Ron Passfield – Grow Mindfulness

Working with Emotional Energy

Lion’s Roar provides a deep resource base for developing an insight into Buddhism. The website provides a full glossary of key Buddhist concepts, traditions and terms as well as an extensive library of audios (advice and meditations), in-depth articles and guides for meditations).

In one of the many audio resources, Sharon Salzberg , author and mindfulness meditation teacher, interviewed Buddhist teacher, Dzogchen Ponlop Rinpoche. The discussion covered the topic, How to Work with Your Emotions. Dzogchen Ponlop is the author of the classic book, Emotional Rescue: How to Work with Your Emotions to Transform Hurt and Confusion into Energy That Empowers You.

Emotions as energy

Hilary Stokes, PhD and Kim Ward, PhD point out that the word “emotion” derives from the Latin, “emotere” which literally means “energy in motion”. They draw on the work of Barbara Frederickson, positive psychology pioneer, to show that challenging emotions such as fear, resentment, anger and frustration can constrict our thinking. Because we tend to focus on the inherent threat of these emotions, we effectively block out new ideas and create barriers to building “resources and relationships”.

Dzogchen Donlop stated that as a teenager he was angry and vengeful but eventually realised that he had a choice in how he worked with emotional energy. Viktor Frankl reminded us that between stimulus and response there is a gap and in that gap lies the freedom of choice. The energy of emotions can undermine us or empower us and we have a choice in how we manage the power of emotional energy..

Moving emotional energy

Hilary and Kim maintain that we can sense emotional energy moving through our body and it can be experienced either as expansion (e.g. feelings such as happiness, joy, calm) or contraction (feelings such as sadness, anger, envy or resentment). While emotional energy itself is neutral in nature, it is perceived as either positive or negative based on our interpretation of the associated feelings and bodily sensations. We ascribe meaning to emotional energy based on our inherent assumptions, life experiences and thought patterns (e.g. optimism or pessimism).

By their very nature as energy, emotions are “meant to be felt and released”, not “suppressed and ignored”. Hilary and Kim argue that burying emotions rather than releasing them results in “low emotional intelligence and stress burnout”.

In the interview with Dzogchen Ponlop, Sharon Salzberg described a situation where she was participating in an intense meditation training course when the Buddhist meditation teacher challenged her about how she was dealing with her sadness at the loss of a friend. She tended to bottle it up because she thought “negative emotions” were “not approved”. However, the Buddhist teacher advised her “to cry your heart out” to release the energy of her emotions. She was advised not to push her emotions away or to be “embarrassed by them”. Instead, she was encouraged to “have a relationship” with her feelings.

Dzogchen Ponlop, in the interview discussion, suggested that we notice how energy of an emotion changes over time, it “never stays the same”. He argues that when we experience an emotion we should not “judge it” or “conceptualize a storyline” – not try to work out how it arose.

Working with emotions to release emotional energy

Hilary and Kim maintain that bodily sensations provide the key to unlocking emotional energy, removing limiting thought patterns and overcoming stress. They suggest that thought-based approaches are limited in shifting ingrained, suppressed feelings. In their view, sensations provide reliable information about bodily and emotional states. They point to the growth of somatic therapy to deal with trauma and adverse childhood experiences, including processes such as somatic experiencing.

Hilary and Kim advocate an approach to releasing emotional energy that they call “bodymind listening”. They argue that if you “allow your body to feel the feelings”, you will be able to access “insightful, accurate, and practical guidance” in the form of messages that can lead you to identify limiting thought patterns, facilitate release of emotional energy and heal your body and mind.

The process of “feeling the feelings” requires openness and curiosity (a mindfulness orientation) and suspension of rationalisations, justifications, judgments and “righteous protection”. To this end, Hilary and Kim offer a meditation on Emotions are Energy for releasing stress, letting go of stuck emotions and strengthening the connection between mind and body.

Reflection

Challenging emotions can be experienced as positive as they can serve to awaken us to a “sense of disorder” when our body-mind is seeking homeostasis. Fear, for example, warns us of danger and is essential for maintaining life and survival. Emotions, too, can open our hearts and enable us to express vulnerability and build relationships.

I recently experienced anger and resentment over a particular incident at a sporting event. I found that I kept playing the incident over and over in my head, developing justifications for my “righteous anger” and, in the process, intensifying my negative feelings. This experience proved to be quite disturbing – upsetting my equanimity.

A reflection on resentment helped me to put the issue in perspective. However, from the above discussion I gleaned that I need to “feel the feelings” (without the contaminating influence of the rational brain), in order to heal at a deeper level.

As we get in touch with our feelings and our bodily sensations, we can grow in mindfulness and develop a deepened awareness of our limiting thought patterns and access creative options for healing and personal growth.

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Image by Alexander Antropov from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness Meditation for Full Catastrophe Living

In the movie Zorba the Greek, Alexis Zorba contends, “I’m a man, so I married. Wife, children, house, everything. The full catastrophe.” Jon Kabat-Zinn draws on this analogy in writing his landmark book, Full Catastrophe Living, in which he contends that mindfulness meditation enables us to “make use of the full spectrum of our experiences, the good, the bad, and the ugly”. He argues that mindfulness meditation helps us to deal with “what comes our way” as part of the human condition and to do so in ways that are both healing and deeply nourishing.

