An easy self-care practice

When things feel hard and your sense of security is shaky, it can be helpful to notice supportive, easy, pleasant things you get to take for granted. It’s a practice I’ve found comforting and steadying when things feel wobbly, scary or overwhelming… Also, it’s easy! (Requires no appointment or special equipment.)

Here are a few things from my get-to-take-for-granted list:

1. The ground. When I wake up in the morning I don’t have to wonder, is the ground going to be there to meet my feet when I get out of bed? No. I get to take it for granted. In moments of unsteadiness or nervous system activation, I can always come back to noticing the ground. (And I swear, sometimes I think it’s saying to me: “Lean back, Heidi, I’ve got you.”
2. Darkness. I love getting to take for granted the darkness at night, especially as I am falling asleep. How kind of our Earth to draw the blinds on light so we can shut off our attention and rest.
3. The sun rising and setting. I notice the length of days getting a little longer again. And that springtime is up ahead. And with it seeds and seedlings and vegetables, and my hands digging in dirt.
4. My Yorkshire Gold cup of tea in the morning. My sweetie gets up before me and has my cup of tea ready when I get up. He has been doing this for so long now that I get to take it for granted. I like noticing that. And I feel lucky.
5. My thrifted Cashmere sweaters. Whenever I put on a Cashmere sweater—no matter what I may be wearing from waist down—I feel luxurious and comforted. Once upon a time, Cashmere was a one-time thing. Then it was once-in-a-while. And one day I said to myself, whyever isn’t this an everyday thing? And then it was. I love thrifting—which I can do online—which makes getting to take Cashmere for granted every day completely affordable. Cashmere as self-care!
6. My 9:15 AM Saturday yoga classes with Jenna Hussey via Zoom. Jenna is AWESOME. Every week she sends out an email with the Zoom link for the following class. (Thanks, Jenna. I get to take your class for granted!) Her class is by donation. And did I mention she is awesome? (If you want to get the link to Jenna’s next class, just email her and ask. Tell her I sent you.)

Noticing what I get to take for granted doesn’t mean I deny the fact that there are things I don’t get to take for granted. These days I miss receiving hands-on professional massage. (Sometimes my sweetie tries but it’s not the same, if you know what I mean.) Yeah, I miss massages. I also miss touching my clients therapeutically, and the entire hands-on aspect of Heidi’s Table (which is still on hold). I also miss going to a restaurant and having food brought to my table. And unmasked strangers.

And you? What do you get to take for granted these days? And what do you miss? Please tell, I’d love to know. Pop me an email or better yet, add a comment to this post so that others can see as well.

Stock your wellness pantry!

I’d like to offer you 25% off the cost of any classes I am offering via Zoom including The Pause, a body-oriented meditation class (meets four times a week, drop-in, no experience necessary) and my upcoming Therapeutic Self-Massage Class on Monday, January 18. To receive this special rate, please enter coupon code “twentyfive” on the checkout page of your purchase. The coupon is valid through Friday, January 15. Come fill your “wellness pantry” up with some some self-care goodies from Heidi’s Table.

Warmly (in Cashmere, naturally),

xoHeidi

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Are you allowing the ground hold you, or are you holding back?

The ground is there for us. We get to take it for granted! But when we are feeling tense or tight or stressed in some way, it’s likely we are holding back from letting ourselves be supported.

Rather than trying to make yourself relax or getting down on yourself for having a hard time relaxing, bring your noticing to the support of the ground under you. There it is. (Good to notice!) And then, ask yourself gently, in a wondering kind of way:

Am I letting the ground hold me, or am I holding back?

Think of the difference between carrying a sleeping toddler and carrying a tantruming toddler. One is allowing you to carry them (even if they don’t know it! and one is not. As you probably figured: sleeping toddler = ease; tantruming toddler = pain in the butt! tension.

Right here, right now do you feel ease or tension? Are you letting the ground hold you, or are you holding back?

