Vanessa Potter - Finding My Right Mind

First published in Great Britain 2021 by Trigger

Trigger is a trading style of Shaw Callaghan Ltd & Shaw Callaghan 23 USA, INC.

The Foundation Centre

Navigation House, 48 Millgate, Newark

Nottinghamshire NG24 4TS UK

www.triggerpublishing.com

Text Copyright Vanessa Potter 2021

Thanks to Barbara Jachs, University of Cambridge for supplying the data and graphs

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, re-cording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from the publisher

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available upon request

from the British Library

ePUB ISBN: 9781801291118

Vanessa Potter has asserted her right under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work

Cover design by Emily Courdelle

Typeset and converted to eBook by Lapiz Digital Services

ENDORSEMENTS

From page one of Finding My Right Mind , you will feel like you have taken the hand of your best friend as you go on a truly meaningful adventure. From hypnosis to mindfulness and yoga, Vanessa leads us on an inspiring journey to understand how different modalities impact the ways that body, mind, and spirit Know, and why they react the way they do.

Dyan Haspel-Johnson, Ph.D, psychologist, Consultant for the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis and creator of The Deep & Easy Sleep Self-Hypnosis Package.

Meditation is everywhere! We are told that it could be the answer to coping with a busy life, feeling more relaxed and even sleeping better. In this fascinating book, Potter embarks on the most incredible journey, providing personal reflection on different meditative techniques and her ability to communicate them clearly is exceptional. As to whether she finds the answers she is looking for, I highly recommend that you read this book...

Professor Alice Gregory, author of Nodding Off: The Science of Sleep from Cradle to Grave and The Sleepy Pebble and Other Stories: Calming Tales to Read at Bedtime.

In Finding My Right Mind , Vanessa Potter, aka Patient H69, writes lucidly about the farther reaches of human experience. Her insatiable curiosity and hyper-awareness of the world around her makes for a compelling account. Personally, I found this book funny, comforting, honest, moving, and at times just so damn weird that I had to keep reading. It raises a glass to spiritual adventurers everywhere.

Dr Roger Bretherton, clinical psychologist and associate lecturer, School of Psychology, University of Lincoln

By exploring the depth of our own mind, this book will teach you that we have much more in common with everyone than we ever thought.

Dr Andrs Canales-Johnson, neuroscientist and host of Talking Brains

Vanessa takes us on an awe-inspiring journey through the tremendous variety of meditative practices. The recollections of her experiences are sharp-witted, illuminating and hilariously funny. I deeply enjoyed reading her book.

Karin Matko, meditation researcher

Ive followed Vanessa Potters journey with great interest and really appreciate the quality of her writing. Her book is most interesting in that it shows her firsthand experiences with different techniques. I was impressed by her courage and skill in turning around a life-shattering trauma. Her subsequent experiments with different techniques offer an unusual contribution to research.

Charles Hastings, meditation teacher

For Dad

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE START OF IT ALL

Epiphanies happen at any time and often without warning. Suddenly, during a work meeting, you realize you need a new job. Or, wedged on a train, your nose against the glass, you know its time to leave the city. My epiphany happened at the age of forty, when one morning I woke up blind and paralyzed.

Many remember 2012 as the year Britain hosted the Olympics. My family remember it as the year I got ill. We received no warning of what was to come no health rumbles that something was afoot. Married to Ed, we lived in a leafy London suburb with our two small children. Ed worked in pharmaceuticals, often commuting for four hours a day, slumping home each evening too tired to complain. Sixteen years as a television producer in the advertising industry had left me strung out, with a military approach to family life. Too often, late to collect the children from the childminder, I bundled sleeping tots into the car. I loved my job, the excitement of foreign shoots and the creative thinking involved, but I wore rally-driver gloves to get through the day. Projects were fast-paced and my terrier-like instinct for detail brought awards and recognition, yet the hours took their toll. When an opportunity to go freelance came up in the spring of 2012, I took it. Freed from the constraints of full-time work, I scheduled a few months off.

For all the chaos and the fight for quality time, Ed and I made a good team. I was the planner and doer of the family, he was the one building dens behind the sofa. With his boyish smile and affable charm he took the role of good cop in our house. That summer, I finally relaxed and spent lazy days playing boo with our toddler son and chasing our daughter around the park. As September brought warm jumpers out of the closet and the last of the tomatoes, I planned our daughters fifth birthday party. This was to be pony-riding at a petting zoo and a hideously pink cake. Having spent two weeks bedridden with a flu-like virus, I welcomed the distraction. I hated being ill, hated the inconvenience and disruption. Id even missed our daughters first day at school, relying upon new friends to step in and help. Finally recovered, party invites were delivered and presents were wrapped.

Yet for all my planning, I never made the party.

Losing Sight

It started with a fizzing an unending dizziness and a sense of doom. Blinking rapidly on the morning of 1 October, I tried to wake up yet I was already awake. Wandering dumbly around our kitchen, a film of static like a visual snowstorm blocked my view. After the childminder had collected the children, I called the doctors surgery. When the dizziness turned into nausea at my appointment, they called a taxi to take me to the hospital.

After a fruitless day in A&E I was sent home. Tests had revealed nothing. Playing down my disquiet, I went to sleep, waking the next morning to the excited shrieks of our daughter shredding birthday wrapping paper downstairs. As I opened my eyes, the room felt unnaturally dark. Thick brown fog enveloped my head as if Id gone to bed wearing sunglasses. My producers mind kicked in, assessing the damage: a 70 percent loss of vision. And my fingers were numb. Within minutes I was packing a bag, using my teeth to zip it shut.

In hospital waiting rooms I held my breath, straining to see as the outer world shrunk into an ever-decreasing halo. Fear clamped my chest and my body shook as an invisible disease attacked my nervous system. Ed frantically pushed my wheelchair from department to department, as numbness crept up my legs and desperation raised our voices. Assessed by a consultant neurologist forty-eight hours after my first symptom, my feet were lifeless blocks of ice and my sight had all but gone. When I was finally admitted onto a ward the next morning, I was blind and paralyzed. In just seventy-two hours two of my major senses had been obliterated.