In his book, Jon draws heavily on the mind-body connection to show how we can use our inner wisdom “to cope with stress, pain and illness” and demonstrates how mindfulness meditation facilitates this interconnectedness. He contends that through mindfulness practices, we can experience not only joy and satisfaction but also suffering in a positive way that enriches our life.

In his book, he explains the benefits of mindfulness meditation, drawing on scientific evidence and the researched benefits of the Stress Reduction Clinic which had been operating for 25 years at the time of his writing, with “over 16,000 medical patients completing its eight-week program”. His aim in writing the book was to make the practice of mindfulness meditation and its benefits readily accessible to people in everyday living – contending with the vicissitudes of life in an ever-increasingly, fast-paced world. To this end he describes in detail a range of mindfulness practices that can be employed by anybody as part of their daily living.

The nature of Mindfulness Meditation

Jon makes the point that in the Stress Reduction Clinic the facilitators don’t do anything for the patients apart from giving them “permission to live their moments fully and completely”. He states that mindfulness meditation is “non-doing”, by “being in the moment”. Through this process of paying attention to their minds and bodies – becoming fully in touch with themselves – patients come to terms with “the full catastrophe that can make life more joyful and richer”.

In the final analysis, participants in mindfulness meditation achieve a new way of seeing their situation, a “way of awareness” that is characterised by wholeness instead of fragmentation. The challenge for participants is to “stop doing” and to “start being”. Given the “non-doing” nature of mindfulness meditation, it is self-defeating to set a specific goal for the practice such as lower blood pressure, heal a specific illness or overcome reactivity. Such goal-oriented behaviours are the product of a doing-culture.

Mindfulness meditation draws its healing power in part from addressing our thought patterns. Jon points out the research that highlights how our thought patterns, beliefs, emotions and attitudes can “harm or heal”. Our thought patterns are pervasive, impacting every aspect of our life as they:

lie behind our motives and choices
determine how we perceive the world and ourself
shape our level of confidence in our ability to achieve things
underpin our beliefs about how the world works and “what our place in it is”.

Research shows that thought patterns can impact our health and contrasts the positive impact of optimism versus the negative impact of pessimism. It also highlights the power of self-efficacy (belief in your ability to achieve/succeed) and its capacity to influence your ability to grow and develop.

Mindfulness Meditation practices

In Full Catastrophe Living, Jon highlights a range of mindfulness meditation practices that we can engage in at any time during our day. He makes the point that the deciding factor in how beneficial the practices are is not how perfectly you do them but the regularity with which you practise. Here are some thoughts on the anchors for each of the practices he mentions:

Breath – is fundamental to our existence, without it we are not alive. Jon describes breathing as “the unsuspected ally in the healing process”. The basic process he advocates involves getting in touch with our breathing, focusing on the rise and fall of our abdomen or chest or the sensation of air entering and leaving our nostrils. The aim here is not to try to control our breath but to be aware of it happening and noticing its character – fast/slow, easy/laboured, deep/shallow. Resting in our breath can be healing and relaxing. Beyond this basic process of being in touch with our breath as it happens there are various techniques available to us at anytime to consciously vary our breath. We can breathe with intention or adopt one of the breathing exercises advocated by James Nestor such as resonant breathing or box breathing. Alternatively, we can adopt “rhythmic breathing”, advocated by Richard Wolf as a form of mindfulness meditation.
Sounds – listening to sounds as you meditate, “hearing what is there to be heard, moment by moment”. It does not involve “listening for sounds” nor judging the quality, duration or resonance of what we hear. Jon maintains that we can treat the sounds as “pure sound” and simultaneously be conscious of the space between – the silences that occur whether we are listening to music or sounds in nature. He encourages us to breathe the sounds into our body and “letting them flow out again on the outbreath”. Listening to sounds can occur in any meditation posture – sitting, standing, lying down or walking.
Sitting meditation – Jon advocates this form of meditation as a way to “nourish the domain of being”. as a counter to incessant moving and doing. He maintains that we can employ several objects of attention (anchors) in the process of a sitting meditation, including our breath, sounds, our whole body or our feelings and thoughts. Jon suggests that you can start this form of meditation by first being grounded in your breath so that you are not easily carried away by the content of your thoughts or feelings. In relation to your feelings, he recommends that you observe your moods and associated feelings and thoughts “as they come and go”. When focusing on thoughts he reminds us that they are “impermanent”, coming and going often at speed. He says the challenge is to identify the “me” thoughts and to be able to delineate thoughts associated with anger or resentment, greed or clinging. Jon maintains that this type of mindfulness meditation is taxing and should only be done for short periods.
Walking meditation – involves consciously “attending to the experience of walking itself”. This may involve recognising the marvellous coordination of the whole body required to be able to walk or acknowledging with gratitude that you are able to walk at all (while there are numerous people who are unable to do so). It could involve focusing on the sensations in your legs or feet but not looking at your feet. Jon indicated that in the Stress Reduction Clinic, people walk in circles or in a straight line to avoid goal-oriented walking – focusing on the act of walking not the destination. He suggests that when you pay more attention to the process of walking, “you appreciate that it is an amazing balancing act”. Barriers we can experience in undertaking a walking meditation can include loss of balance, strong emotions and invading thoughts.

