Embracing Resilience

Hello, it's Eve here. Thank you for joining me in this guided practice. When you're on a fertility journey, the path from A to B does not always go that smoothly. There can be so many twists and turns and oftentimes it may even feel like you're going backwards. This journey can also be quite exhausting, both mentally and physically. You might feel that it's all you talk about. You might have been on this journey for a long time, or perhaps it's not working out as you had expected or wanted. All of this can take its toll and it can chip away at your sense of self. A word that keeps coming up for me is resilience. How does one stay resilient? How do you bounce back from the challenges along the way? For me, the image of a mountain has been so helpful. A mountain is strong and sturdy. It's beautiful and unwavering, whilst everything is changing all around it. So I wanted to share the Mountain Meditation with you. A version of this practice is also taught in mindfulness-based stress reduction as a way to cultivate resilience with compassion. So let's get started. Inviting you to get into a comfortable seated position, a position of stability and poise. The upper body balanced over your hips and shoulders. The hands resting down by your side or in the lap, and sensing into the support you have from the seat or the chair. And when you're ready, allowing your eyes to gently close and gently focusing your awareness on the breath. Feeling each breath come in and go out. Allowing the body to be still, sitting with a sense of dignity, a sense of being complete whole in this very moment. So as you sit here, I invite you to picture or imagine the most magnificent or beautiful mountain you know or have seen, letting it gradually come into greater focus. It's okay if it doesn't come as a visual image, allowing the sense of this mountain and feeling its overall shape. Its lofty peaks, the large base rooted in the bedrock of the earth's crust. Its steep or sloping sides, noticing how massive it is, how solid, how beautiful, whether from afar or up close, perhaps your mountain has snow, blanketing its tops and trees reaching down to the base or rugged granite sides. There may be one peak or a series of peaks, observing it, noting its qualities. And when you feel ready, seeing if you can bring the mountain into your own body so that as you sit here, you share in the wholeness and the stillness of the mountain. You become the mountain. Grounded in the sitting posture, your head becomes the lofty peak. Your shoulders and arms the sides of the mountain. Your buttocks and legs are the solid base rooted to your cushion or your chair. With each breath as you continue sitting, becoming a little more a breathing mountain, alive and...