I understand. And don’t feel bad. Many people are. In everyday language you probably refer to it as “being stressed out.”

If you’d like help not feeling at the mercy of a nervous system run amok, read on. I’m going to start real basic, okay? No advanced techniques here, I promise. And best of all? You have everything you need, right where you are, to do this.

The Pause and Notice

Here’s the how: Stop for even just a moment. One of the easiest ways to pause is to notice your breathing. (Personally, I like to close my eyes when I do this.) Go ahead. I’ll wait! (This kitty will save your spot so you know exactly where to come back to.)

Often, just noticing our breathing will allow it to change into something more comfortable and easy for us. (Mmm, ease…)

Notice how I said “allow it” rather than “make it”? Noticing allows it to change. We’re not making anything happen. Whew! No forcing, no cajoling. How kind and respectful of ourselves.

Want to try The Pause and Notice again? Go ahead. I’ll wait. (This kitten will save your spot this time).

There’s nothing fancy about breathing. Our bodies and the air know exactly what to do with each other: the air, so generous, so right here, and your body, so ready, always, to receive that next breath… And just by noticing we get to piggyback onto something that most of the time, if not always, we already get to take for granted.

The poet Rilke said (in his poem Let This Darkness Be a Bell Tower):

…feel how your breathing makes more space around you

I know what he means. (And my hunch is that poets, as a demographic, have highly sensitive nervous systems. I think he knew of what he spoke!)

That’s all for today. I’ll have more Care for Nervous Systems soon. For now, why not give The Pause and Notice a whirl.

I’m right here, breathing with you, making space around us, until next time–

xo
Heidi

P.S. Have you been to Heidi’s Body-Oriented Meditation Classes? The Pause is a great place to receive gentle guidance, support and company while you practice pausing and noticing. First cup of calm is on me. (Coupon code: Cupofcalm) Cheers! You are so welcome.

The post Care for Nervous Systems: Part 1. The Pause & Notice appeared first on Heidi's Table.

1.     Take 10 slow, deep breaths. Allow those breaths to reach all the way down into your gut (diaphragm) area. Put your hand right there –that place that if someone were to punch you they’d knock the wind out of you— and feel your hand rise with every inhale, and fall with every exhale. Do that for 10 breaths.

2.     Invite your thoughts to hitch a ride on your breathing, as if your breathing were a wave, or a train, or a car, or an [insert your favorite thing that moves that you can hitch a ride on]. Give your thoughts a place to rest, a place to put their feet up, and enjoy the ride.

3.     Notice your thoughts AS thoughts rather than hooking into or engaging their content and story and following them unconsciously down that same old same old rabbit hole again. That worry about ___? Hello, Thought. That urgent push to do something about ___ right this very second now? And hello to you, too, Thought. That regret about how you didn’t ____? Ah, there there, dear Thought. That looming and quickly approaching deadline for ___? I see you, Thought. If ___ really is something you need to address, it (and you!) will be much better off for you having calmed yourself down.

4.     Don’t take your thoughts personally. Did you make that thought cross your mind? No. Neither can you make that thought disappear. Thoughts come, thoughts go. Don’t take them personally. Notice them as thoughts. Let them come and let them go. If you have trouble not taking them personally, imagine your thoughts running around in a big field somewhere. My thoughts, when I do this, look like wild horses. They can run around but I don’t have to run around in the field with them. I like to sit on that bench there under the big tree while they do their thing, thankyouverymuch.

5.    When there is a thought or a family of thoughts that has got you by the throat and is not letting you sleep or breathe or enjoy your otherwise good life, dammit!, write the stressful thought down on paper and practice meeting it with inquiry and understanding. “My boss is a jerk.” “My child should get off her iPad.” “He doesn’t understand me.” “My children should call me.” “It’s too late.” “If I don’t have a child, my life has no purpose.” What’s your stressful thought? Write it down. (My favorite way to practice inquiry on stressful thoughts is called The Work of Byron Katie. Google it!)

