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Erin Shannon with Dawson Church
Meditation
Dawson: Erin, I would love to have you walk us through the meditation you use with the professional athletes you work with to improve their performance because they clearly benefit from using it when they’re under pressure. If you’d be so kind, just walk us through the steps of what you have them do when they’re in those situations.
Erin: What we can do is do the longer version. I have my athletes do 20 or 30 minutes at night or during a time when they can really rest and do the longer version. Just like any kind of muscle memory programming, you can go through this longer program a few times. Then during the course of your day, you can shorten it and use it. You can take just a minute or 20 seconds and use this same technique of moving the colors through, but because you’ve practiced it on a deeper level, you can do it quickly when you’re standing in line at the grocery store, in the middle of a tennis game, halfway through your jog, or whenever.
What we can do today is go through the longer version. Then you can play with it and shorten it as needed throughout your day and your life.
Dawson: That sounds perfect.
Erin: The first part is a general relaxation. There are all different relaxation techniques. Once we get into the relaxation and you get into a chilled-‐out right-‐brain space, then we’ll go into the specific color meditation. You can always put background music on and be fancy about the relaxation, but we’ll do on-‐the-‐fly Dr. Shannon style. How is that?
Dawson: It sounds good.
Erin: Start by getting into a comfortable position, lying down, closing your eyes, and taking some nice deep breaths. Focus on your breathing. It should be deep and regular. Take about five nice, deep, and relaxing breaths in through your nose and out through your mouth.
With each breath, imagine yourself getting more and more relaxed, breathing in peace, safety, and love and breathing out anything that doesn’t serve your highest good. This beautiful breathing process can be a healing process with every breath you take in through your nose, peaceful healing energy, and out through your mouth. With each breath, you’re going to relax even more deeply.
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Now visualize, imagine, or feel all of the muscles completely relaxing. Relax the muscles of your forehead, all the muscles of your face and your jaw. You’re just letting that melt away. Relax the muscles of your neck and shoulders letting them melt and get heavy, releasing and relaxing.
Relax your chest and arms, just melting. Relax your torso and all the muscles of your back melting down. Allow the muscles of your stomach to relax completely, allowing your breathing to get even deeper and more even. With every gentle breath, allow yourself to become more and more deeply relaxed. That’s very good.
Now visualize, imagine, or feel a bright light at the top of your head. That light might be just inside your head. Allow your mind to choose the color of the beautiful bright light. Any color is right.
Everything that this beautiful light touches as it spreads down your body and every tissue, organ, muscle, fiber, and cell of your body will heal, releasing aches, pains, illness, stress, and any negativity at all. This light will heal and release. This light will deepen and deepen this level of relaxation. You’re already feeling deeply peaceful and relaxed.
Now see, feel, or imagine this beautiful light spreading down from the top of your head down past your forehead, coating behind your eyes and relaxing you even more. See, feel, or imagine the light spreading into your jaw and down your scalp, deepening your relaxation and healing and releasing.
Imagine this light flowing down your neck, completely relaxing these muscles of your neck and throat and smoothing out the lining of your throat. You relax even more.
Visualize, imagine, or feel this relaxing and healing light spreading down into your shoulders, healing every muscle, nerve, and cell of your body, and now down both arms all the way down to your hands and fingers.
See, feel, or imagine the light flowing into your upper back and chest and into your heart, which pumps the light through every blood vessel of your body and into your lungs, glowing beautifully, strong and healthy, with this light. The muscles of your upper back are now completely relaxed and healed with the light.
The light now spreads into your spinal cord from the tip of your brain all the way down to the tip of your spine, flowing to reach every single muscle and cell of your body. You are so deeply calm and relaxed. You feel wonderful deep peace, tranquility, and calmness.
See, imagine, or feel the light spreading into your abdomen and lower back, relaxing all the muscles and nerves. It’s flowing into your hips, down your legs all the way into your feet, and right out your toes so that your entire body is filled and completely saturated with this beautiful bright light. You feel so peaceful and relaxed.
Now visualize or imagine the light flowing out of every piece and part of your body as if you were in a cocoon or a halo of light. This beautiful ball of light protects you inside and out, relaxing your skin and your outer muscles. You’re even more peaceful, calm, and relaxed.
Now I’m going to count backward from five to one. With each number, you will feel more and more relaxed, peaceful, and calm. The level of your relaxation will deepen and deepen. By the time I reach one, you will be in a very deep state of relaxation. Your mind will be freed beyond the normal limits of space and time. You will be very relaxed, healed, and peaceful.
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Five, you’re allowing the light to saturate and heal. Four, you’re more and more relaxed. Three, deeper and deeper. Two, you’re very relaxed. One, you are deeply relaxed. You are in a very relaxed state.
