[wes]

Sedate,

Here is my 2 cents. Practicing with a heart rate monitor and a computer doing static tables has helped my head space alot. I lay on the couch in a relaxed "astronaut" type position with lots of pillows so very relaxed. Then I have the computer telling me "breathe" and "hold" and also have my heart rate monitor telling me what my heart rate is. You may wonder how all this technology helps me relax or find a happy place though it does I think because it makes the reality not that pleasant. For example when I am on my 2nd or 3rd hold from a static O2 table doing say a 3 min warm up hold, I really want to slip away into one of my alternate realities and not check the time and not open my eyes and just kind of float so when I can't overcome the urge to open my eyes and check the time and "come out of the zone" I am kind of assulted by this harsh reality, I see my hear rate (now climbing as I have my eyes open which uses more oxygen and I am thinking which uses more oxygen) and I see that my time isn't up on the hold which I knew anyway as the computer would have told me "breath" if it was up, so with this set up there is really no upside to "waking up" to check the time. The benefit of this is as soon as you do this you immediately want to go back to your warm fuzzy place and kind of hide which I have learned to do.

As to exactly what I do during the non contraction phase I imagine myself floating and falling and often get a spinny vertigo feeling like I am tumbling and turning which I enjoy alot. As contractions near I imagine myself in the sink phase of a long deep dive, when I have outside "thoughts" I turn them into "safety divers" that I look at and acknowledge and thank with a nod as I continue deeper and deeper into my dive. Once the contractions get intense I say to myself OK time to come back up and I start swimming up and say hi to those same safety divers as I near the surface.

My other recommendation is to do the full negative statics as the contractions are so intense and the psychology so "ugly" that it will make your regular statics seem pleasant and enjoyable. Try starting at 20 seconds for full negatives and go for 1 second more each night. I would stare at your watch and count the seconds as this makes it "tougher" to do and tough it out for one more second each day. When you can do more than 60 seconds of full negative then really any ugly feelings you get during regular statics will be no big deal.

I also recommend waking up in the middle of the night to do statics when I did them in the morning I felt pretty crappy the rest of the day so it nice to do the statics and then sleep for 2-3 more hours then I would feel great the next day.

Good Luck and Cheers
(my PB is about 6:45)