Getting Started
The sessions are offered as a degustation of ideas for you to select from. To help you prepare, please think about the following four questions:
1. Where are you on The Corgi Scale?
It is good to take a moment to understand your energy before starting a session. The Corgi scale has been designed especially for people with ME/CFS, so we don’t need to think too much about numeric scales or words or anything. We can just choose which corgi aligns most with how we are feeling.
Do you know which corgi you feel like today? Take a moment, give yourself a breath in and a soft sighing breath out (or some other grounding pause), then look at each photo slowly.
2. What else is happening regarding activities, health, and stress?
Please consider what you are usually able to do within a day and how much energy you can allocate to trying new things today. Is today feeling like a relatively good day in this context? Or not so much? Have you been busy or stressed? Do you have a sniffle, or is it hot? These things could lessen your available energy, so it is helpful to enhance your preparation by factoring them in and adjusting your expectations.
If you feel have 2 min of activity to add in, for example, that is great. Lie comfortably, relax, and listen out for what sounds like a good activity for you to spend those valuable 2 minutes on. You can use the remainder of the session to practice two highly regarded skills viz regulating by relaxing and seeing how much you can do without exacerbating symptoms.
Research is showing finding “uplift” (minor pleasant sensations) is an added benefit to pacing – perhaps you can find something you particularly enjoy in the session today; you might also feel a sense of accomplishment for getting yourself set up and being involved.
3. Are you ready to Savouar Rests and Subtleties?
We can practice gentle actions, AND we can practice saying, “A rest would be beneficial now,” and taking and savouring that rest. You are always welcome to rest at any point during the session.
Other subtle options include doing tiny, barely perceptible movements, imagining the movements, or just letting the sounds keep you company for a while.
If you think about how elite athletes are coached to visualise their activities, perhaps you could benefit from imaging movements. If you are someone who doesn’t visualise, that is fine too, as people using the sessions and just listening have found that restful, too.
Practising how relaxed you can be in your limbs, tongue, jaw, torso, hands, and feet can also be useful if you prefer relaxing to one of the suggested movements.
If you would like further information on rest, please see the 4 Types of rest in the COPING STRATEGIES.
Something else to consider before we start: when we quieten, sometimes our body reveals to us past times that were challenging and unresolved. If a strong feeling comes up, there may be tears that need to flow. Many times it will go again after a few minutes and there will be increased calm.
However, if you have had traumatic experiences before you start the series, please connect with an appropriate support person who you feel comfortable with and discuss how you plan to address anything tricky that comes up over the weeks. Hopefully, this means any strong feelings that occur can help you understand and move past the trauma safely and not relive it. If you feel a trigger coming during a session, you are, of course, welcome to stop, get up, walk away, speak to yourself soothingly and with compassion, or do whatever you feel you need to manage your mind/body/system with kindness and support. That is likely to be more valuable to you at that moment than finishing the session. Overall, we are aiming for more gentle calm, so please do whatever suits you and where you are just now.
If you have severe ME/CFS, please be cautious and only use meditation, and that only if you can tolerate audio input without adverse impacts.
4. Are you monitoring Heart Rate Variability?
Heart Rate variability has been associated with fatigue severity and is now measurable on phone apps for people who have chronic illnesses. An example is found at makevisible.com, where the developers themselves have Long COVID and a variety of other energy-limiting conditions. Some people with ME/CFS choose to add this objective data to their own perceived sense of well-being and the Corgi Scale. Remember to decide for yourself what suits you well today and lessen your activity level anytime you need to keep the program sustainable for you.