6.     Close your eyes, breathe and take a moment to notice where in your body you sense or feel the upset. Is it heavy in your chest? Is it a lump in your gut? Is it thick in your throat? Is it fuzzy behind your eyes? Is it a pressure in your temples? Put your hand there and say, in your own way, I see you there, I see you. And breathe.

7.     Feel the support of the ground under you. During overwhelm and upset it can feel like our mind is a kite on a flimsy thread in a windstorm. Rather than being that precarious kite, turn your awareness toward the ground under the feet of the person holding the kite. Stand or sit tall and strong like a mountain and breathe into that ground. The ground never went away, you just forgot it was there. Let the ground support you.

8.     Notice the pull of gravity. As long as we live upon and call this dear planet Earth our home, we get to enjoy the force of gravity that keeps us from floating up up and away. The force of gravity is such a part of our reality, we GET to take it for granted. Take a moment to appreciate that there is always this force pulling you back to earth, back to home, back to ground, back to body. The pull of gravity toward ground is with you whether you notice it or not (whew!) — calm comes in noticing it.

9.     Practice being sensual. Turn your awareness toward your physical body. Take a moment to touch, to swallow, to yawn, to smell, to taste, to hear…and notice. Our senses are something else we get to take for granted. Take a moment to notice the world through your body’s senses and allow your thoughts to come and rest in your body.

10.     Let your body work up a sweat doing something physical. Allow the muscle of your heart to pump up its volume while you work it for 20 minutes. Maybe you’ll dork dance in the kitchen, maybe you’ll walk around the block several times, maybe you’ll run, maybe you’ll bike to the store instead of driving, maybe you’ll put on your favorite music and jump up and down… Work up a sweat, shake up the thoughts and let the ones that no longer serve (if ever they did) float away. Thought? What thought?!

11.  Practice the art of not being impressed by your thoughts. Sometimes a very juicy thought comes along, a thought that is really hard not to lasso in and call your very own. Practice the art of noticing and not being impressed by your thoughts, no matter how juicy or enticing. That thought about that same old thing that always bothers you? Hello there. No biggie.

12.  Bring to mind the calmest and most loving person, place or thing you know. Allow yourself, in your mind’s eye, to sit in this person’s, place’s, or thing’s presence with your upset. What are the qualities of this calm person, place or thing? Go there, be there, rest there. How are they (how is it) with your upset? By imagining it, you are practicing it.

I’m about to tell you something very secret: there is an old-timey village in the mountains that I sometimes go to in my mind’s eye when I’m very upset and it all feels too much. In this village there is a group of wise old women — their laps are wide, they have chin hairs and don’t care, their eyes are fierce and ever so kind at once, and they have all the patience and wisdom (from eons of experience) in the world. They are never in a hurry. Sometimes they do a drumming and dancing ritual around me, sometimes they go off and concoct or cook me a magical brothy thing or potion for what ails me, sometimes they chant sounds in an ancient language to put me to sleep, and sometimes they hold me while I cry. They see me; they honor me; and they are never, ever upset by my upset.

13.    Practice the tenderest kindness imaginable toward yourself today and give that kindness a physical expression. Maybe you’ll put your hand on your heart or reach your arms around you and squeeze the remarkable being that is you. Notice you. Even and especially when you are at your most upset, anxious and stressed, take a moment to notice how you are showing up and doing the best you can. Hooray! I, for one, am so happy there are people like YOU in the world.

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“After a massage I feel very connected with my body. Is there anything I can do in between massages to maintain that connection?”

Dear Keeping the Peace,

I love that there are people like you in the world, people who want to feel connected to their bodies.

Connection is about relationship, and since it’s hard to relate to something or someone we don’t notice, that’s where I’ll invite you to start: by noticing.

Practice, whenever and however you can, turning toward, listening, and paying attention to your body.

“But Heidi,” you might be saying, “it’s easy to notice my body when I’m getting a massage, but things are stressful and life is busy off the massage table… Also, I am very easily distracted… And my body often is a source of stress…”

I hear you, Keeping the Peace, and it is exactly there, where you are, that I invite you to start:

Let stress, let discomfort, let disharmony and all the ways those express as tightness and pain in your body be what taps you on the shoulder to notice.