Now allow the light to dance through your body. The light is your instructor now. Ask the light to show an area that needs attention. When you notice that area, just communicate with it. What does it want you to know? What does it need you to understand? Allow the light to show you and help you understand what that area of your body needs.
After you have your communication with this area, ask the light what color this area needs in order to heal. It can be one color or it can be several. Maybe the color has a sparkle to it or a depth. Perhaps it even has a temperature or a weight.
Your body knows what color this area needs for healing. Once the color comes to mind, run that color from the top of your head all the way down through your body. Take as long as you need to fully saturate every area of your body, paying special attention to the area that needed communication, making sure every area is saturated. Take as long as you need. That’s very good.
Now notice the area that needed attention. Make sure that it has communicated all it needs.
Now do another scan of your body to see if there are other areas that need your attention. If anything comes up, again ask that part of your body what it needs to tell you. Once it’s finished communicating, ask it what color it needs and run this color through.
This technique can be used any time you want. If you notice tension, anxiety, pain, a constriction, just simply take a breath in through your nose and out through your mouth, and you’ll remember this beautiful state of relaxation. You can run a color through your body any time you need to, any color you’d like, any temperate or any texture at any time.
This human light and these colors are your tools to heal and release at any time. They always work. They always make you feel better.
Now begin to notice the room around you and the sound of my voice. Wiggle your fingers and toes. Begin to become fully alert and awake, but remember your color tools are always at your disposal. You carry them with you. You’ll also carry the peace and relaxation that you feel.
With a few more deep breaths, soak in this feeling. You’re getting your energy ready to rejoin the day. Very good. Now open your eyes, smile, and thank your body for the beautiful gifts it gives you.
There we have it.
Dawson: That was profound. I found myself going deeper and deeper. Around four minutes, I clicked into this magical space. I was working on a pain in my left knee that was at a 4 out of 10. It’s often there, and I saw the color green sweep through my body. It seemed to be like taking a broom and sweeping that pain away. It was gone. It was amazing.
Erin: It’s wonderful. It’s always wonderful to realize that your body comes up with the colors right away. You don’t have to think about it. It’s always there.
What’s amazing to me is that I’ll use this exercise with my patients on the table, and we’ll use it as a sort of somatic dialogue exercise. When someone is in the room with me, we will run the color through, and they’ll respond to me and say, “I noticed my stomach.” Then we’ll take some time and go into what they noticed. They’ll talk about it. Then I’ll say, “When is the first time you felt this?”
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Maybe they’ll say, “In my stomach, I feel a knotted-‐up, hard rope. It feels heavy and hot.” Then I’ll say, “If you could come up with a number, when is the first time you ever felt like this? What number pops into your mind?” They’ll say, “Four.” “What was going on when you were four and you felt this knot? “ My mom and dad were fighting, and I heard them. They were slamming doors, and my stomach started to hurt. I felt knotted up, and I ran into my room and closed the door. I was so scared.”
I’ll say, “Let’s go back. If you could wave a magic wand, what would you like to have happened in that situation?” They might say, “I’d like for my mom and dad to not have the fight, and for my mom to call me out of my room and say they were just talking and that they had dinner ready. Then we would all sit down for dinner. Then my stomach would feel fine.”
“Let’s imagine that. Let’s take a picture of that. Get a picture clear in your mind of that happy scene.” They’ll take some time and get the picture. I’ll say, “Now click on your camera and get that picture. We want to put a frame around this picture. What kind of frame do we want? What color is it? What material is it? Is it wood or metal? Is it thick or thin?”
They’ll pick a color and a material. Let’s say they pick a beautiful yellow. After they get the picture and frame all set up, we’ll run that yellow color through the body.
After we’re done running the yellow color through, I’ll say, “Was there any area of your body that was difficult to run that color through?” “No, the color went through really well.” “Now take a few deep breaths. Let’s do another scan.” Then we’ll do the whole process again.
What I find really interesting is that, as we do the process, they always know a number. The number is usually pretty young, usually under 10. Sometimes we’ll get an 18 or 27 or something. Maybe that was due to a trauma. A lot of times, it’s something they really haven’t thought about. It might be some seemingly innocuous event that wasn’t a huge trauma. Sometimes it is, but many times it’s just these things that happen in life that you might not have thought about for 20 or 30 years. All of a sudden, it comes up.
Another interesting thing is that a lot of times the color they choose to put around their picture frame is related to the chakra that governs that area of the body involved. I always find that interesting.
It’s a fascinating exercise. We’ll go on and on for a good two hours. Honestly, when people get up after that, they just feel more peaceful, in touch and solid with themselves. It’s like 10 years of therapy in two hours.
I never cease to wonder at the power of this exercise. We do it as often as we can, and it makes a profound and lasting difference.
