A Meditation for Adoptees -- Plugging into Your Energy Source

Lie down and get comfortable. Take a few deep breaths and then exhale a little longer than you inhaled (if it feels good, you can inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth, like a sigh). When you exhale, the diaphragm pushes up against the heart, slowing down your heartbeat, telling your body to relax. When you inhale, the diaphragm inflates, giving your heart space to beat more quickly and to tell your body to get a move on. So, when you’re trying to relax, exhales are your gateway drug.

Place a finger in your belly button. Flesh on flesh. Think of E.T.’s lit-up finger pointing to the sky, only your lit-up finger is pointing into your navel. Focus on the feeling. What does the tip of your finger feel when you inhale, when you exhale, when you pause between breaths? If your mind says things about your belly being “too soft” or “too big” take a moment to point out to your mind that your belly is your belly. In this moment it can’t be “too” anything because it is what it is, and if you follow your mind down “too” road, you are not living in the present moment, which means you aren’t doing this right. So knock it off. I don’t ask a lot of you, but I’m asking you to do this one thing right.

Be curious instead of an asshole, is what I’m saying. Pay attention to what your fingertip feels and what your belly button feels like with your finger in it.

Listen closely to these feelings. You are now plugged into your origin. How do you know if what you are touching is all yours or is also part of your mother of origin? You are plugging into the spot that fed you for your fetal life.

What do you feel if you press in a little harder? Your body is packed full of muscles and organs and so many other things that make up a human. Do you know what you’re touching? At one time you had a cord here that connected your body to another body. Referring to yesterday’s blog post: you were a we. Are you a we now, connecting into yourself with your own finger? Do connections die when the cord is cut? What happens to the energy between the baby and the mother’s body when the cord is cut? What if you can access the core of energy with your finger, just as you might be able to sense the energy of Old Faithful if you put your hand in the opening when it wasn’t erupting (this sounds scary and dangerous, but energetically I like the comparison)?

Can you stay here for say, five minutes, listening to and feeling the energy that is you and possibly her? If you can’t, why not? What’s happening? Are you bored? Do you want to scroll instead of paying deep attention to your own body? Why?

For an average of 40 weeks and 5 days, you were in a body and you had no phone, no books, no toys to play with aside from your hands and a thick cord. You did not die of boredom. You grew.

Your body loves when you pay it kind attention. Listen. Feel. Cry if you want to cry. But stay.

How do you feel?

I got the photograph from Martha Beck’s book Finding Your Way in a Wild New World.