I used to be anxious all the time.

In my 30’s, the person I was engaged to marry told me my anxiety was one of his biggest concerns about moving forward with me.

Even with really great self-awareness practices (some of which I love and practice to this day) and therapy, I could not stop being anxious.

When my massage therapy clients would tell me they wanted to “be calm like [me],” inside myself I felt like a fraud.

And I thought my anxiety was my fault.

A few years ago I learned about the Polyvagal Theory of the nervous system and a research-based auditory intervention to reset my nervous system.

I learned that my stress responses (in my case, anxious hyper-vigilance which I’d then try to soothe with food) were completely understandable and, actually, signs of a nervous system doing exactly what it was supposed to do: keep me safe!

I learned that when my body doesn’t feel safe and connected, it is impossible to fully take in the benefits of otherwise wonderful interventions like psychotherapy, like meditation, like Focusing…

I learned that there are ways to reset my nervous system for connection rather than for anxiety and shutdown.

These days I am in a friendly relationship with myself, which means that when anxiety arises (MUCH less often than it used to) I am able to turn toward it and practice being friendly and curious about how it might be trying to help me. (Because it is!) I often feel playful (not possible when my nervous system was constantly disregulated)… And most days I enjoy waking up to a new day.

If stress is keeping you from connecting with people who matter to you, and if you have a less-than-friendly and kind relationship with your self, I’d love to invite you to my FREE masterclass:

RELAXED U: BECAUSE WHEN YOU FEEL BETTER, YOU LOVE BETTER!
Date: Sunday, March 20, 2022
Time: 1 PM Eastern | 10 AM Pacific (GMT -5)

Grab your seat to:

• get immediate relief from stress, anxiety, overwhelm…
• feel present and connected to yourself and others
• learn 3 key steps to calming your nervous system
  (i.e., your cheat sheet for later, because yes: stress happens! )

I’m putting a stake in the ground for you and your nervous system to begin playing on the same awesome team!

Let’s turn your stress into relaxed connection…together. Register NOW!

xoHeidi

PS Have a friend you’d like to invite? Send them HERE (where you, and anyone you want to invite, need to register: https://heidistable.com/product/relaxedu2022/)

The post How I stopped being anxious all the time 🥺 (and became a friend to myself in the process 🤗) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

When: Friday, January 1, 2021

Time: 12 PM (noon) Eastern US Time / 9 AM Pacific

Fee: FREE! (use coupon code 2021welcome)

Place: The Pause | It’s at the corner of Now & Notice (where that old dive “Reaction” used to be)

The Pause is a body-oriented meditation class. No previous meditation or focusing experience is necessary. It takes place via Zoom. (You can be as visible or invisible as you choose).

You’ll need to “purchase” a class and enter coupon code “2021welcome” at checkout to have the $10 class fee waived entirely. (Even though you will not be charged, you must complete the transaction to be sent access link to join Friday’s class).

Friday’s New Year Welcome class will be one hour long (rather than the usual 45 minutes). Heidi will guide you settling into a sense of grounding and safety and then offer invitations for you to notice your experience in different ways. Then there will be quiet time to practice in silence, followed by reflections and sharing from class participants (totally optional).

Join us this Friday to mark the turn of year by tuning into your body’s wisdom, which is conveniently right where you are, available for the noticing.

Want to give it a try?

Read more about The Pause and register HERE. (Remember: coupon code “2021welcome”)

Can’t wait to see you!

xo
Heidi

P.S. PLEASE forward to your friends! Let’s welcome the new year in our bodies!

The post A Warm Invitation for You to Welcome 2021 at The Pause appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Metaphors aside, The Pause is a body-oriented meditation class I am offering every weekday. (Drop-in, Covid-safe, 45 minutes.)

A sense of grounding and calm –even (and especially) in these challenging times we are living– are a few of the things that dropping in at The Pause can help you experience. Clarity and right action can arise naturally where reaction used to take place automatically.

