Al-Anon's Step 11

Al-Anon's Step 11 - Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

Sometimes I think of this as my favorite step, and many times it looms large in my mind as one I am consciously working on. However, going through my notebooks I realized that I have not been to very many meetings on Step 11. I procrastinated in writing on this step as I have gone through a lot lately and writing about how I work this step is almost too personal to share at this time. But, I will write about how I got into it.

(Photo by Selma Yalazi.)

I was not excited about the “prayer” part of this step in the beginning because I had some issues with the religion of my origin. I thought of prayer as an obligatory thing, and so when I did it I rarely felt a connection with God. The idea of meditation was, and still is, more accessible to me. To get used to talking to my Higher Power on an intimate basis I had to learn to be quiet so I could tune in to the messages I was supposed to receive. I learned that I should not pray for others or for a specific cause, but to ask for guidance in my situation. Then, I had to accept how my Higher Power resolved my problems, which may not be the way I intended. I have to be confident that my Higher Power will take care of my loved ones and myself and that things will work out, even if I don't know how.

Learning to meditate had been a big part of my Al Anon experience. For most of my life I could not imagine sitting still and clearing my mind for even three seconds.  I found yoga invaluable for calming my mind for mediation as I could work out the compulsion to always be doing or thinking about something and instead focus on the class. (I have heard is the original purpose of the yoga poses – to quiet your mind and to focus on meditation.) Part of the reason I began taking yoga classes is that I knew that there was meditation included in the class, and I had no idea of how to do meditation on my own. I knew I needed someone else to guide me. It is only in recent months that I began doing meditation on my own. 

I tried a number of different ways to learn meditation outside of Al Anon and yoga. Once, a Buddhist monk led a meditation workshop at the local library, and that helped a lot. At that time I was not yet practicing yoga and the monk helped us to learn how to just sit in a regular chair and meditate. He said for us to simply sit upright, place our feet flat on the floor, and rest our hands in our lap. (I mention this because an Al-Anon friend injured himself trying to meditate. He thought you had to meditate while sitting cross legged on the floor, but he did not realize that at his age he was no longer physically able to do so.)

I did not get much out of reading books on the subject, even though I am a big reader and love to learn "how to" from books. It seemed to me that books were full of quick novelty exercises while what I needed was just to listen to someone else guide me. I found a couple of web sites with recorded meditations on them, and YouTube had plenty. (Alas, my favorite night time sleep meditation from that time has been removed.) I also like the evening meditation from the DVD AM and PM Meditation featuring Rodney Yee and Maritza. I would put it on my bedroom TV, skip the yoga part (because I have my own practice, but it is not necessary to use the yoga part to do the meditation) and use it to get to sleep at night.

I had a big breakthrough when I followed the Yoga JournalMediation Revolution series.  (I wrote about my experiences as I was going through them, so see this tag on meditation for all of the entries. As with the DVD, I had my own yoga practice and skipped that, using only the recording at the bottom of the page.) It took me a couple of months to get through the whole series, and it was hard, but I grew tremendously from it. I use techniques from the Great Heart meditation when I need to feel connected to my HP. In fact, the whole series made me more independent in my meditation and I can now sit quietly and meditate on my own, using my own intuition instead of a recording.

These days, at night before I go to bed I do some kind of relaxation yoga practice and then sit quietly in bed and meditate. This helps wind me down so I can sleep, no matter what is going on in my life at the moment. I feel that I have been working Step 11 hard over the past few months, but now I am reaping great rewards from it.

Restoring Ourselves to Sanity

Last week I got a great new stress relief yoga DVD. AS I've been doing the practices, the teacher on the DVD seems to be emphasizing "restoring ourselves to our natural flexibility." I think, "What, from when I was a baby??" I had similar resistant thoughts about the frequently mentioned phrase "restoring ourselves to sanity" in my early days of Al Anon. No one likes to think of themselves as insane, and certainly I didn't. But, over the years of attending Al Anon meetings I've come to see a less harsh idea of this.

(Photo by Electron of Wikimedia Commons.)

First, my personality. I always thought that to be withdrawn, depressed, nervous and shy were my natural personality traits. I almost couldn't believe memories I had of myself as a child, before alcoholism took over my family. I remember one time a boy I knew had a birthday party but I wasn't invited. I actually knocked on the door of his family's home and asked the mom why I wasn't invited! I certainly didn't have those kind of balls when I was an adult but now I am learning to grow a pair in Al Anon. (By the way, his mom said the party was for boys only, but she gave me a big piece of leftover chocolate birthday cake as  parting gift.)

Also, in my relationships with the alcoholic I can now begin to see what is crazy and not crazy. With the alcoholics in my life, I live in this little world with them and I do not see the truth of the matter. I let them manipulate me into thinking that their way is correct. Last week when we were going through the codeine episode my boyfriend kept impressing on me that nothing was wrong, and I was the uptight one. In fact, after the near accident he complained that I was mad at him for being "a responsible driver". I knew enough to get away from him and get to some Al Anon meetings.

