Meeting challenging times & challenging emotions with Mindfulness
I think courage is many things, including the ability to meet intensity with honesty, compassion, and spaciousness - with oneself and with others.
This is a time when no one is exempt from challenging experiences, and challenging emotions. It is a time when it is easy to understand why someone might choose to either numb out in front of a screen, with comforting food or substances, or allow themselves to completely succumb to the passionate emotions of anger, sadness, frustration, or fear. We may be being pushed well beyond our comfort zones of security, wellbeing, and certainty, which can cause an avalanche of feelings. I write this in the time of pandemic - a time when we may be already exhausted in many ways, and yet we are not done; endurance is required even still. This means that now is a really good time to remind our hearts, minds & bodies of their natural capacity to stay spacious, even in challenging circumstances.
In this spaciousness, we don’t need to push away our feelings of overwhelm, for example, but instead we can breathe and give this feeling lots of room to move, transform, and eventually, to pass, like a cloud in the sky. It does take courage to allow this natural process to pass through us, and to open ourselves up to the mysterious unknown of the present moment, instead of holding onto anger or hopelessness, or other afflictive emotion, because it feels justified and familiar.
To be clear, I am speaking here of common emotions – loneliness, disappointment, frustration - that visit all of us, and have more likelihood of appearing in these challening times. Certainly if one is suffering from more profound or chronic conditions, such as anxiety or depression, creating spaciousness with mindfulness may be helpful, but seeking outside support – therapy, community, healthcare services - is absolutely essential. Please keep this in mind as you investigate whether mindfulness may be helpful in navigating these rough waters we find ourselves in, or if reaching out for support is a bigger priority (if in doubt, reach out – it is also a courageous act).
Mindfulness, as I have described in previous posts in my Mindful Living Series, is not an intellectual pursuit, rather, it is a tapping into the wisdom & insight of the whole being: body, heart & mind together. Mindfulness is often described as having two wings: One is the wing of awareness, and the other is the wing of compassion. It is a compassionate, honest, spacious awareness of the present moment. Some texts on mindfulness describe the honesty like a sword – it is sharp, precise, and clear-seeing, and coupled with compassion, this sword can be used to gently peel away at the layers of our ego - our superficial self - which is the container of opinions, judgements, and thoughts, revolving around the creature we call ‘me’ and ‘mine’- in order to connect to a bigger, more timeless sense of self that knows that things come and go. This bigger sense of self is like our own inner healer; it is a reservoir of kindness and wisdom, that makes sure we don’t get too lost in this turbulent world.
Certainly with everything that is going on these days, it can be difficult to access this bigger sense of self, and yet I think it is exactly what we must do in order to stay healthy now, and to bring a healthier self into our collective future. We do not have control over all of the circumstances of our lives, but we do have control over how we choose to respond, and I really hope that we can respond with heaps of compassion towards ourselves and others, with attention to the breath, and with a spacious mind. This is good medicine.
Connecting people to their own resources for self care is my passion. Here are some offerings of practices to stay well in all ways, in our current situation, and beyond. Try 1 or 2 things listed here, once, or twice, and notice how it feels. Find what resonates. Listen to your wisest teacher, which is yourself, to see what you want to incorporate into your self care practice, and enjoy.
1. Take care of home, which is the body: the food that we eat, how much sleep we get (or not), our water intake, how much time we are spending in front of a screen, our intake of news, the amount of exercise we are getting – all of this strongly affects our mental and emotional states. Making a vow to oneself to eat healthy food, or to reduce screen time, for example, will have a dramatic effect (for the better) on our emotional and mental health. (I write more about this in the blog posts: Mindful Eating and Mindfulness of the Body).