Want to drop in and try it out? Your first shot of ease or cup of calm is on the house. Seriously, it’d be my pleasure to gift you your first class. (Use coupon code cupofcalm when “purchasing” 1 class.)

No long term commitment is required. No meditation or Focusing experience is required. Come once and give it a try! If you like it, come back every time, a couple times a week, or just when you can.

I miss you, and hope to see you soon at The Pause. (Learn more & see class times).

xo
Heidi

Please and thank you for posting this invitation on social media and/or forwarding it to your friends! I really appreciate it.

The post A special invitation for you appeared first on Heidi's Table.

It’s been too long: too long since I’ve greeted you at my office and asked what it’s like being you these days… too long since I’ve worked with your body… too long since we’ve scheduled your time to come back… too long. I miss you!

As much as I wish we could work together in person, I have decided not to reopen my massage therapy practice at this time. As I said in my open letter last week, I cannot confidently conclude, based on what we know (and don’t know) about COVID-19, that I can safely do my work right now. I write this to you with sadness and grief, even while I know that it’s the right decision.

Please know that I will let you know as soon as anything changes. 

I wonder how you are, what your days are like these days. I hope you have stayed healthy and well. And let’s not forget sane! I wonder how your body is feeling, where it hurts. I wonder how you are sleeping. I wonder how your mood is, and if you’re being friendly with your dear self. I wonder what’s been hard for you, what you miss, whom you miss, where you miss being or going…

That pretty much sums up the reason for this letter to you, except for also wanting to let you know that I am doing OK. Hanging in there, like I think we all are doing our best to do. There are even some ways in which this odd time has agreed with me. It’s good to notice those things, too: 

• My scrappy, oddball little garden gives me so much joy. I love watching things grow! Also, I think composting is sexy. I love “making dirt” from food waste.
• I’m writing a book. It’s a memoir called “Home(sick)” — it’s all about my journey from homesickness, eating disorder, and suicidal depression and anxiety to health and finding a home right inside my own, now dear-to-me, body. (Does that ring a bell? Yeah. It’s my own personal version of my business’ tagline: “At home in your body, at home in the world.”)
• The online drop-in meditation class that I’ve been teaching/facilitating every weekday since March 17. I offer the class for others, but boy has it been good for me as well. Maybe you’ll pop in one of these days! I guide you in tuning in and cultivating friendliness toward your own dear self (a.k.a. “Focusing”) and then we meditate, and then we have time for questions and reflection. Boom! 45 minutes. Every weekday.
• Good, as well as sometimes quite crappy, TV (Netflix, Prime and Hulu)!  I really liked Dead to Me (irreverent, dark, funny). Last Tango in Halifax (funny, heartfelt, smart, British.) Gentefied (Latinx community in LA). An excellent and moving documentary on PBS, College Behind Bars. And, I’m embarrassed to say, but hey, I’ve had lots of open evenings, okay? Married at First Sight. That’s right. Horribly addictive. (Mr. Heidi’s Table calls it, “OPP: Other People’s Problems.”) And, oh yeah, a much better, masterfully edited show about people getting together called Dating Around. What else? Oh yes! All the cooking and baking shows. All!
• Well my dear, I’m going to sign off for now. I’d love to hear from you, how you are, what you miss, what crappy TV shows you’re addicted to… you get the idea! Write a comment here, drop me an email, and if you are an in-person client of mine, please feel free to book yourself a 15-minute check-in Zoom call. (It’s $1 — only because my booking system requires me to charge more than $0 to register it as a service).*

Be so well, wear your mask when you go out, and stay safe! I send you the warmest hug.

Heidi

*Other remote services –Bodywork & Focusing sessions– are also available. Read more.

The post A letter to my clients… appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Also upcoming: Therapeutic Self-Massage Class on Wednesday, 22 April 2020 at 7 PM. If you’re missing seeing me (or your massage therapist) in person, or are feeling a lot of tension and having a hard time relaxing, I hope you’ll register. (The class will be recorded — everyone registered will be sent a recording within a week of the class.)