Reflection

What Jon describes in the above mindfulness meditations can be undertaken anywhere, anytime. They can become a part of a daily routine and/or a spontaneous mindfulness practice in the midst of doing other things. The more frequently we undertake routine mindfulness practice, the more we can grow in mindfulness and become spontaneously mindful of our bodies and our surroundings.

In Ella Ward’s novel, The Cicada House, her main character, Caitlin, comments that the wind through the trees sounds like waves. After reading that comment, I spontaneously paid attention to the strong winds blowing from the Bay through the trees to our back deck. As I focused on the sound of the wind amongst the trees, I could sense the sound of waves rising and falling.

My reflection on Jon’s discussion of mindfulness meditation led to the following poem:

Mindful Walking

Walking with intent,
process not destination.

Grateful for the balance and coordination,
grateful that I can walk.

Focusing on the sensations of feet and legs,
feeling pressure on the soles.

Listening to sounds,
hearing the birds,
above and below, in front and behind, to the left and the right.

The world of “doing” falling behind,
overtaken by “being”.

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Image by 춘성 강 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

To Care for Ourself is to Care for the World

Self-care is often considered to be narcissistic or self-indulgent in a fast-paced world where we have multiple responsibilities and ever-changing demands. However, the reality is that in caring for ourself, protecting ourself from burnout, we are able to give time and energy from a place of abundance rather than from depletion.

In a previous post, I wrote about strategies suggested by various experts on how to manage ourselves in times of overwhelm. The focus in that article was on the overwhelm resulting from external events and circumstances as well as from our own health situation such as chronic illness.

In a talk given for UCLA Health, Diana Winston focused on the internal causes of “overwhelm”, namely, our own self-stories and patterns of thinking and doing. Her talk, Taking Care of Myself I Take Care of the World, focused on what we can do to redress the frenzied state of our lives as we endlessly pursue multiple conflicting goals. Diana stressed the need to prevent personal overwhelm, exhaustion and burnout and offered strategies for addressing this modern-day challenge.

The internal messaging that drives us

We might be caught up in activism over climate change, addressing issues of domestic violence or working to help redress the growing levels of homelessness. We might think that we must be doing something to help those in need and cannot rest until these needs are met. Diana cautious us that working in a frenzy is not going to enable us to make a “long-run, sustainable contribution”. She argues that if we are operating from “depletion”, we cannot give to the world in a “real and meaningful way”.

Diana quoted Thomas Merton who talks about self-violence when people over-commit in the face of conflicting demands. He argues that “frenzy” depletes our inner peace and “kills the root of wisdom that makes work fruitful”. This raises the question as to why we work in a frenzy when such a state destroys both the rewards and productivity of our work.

Diana suggests that sometimes this need to help everyone and “commit to too many people” comes from a sense of self-identity, needing to do something compassionate to feel validated. It might also be that it makes us “feel okay” if we are doing something to help others, we feel useful and not “empty” or useless. Diana acknowledged that in an early period of trying to help everybody all the time, she was working from a sense of feeling “not enough”, her inner voice was critical of her output.

Meditation and reflection to reverse frenzy

Thomas Merton argues that “we are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being”. Diana maintains that we can recapture our sense of being-in-the-world through meditation and deep reflection. In the process we can unearth our negative patterns of thinking and gain clarity about the way forward for peace and productivity.

Diana argues for scheduling “a time of not-doing” in our diaries so that we can become less frenzied and less focused on doing. We can change our attitude from “running out of time” to expanding our time through delegation, asking for help and learning to act more productively and calmly by devoting some time to self-care. We can then contribute to the world through “overflow’, rather than depletion.

Diana also argues for the process of self-resourcing, building “positive states of mind” through pleasurable activities. This can involve forest bathing, meeting with friends, spending time in our garden, journalling, blogging, and engaging in compassion practices. We can imagine beautiful places that have brought us joy or revisit activities such as pickleball that offer enjoyment and fun. Tai Chi, meditation-in-motion, is another way to replenish our inner resources and develop our overall health and fitness.

When we don’t care for ourselves

When we get consumed by our work and frenzied activity we exhaust ourselves and operate from a state of depletion. Burnout, for example, causes depletion on the physical, mental and spiritual levels. We become tired and exhausted, overly negative and cynical and lose a sense of meaning in what we are doing.

Diana points out that we can’t give to others from this state of “emptiness”. Self-nurturing can rebuild “our bathtub” so that we can offer service and help from a state of “surplus” rather than deficit. When we are in deficit, every small challenge appears large and adds to our depletion. We become short-tempered, impatient and critical of others. So many things are seen to “stand in our way”.

Diana suggests that The Nap Bishop, Tricia Hersey, has a lot to offer through her focus on rest and relaxation. In her book, Rest Is Resistance, Tricia promotes the idea of napping, being prepared to say “no” and upholding personal boundaries as ways to “free yourself from the grind culture and reclaim your life”. She argues that in this approach lies true liberation and justice.