Dawson: Rather than viewing the pains, aches, and hurts as problems made to go away, you’re revisioning them as messages from your history, past, and subconscious, urging you to hear. Rather than those feelings in your body being something you want to make disappear, they’re information and messages that guide you on the path to healing.
Erin: That’s right. Really, the exercise is a variation of something called holographic memory resolution. As we’ve learned in neuroscience, our muscles and cells store memories as if the events involved are occurring in the present tense. They encode those memories with enkephalins. When we’re in a time of stress, a trauma is triggered, or we have some kind of chronic condition, those enkephalin-‐encoded memories are still there either sucking our energy that could be utilized in healing something else or just being joyful, or actually reenacting the trauma as if it’s still occurring.
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With this exercise, we are finding the areas that are holding traumas, and we’re releasing and reprogramming them to remember that time, using the magic wand technique: In an ideal situation, what would you have wished could have happened?
Instead of doing what traditional hypnosis or therapy would do in just talking about or releasing it, reprogramming and reworking it makes a lasting impression such that an injury that might have been nagging is now gone. With my athletes, maybe they had a surgery and they come back twice as fast from the surgery and never reinjure the site or never have the aches and pains when the weather changes or after a game.
You can use it with anxiety, depression, repetition compulsion, habits, or chronic diseases. I had a woman the other day who has had Crohn’s disease forever and has had all these surgeries for it. She was getting ready to have a massive surgery that would have made her wear a bag for the rest of her life. With just two hours of this exercise, her symptoms are simply gone.
It’s a powerful exercise, and it can be used for anything. With a skilled technician or practitioner of it, I don’t see any end to the uses of it.
Dawson: We do sometimes need things like those surgeries or other medicalized ways of fixing the body, but often we’re just using those as a substitute for getting into the energy and the emotional aspects of our problems. It’s so interesting that once you resolve the emotional aspects—the feelings and the emotional charge—that many of those early memories carry, it’s striking that many seemingly physical symptoms or conditions melt away. There might still be something left there that you have to attend to medically, but at least you won’t be medicalizing the emotional part of your problem.
Erin: Right. So many things we end up going to a hospital or a doctor about are symptom management things. The root cause, perhaps, is not being addressed or is not fully understood on an emotional, spiritual, or cognitive level.
I’m very pro-‐allopathic medicine. We are lucky to have all these wonderful doctors, all this wonderful medicine, and all of these tools at our disposal. The type of healing work this exercise accomplishes is complementary.
Obviously, it’s the least harm if you can do some of these practices and get your emotional center in balance. Then you can see if the problem alleviates or at least mitigates. If you still need medical help, you can ask your doctor, “What do we do with this?”
If you go the surgery route, obviously you can’t go back from that. Once you cut something out, it’s out. When considering surgery, you might ask beforehand whether it will get to the root of the problem or you are just putting a Band-‐Aid on it.
Also, when you do have surgery, even though the anesthesia puts you to sleep and you don’t remember it, your body remembers it. Do practices like the one we just did postsurgery to allow your body to heal and release any of the stress from the procedure itself.
The uses of this are endless.
Dawson: Once we have these tools in our personal toolkit, we can invoke them in any of those situations when we’re under stress, facing a medical procedure, healing after one, feeling a pain, or recovering more quickly after we injure ourselves.
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There are many times when simply doing this is incredibly powerful. It's not something we learn and apply to one thing in our lives. Once we learn these kinds of skills, they’re applicable to many areas of our lives.
Erin: Yes, and it’s not just for healing a negative event. My athletes use it and we can all use it to optimize performance, raise mood, shake off the 3:00 slump, be prepared to make a presentation, or be present with our children.
Speaking of children, they’re so good at this exercise. I have six children, and my youngest one is four. She will use this on other kids. If we’re at a playground and another kid falls and gets a booboo, she’ll come over and say, “What color does it need?”
It’s funny because kids just get it. They’ll say, “It needs purple with green sparkles.” “Okay. Let’s give it purple with green sparkles,” and the kid stops crying. It’s amazing.
My kids are running around the playground saying, “What color does it need?” You’d think people would say, “What?” but little kids under the age of 10 get it. It’s just some natural thing we have.
Once we let our rational brain go for a minute, we get it too. It’s just another reminder of how powerful, brilliant, and intelligent our bodies are if we just get out of the way sometimes and allow them to heal and talk to us, and we really listen. It’s such a powerful tool we can use for anything.
Dawson: Erin, I am so grateful to you for having shared your approach, your skills, your wisdom, and your passion for helping people heal in this beautiful way.
Erin: Thank you. You are one of my heroes. Anything I can do for you and the community that follows you is my honor.
Dawson: Thank you and bless you.
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