The post Time Sensitive: This Saturday (18 April) 1 – 3 PM EDT (10 – 12 PDT) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

On March 18 I closed my office for in-person therapeutic massage work. (This is temporary, my part in minimizing the spread of COVID-19). It’s been an adjustment! (I miss you.) I, like probably you, am physically/socially distancing and going through quite the range of emotions: fear, sadness, lonesomeness, anxiety, anger, contentment (in my garden), joy (the buds. on the trees. have you noticed?), scared again…

Yesterday, when I sat quietly and tuned inward, I sensed a heaviness in my chest area. When I turned toward it in a friendly and wondering kind of way, it seemed like a stone: big, though not as big as a boulder. And smooth, like a river stone whose roughness has been polished by constant water. I wondered: why not just get rid of the stone, wouldn’t that feel good? I was surprised to sense, from my body, that no: not only didn’t the stone want to leave, but my heart and chest area actually liked having it there. I sensed then that this big river stone was somehow related to my massage work and specifically my touch and contact with my clients’ bodies, and to missing that, suddenly quite intensely. I sat there quietly for a few minutes, trusting the process, no matter how odd or strange what appears might seem.

Trusting the process. It wasn’t always like that for me. Practicing has certainly helped. I’ve learned that my body knows so much more than I think it knows. And having practiced now for many, many years, I have built up some pretty darn good awareness “muscles.”

These are challenging times. I haven’t been to a food market in over a week. (For someone who loves to browse the aisles not in malls but in food and farmers markets, that is something.) I haven’t been—

What about you? I imagine that you are washing your hands a whole lot, physically distancing and staying home. Your list of “I haven’ts” might be long, like mine.

But there is also something I HAVE done, something new which I am hoping you might—now that you know about it!—do with me.

Every day at 12 PM Eastern time (9 AM Pacific) I am leading a COVID-safe, drop-in, virtual class: “At Home in Your Body: Focusing-Oriented Meditation.” It’s only 30-45 minutes long. You can come every day, you can come once a week, or just once in a while. No long-term commitment is needed. And I’d LOVE you to join.

The cost of the class is $10. (Though right now it’s on sale for $5, in anticipation of you reading about it and wanting to try it out—you’re very welcome!) I understand, too, that these are financially trying and wobbly times and that some of us have lost our income from one day to the next, so if the cost of the class would keep you from participating (or participating as often as you’d like), PLEASE drop me a line and I will send you the access link so that you can join regardless of how much you can or can’t pay.

Tuning in and turning toward ourselves with friendliness. That’s what I and anyone who joins me in class are learning and practicing doing every day.

You know the big river stone on my heart yesterday? When I sensed how it wanted me to be with it, it showed me it wanted me to oil up my hands and rub it. Yeah. That felt right. I didn’t have to figure it out, change it, or make it go away. And while it didn’t replace me getting to work with my clients and their bodies in my office, much relief came to me from noticing the whole of how it was in a friendly way.

I’m sorry about what our dear human species is experiencing these days. I’m sorry for our dear planet and how thoughtless and mean our species has been to it. I’m so sorry about the loss and death so many people around the world are experiencing. I feel sad and scared and angry all at once.

Connection sure feels good, even if it’s in a different way than we’ve ever connected before. Maybe I’ll see you in class!

Warmly,

Heidi

P.S. Please forward widely. (Thank you! I really appreciate your help.) What if everyone in the world came out of this extraordinarily difficult experience friendlier toward themselves and each other?

Learn more/Register for “At Home in Your Body: Focusing-Oriented Meditation“

The post You are warmly invited! “At Home in Your Body: Focusing-Oriented Meditation” Classes (COVID-safe, virtual, drop-in) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

I ask this of people who come to Heidi’s Table for the first time. Probably, they and I have just met. They have made an appointment so I know their name and phone number and email address, and by now they’ve taken off their shoes and coat, but more than that? Not much

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

I didn’t used to ask this. I used to dive right into the nitty and the gritty of allergies and injuries, of accidents and surgeries, of illnesses and medications… It’s not that these things aren’t important (and I will still ask about them before I work with someone’s body) but now I have those questions wait. First things first.