Reflection

When I think about self-care, what immediately comes to mind is my weekly glass of wine that I have to relax and wind down from the week. I rationalise this aberration from my diet on the grounds that it helps me focus away from work and is restful. However, with my chronic illness of MCAS, drinking alcohol is not self-care but self-harm. When I really reflect on what alcohol does to my body and mind, I have to ask myself, “Why do I persist in having my one glass a week when I know it is injurious to my health?”

As I grow in mindfulness through meditation, reflection and mindfulness practices, I can gain a greater insight into what drives my behaviour and develop the courage to create change so that self-care becomes a priority.

As part of this reflection, I wrote the following poem to help me unearth my thought patterns and reframe wine as self-harm, not self-care. Wine can no longer be viewed by me as a reward – it is a source of harm.

What is There About Alcohol?

What is the attraction?
like light to a moth.

It hurts my head,
makes my throat sore.

It damages my stomach,
strains my liver.

It aggravates my arthritis,
disturbs my sleep.

The pain outlasts the pleasure,
a mythical creation.

Is it for companionship?
Is it for conformity?
Is it for comfort?
Is it for control?

What do we see in this delusion,
where are the rewards?

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Image by Niels Zee from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Discovering Pickleball – An Alternative to Tennis

I never thought I would be writing a post that elevates pickleball to a similar level as tennis. As a “tennis tragic” I thought that pickleball was not the “real thing” as it is played on a court the same size as badminton and is promoted as a mix of this sport together with table tennis and tennis. It clearly hasn’t the depth of traditions of tennis and the great battles of the Grand Slams and Davis Cup matches. My disparagement of pickleball was shared by many in my tennis fraternity.

Necessity is the stimulus for innovation and a mind shift

I found as winter progressed again in Brisbane that the arthritis in the middle finger of my playing hand had worsened to the point that I had difficulty holding my tennis racquet and playing tennis caused a lot of pain. Added to this, was the ever-present threat of exercise asthma caused by exertion in the cold air (I take a couple of puffs of my inhaler before playing to prevent an asthma attack occurring).

The arthritis in my finger makes it difficult to execute my tennis shots with any consistency to the point that the attraction of experiencing competence in the game of tennis is diminished considerably and is replaced by frustration at not being able to execute what I have been able to do previously without difficulty. The arthritic condition of my finger is aggravated by “allergic arthritis” brought on by my MCAS chronic illness.

I have not been able to use my first serve in tennis for a number of years as it puts too much pressure on my weakened back. A recent diagnosis of multilevel disc degeneration in my spine has made this even more critical.

Ageing and pickleball

As I age, I lose speed in my reflexes, stamina in my body, strength in my arms and legs and overall fitness. While I use walking, stretch exercises and Tai Chi to offset these diminishing physical capabilities, there is an inevitability about the downward trend owing to wear and tear over many years.

The experts in ageing tell us that we can prevent the onset of dementia by physical and mental activity, especially by learning new skills that involve a cognitive component. For tennis players, pickleball requires a new language (paddle instead of racquet, dink instead of a drop shot) as well as new rules. New rules to learn for pickleball doubles include:

You have to be serving to earn a point
With the exception of the first serve of a game, once one server (Server 1) loses a point, their partner (Server 2) starts serving until they lose a point (then serving reverts to the opposing team)
For the first serve of the first game, the first server is treated as Server 2 and once they lose a point, the serve immediately reverts to the opposing team (this can be difficult to get your head around!)
You are not allowed to volley in the “Kitchen” (an area seven feet from the net which exists on both sides of the net).
You have to serve underarm
Double bounce rule – the server must let the return bounce before hitting the ball (unlike tennis where you can volley a service return).

While there are competitions and international tournaments dedicated to young pickleball players, there are distinct advantages of pickleball for older people. These advantages include:

It is not as physically demanding as tennis
There is a strong social element to the game (if you do not play competition)
There are protocols for frequent rest breaks/drink breaks
The rotation system enables at least an eleven-minute break (the length of a game) when your time off the court arrives
You can take advantage of your competencies in other racquet sports acquired over the years
The Kitchen rules re volleying “keeps the athletically and physically superior from dominating the game”
It helps to maintain fitness and the motivation to keep fit
The underarm service action places a lot less pressure on your back in comparison to the overhead motion of a tennis serve. (This has proved important for me as a recent diagnosis of neuropathy led to the discovery of multilevel disc degeneration in my spine.)
Provides a chance to meet new people and extend your social network
It can be played at various levels ranging from social to Advanced (competitive and tournament play); “social” means social. As one Pickleball trainer/coordinator explained – in social pickleball you are meant to play to the level of the opposition (e.g. withholding more advanced shots when playing beginners) – an ethos rarely shared in social tennis.

Using pre-existing skills and competencies

One of the attractions for me in pickleball (being a new arena for me) is the opportunity to try out different shots each time I play. Unlike a tennis racquet, the pickleball paddle does not have strings and the ball comes off the paddle differently to a tennis racquet. While you may have competencies in spinning, volleying, lobbying and smashing from playing tennis, you have to make adjustments when using a pickleball paddle with a plastic ball.