Practically speaking, how to connect with your body

In real life, in the real world, it might play out like this:

The next time you feel that knot creep into your shoulder, that pain settle into your butt, or that ache into your foot, use it as the reminder to turn toward your body and wonder:

How am I?

Let those words hang there for a few beats. Give them a breath, or two, or four.

How am I?

Notice. Don’t hurry to answer. Let the words linger around you like a cartoon bubble.

How am I?

Let your words (or whatever words or way you choose to come in contact with your body) be a soft invitation. You aren’t demanding an answer, you are inviting contact, and waiting and noticing what comes.

How am I?

Notice. There are so many ways to answer that question. The first answer that comes may be wordy, like a kid telling a convoluted story.

How am I?

Notice. Allow your body to answer. Maybe at first it seems like nothing comes or maybe what comes is something very very shy. Notice. And from a place of calm curiosity, watch.

How am I?

Sense down your middle. Invite your throat area, your chest area, your belly area to answer.

How am I?

Keep wondering, keep sensing, keep listening.

Remember your heartfelt intention to connect. You want to know this thing, this collection of cells, this mystery of being — however *you* think of it — that you call “your body.”

Be the space in(to) which your body can answer

Allow your body to tell you whatever, however it is. And keep listening.

The more you listen, the more you will hear. The more you hear, the more you will connect. I promise.

Channel your massage therapist’s table or your massage therapist’s office, if that helps. Channel your very own dear self while receiving a massage. Recall how your breathing, when you are receiving a massage, settles into calm. Be the calm into which anything your body wants to tell you can speak or in some other way be known. Be that calm.

Notice and listen. I think you will be amazed. I always am.

Several years ago I went through a bout of insomnia. Ugh. I kept waking up way before the rest of the world and, try as I might, just couldn’t fall back asleep. Finally it came to me to practice doing onto myself what I do for my clients: to listen, to be with, exactly as it is, whatever might be going on. Those sleepless wee hours of the morning became the tap on my shoulder to stop and listen to my body. I wrote this list-poem during one of those nights:

It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to smooth things out.
It’s hard to listen, to let discomfort be.
It’s hard to listen, to pull up a chair and keep company.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to have an agenda.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to steer things back to before.
It’s hard to listen, to feel it just like it is.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to pretty it up. Or make it worse than it is.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to tell you what to do.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to assume I know what you mean.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easy to jump to conclusions.
It’s hard to listen, it’s hard to realize I don’t know shit.
It’s hard to listen, to feel fragility.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to grip.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to interrupt.
It’s hard to listen, to realize the rain could wash it all away.
It’s hard to listen, and not tell things where to go.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to argue.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to explain.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to pretend.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to justify.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to advocate for the devil.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to defend.
It’s hard to listen, to know that things aren’t mine.
It’s hard to listen, to see people as capable.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to interfere.
It’s hard to listen, it’s easier to be hard.
It’s hard to listen I’m afraid.

Keep the Peace, thank you for being the very first person to “Ask Heidi.” I love your question and I love that you asked.

Heidi

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It’s too much: too much pressure, too much to do, too much to keep track of, too much noise, too much work, too many messages, too many things… Too much, you think.

Even while it feels like not enough. Not enough time, not enough money, not enough business, not enough lovin’… Not enough, you think.

And you are tired. So tired. If only you could rest, you think. You try to remember when you last sat in the sun and read for an hour. You want to get away… But there’s so much to take care of, you think.

Maybe you have a business. Maybe you have a family. There are people you feel responsible for, or to… Or maybe it’s just you, and maybe that is the thought that wakes you: I am alone, you think.

Oh sweetest heart, come. What I want to tell you is simple, and yet we forget it all the time. I do. (Why do you think I’m writing it to you right now, before I go to bed?!)

