As human beings we tend to focus on negative experiences or emotions. The capacity to put more weight on negative experiences than positive ones likely evolved to keep us out of harm’s way. From the beginning of humanity our most important survival skill has been our ability to stay away from danger.

Hence this tendency to allow negative thoughts to overcome us happens by the nature of our brain. It’s part of being human. Knowing this means we can stop being so hard on ourselves!

The good news is, we can heal our negative patterning and REWIRE our brain to focus on positive emotions and experiences. Therefore lead more happy and fulfilling lives.

A powerful way to do this is through a regular easy practice called the Mama Transformation Technique.

This technique, which is based on the latest brain science, teaches us to cultivate positive emotional states by linking difficult ‘pain body’ feelings with positive memories. We are able to use our positive memories and their associated positive emotions to manage and overcome difficult feelings in the present moment.

Doing this technique as a PRACTICE heals old negative patterning, and changes our emotional reaction into a more positive tone when we recall the same old painful thoughts, feelings or experiences from the past time and time again. We start to feel, act and speak from a new place of awareness and happiness. We literally rewire our brain. VERY COOL!

“I am getting much better at dealing with many of the difficult ‘BIG’ feelings associated with motherhood. The ‘Mama Transformation’ technique leaves me feeling so much better, lighter and more positive about my day to day experience as a mother”.

~ Alex O’Callaghan {Brisbane}

You experienced a full-bodied ‘taste’ of the Mama Transformation Technique when we did the mama goddess vision setting exercise in Module One. In that meditation you were guided to take the qualities of your mama goddess deeper into a whole-bodied experience as if you were actually living it now.

Unfortunately most of us have lots of resistance to savouring positive experiences, really allowing ourselves to be with them, soaking in the feelings and sensing the body sensations. We are not inclined to let good experiences really sink into our body and brain because of our evolutionary negative brain bias. Activating POSITIVE STATES is an essential part in the process of this transformation.

Think about all your best memories. They’re usually associated with big feelings and emotions, and ecstatic sensations. They remain vivid because you’ve ‘remembered’ them often, and given them heightened attention over an extended period of time.

The practice of giving heightened attention to a positive memory will consolidate it in your brain so that you can draw upon it, and over time it literally changes your brain’s neural structure. Your negative memories and inclinations with have less power over you over time. Excited? I most definitely AM. This is incredible knowledge to empower all of us. We literally have the capacity to heal our unhelpful patterning, and not feel such a victim to our ‘story’. We can change our mind, to change our brain to become more whole.

Four simple steps to Mama Transformation.

STEP ONE:

Pay attention to a positive experience in the present moment OR remember one from the past.

So often good events or good aspects of yourself roll by without you even noticing. Set a goal each day to actively look for the experiences you need to feel whole. It could be any myriad of things that you need to fill the hole in your heart, soothe the unease in your gut, or calm your mind. Open yourself to notice and stay with the positive experiences. Have a daily intention to notice, notice, and notice them.

OR

Take the time to literally re-member the details of a positive experience from your memory. For example, the moment you looked into your child’s eyes and connected with unconditional love, or the time when someone really validated qualities about you and so on. Notice the details, get a picture in your mind, get a full-bodied sense of the experience of what happened.

STEP TWO:

Once you’ve got the positive experience or memory extend it in time and space. Keep your attention on it so it lingers. Don’t just jump onto something else. Notice any feelings of discomfort with staying with something good. The nature of working memory is that it’s limited. Like a blackboard. It holds what you put on it, but if new stuff comes in it knocks off what used to be in working memory (which unfortunately was the positive experience that you’re trying to help sink in). Instead try to keep your attention on it. That alone is a kind of mindfulness practice.
Let the experience fill your body with positive sensations and emotions. In a nutshell …relish it, savour it. It’s delicious!

STEP THREE:

Sense that the positive experience is soaking into your brain and body, registering deeply an emotional memory. There are a lot of different ways you can do this and to have it anchor in your body. You might like to imagine it sinking into your chest and back or sending nourishment to a beautiful lotus flower in your heart. You could get a sense of its energising vibrations in your gut or healing light into your womb. There could be lengthening in your spine or power in your legs. All of these are giving this experience a link to your body that you can later activate and draw upon through the body. Keep the heightened feelings of this positive experience/memory sinking into your whole being-ness for 5 or 10 or even 20 secs. Actively relax and open your body to fully absorb it. Trillions of cells opening, receiving and tingling with it. Turn the volume knob fully up on every little aspect of its deliciousness.

STEP FOUR: (Optional extra for healing the Pain Body)

Sense the positive experience is going down deep into old wounds and hurt places inside you (Pain Body), and soothing them and filling them up again, and replacing them over time with new positive feelings and views.

Often it works for the new positive experience to be the targeted antidote to the old negative one. Eg. new experiences of worth replacing old feelings of inadequacy, OR current feelings of being cared about and loved, replacing old feelings of rejection, abandonment, or loneliness. Or a current sense of your strength replacing old feelings of being small or weak. The replaced experience, the healed experience could be from your adulthood but usually the most valuable experience to replace is from your younger years. The Pain Body is usually rooted in childhood experiences. That’s what you want to heal to prevent the upsets from coming back and playing themselves out in your present-day motherhood.

The way to do this 4th step is really simple. All you have to do is have the new positive experience be prominent and in the foreground of your awareness, at the same time as the old pain is dimly sensed in the background of awareness. You’re not going to forget about the experiences that happened. BUT those old events will gradually reduce, and lose charge of their painful associations and their hold on you. Hence you will not have the same powerful reactions that have you say, do and act in ways that you later regret.

Dr. Rick Hanson says : This is THE SINGLE MOST POWERFUL WAY I KNOW TO AUTHENTICALLY HEAL FROM THE INSIDE OUT .

All FOUR of these steps are to be used in daily life. Often. 2, 3, 4 or more times a day! Each time its 5, 10, 20, 30 secs. Its really not that big a deal to do. Its private. Its internal. You could do it at the park, whilst doing the laundry, in a conversation or before going to bed! But each time you are doing it you’re repairing the ache in your heart, the sinking feeling in your gut, or the fear in your mind. You’re creating new neural pathways of positivity and goodness in your brain.

“You’ll actually notice a difference in a few days, and certainly in a few weeks if you stick with this practice. Over a few months you should experience a growing and fundamental shift in your experience of living. AND over a few years you should have a transformation in the characteristics of who you are and how you more positively and profoundly show up in the world”.

~ Dr. Rick Hanson, Author of ‘Buddha’s Brain’

EXERCISE: Go to your Lasting Change For My Gorgeous Mamahood Playsheet and complete the exercise ‘My Best Memories Ever’.

To practice the Mama Transformation Technique download Mama Transformation Technique audio HERE.

With love,