The bounce of the ball is very different and requires a lot of knee bending. However, the challenges associated with a new “bat” and ball make it necessary to make adjustments to playing shots and to learn new skills.

Existing tennis skills such as anticipation and preparation can stand you in good stead when playing pickleball. You can also draw on different spins you have mastered such as topspin, backspin and slice. For those who have mastered the two-handed backhand in tennis, there are pickleball bats with an extended grip to enable two-handed shots.

Competency in devising game strategy is transferable from tennis to pickleball. For example, tennis drills designed to develop skills in controlling the net in tennis doubles can be drawn on when playing pickleball. This could involve drop shops (dinks), or playing the ball long, sliced or angled to place an opponent at a disadvantage. Other tennis drills associated with playing the ball down the line can come in handy in pickleball as very few people use (or able to use) this strategy in social pickleball.

Reflection

In a previous post I explained how tennis can help us to grow in mindfulness by developing our focus on the present moment, improving our capacity to pay attention, increasing our ability to act with intention and strengthening our resolve to “accept what is” (both our mental and physical capabilities at the time and those of our playing partner and opponents). Likewise, pickleball can provide growth in mindfulness as a rich fringe benefit, especially when we play socially and choose, on purpose, to play at the level of our opponents.

I have also shared how I have found that Tai Chi, as a regular mindfulness practice, can develop tennis competence by improving concentration, coordination, reflexes and the ability to tap into heightened insight and instinctive responses embodied in body memory. I’m discovering that this is true also of pickleball as I unconsciously access tennis skills developed over many years of tennis practice and playing.

In reflecting previously on my tennis game and skill, I wrote a poem called, For the Love of Tennis. Reflecting on my discussion of pickleball, I have now developed an Ode to Pickleball titled, For the love of Pickleball.

For the Love of Pickleball

Pickleball can be playful and fun:
Accessing our childlike creativity,
Building partner relationships.

It can promote growth:
Learning a new language, rules and skills,
Growing in mindfulness and sensitivity.

It can develop competence:
Using new tools in different ways,
Experiencing joy in execution.

It can enhance fitness:
Using new muscles,
Increasing motivation to stay fit.

Pickleball for quality of life and longevity:
Learning, laughing and enriching,
Moving beyond limited mindsets.

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Image by Nils from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Using Bodily Sensations as an Anchor for Mindful Walking

Diana Winston, Director of UCLA Mindful, introduced the idea of bodily sensations as an anchor in meditation. As she was specifically explaining standing and walking meditations (in lieu of sitting meditation), she focused on the sensations in our hands, our legs and our feet.

Diana’s guided meditation podcast was one of the free, weekly podcasts offered by meditation teachers at UCLA Mindful. At the outset, she explained the concept of an anchor in meditation.

Diana asked us to envisage a ship’s anchor keeping a ship in place despite being buffeted by winds and tidal surges. The analogy means that a “meditation anchor” serves to help us maintain our focus despite being “buffeted” by our thoughts and emotions. Just as a ship is surrounded by water, we are immersed in our thoughts and emotions – a fact of life that is inescapable.

The secret power of meditation is the capacity to constantly return to our focus despite ongoing distractions and our anchor supports this process. Over time this capacity builds concentration and resilience as we develop the ability to deal with “negative self-talk”, difficult emotions and the vicissitudes of the human condition.

A standing meditation

Diana suggested that we explore a standing meditation by slowly shifting our weight from one foot to the other. She pointed out that a lot of our functions such as standing and walking are performed unconsciously. Meditation involves paying attention to specific functions/activities as they occur and, in the process, exploring the bodily sensations that occur with a sense of curiosity and openness. It also involves accepting things as they are, e.g. accepting an inability to stand for longer than two minutes or unevenness of our posture due to a spinal injury.

As we shifted from one foot to the other, Diana asked us to pay attention to the sensations in our legs and feet. We can notice the added pressure on one foot as we move our weight from the other foot. We can notice tightening of the muscles in the weight-bearing leg . As part of the process of a standing meditation, we can effect a progressive focus on each of the muscles in our leg and then focus on the sensations in our foot. There could even be the experience of muscle spasms or cramping. Diana encourages us to undertake the standing meditation being conscious of our physical limitations, e.g. if we are unable to stand without pian, then a sitting meditation is a better option.

A walking meditation

A walking meditation involves walking slowly while being conscious of the physical sensations as we raise and lower our feet. It takes considerable discipline to slow down enough in our hectic world to pay attention to minute bodily sensations. However, the act of mindful walking can create a sense of calm and peace if we maintain the focus on our anchor.

We can also add surrounding sounds as an additional focus. On my morning walks in another area, I used to listen to the call of birds that were in bushes above, below and beyond me. This focus enhanced the practice of mindful walking for me.

In previous posts I have detailed approaches to mindful walking inside and mindful walking outside. The latter approach can incorporate awareness of all the senses, a form of natural awareness.

