INTERUPT DISTRESS
The following blog appeared on my Facebook page some weeks ago. More people read and commented than any other post. I felt it was helpful and am sending it out to my mailing list. Our need to PAUSE and connect with our inner capacity for sanity and joy regardless of the horrors that are disrupting our world, is essential .. for our sanity,and so we can respond fully when necessary.
I slept 14 hours last night. I did not realize the amount of stress I was living with daily: the overt news, the subtle ways in which I delude myself , the change in weather, even the cost of bananas. And yet more. An energetic feeling on city streets of destabilization, desperation, speedy ignorance disguised as life as usual, and digital bass blasting like a jack hammer under everything in every shop sometimes exhausts me. It was quiet in my bedroom. I did not have the energy to even check my email. I just needed to sleep, and to dream, and to rest. I woke up rested but with a lump in my throat, and a heart ache remembering how it must feel to not be able to sleep because of war, extreme poverty, terrifying violence, and threats of deportation. I dedicated the goodness of resting to everyone who can not rest, rather than just get caught in a forest of complaints. I over rode a litany of outrage and guilt. I made a list of antidotes. A Haitian woman once told me, in a tent, after the earthquake, following a storytelling, "You did not change our lives, but you rested our minds for an hour,and reminded us that we do have joy."
1. remember every fifteen minute to push away repeated and intensifying inner story lines of hopelessness, fear or regret and breathe deeply into your body. You will not lose your thought thread or intelligence. Interruption nurtures space and compassion.
2. walking on the street or anywhere, when you find yourself lost in fear or preoccupations, just stop literally, and pause. then look at something outside yourself. Look at it and then look again, see the details of the petal of a flower, or the tangled lines of a withered leaf. Notice the shape of stones or bricks, the pattern on a tea cup. Then, regardless, smile and even jot down the details you see and read them out loud as if they are the words of a great poem. Poetry is natural and uplifting.
3. call a friend and don't speak about politics. Ask if anything unusual has happened to them. Tell them about your deep seeing, even read your poem.
4. and, if you have the space, lower your shoulders, and lift your arms up straight up, palms in the air facing one another, and then in the slowest motion possible, let the feel of your fingers in the air ripple through your arms, and bring your arms down, keep moving,slowly, breathing as if you are connecting invisible threads of sky to the earth beneath your feet. Then take three breathes before doing anything else. Joining sky and earth can not be replicated by AI or any idea.
5. Or just stand up and jump a few times, or making a laughing sound until a real gut level giggle rises up.
with love, Laura.