Dearest heart,

You do not need to hold yourself up. You do not need to keep it together. The ground, it is strong. And it’s right there under you at 3 in the morning or afternoon. Supporting you. Let the ground hold you. All of you:

Head? Yes.
Butt? For sure.
Neck? Absolutely.
Arms? Ahhhhrms.
Legs? Mmmmm.
Back? The ground has got your back, for sure!

See if you can let yourself be held.

Also, the air? It’s free, my love, free! No need to skimp. Your neck and shoulders will appreciate the rest they get when your breathing is gentle and deep. Also, you might try this if ever you feel yourself anxious and struggling for breath: let yourself be breathed. Notice how air enters and leaves, enters and leaves. Again and again. What a relief.

Oh my love, I know you know all this, you just forget.

Here’s a crib sheet for 3 a.m. Tuck it under you pillow if you want:

Strong ground. Generous, free air.
Let the ground hold you.
Let the air breathe you.

What a relief.

Oh and too (lest you forget)?

You are loved.

What’s that? By whom?

Ahhh… here’s a thought: How ’bout you fall asleep counting loves! (Sheep are so last century). Count people who love you, past present future. People you love, ever… Things you love… Animals… Places…

Sweet dreams, my sweet…

*Kissing your forehead… slipping out quietly*

The post 3 a.m. cribsheet (for when you can’t sleep because everything is too much) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Why do you stay in prison when the door is so wide open?
Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking. Live in silence.
Slow down and down in always widening rings of being.

No to-do list is going to get me there.

There?

There. Where worry ends.
There. Where it feels safe.
There. Where I’m home.

A monster shouts: “You must figure out your mailing list thing!”

And another: “You must get that new page up.”

And another: “Quit being so anxious or everything you do will come from fear.”

And yet another: “What’s the use. You may have good ideas, but you are paralyzed. What’s the use. You will always be a loser, maybe smart, but a loser nonetheless.”

Ah yes. Thanks for sharing. Onward!

Except for the fact that fear has, in effect, grounded all planes.

<Cue sad trombone>

There is nothing to do now but sit and notice. Oddly, just that brings a hint of relief:

There is nothing to do now but sit and notice.

It’s been weeks now, the 4AM-waking-up thing. (Except for Sunday, when the clocks changed and I woke up at—wait for it!—3, which is to say, thankyouverymuch, 4).

<Again with the sad trombone>

At dark:thirty it’s hard to ignore what’s wanting your attention. I mean, you can try, but there’s not much by way of distraction. And you can struggle to sleep, but sleep and struggle were never good bed fellows. (heh!)

Of course you could pretend it’s 7 and get up and get busy. But you’re onto that thought. Plus, you’re a mood detective! And so this morning you sit up in bed, wrap a blanket curiosity cape around you, and try to channel the Buddha. (Some people call this meditation).

You notice how hard you feel: things feel hard and you feel hard. A wall around your heart kind of hard. Numb and brittle-hard. Fragile-hard. Hard all around.

You understand about defending against what you’re scared of. You understand about being afraid of what’s dark. You understand about homeland security. You understand about terror. You know war. It’s an inside job.

You could call in the light brigades. You could bomb the bastards. You could smoke them out of their caves. But we know how that goes. All wars are civil wars.

So you sit. There you are, on a wall. Hello, frustration. Hello, fear. And oh! Hello! If it isn’t…

Humpty Dumpty!

“Hi!”

[He doesn’t answer. He’s shivering. Let’s try again. Maybe let’s try un-exclamating and un-bolding the font this time.]

Humpty?

[Still no answer.]

“Are you cold?”

What can I say. When I’m nervous I sometimes state the obvious.

He’s chattering so hard I’m afraid he’s going to go and crack up right on top of the wall here, before ever there being an actual event to report, like a fall. And then, not only would there be a mess on top of the wall, but we, by which I mean I, would be responsible for ruining the age-old nursery rhyme, to boot.

I’m going to be here for a while, I can tell. Plus, I remind myself, I am channeling the Buddha.