Reflection

Through much of life we hasten to get somewhere or to achieve a goal, e.g. a fitness goal as we walk or run at pace over a specified distance. Mindful walking helps us to become more conscious of our surrounds and our bodily sensations. The process enables us to slow down, detach from our goal-oriented behaviour and build our capacity for natural awareness, being in nature with curiosity and wonder.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can enhance our self-awareness, build our concentration and capacity to focus, develop emotional regulation and experience equanimity. The following reflective poem, that I wrote as I developed this post, communicates something of the magic of mindful walking:

Mindful Walking

Slowly walking seeing what surrounds us,
Sounds surfacing from hidden spaces near and far,
Sensations seeping into our consciousness.

Anchored in our body,
Mindful of our sensations,
Calm and peace pervade.

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Image by 춘성 강 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Celebrate the Small Things in Life

In our May online Meetup of writers-with-chronic-illness, Jennifer Crystal introduced a poem by Lucile Clifton titled, “Won’t You Celebrate With Me?”. The poem was made more poignant by a video presentation of Lucile reading her poem to an audience. In the poem, Lucile talks about her life as a woman who was non-white and who had to shape her life without models, simply by being true to herself. She asks us to celebrate with her that “every day something has tried to kill me and failed!” Lucile is noted for her comment, “One should wish to celebrate more than wish to be celebrated.”

Lucile’s message is to celebrate the simple things in life – that we are alive, have an identity shaped by our background and life experiences, and have the opportunity to be true to ourselves whatever our life’s work may be.

Writing process

Participants in the Creative Meetup group were encouraged to write their own reflections beginning with the words, “won’t you celebrate with me?” In the sharing of reflections, people identified simple things in life to celebrate – that they woke up, were able to walk, could appreciate nature, showed courage despite their pain and fears, maintained hope despite the daily setbacks, and managed the unexpected.

People expressed appreciation of light and dark, the rhythms of life, and the opportunity to slow down and be calm. Other simple things in life that were celebrated in the group included receiving a thank you, listening to birds and raindrops, being able to breathe and seeing the sunrise and sunset.

Participants’ reflections were often expressed as poems. Jennifer pointed out that poetry enables “a larger story in a concentrated space”. This was particularly true for one participant who expressed anger at having to endure delays in medical diagnosis and treatment. There are times when people with chronic illness feel that the medical system “works against them”.

Celebrating the small things as we age

Carol Lefevre in Bloomer, her memoir about aging, wrote about the challenge of dealing with ageing and the discrimination of ageism, particularly against women. She concluded that ageing is a “necessary adventure” and her way to achieve wellness during this late phase of her life (turning seventy), was to become “settled in to a pattern of thinking, reading and writing” – a simple pattern of being-in-the world that is congruent with her age (she writes “what only an old woman can write”).

Carol contends that we can flourish in late-life if we embrace life “as it is” when we age. We can flourish through our creative pursuits, particularly through writing and gardening. She stated that her strategy to deal with the challenges of aging is “to retreat in to the garden”. Carol noted that the fluidity and rhythms of nature serve as a calming influence in the face of “the relentless press of daily life”. Hope is embedded in gardening because it is “a forward-looking pastime” that promises a return in the future on the investment of time and energy.

The simple act of being with nature

Research has repeatedly confirmed the healing effects of nature. Nature’s solitude and silence can create a pathway to self-awareness and resilience. Nature reminds us of our interconnectedness and our co-dependence. Being with nature involves more than being in it; being-with-nature entails opening our senses to the wonder and awe of nature. We can listen to the rustling leaves and the birds (near and far); observe the colours of the trees and flowers; smell the earth and rotting vegetation; touch the vast array of textures surrounding us; and taste the fruits of the forest.

The Japanese have mastered the art of “forest bathing”, walking slowly and mindfully through a forest. A forest can highlight our senses, boost our mood and evoke stillness and resilience. Trees can be a source of meditation, reflecting the enigmas of daily life and reinforcing the transitory nature of human beauty. They can ground us in the simple things of life such as the air that we breathe and the ever-changing foliage that encompasses us.

Carol found solace in gardening because there is “a timelessness to the routine tasks of weeding, digging, planting”, and the fruits of today’s labour remind us of our forebears engaging in these same flourishing activities (including monks of old who planted and harvested herbs and other edible plants). She contends that this connectedness to the past is both grounding and calming and “gently draws attention back to the present moment”.

I find that playing tennis likewise grounds me in the present moment and helps me to develop mindfulness. In my poem For The Love of Tennis I acknowledge this groundedness and savour the simple things of being able to “run, bend, stretch and strain” and to experience again “the slice, the serve, the stroke, the sound”.

Reflection

Jennifer noted that in the Creative Meetups participants shared their vulnerability and strong emotions and were supported by people “holding space for each other” and listening compassionately. Louise DeSalvo reinforces the healing power of storytelling in Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives. She offers practical advice and tips for “restorative writing” – “writing as a way to heal the emotional and physical wounds that are an inevitable part of life”.

I found when people were sharing their writing that I became “teary”, not only because of the evocative writing that was shared but also the pain and suffering. I found that I was feeling for, and with, the person who was sharing – an empathic response.