“What’s it like to be you in the world?”

People seem surprised when they hear this. There is no automatic answer. I’ve not asked them where they are from. I’ve not asked them what they do. What I have done is made a space for them to stop and notice themselves.

What’s it like to be me in the world…

Oftentimes I watch them pause. And wonder. The question mark has turned into an elipsis… This delights me. They are checking in with the ultimate (if still just potential) expert and friend of themselves: them! (Or he! Or she! Or whatever pronoun they use to refer to their dear own self).

The benefits of their session have certainly begun. I allow for a beat or two after my question and then I might say a bit more: “help me understand what your body does a lot of, what happens when you’re ‘stressed out’… Sometimes people tell me what they do for work, for play, but please answer however you think will help me understand what it’s like to be you.” And then they do. And invariably I feel honored to have been allowed to hear what it’s like to be them.

Sometimes, later in the day, maybe as I’m falling asleep, something a first time-client has said will come back into my awareness. Maybe I’ll remember that thing they said first. Or the way they held their shoulder. Or the way they finally sighed on the table when their mind slowed down. Sometimes I have the sense that everything I hear and observe during my interaction with clients and their bodies lives in a kind of pocket somewhere in the vicinity of my heart. It’s warm and it’s soft and it hums, this pocket… something about intimacy, something about connection, something about the privilege of having gotten to be there, and all of it something to do with this being human, in a body, in this our crazy and amazing world.

What’s it like to be you in the world?

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It’s Valentines Day. And today I want to talk about loneliness. (Because, why-ever not!) And about beginning to meet our very own dear selves with curiosity and tenderness.

Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, scientist, and prolific writer among other things, knew a thing or two about human feelings and motivations. He said:

Loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”

In other words: loneliness isn’t so much—or necessarily, at least— about the who but about the what… With the what being what’s important to you, for starters, and then for purposes of not feeling lonely, being able to communicate that what.

So, my dear, what’s important to you? Do you know? Do you even know where to look? No worries if you don’t. We all start somewhere, and loneliness is certainly as good a place as any to start on the journey of getting to know the one person you are guaranteed to fall asleep and wake up with, for better or for worse, for richer or for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do you part!

Now, depending on where you are on this journey of knowing you, what I just said may make you gulp or roll up your sleeves or jump up and down excitedly. That’s OK. Any of those? Totally OK.

How can you listen for and put yourself in the frame of mind-heart to hear at very least the stirrings of what’s important to you today? And once you hear something, is there a way you can express, even if just one tiny part of whatever it is that stirs you? (I talked about some possibilities for how to do that a few days ago here).

Dreams are one of my favorite ways to listen for important, just under conscious surface, things in me. When I write down my dreams, especially the ones that wake me up in the night or the ones that stay with me upon waking in the morning, it is my way of practicing being curious and turning toward what is important.

Dreams speak in the language of images and metaphor, which is why sometimes (actually, quite often!) they can seem very odd. And often it’s the disturbing dreams that catch our attention. “I had a bad dream last night,” you might find yourself thinking or saying in the morning. But if you turn toward the dream, no matter how seemingly odd or bad (even or especially if it feels like a nightmare!) with curiosity and a wanting to have it open up for you, you might be surprised by what treasures you find.

I’m not talking about dream interpretation here, not per se. But rather an openness and curiosity toward whatever your dream has brought to you.

Years ago —around 20, actually!— I read a little book by Gene Gendlin called “Let Your Body Interpret Your Dreams.” It was the book that first introduced me to Focusing, which is a wonderful and very learnable process of listening to and getting to know ourselves. Incidentally, I count Focusing to be among the 2 or 3 things that most has helped me come into kind relationship with myself over the last 20 or so years (after waking up from a failed attempt to check out of life). Changes in my life have not happened overnight, so to speak, but a lot of them DID happen, and certainly started happening, in the night and in my dreams.

