This sunrise meditation in Nepal was one of the golden mornings of my life. The night before we experienced a wild storm blowing through our camp on the remote Megang Danda Ridge. Vaporous black clouds raced out of the valley to collide with the swirling thunderclouds overhead. The green field of the camp was covered in a white blanket of hail. We held onto the dining tent walls to stop it lifting off into the air. Full of laughter, wide eyed, exhilarated. A break in the roar of the storm was our cue to sprint across the hail smothered ground into the security of our own tents.

I slept deeply and woke to the sound of breathing. My own breath. Expansive & full. I unzipped the tent, amazed to see a night sky full of bright stars. Not a single cloud. Everything had changed. Everything changes.

In meditation we become intimate with this constant change. Thoughts become other thoughts. Intense sensations in the body shift from place to place. The boredom, the joy, the anxiety, the delight. It all comes and it all goes. Sitting on a rock, breathing in the blue and gold of the sunrise. Sitting at my desk writing this. Holding my newborn son. Watching that son drive into his adult life in a red sports car. Accepting change or impermanence is the basic teaching of meditation and Buddhism.

This has become more than an intellectual concept for me since I began practicing Trauma Release Exercise - TRE. With a nervous system that is not in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze or please I can relax into myself. TRE has given me a sense of inner safety that has deepened my experience of meditation and of life. We don’t have to travel to know self-connection and awareness - it is all within us.

I’m so looking forward to sharing this space with you at the Nervous System Reset & Restore for Women on June 2nd. Info here

If you are already using TRE or have experience with it this is an opportunity to reconnect with the practice and experience the depth of tremoring with a group.

PS if you do want that Himalayan sunrise check out the beautiful work of Heartspace Expeditions in support of The Active Hearts Foundation