I notice I want to save him, to keep him from falling. I want to tell him that the story doesn’t end well if he goes ahead and falls. The experts won’t be able to mend things. The people running the world are, in fact, more f*cked up than he is, and really, it’d just be a horrible mess.

But I bite my tongue. For about a minute.

“Do you need anything?”

[no answer]

Apparently, he doesn’t like questions. They put him on the spot and, I’m cluing in, he’s already on the spot. That, plus, he’s onto me. He knows my questions are much more about me trying to alleviate my own discomfort than about what he might really need.

So I keep sitting. I’m nearby, but not too close. And certainly not in his face. The last thing you want to do is startle an egg on the ledge. I’ve learned a thing or two from police shows.

His eyes dart around. His shoulders are up to the ears he would have if he weren’t an egg, and his head is way forward. (Work with me). His brow is furrowed and his egg-chest is sunken in. His legs are twitching. Classic signs of tension. I notice these things and, am proud to say, say nothing.

It is now a quarter till dawn. We’ve been sitting on the ledge, he and I, for what feels like ever. Egg time moves verrrrry slowly. Especially in the dark.

At some point I stop pretending he’s not right here inside of me, a part of me. I get more curious. That’s about when he starts calming down. His body is still shaking but he seems less agitated.

But he sure does still look cold. I get a soft woolen blanket and very quietly, set it nearby. If he wants it, he’ll get it. I notice that he doesn’t flinch or pull away, and when I am back at a safe distance and seemingly not noticing, he reaches for the blanket and wraps it around him.

I sit and notice the urge to say something smart, to blame something—his upbringing, his estranged family, the Easter Bunny—and I bite my tongue.

Then I notice the urge to leave, to get up, to get busy, to turn on some screen or another. If I can’t fix things inside with my inner Humpty Dumpty and make this fear go away and never come back, then at least I can distract myself, no?

But I stay.

The Buddha, who apparently I’m no longer channeling because he has just come and joined us on the wall and now he looks just like the freaking Dalai Lama, says something to me in Tibetan. Or maybe it’s Pali. Not sure. But either way, I don’t understand.

I raise my eyebrow, as if to say, “Come again in a language I know?”

Notice I say, “as if,” because I don’t actually say that. At least not out loud. I’m catching on to this silence thing and how most things I say when I’m scared are really just blah-blah-blah and, quite frankly, I’m bored. Given the choice of scared and bored, or just scared, I’ll pick just scared. Just. As if! Still. You get my point.

So now it’s me. And Humpty Dumpty. And the Dalai Lama, who, I might add, looks to be smiling.

Smiling? you ask.

I know, right?

To be sure, it’s not like he’s laughing at us or anything. It’s more a smile like he’s onto something I don’t quite get. Yet. The “yet” is definitely implied. Whew! And also? It’s a warm smile. Very warm. As if to say: “all is really truly OK, including you.” As if—get this—he has confidence in me.

I want to say, “But Your Holiness Mr. Lama, I’m very scared. And I don’t know shit. And I’m just one girl. And look! Humpty! Who will put him together again if he goes and jumps?”

But I don’t. Because I’m practicing silence. And sitting. And noticing, by way of writing, which is my way.

Thank goodness for pens, curiosity capes and listening caps. Best secret powers, ever.

The post Entertaining today’s guest: Insomnia, again! (feat. Humpty Dumpty) appeared first on Heidi's Table.

Hard to ignore. Certainly hard to sleep through. When I finally “cried Uncle” and got up, I was tapped ever so lovingly on the shoulder by this line:

tending as all things do, toward silence…

Ahhh. And then I remembered (with a little help from above Google) the poem by Mary Oliver from whence my love-line came:

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades;

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
I look on time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth
tending as all music does, toward silence.

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it is over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

~ * ~

Oh my dear body, I have been full of argument. And oh but I have been feeling frightened. Something to do with time and how it keeps passing at warp speed measured in days, even hours, when it used to be years. (Um, what year are we again?)

Something about how I’m doing too much of the wrong thing, and not enough of the love thing. And how the two are all tangled up and I can’t tease them apart. And in all this I need to support myself.