Just last night I had the strangest dream. And this here is me showing you how I turn toward whatever it might be bringing me…

First I relay it. Usually this happens by me writing it down. Sometimes I tell it to my husband or to my Focusing companion, with whom I meet once a week, but not always. Even just writing it down for myself counts.

In my dream I’m visiting a hospital like McLean Hospital. In my dream I’m going there for business, though not exactly business, and also not exactly personal affairs either, though of course I have feelings about these kinds of hospitals, having been in a psych hospital when I was just 18. And again 26. Anyway, in my dream I go round the bend to the entrance, which is in the back of the hospital rather than right on the street, and I am met with a very very steep and paved driveway. Incredibly steep. Steep like I don’t know however one would ever go down it, let alone climb it to leave! But I do. Somehow I manage to get to the door and in. The place is welcoming and organized. People who know what they are doing work there and they are neither cagey nor secretive, nor overly solicitous: just straight up decent, smart and doing their jobs well. Someone is showing me around. Then, in the next part, a girl-young woman —not a baby but neither a fully grown woman— wants me to pick her up. And so I do. She gets in my arms and falls asleep there. She is so close to me, right up against me with her head nuzzled into the crook of my neck, and I notice how much comfort and how comfortable and how comforting it is for both of us. She was in this hospital, this girl-woman-baby, and when I arrived she jumped into my arms. A woman who works there keeps showing us around, leading us down maze-like hallways and into and out of offices and rooms here and there and everywhere. The last room we enter in this dream, after which I wake up, has a huge window overlooking a wide and shimmering ocean.

That’s it. That’s my dream. And this is how I get curious about the dream, open toward understanding what it’s showing me as important right now in my life, open to hearing what help it might have for whatever is challenging or “up” for me these days. (For dreams always bring help, always, even if they are just showing us something we otherwise don’t see).

So the hospital in the dream is not unlike the psych hospitals I found myself in when I was 18. And 26. At which time I really was rather alone, literally, and, oh god, lonely as hell. I didn’t have myself, and certainly didn’t know what was important to me (other than finding the next sweet food to binge on!). And I didn’t have much in the way of family or other people.

OK. There is that. That feels resonant. The kind of hospital in my dreams is familiar to me.

But… the one in my dreams is also different! I am arriving to visit it, not to stay in it. I am there on business, though my interest is also personal.

Could this be about the work I do with clients? And the work I am doing much more of now as I focus on helping people with anxiety and depression?

Yes, maybe. Certainly not no, but not quite a full hit of YES. Let me stay with it… What else… What happens next?

There’s that girl-woman who gets in my arms and whom I end up walking around holding while the good people who work there show me around. Ah… that bit, I remember now when I was writing it, that bit choked me up: not a baby and not a woman. Something like me when I was 18. And 26. Feeling so lost and alone in the world. Excruciatingly lonely. A lot like that. And, at the time, in that kind of hospital. Yes. But the part specifically that made me cry is the bit where that girl-woman trusts me so much. And how much comfort and comforting there is when she is in my arms.

There it is. The nugget. The important bit. The bit I wanted to tell. There it is. She is me-then. She is me-then who is still, often, with me now. And at different points in my life I’ve had such shame about her. And I’ve tried to pretend her away. Or hide her, certainly. But not in this dream. I am walking around holding her, holding me, close. And, goodness gracious, could it be? Even telling you my dream about it, about me.

So, my friend, my client, my dear, what’s important to you today? When you turn toward yourself with curiosity, what do you find?

See if you can make room for whatever, for whoever is there. EVEN if (and maybe especially if) what you find is a part of you that’s afraid to look. Because that is often the case when we start turning toward rather than away from ourselves.

Go gently, go kindly, and go ever so curiously. It’s SO worth it! Happy Valentines Day, love.

Lastly, I leave you with this poem by Derek Walcott:

Love After Love

The time will come
When, with elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door, in your own mirror,
And each will smile at the other’s welcome,

And say, sit here, Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you

All your life, whom you ignored
For another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

The photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Featured artists: Leah Piken Kolidas and Emba

The post Alone or lonely? (An important distinction!) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

And I just love it!