Following the sharing, Jennifer asked us to write a process journal entry where we wrote about “what it felt like to write [tonight] and listen”. Participants indicated that they were sharing things in the group that they would not share outside the group – a sign of growing trust and mutual respect with the Meetup group.

In writing the process reflection, I found that my strong empathetic feelings tended to mask my own uncomfortable feelings of anger and frustration at the members of the medical profession. I’ve continually encountered the failure of a medical practitioner to listen to what I was sharing before jumping to a solution based on their personal orientation and training. The result has been inadequate treatment and ongoing problems with MCAS and related allergies. I had to find out for myself, for example, that wheat allergy can lead to “exercise-induced anaphylaxis” if I “exercise within a few hours after eating wheat”.

Writing a process journal entry is a form of “writing slow” which is highly recommended by Louise DeSalvo as a means to deepen our creativity and reflection.

By focusing on the small things in life, along with reflection and writing, we can grow in mindfulness and, in consequence, build self-awareness and creativity to manage our lives more peacefully and productively.

In the following reflective poem, written during the May Meetup, I share something of my thoughts about the power of writing poetry:

Poetry for Peace

Searching for a food I can eat
Like a fox foraging in the forest.
Tantalising sweet taste sensation
Transforming into testing torture.

Poetry creating peace through pain,
A place for planning and pleasure.
Opening up options for optimism,
Resolving to reframe for resilience.

Control is within, not without,
Choice to contract, not expand.
Accepting the constraints on food,
Exploring freedom to flourish.
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Image by Kev from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield- Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution-Non-Commercial -No Derivatives.

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Writing “In Community” for Healing

During the recent Healing Through Writing Festival, Grace Quantock presented on the topic, Living Well with Chronic Illness. Grace maintained that people with chronic illness often have to deal with missed symptoms, explaining away illness, and social exclusion. She stated that it is often harder to gain belief from others than to deal with the symptoms themselves.

Grace identified an experience that I have had with diagnosis of chronic illness. She indicated that people with chronic illness can produce “exhaustive documentation” only to be ignored by medical professionals. In my case, I spent three hours documenting the major events and symptoms in my medical history over 10 years only to have an Allergist refuse to read the document or add it to my medical file.

The barriers to writing for healing

In a previous post, I explored the idea of memoir-writing for healing as proposed by Janelle Hardy. Grace argued that there are often barriers to our attempts to write as people with chronic illness. She suggested that isolation, both emotional and practical (in terms of access to information), creates a personal barrier.

The writing community itself can also establish barriers by promoting “a productivity culture” that is translated into words-per-hour or words-per-day (e.g. setting a goal of writing 2,000 words per day). The assumption, as Grace points out, is that writing is a linear process. However, people with chronic illness have a different relationship to writing time in that they can be intermittently or chronically disabled in terms of capacity to write. They may have impediments like brain fog, arthritic limbs, chronic fatigue and/or nausea.

Grace maintained that there is an assumption in the writing community, and especially amongst publishers, that writing has to “be a certain way”. There is a tendency to favour universal experience over individual stories – personal experience and coping strategies are often discounted. Writers with chronic illness can be blocked by literary gatekeepers who argue that their stories are “too niche” or “not literary enough”.

Grace suggested that we can too easily succumb to the expectations and standards of others by thinking that we “do not have the credentials” to write or “lack the recognition or prestige” required to publish. This mental barrier makes it harder for us to envisage our “own writer’s journey” (which will be unlike that of anyone else). Often relevant credentials are difficult to acquire because of lack of access to training and/or the availability of empathetic mentors.

She argued that the real or core questions relate to “what we hope for in the writing” and what will have the most positive impact for us.

Strategies for overcoming the literary barriers to writing with chronic illness

According to Grace, a starting point is to change our expectations of ourself in terms of written output but also in terms of healing outcomes. She warned that writing with the mindset “that writing has to fix us” (it must be “reparative”) can actually harm us. An “extractive mentality” can do us violence. She suggests that instead of trying to “write to heal”, that we view writing as “a way that is healing”. The process itself is healing; the healing outcomes are beyond our control. We have to move from an outcomes-focus to a process focus and write the best way we can, given our physical, mental and emotional states.

Contribution to a literary lineage

Grace suggested that we reframe the writing process by acknowledging that we are contributing to a “literary lineage” – writers with chronic illness – and, in the process, creating our own legacy. There are writers with chronic illness who have considerable literary achievements such as Alice Wong (with Lupus); Flannery O’ Connor (with Spinal Muscular Atrophy); and Virginia Woolf (serious mental health conditions). Over recent months, I have been inspired by Jennifer Crystal, author of One Tick Stopped the Clock: A Memoir, who contracted Lyme Disease from a tick bite. Jennifer is a weekly columnist for the Global Lyme Alliance, creator of the Writing to Heal Immersive Program, and story coach/facilitator for the Health Story Collaborative.

Grace argued that by writing with chronic illness we are creating documentation that can lead to personal and system change. By navigating the process of writing about difficult or challenging health situations, we are creating “words that will outlive us” and offering possible solutions or strategies for someone else experiencing chronic illness. She stated categorically that “the poem we write today might be a lifeline somebody else finds after our lifetime”.