Maybe your tension isn’t so much like a tantruming toddler. Maybe it’s more like you’re trying to help the ground carry you. (As if!) But tension or no tension, the ground holds you, no questions asked. It doesn’t ask for your trust but it’s good to notice if, in essence, you are holding yourself as if you didn’t trust it. Can you let it do what it’s already doing so well?

Maybe you notice that mostly you feel relaxed. Great! Oh wait, except for something that feels like a knot in your shoulder and a kind of buzzy busy-ness going down your arm even though you’re doing exactly nothing right now.

Good to notice.

Let the sense of tension, discomfort or tightness be your cue to pause and to ask yourself… You guessed it:

Am I letting the ground hold me, or am I holding back?

And then, again, bring your noticing to the support of the ground under you, whether that be the floor, the bed you are lying in, or the chair you’re sitting on. Notice just how supported you are. (Thanks, ground!)

Are you letting it hold you or are you holding back?

On your next exhale –which just so happens to be one of a number of ways in which your body is already regularly and automatically releasing what is not needed– notice your body’s contact with the support and see if there is any softening that’s ready to happen. Can you let it?

You’re not making it happen. (That would be forcing). You’re simply showing up, noticing, and getting out of the way of its happening if and when it is ready.

Noticing (some people call it awareness): what a simple way of getting out of our own way and allowing what is next and best to happen.

I call that effortless change. Because relaxing should never be forced.

In summary, when you notice yourself tight/tense/stressed/uncomfortable:

1. Wonder, gently ask yourself: Am I allowing the ground (or chair, bed, etc.) to hold me, or am I holding back?
2. Notice the support under you, especially under/behind the place(s) where you sense a holding back.
3. On your next exhale, see if there is any softening (letting go, relaxing) available to you just for having shown up and noticed.

Go gently, go kindly, go curiously.

I can’t wait to hear how it goes for you!

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Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.

Muscle tension gets a bad rap. But it’s not a bad thing. Think about it: If it weren’t for tension, your muscles—which are attached to your bones—could not contract and you would not be able to move. Yikes!

When things are working well there is a constant balancing and rebalancing between tension and relaxing, between muscle fibers firing in contraction and then releasing to rest.

When muscles don’t get enough tension leading to movement, they begin to cry out for it, so to speak, using the language of pain and discomfort which in the common vernacular we have names for, like, “that knot in my neck,” or “that pain in my butt,” to name just two.

If your body, or an area of your body, has not been getting enough movement then that pain in, say, your butt may well be trying to say: “Get up, darling! Move me! No, I’m not tired… I’m tired of sitting!”

On the other hand, when muscles don’t get enough opportunity to release and rest, they also begin to cry out, very likely using that same language of pain and discomfort.

Like daytime and nighttime, like light and like shadow, like the bird wings and the hand opening and closing in Rumi’s poem, tensing and releasing are useful and beautiful, each. Calling one good and the other bad kind of misses the whole picture. Not to mention that favoring one over the other will, very practically speaking, lead to imbalance. And imbalance always has a way of affecting our integrity.

Sometimes imbalance in the contraction-release cycle can play out like this:

One muscle or muscle area gets overused and exhausted and maybe its function starts being impaired. Then another muscle will jump in, so to speak, to pick up the slack of the muscle that is crying “Uncle!”

That sort of pinch hitting that muscles do for each other is useful, for sure, but when done for too long or too intensely, then the muscle doing the filling in for the other’s exhaustion can’t tend to its main body function. And what could happen then?

Here’s an example…

Take the diaphragm. The diaphragm (in your “gut” area) is a dome-shaped sheet of muscle and tendon whose main function is respiration. Yup, the diaphragm is all about breathing. Yay! (Still not sure where your diaphragm is? Well, it’d be where you could get the wind knocked out of you if you ever—let it never be so!—got punched.)

When you aren’t using your diaphragm to its full capacity for breathing, your neck muscles will jump in to help out. (After all, the body doesn’t mess around in making sure you are breathing. Thanks, body!)

Now neck muscles are useful and incredibly good at their main function which is all about helping you look up and look down and look around — that is, flexion, extension and rotation of the head — not breathing. They will help, for sure, but they’d rather just pitch in here and there rather than permanently. And who can blame them?

