Virtual by Design, Part I: For the Ones Who Need the Practice to Come to Them
I was sobbing on the nurse practitioner’s table. Pain radiating from my lower spine down my left leg.
Two herniated discs. Suspected. Confirmed later on an MRI. In the meantime, she was suggesting ibuprofen. Which I was well aware was doing f—k all for my pain.
“Can’t I get anything stronger?”
Her response: you have to go through your PCP. And maybe he’ll give you one or two pills.
Of course. This was clearly a post-opioid-happy-era of prescribing pain meds. Lawyer Caitlin knew exactly what was happening. She was passing the liability buck.
I was in pain and being sent home to my heating pad and ineffective over-the-counter meds. Which in the end worked out. But in the current moment, I was livid.
Immobile in bed. Heating pad on. Legs elevated to support my spine. The particular kind of desperation that comes from hurting in a way no one seems able to fix took over my brain. So naturally, I turned to Google.
The searches all began to bleed into each other: herniated disc pain relief. Herniated disc symptoms - when to go to the ER. How to heal disc pain faster. What actually works. And somehow I landed on a YouTube video.
A clear, calming voice. Forty minutes of following it somewhere inward.
I came out the other side with my pain suspended for the full length of the video.
Sure, it returned shortly after. But for forty minutes, my nervous system had stopped bracing. The fiery pain that had been running constantly wasn’t even a dull roar, it had simply disappeared. My body resting in a way it hadn’t since before the injury.
I went back the next day. And the day after that. I found the Insight Timer app and practiced for 100 days straight. Completely addicted (in the non-ruin-your-life-and-end-up-on-a-Hulu-or-Netflix-documentary way.)
Some days drifting in and out, some days hearing every word, some days just gone, my conscious mind totally offline.
I didn’t know yet what the work was doing physiologically. I just knew it was the only thing that worked.
That first 40 minutes of relief is where The Good Muck actually started. Before the check-in at a voice lesson, before the beach with Arlo. It all started in a body that couldn’t move, with a practice that didn’t require me to.
The practice that comes to you
When I started building this work into something others could access, I knew instinctively, it would be virtual. Yes, lower overhead for a new business wouldn’t hurt. But that wasn’t why. I knew it would access the exact people I wanted to help.
People who know and understand, like I do, what it feels like when your body won’t cooperate and the thing you need is still somehow out of reach. When you live with unpredictable conditions, where your flares up decide to come at the worst possible moment. When you’re too exhausted to get yourself there. When showing up requires more than you have on a given day. When your energy levels fluctuate on any given day. When (in my case) a tiny spec of gluten can derail your entire week.
The physical barrier is real and it is not small. Commuting requires energy. Showering and getting dressed requires energy, walking through the door, requires energy. Too much energy when you’re living in a body that is already screaming at you to stop.
Virtual removes all of it. The practice comes to you. In your bed. On your couch. On your good days and your hard ones.
Your props are yours. Your bed, your pillows, your heating pad, your blanket, your dog curled up by your side (or on top of your head, which is Arlo’s favorite position). Nothing needs to be put back. You take exactly what you need and you give nothing back except your presence.
Why it works from wherever you are
After the acute pain wore off, the skeptic in me needed to understand the physiology before I truly trusted it. Here's what my mind needed to know: that these practices work, even at a distance
Clinical hypnosis and the practices offered at The Good Muck do not require physical proximity. They work through the relationship between a voice and your nervous system, and the brainwave state that voice is designed to induce. The work is auditory and relational. It travels through a screen, through a recording, as effectively as it travels in a physical space. What the voice is doing physiologically doesn’t require you to be anywhere specific for it to work. It just required listening. From wherever you are.
Co-regulation works the same way. When two nervous systems are in contact, even virtually, even through a screen, like in our live online classes, they influence each other. Mirror neurons respond to facial expressions, breath patterns, presence. The felt sense of other people going inward alongside you is real, even when those people are in two completely different cities. You are in your own space. Practicing together. And your nervous system registers that togetherness.
What virtual removes is the friction. What it keeps is everything that actually produces the change.
The Future Self Session is built on the same principles. A 20-minute guided audio you can experience from exactly where you are right now. Wherever that is. Whatever your body is doing today. There’s a journaling guide to anchor what surfaces, for when you have the time and energy for it. Start with the audio. Build from there if you can. Every minute of the practice is a minute of progress. Every minute counts.
What’s your minimum viable step in? Do that. And then keep going.
Your first step in
You don’t need a good energy day to begin. You don’t need to be anywhere other than where you already are. Lie down, press play, and listen. That’s all.
The work has been finding people in the places they couldn’t leave for a long time. It found me flat on my back with a heating pad and a Google search. Maybe it found you there too. Maybe this is the start of your own 100 days straight.
Your own discovery of this work. At whatever cadence your body allows.
»Experience the Future Self Session
See you in the muck.
Caitlin
The Future Self Session
20 minutes clinical hypnosis audio recording Journaling guide to future scripting