That last thought is so heavy it could crush rocks.

Playing Mood Detective

Sweet pea, shall we play? Want to invite your old pal and superhero Curiosity to play Mood Detective with you?

Yesss!

OK. What happens when you believe this thought? How do you live your life when you believe: “I need to support myself” ?

I worry. And then what I do is motivated by fear.
I feel alone. And I jump into the future and worry about dying alone.

Yikes!

And I wake up early and can’t sleep.
And I spin. Not like in a Sufi dance of joy, no. More like a piece that has sprung loose from a powerful moving machine… it’s still spinning like mad but on its own.

Oof! So hard!

And how does it feel in your body when you’re thinking that thought?

I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders.
It feels like there’s static on the screen of my mind.
Nothing is clear.
Sometimes my neck hurts.
And sometimes I feel it in my butt.

Ow! OK. Could something else be as true or truer than this pain-in-the-butt thought “I need to support myself”?

What do you mean?

Well, as I see it you are an adult and you are running a business and you need to pay bills and keep things moving. But when you are crushed with this thought you are usually only looking at things from one perspective, and, not to put too fine a point on it, that would be the perspective of doom.

Oh yes.

The thought “I need to support myself” really doesn’t seem to be serving you, does it?

Nah.

Because I know for a fact that you’d still work and do the things you love, even without that thought.

Yes, probably you’re right.

Can you tell me about those?

Those?

Those things that you love to do?

Read and write poems and essays and stories.
Connect with people… people I’ve met and people I’ve never met and people I’ve not yet met.
Sing and dance. Pretend I am Leonard Cohen’s female backup.
Be a Massage Therapist.
Play Mood Detective. Teach my clients to be mood detectives so their bodies don’t have to express their stress as pain.

Wow. That’s a lot of things to love! So, what else could be as true or truer than your original pain-in-the-ass thought: “I need to support myself” ?

I need to allow myself to be supported.

Can you tell me about that?

Well, truth is, I am not alone. Not really. I often think I am, but I’m not. Yesterday morning I called my friend at 6:30 a.m., crying. I woke him up and he listened and was there. It was 5:30 for him!

Oh yes. That is support. Not to mention love.

And I have other dears that love me. All over the world.

Yes, you do.

And I have clients whom I adore and by all accounts, they seem pretty much to like me too. They pay me and I get to help them.

Wow, yes.

You know, come to think, how I help them is all about this.

How so?

Sometimes I will hold parts of my clients’ bodies. Like their head, for example. I make a fulcrum with my fingers and place my finger pads and tips right where their head meets their neck, atlas on axis, at the crux of so much of the pressure in their neck and jaw… And I wait. And listen. And hold. All the while their head is resting in my hands.

I can tell how much their neck tension is easing by how fully they let me hold their head. Sometimes, for whatever reason, a client will keep holding the weight of their head. Mostly it’s not conscious at all. Maybe they are trying to help me. They simply can’t, for whatever reason, in that moment allow the full weight of her head to rest in my hands.

Often, just showing up and bringing awareness to how it all is is enough to change it. I can tell when a client rests because I feel the weight of their head–ironically heavier and lighter at once–in my hands. Often their jaw and face softens at the same time. It moves me in a way I can’t explain, to get to be there when that happens.

Oh my, Heidi! Do you have any openings today? I want you to hold my head! OK. Where were we?

We were playing with the thought “I need to support myself.” And I was noticing that when I believe that thought I am not allowing Life–by way of the ground, the bed, the pillow, the figurative or actual hands under my head–to support me.

Gravity comes to mind, too. That fantastic force of this our earth, not letting me up and float away into the la-la-land. When I am worrying, I have usually forgotten about the loving force of gravity pulling me ever back to the ground, back toward darkness, “tending as all music does, toward silence.”

~ * ~

Dear Mary Oliver, dear poetry, dear life, dear Byron Katie, dear ground, dear gravity, and oh dear client-of-mine,

Thank you.

Love,

Your Heidi

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