The act of making art or in some way giving expression to heartbreak means that the whole thing about that ache won’t have to come out sideways.

Come out sideways?

Yes. “Coming out sideways” is the expression I use to describe what happens when things that want and need expression don’t get acknowledgment or direct expression. And then because they still are needing acknowledgment and expression they end up coming out indirectly, often in unpleasant and painful ways. Or in reactive ways that we later regret. Either way —bottled up or hidden away inside, or reactive outwardly— painful.

Like when you’re angry but you have a thing about anger (like, for example, you don’t think it’s kind to express anger) so then instead of having a conversation in which you acknowledge your anger and talk about the situation that brought it about you end up just sucking it up and smiling but inside yourself, or with other people, you’re all ohmygod…grrrrrrr! And then one day, or maybe even just 5 minutes later, you snap or say something snarky, which then you might quickly follow it up with a “just kidding!” That’s an example of anger coming out sideways.

Like knots and tension in your body. Oftentimes that kink in your neck has little, maybe even nothing, to do with your pillow. And all to do with some heartache, grief or some hard or confusing thing that doesn’t otherwise have expression or resolution. Knots and patterns of tension in your body can be examples of something coming out sideways.

Like reactivity. Like when you bite your sweetie’s head off, or yell at your kid, or flip the guy in traffic the finger… Reactivity and irritability, be it toward people dear to you or strangers in traffic, are examples of things coming out sideways.

So, what about you? Is there something eating at you, something waking you up in the middle of the night, some disappointment that feels too hard to carry, or some something that seems too complicated, or maybe even impossible, to put into words?

Making your broken heart into art

“But I’m not an artist like Leah!” you might be saying.

To which I say, “No matter!”And also, “Says who?” And also, “Can you really know that?!”

Making art out of heartbreak or grief or sadness or anger, can happen in so many ways! (And if the word “artist” throws you or makes you want to argue about whether or not you are, then think of it as in some way giving outward expression to what’s inside.)

Paints, pencils, crayons… Yes.

Poetry, prose, or just a free-write in your journal… Yes.

A song in the shower? Yes.

Moving to the sound of a song that says it so well for you? Yes.

Telling the thing to a friend or therapist? Yes.

Asking your dreams to help you before you fall asleep and then writing them down first thing in the morning? Yes.

The possibilities for expression are endless. And they can be private (you don’t have to show the world, unless you want to, of course!). The important part, the part that will offer you and your body all the benefit, lies in the act of expression.

All for today. Onward, dear reader. Best wishes to you in making your art and expressing things so they don’t have to come out sideways.

xo

Heidi

P.S. More of Leah’s art can be found at https://www.facebook.com/art.by.Leah.Piken.Kolidas/

[Post edited on 13 Feb. 2017]

The post The Art and Act of Listening (to your body!) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

A friend recently wrote me of her broken heart. She is crying every day –heart crushing sobs– and tells me that her tears have absolutely no regard for time of day or place where she might be. Earlier this summer she started trying to date other people but then stopped. She feels terrified of ever being in a relationship again: “I don’t think my heart can take it.”

What follows is my letter to my friend, who told me she’d love it if I shared it. We hope it will help another broken heart, maybe yours, maybe someone’s you know.

Have a question or a matter you would like me to write about here on my blog? Drop me a note by email or by using the “Dear Heidi” boxes located on my blog just to the right of this post.

My dear friend,

I feel for you. So much! What grief, whether from now or from way back when, though I imagine it’s some concentrated combination of both. How hard the cyclical experience of what you describe must be, that yearly repetition of ending and then beginning only to end again… So hard. No wonder you are feeling such pain, and, I imagine maybe even some stiff cocktail of emotions like anger, like despair, like who knows what all, for it certainly is hard to tease a whole tangle of heart-crushing and sob-inducing kinds of emotions apart.

