Integrate!

Welcome to Canadian Thanksgiving, 2020 edition. Do you feel like the walls are closing in?  We're experiencing the last few weeks when reasonable people expect to sit outside and enjoy it. And we're facing our first COVID winter, a time when gathering outside is probably unpleasant and gathering inside is either forbidden or risky. Our kids are still in school, but they are confined to their desks for most of the day, their worlds reduced to a few square feet of not-very-comfortable territory. It's tough in here. It's tight and getting tighter. So what can you do? You have access to three powerful tools for creating space.  The first is movement. If you can, get outside and walk. The weather doesn't matter so much when your muscles are warm and working. The skies are always higher than the ceilings, and you'll see people or animals that are sharing your world and moving with you.  The second is connection. I know that a phone call or video call is not as good as...

This herd of deer was very aware of us as we stopped to watch them graze. Deer are interesting because we think of them as symbols of both calm and caution. There's a fine line between mindful and anxious. Language, at least the English language, defines anxiety as worry or nervousness. We are all familiar with people who get stuck in this kind of worry and face it everywhere they go. Like deer, they regard all change with caution: all movement could lead to disaster. And yet, if they are anxious to do something or anxious for something to happen, it means that same feeling is also a mark of desire for change. Anxiety doesn't tell us whether the world is good or bad: it tells us that change creates stress (either because we want it or because we fear it). If you are feeling anxious, imagine being a deer. Imagine that your heightened sensory awareness allows you to scan for danger and for the presence of your herd. Imagine that scanning allows you to put your head down an...

Someone told me at a conference recently that she was impressed by how self aware I was. And then, letting go of the point of the exercise (which was to give a compliment) she added, "almost too self-aware." I know what she meant. Being self aware can lead to too-much-information syndrome. The self is a complex entity: getting to know it is a task that consumes a lot of mental energy. Using what you know requires even more. It can seem that it would be easier to just take a shot in the dark and hope you were making the right choice. It often seems easier not to notice that the self of which we are not aware is already having an impact on the people around us. Being too self-aware is like being too alive: it means you can't hide from your interdependence with the world and it means you're going to get hurt. Sometimes you will be hurt because you will be aware of things in your life that you love and that other people threaten. Sometimes you will be hurt because  yo...

If you are not in pain, don't read this. Don't imagine pain: it will get under your skin and it might grow in unexpected ways.  This post is for people who are coping with pain, people who don't have to imagine how pain concentrates your perceptions while making it hard to focus your thoughts. This is for people who know how words fail when some part of your body is suffering and someone asks you to describe the pain. If this is for you, then imagine that you can see someone who looks and sounds like you, someone who is experiencing that same pain that you are experiencing. You might notice the tension across that person's forehead, the clenching of the jaw, the breath that is not quite rhythmic. You might be aware that the body twists or tilts at an awkward angle, that something is unbalanced. You might notice, as though it were happening to someone else, someone far off in the distance, that all parts of that person are involved in the experience of pain. But that...

Were you ever dead tired and pleasantly sleepy just until the moment when you slipped between the covers? Suddenly or gradually, you realize that you are no longer sleepy. Your mind begins to work at old problems. Your muscles tense up.  You wonder how you have twisted yourself into such an uncomfortable position. All day, you were busy and productive and mostly positive. Now you feel that your life is a snarl of unresolvable problems. Now you feel cornered and resentful and you wonder how so many people seem to be more capable of satisfying lives than you are. It doesn't make you feel better to know that many of those people believe you to be competent and successful and a model for good choices. So you begin to tell yourself a story about how dumb it is to feel this way. Some part of you knows that the anxiety that is driving this is pointless. Some part of you wants to give up the old, old battles and rest to fight another day. But telling yourself to stop thinking is like t...