plus experience with clinic cases from AIDS to allergies.
Diane Mariechild. Mother Wit. Freedom, California: The Crossing Press, 1988. Guided meditations and rituals for women, from relaxation to dream-recall and wicca ceremonies. A chapter of meditative exercises for children.
Nancy J. Napier. Recreating Your Self. New York: W. W. Norton, 1990. Theory and practice of self-hypnosis as a path to the inner child, changing family myths, healing traumatic events, and developing one’s authentic self. (See chapter 4.)
Dr. Dean Ornish’s Program for Reversing Heart Disease. New York: Random House, 1990. Meditation as a stress-reduction technique when combined with exercise, diet, and group support.
If you sense pain in your past or for any reason feel the need of a more long-term and orderly process, consider the four well-designed steps of self-therapy in Making Sense of Suffering: The Healing Confrontation with Your Own Past by J. Konrad Stettbacher, with foreword and afterword by Alice Miller, New York: Dutton, 1991. It also provides sensitive guidelines for selecting a group or therapist.