It’s not about anyone being to blame, whether it is he for coming back and sleeping with you each fall only to break up with you again by summer, or you for going back to him each fall and being heartbroken again when he breaks up each summer. Our dear minds get some kind of momentary satisfaction from finding blame, but blame heals nothing for anyone and ultimately serves only to deflect from the thing that truly will help. The more useful and ultimately healing thing to wonder about, and the thing to bring every ounce of your energy to is this: how can I be with this now? Whatever is appearing, at any given heart-rending moment: how can I be with this now?

Maybe you close your eyes and feel and sense exactly how the whole heart-crush of it is in your body right now. Notice where it is. Maybe put your hand there and be with it in that way.

Sometimes when I have a hard time being with something —this is especially true for those very big emotion kind of things like what you are describing— I bring to mind people and beings, imagined or real (it doesn’t really matter) who would be able to be with it. These are people who would be incredibly compassionate and moved by what I am going through, though, ironically, they would also not be freaking out about it, not because they don’t care but because they have a bigger and wider perspective and probably they know something I don’t. Those are the people, in lonely and alone and heartbreaking moments, I bring to mind. Actually, I call it “channeling.” (I like to channel, among others, Tara Brach, Kuan Yin, Byron Katie, my therapist, my teacher and friend, Barbara. Sometimes, these days, I even channel an entire village-of-old wherein the elders take care of me. I do this when I don’t have it in me to take care of myself, and when the part that is upset feels so large it feels like the entirety of me.)

Related to the question “how can I be with this now?” it can also be very helpful to wonder: How would this [heart-broken part of me] like for me [or the people I am “channeling”] to be with it? And then pause and sense what kind of company it wants… Maybe it wants a very quiet kind of company. Maybe it wants a song. Maybe it wants to show you something. Maybe it wants to sit under a tree in the park.Maybe it will let you know it wants touch. Maybe it needs the metaphorical village curanderas to make a witchy brew for it. Maybe it wants to hear the beating of a thousand drums. Maybe it wants you —in your mind’s eye— to sit there right next to it where it can feel you. Maybe it wants you in the same room, nearby but not in direct sight… The point is, find out how IT would like you to be with it.

And don’t forget flesh-n-bones people, my friend. Let people help you. Let them know you need company. Let them know you need a cup of tea. Let them know you need a place to stay. And if tears come in barre class, so be it. Good for you for being at your beloved barre class. And if tears come in the grocery store, so be it. I remember once breaking down sobbing on the side of a street over yet-another-moment in something not unlike what it sounds you are going through. A woman came and asked if I was OK. She asked if there was someone she could call for me. She cared, and in that moment, I was not alone. The people who couldn’t handle it —a woman on the side of the street crying— didn’t come. The woman who could, did. Let the people who care and who can step up to help, help you, my friend. You are not alone.

It’s no wonder you are terrified of being in a relationship again. No wonder. Please know that your next relationship will come in its own good time. Not your time, not my time, but its good time. What a relief, isn’t it? Your next relationship will come when it comes, the timing of which you have no idea about now. Good about that. Its timing is simply not any of your business right now. Whew!

Of course something in you would, right now, be telling you how terrified it is about you being in a relationship again. Of course. Please know that its terror applies to now. Right now your heart can’t take even the thought of another relationship, and with good reason: look at the right now pain you are experiencing over the relationship which you are grieving right now. Try as best you can to resist extrapolating from your right now experience onto your future self. Now brings all you can handle and your only job is to take care of your now-heart right now. And when something in you now shows you pictures of your future-self not being able to handle another relationship, know that that is your now-self dressed in a future-self costume and take it as a signal to be with right-now-you. Resist the temptation to believe or disbelieve what the scared parts of you are saying, and the scary pictures of an imagined future they are projecting on the screen of your mind.

Just as right now brings all you can handle now, right now also bring all that you need right now.

Rumi comes to mind.

Every part of you has a secret language.
Your hands and your feet say what you’ve done.

And every need brings in what’s needed.
Pain bears its cure like a child.

