{"id":533,"date":"2014-03-08T20:22:18","date_gmt":"2014-03-08T20:22:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=533"},"modified":"2014-03-08T20:22:18","modified_gmt":"2014-03-08T20:22:18","slug":"d-is-for-deep-relaxation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=533","title":{"rendered":"D is for Deep relaxation"},"content":{"rendered":"<style type=\"text\/css\"><!--\nP { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); }P.western { font-family: \"Liberation Serif\",\"Times New Roman\",serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.cjk { font-family: \"Droid Sans\"; font-size: 12pt; }P.ctl { font-family: \"FreeSans\"; font-size: 12pt; }\n--><\/style>\n<p>I came into the room and there were sleeping mats, pillows and blankets everywhere. People were sitting and lying down on the floor. The sight reminded me of a girl guide sleepover, though there wasn&#8217;t nearly as much noise.<\/p>\n<p>So I got a mat and a blanket and joined in. I&#8217;ve done a lot of different things in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.woodbrooke.org.uk\/courses.php?action=course&amp;id=8722\">Woodbrooke<\/a>&#8216;s quiet room over the years. Quaker Worship most mornings that I&#8217;ve been there, lots of sessions led by tutors, lots of sharing and listening in pairs and small groups, some drawing, a party and some circle dancing, but nothing quite like this.<\/p>\n<p>The guided meditation that followed began in a fairly familiar way with thinking of parts of our bodies and consciously relaxing them, but I soon found myself falling asleep to the sound of the facilitator singing &#8216;twinkle, twinkle little star&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p>When I awoke, another new experience was to follow \u2026 but that is the subject for my next post &#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/still-reflection.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-535 aligncenter\" alt=\"still reflection\" src=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/still-reflection-300x204.jpg\" width=\"640\" height=\"444\" \/><\/a>It still amazes me how this practice actually sends nearly everybody right off to sleep. Even in a conference centre hall with 400-500 people, when I woke a bit sooner than most, I realised how many of us had slept. Very refreshing it is too.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">There are also some simpler relaxation meditations (see <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/The-Blooming-Lotus-Meditation-Mindfulness\/dp\/0807012386\">The Blooming of the Lotus<\/a>) that I have found easy to use lying in bed at home when everything has felt a bit too much to cope with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I came into the room and there were sleeping mats, pillows and blankets everywhere. People were sitting and lying down on the floor. The sight reminded me of a girl guide sleepover, though there wasn&#8217;t nearly as much noise. So &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/?p=533\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=533"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":536,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533\/revisions\/536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stephanie-blog.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}