When I do the meditation for relaxation and memory focus, I experience shivering. At first I thought this was just a result of a cool room temperature and I started using a heating pad. The pad does not help. I won’t go into the work I have done to understand and cope with the distractions that pull my attention away from the exercise. Today I am wondering if the shivering is about blood flow that changes when I am seriously concentrating. The shivering has happened only one other time when my life was in danger. I had to make life or death decisions to save myself. And I did save myself without injury. So what can I do?

Writing is helping me think. If there is no other solution, I will borrow a phrase from an article about being kind to yourself in Martha Stewart’s magazine. I will put my hand over my heart and say, “I will be okay, sweetheart.” This lines up with another time when I found myself upset that I couldn’t finish an exercise without falling asleep. The tears seemed to be due to anger at myself. Something in me said that’s kind of mean, have some understanding for yourself. I felt this was the first time I had a sense of a safe voice inside me coming from the safe place that Dr. Amen talks about in the meditation. It was like talking back to an ANT. So I decided that I had learned something from the meditation even if I had fallen asleep.