2. Mindful moments: Take a moment each day to sit and listen to the breath, and feel the connection of the body to the earth. Literally feel the points of contact that you have with the ground, whether you are sitting, standing or walking. This alone calms the nervous system and puts us into a more rejuvenating state. Once the attention is able to sit with the breath for a moment, ask yourself, ‘what is here?’, and then listen for the response. Let all responses be welcome, but see if you can frame your answers in the form of “Anger is here’, rather than “I am angry”. Notice how it feels different to frame it that way. See if you can listen to your answers with the wings of compassion and honesty, and with patience. You might also ask yourself “What does this feeling need right now, that I can provide?” Often just giving our feelings time and space to be recognized, to breathe, and to move through us is very powerful. No one is exempt from feeling difficult, strong emotions; they come and go like the weather.
3. Connect with nature. I live in a city, and so while it is very helpful to walk amongst the trees in the parks, it is also helpful to sit and visualize some of my favourite, calming places in nature: the beach with its sound of the tide, the crisp air of the tree-filled mountains, the prairie sky with its too many stars. Nature has its own sense of time, which is just as true as our society’s sense of time. The good medicine within nature’s clock, smells, sights, and textures is too rich and profound to explain in the short space I have here. We all know the good medicine of being in nature.
4. Drop the story, stay with the feeling: Often what keeps an emotion alive - the fuel for the fire, as it were - is holding onto the story behind it. There are many circumstances going on right now that can spark strong emotions, and it is very understandable that we may have a hard time letting go of the story. The problem, as we know, is that holding onto these negative emotions, even though there may be very understandable reasons to do so, is that it creates the effect of drinking our own poison. We can feel the effect of these negative emotions in our bodies, hearts, and minds. This is where the sword of wisdom & clear-seeing comes in. When we notice that these emotions are present, instead of focusing on the story, pause, breathe and focus just on feeling the emotion underneath it. Feel where it is in the body, if it has a color, a shape, a temperature. Stay with the feeling, and notice how it evolves. Again you might ask this emotion what it needs right now, that you can provide it. It has been said that without the fuel of a story, a pure emotion can only last 90 seconds.
5. Cultivate the good: While honoring and respecting all feelings, we can also put some extra energy into cultivating what have been called the ‘wholesome emotions’, such as joy, empathy, kindness, generosity & gratitude. Just as we can ‘drop the story’ when we feel something ‘unwholesome’ (anger, jealousy, indignation), we can also take a pause and savour the good moments, be they small or big, of happiness and wellbeing. Dr. Rick Hanson has written extensively about how to ‘cultivate the good’, and while the practice may feel mechanical to start: pausing and savouring good feelings when they come, it is very good medicine. Simple examples are: taking an extra moment to smell the flowers, or notice the sunset, or the sound of the birds. As we orient ourselves towards positive states, we are not required to stay perfectly on course all the time. Like a sailor nagivating towards the North Star, when we lose our way, we re-align our compass, and we re-adjust our sails. It’s a very compassionate form of courage.
6. Connect with others: When we are feeling a lot of internal intensity, it can be very helpful - and powerful - to remember that many other people are feeling the same things we are. As I have said, no one is exempt from feeling difficult emotions, and so when we connect with a sense of shared suffering, our hearts can open, and we can breathe not only for our own self soothing - but we can send soothing, spacious energy to all of those who are feeling the same things we are. While this can be seen as an act of generosity (which it is), it is also surprisingly beneficial for the person doing the practice.
7. Mindful meditation has been shown to be very helpful in this process of navigating towards happiness. As I stated above, it is not a cure-all, and in many cases should be accompanied by therapy or the advice of a health care practictioner, but the positive benefits of meditation are very well known. These positive effects may be felt immediately, or after some time of practice, and it is important to try practicing with different teachers and different schools of meditation to find a good fit. Here I offer a guided mindfulness exercise that is designed to bring us more into our bodies, and to feel the earth as a grounding resource.
I sincerely hope that there is something of benefit here to assist in these challenging times.
Stress can affect our health a lot, and now, as always, is an important time to honor our health in all ways.
Wishing you well.