When I got to Al Anon it was a different world-- sane, if you will. I met other people who's alcoholic family members had trouble with surgery or prescription drugs. A longtime member of both AA and Al Anon told me that prescription drugs are the new "slippery slope" because alcoholics don't think of the effects leading to drinking again, just that the doctor prescribed it and it must be fine. That was certainly the case with my boyfriend. He felt he had a right to take them but I could tell he enjoyed being out of it and away from his problems.

Ooooo…I See Colors!

Well, I can’t say I fell off the meditation wagon, but I took another “break” from Yoga Journal’s 28 Days of Meditation.  I don’t know why I am so balky about this but I went and looked at the notes from the last few days I did it. I seemed to be having trouble with the breathing exercise in that week’s recording and I was puzzled by the lack of energy, which the speaker on the audio file says I should feel at the end.

I also ran into problems sitting because I don’t like sitting in my desk chair to meditate and my headphone cords are not long enough to reach the floor. The wifi on my laptop is not working or I could find a more comfortable seat.

(Photo by Ivan Prole.)

The breathing exercise that week involved inhaling; pausing, inhaling, pausing, inhaling, pausing and then a long exhale. This actually hurt my upper chest. (I have a touch of arthritis there.) This exercise has since resurfaced in my yoga practice, so hopefully I will get over it soon. Though, the breath work I did during the first couple of weeks is very simple and I find myself using it in daily life and during other meditation.

And, yes, I think I’ve found a way of meditation practice that works for me. I intend to finish the Yoga Journal email workshop because I’ve learned so much from it already, but I now realize that it takes a lot of concentration and intellectual work for me to do the meditations in the series. I realize that now I have to “Keep it simple”.

One stressful night recently I was seeking the comfort of meditation but I didn’t want to do all of that work. So, I busted out a Rodney Yee AM/PM meditation DVD and put it on my bedroom TV, where I can sit cross-legged in bed. I skipped over the yoga part, since I had already done my regular practice for the evening and just listened, but I used the simple breathing I learned from the Yoga Journal series. This was very relaxing for me and I have been doing this often over the past couple of weeks and has helped me get to sleep after a long day of stress. I’ve even ordered some other guided meditation DVDs.

One thing that interested and surprised me is that I experience the odd area between sleep and waking. I only had this in meditation once before in my life, when I took a restorative yoga class and the teacher led us through an hour long guided meditation. I was delighted to see unusual and very colorful images as I got deeper into meditation. My favorite was the time I started to visualize that I was traveling down a dirt country road in Virginia. I don’t even know if this road exists, but it was cool. I really like this part of meditation and I hope to do this more often. AS an artist, I find the visual image fascinating and I am amazed at what my own mind comes up with when I relinquish control over it.

I have to tell you, this impressed the heck out of my boyfriend. He spent most of his adult life using drugs to achieve the same thing. Interestingly, seeing colorful imagery is part of his "Why people should do drugs" argument. He thinks that, as an artist, I'd get something out of it. He also maintains that I am "terribly sheltered" because I never did drugs. But hey--both of my parents were alcoholics and I had to deal with lots of behavior that was inappropriate around children. Because of what I've seen, I have no desire to get drunk or stoned.

28 Days of Meditation -- Week One

Al Anon's Step 11-- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

OK, so I didn't think I was working on Step 11 but it sort of snuck up on me. As I mentioned before, I started Yoga Journal's 28 days of meditation email series (Is that what you call these things?) and I just completed week one , so here is what I went through.

(photo bytung072 of stock.xchng.)

Most of the meditation I do normally is through yoga. I came to yoga about 4 or 5 months after I began Al-Anon and it has helped me tremendously because it seems that the ideas in both are similar. That is a whole 'nother post, but I could never sit still before I came to Al Anon. Starting with the physical activity of yoga and having a short meditation as part of the routine was the only way to calm my mind in the beginning. This spring I felt I was ready for more and I bought a meditation CD, but never really used it much. So, I signed up for the Yoga Journal thing and forgot about it until it started and I began getting the emails.

The first night was good, but the next night I didn't want to do it, even though I did. This is also where my resistance comes in. I could never really grasp the part about breathing in yoga and this is also important for meditation, and of course the first week in 28 Days is a breath meditation. On day 3 I decided that I was "bored" and also skipped day 4. I did pick it up again on day 5 and I made myself do it though, and I felt a bit more settled by day 7. Some days I did my regular yoga practice before beginning and other days I just started. That seemed to make no difference.

I liked some of the imagery in the week one breath meditation, such as imagining yourself inhaling and exhaling little particles of light. I remembered a previous meditation from somewhere else where I was asked to imagine inhaling light and exhaling toxic things. I did that at first for this one but then I didn't like the idea of myself filled with black toxic gas and went on with inhaling and exhaling little particles of blue and white light. That image has been useful to me over the week, as I tend to be a very visual person who finds blue and white very soothing.

What did I learn from week one? My yoga meditation is all about settling my body and mind. The key word here is settle. It took me  a few years of yoga just to do that and going deeper is a challenge.