Having nothing produces provisions.
Ask a difficult question,
and the marvelous answer appears.

Build a ship, and there’ll be water
to float it. The tender-throated
infant cries and milk drips
from the mother’s breast.

Be thirsty for the ultimate water,
and then be ready for what will
come pouring from the spring.

This is a part of Rumi’s poem “Joy at Sudden Disappointment,” translated by Coleman Barks. I found it on page 169 of my beat up and dog-eared “The Essential Rumi.”

Friend, you are much bigger than all of this. Some of the very upset parts of you are feeling difficult things so intensely that they seem extremely big, so big that it is tempting to believe that those parts ARE you. But you, my dear, are bigger, you are wider, you are older, you are wiser. How do I know? For you are noticing them. See if you can spread the biggest possible blanket for all the parts arising in you to be, to rest upon. For surely they want rest. You don’t have to fix them. You don’t have to make them go away. You don’t even have to heal them. Healing happens. Just spread the blanket and let them be there. They will surely also bring, as Rumi says, what’s needed.

And when some part or another in you expresses some great sense of urgency about needing you to do or fix or make some big decision right now? Notice and listen. Surely it wants relief and it wants you to be OK. Of course. Say, there you are, I see you, but don’t let your next movement be determined from that part, for it is limited and partial. Just be with it and listen. I say “just” not because it is necessarily easy to do, but rather because it is all you need to do. And, come to think, it is actually much easier than all the frantic kind of movement we of this age and time are used to watching transpire all around us. But we do not need to be at the beck and call of urgency.

A practical point, is there any way you can move out of his place? Even though he’s not in town for most of the year, I imagine that living in his place necessarily makes all of this —and ending the cycle you describe— much harder. It is very likely that moving out would shift things energetically. Maybe you move into somewhere temporarily, even just a month or two or three, while you take care and make space for your next place (of living) to become available… Remember that you can ask for help. Sometimes it is only in the asking, in the putting forth of our need, that the immediate next step becomes available. Asking is a powerful practice. Allow people to say yes. Remember, the ones who can’t handle the woman crying on the side of the street, won’t come. The ones who can, will. Give them, give you, that opportunity.

When can you come visit us again?

Thanks for the info on the swimming hole. Two and a half hours was, indeed, too far. The cabin we stayed in was magical. We will go back.

I send you all my love. Please let me know if I can help. If any of what I wrote did not fit or is not welcome, please just give it right back to me, for at the very least, maybe I needed to be reminded of everything I’ve told you.

Heidi

Dear blog reader,

Would you like company and guidance while you listen and sense into something difficult of your own? Would you like to learn to be with yourself in the ways I describe in this letter? You can book a session HERE. I work with people in-person at my office in Cambridge, Massachusetts and remotely, via Skype, FaceTime or phone.

A few of the people I “channel” have been  —not coincidentally— my most trusted teachers over the years. In particular the following three offer a powerhouse of wisdom and support:

• Tara Brach | Insight Meditation Teacher who has taught me to sit still in an intentional way (some people call this meditation) and how to be with what, then, arises. I adore her. Her podcasts are excellent, free, and always uncannily pertinent.

• Barbara McGavin and Ann Weiser Cornell at Focusing Resources | Barbara and Ann have turned Gene Gendlin’s Focusing into a very learnable process with immediate implications for how we relate to ourselves –and all our parts– as well as to the people in our world. Focusing is a process of listening to the body and being with hard things, big or little. Some of my hardest and most stuck inner places of struggle have changed as a result of listening and being with myself in this way.

• Byron Katie | When I am stressed out, there is at least one untrue thought I am assuming to be true. Before I notice that I am in the grips of a stressful thought or story, I am at its mercy. But when I meet that thought with the kindness of inquiry, it has a way of unraveling. I never know exactly what will come of asking Byron Katie’s questions, but invariably I end up in a place less stressful, at the very least, and sometimes my eyes are opened to possibilities that turn my stressworld on its head.

Until next time, take care of your dear self and remember to ask for help if you need it.

Heidi

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