When your breathing is shallow and skimpy for too long, your neck muscles will, understandably(!), be all, “hey, man! A break? Can we go home for a rest already? We’ve been working without a break all day! And what about that diaphragm over there, just sitting around—!”

Your diaphragm, meanwhile, is completely underemployed and we can easily imagine what that is doing for its sense of wellbeing and self-esteem!

The constant balance of things… Pretty amazing, isn’t it? Also amazing that we get to take so much of it for granted: the cycles of our bodies, the cycles of nature, the balance and rebalance, constantly, always toward integrity.

Taking a moment to notice it all might be nice. You might just find yourself breathing a bit deeper just for having noticed. Ahhhh… (Thanks, diaphragm!)

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Over the years I’ve heard my question answered in many ways but there is one intention that is, by far, the one that clients say the most:

Relaxed

What a worthy intention! When we are relaxed, hard things somehow become softer, easier. Tight places become roomier. Annoying things feel more neutral, and maybe even, humorous.

Being relaxed allows for seemingly impossible things to shift and settle into something new, something which tightness and anxiety may not have allowed us to see before. Relaxing clears space for the next and best thing to happen unimpeded; seen that way, relaxing makes better things possible.

I’m certainly not one to tell people who are feeling anxious or tense to “just relax” — it’s annoying, to say the least, and a bit insulting, too. After all, you’re smart and you do your best, and if it were so easy, I’m sure you would have already.  But I love helping people relax, and today I want to tell you two things that make relaxing much more likely to happen:

1. Acknowledgement

Think of acknowledgment as saying hello to what is there, even when (or especially!) when what is there for you is unpleasant or hard. It’s a nod of recognition, a way of letting the unpleasantness or tightness know that you see it. It’s a little bow of respect. You may not like it, and you may wish it were different than it is but you are saying, nonetheless: “I notice you. Hello.”

Tension, anxiety or whatever word best describes what is hard for you, deserves your noticing and respect. After all, it is there for some good reason. Maybe it is trying to protect you. (Letting you know, for example, not to take on anything else.) Maybe it wants you to remember that “no” is a valid answer needing no further explanation. Maybe your body —through tightness and anxiety— is trying to express something that is off (like how you keep smiling and pretending everything is fine when it isn’t), or out of balance (like when you sit for hours on end, not letting your body get movement or fresh air).

Our bodies hold a wealth of wisdom and I love helping my clients learn to listen to their bodies, but simply acknowledging what is there for you right now and saying hello to that is always a good place to start.

2. Support

It’s hard to relax when we don’t feel supported.

Imagine you’re entering a room and are looking for a place to sit and the only chair available looks kind of sketchy. You aren’t sure it will support you. If you sit down at all, you’d probably do so very tentatively, holding back some of your weight and then only letting go a little bit at a time until you know that the chair is stable and strong enough.

The support of the ground or of the furniture we sit upon is something we often get to take for granted. Thankfully, most chairs we go to sit in do support us.

Habitually tense and contracted places in your body can become so accustomed to tightness that even when your body is fully supported and by all accounts could be resting, those places may have a hard time letting go. If your body remains on high alert and tight when you would love to be resting, take it as a signal to pause and notice the support that is already there for you. Especially notice the support right under and around the place of tightness. And then, after you have said your “hello I see you there,” take a conscious and deep breath and as you exhale, notice if there is any softening, any relaxing, that is ready to happen.

Yes, it’s hard to relax when you don’t feel supported, but feeling supported can often be as close and as possible as an intention to give a nod of acknowledgment followed by a conscious noticing of the support that is there… it’s worth pointing out that the support is there whether you notice it or not; the magic, however, in this matter of relaxing, is in noticing.

Go ahead. Next time you have a hard time relaxing, practice saying hello, notice the support that’s there, and on your next exhale, see what happens. Maybe, like me, you will hear the ground saying to you:

“It’s OK. I’ve got your back.”

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