Grace contends that our writing – whether as a novel, memoir, blog, poem or journal – can be a “springboard for the next person” as we can be offering alternatives and providing evidence of their efficacy. We can reframe our solitary writing as “part of a larger network” and a contribution to our “collective experience, collective tapestry and collective legacy”.

Cultivating our literary community

A strong theme throughout Grace’s presentation is her emphasis on networking within our writing community. She proposes three core strategies to take advantage of the mutual support and resources that can be available through such a network:

Name three people who are part of your literary community. In thinking about this, I was able to name Annie Brewster, Jennifer Crystal, and Jennifer Harris. Annie is the creator of The Health Story Collaborative (HSC), designed to “harness the healing power of stories”. She is the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss.
Identify an element of their work that resonates with you. I have networked with each of the authors mentioned above when they have been facilitators for the monthly, online Creative Meetups, hosted by HSC. The Meetups are a network activity for writers with a chronic illness. Each of the facilitators have a profound knowledge of narrative therapy and a very strong commitment to helping people to heal through shared personal narratives.
Exchange literary support with other members of your literary community, e.g. re-tweet, write supportive blog posts and create book reviews for members of your literary community. I have had correspondence with each of the previously mentioned Creative Meetup facilitators, and they have read my blog posts and poems and offered support and encouragement. I have also mentioned their work and promoted their writing in my blog posts, e.g. articles about Annie Brewster and Jennifer Crystal. The Creative Meetups themselves involve a community of writers who willingly share their stories and their writing. The participants offer supportive challenge and the constant encouragement to move towards healing.

Reflection

Grace has made me more aware that I am not writing alone as a writer with chronic illness and that I am not just writing for myself and my own health. As I become more aware of my participation in a literary community, I can become more conscious of how I can support, and be supported by, others in my literary community,

This newfound appreciation enhances my gratitude for my ongoing access to an understanding literary community where I don’t have to explain myself, defend my position or pretend to be someone other than who I am.

As we collaboratively grow in mindfulness through our reflections and writing, we can increase our connectedness, build our mutual support and deepen our insights.

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Memoir-Writing for Healing

Janelle Hardy, writer and somatic healer, recently produced and hosted the Healing Through Writing Festival with multiple facilitators who themselves are writers and healers. Janelle is the creator of the course, The Art of Personal Mythmaking: Write Your Memoir While Healing Yourself, which is designed as a self-directed approach to healing while writing the first draft of a memoir.

The 13-module course includes writing prompts, somatic visualisations and other techniques, and a process for outlining your storytelling. In developing the course, Janelle drew on her training and consulting experience in bodywork and somatic approaches to trauma healing. Her techniques and tools enable course participants to gain “clarity, focus and structure” as they write to heal.

Janelle also offers a 9-module, self-directed course, Write Your Life Stories, Heal Your Past, which is also designed to help us heal from our difficult experiences while working on a memoir. This self-paced memoir-writing course incorporates somatic healing techniques as well as guidance for choosing forms of storytelling, assistance in outlining a memoir, ways to overcome writer’s block and tips about the writing and editing process. The course is designed to help us deal with our difficult life experiences through writing without becoming overwhelmed.

Writing prompts and the road to healing

Throughout her Festival presentation, Janelle offered several writing prompts designed to elicit recall and identify elements of our life story. The prompts covered both challenging and rewarding experiences, bodily sensations and personal insight. I found the prompts particularly fruitful for “loosening the cobwebs”.

By way of illustration, Janelle shared her own story of chronic fatigue and her acute shyness. She would often experience a “frozen state” and become “stuck”, with her creativity blocked. After a relationship breakup, she had to deal with her role of a single parent and, at the same time, cope with her negative self-stories. She sought healing through multiple modalities including somatic experiencing, dance, writing and research and experience of different cultures.

Janelle highlighted the fact that we store and release stories in our bodies. This is in line with the research and writing of Bessel Van Der Kolk who published the book, The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma. Janelle introduced a basic somatic exercise during her presentation that involved listening to sounds, touching, stretching and feeling bodily sensations. She incorporates somatic practices in her courses because she firmly believes that we can reclaim ourselves through our “bodies, stories and desires”. Janelle described dance as an “embodied language” and found that it helped to reduce her stiffness, tightness, stress and related feelings.

Janelle explained too that we understand the world through cultures. To really appreciate this idea, she became an exchange student and undertook home stays in Japan, Russia and Canada. Given the pervasive nature of cultural influences, a useful writing prompt could be, “What influence has your cultural upbringing had on your own life story and how you perceive yourself?”

I recently gained an insight into the influence of cultural experiences on our self-stories and how we perceive ourselves by reading the novel Runaways, a memoir by Shelley Davidow and Shaimaa Khalil. The joint memoir tells the story of their 20-year friendship across cultures after meeting at the University of Qatar where Shaimaa was one of Shelley’s students.

Not only were they “strangers in a strange land”, but also they brought to their relationship and self-stories the influence of their different cultural upbringings – Shelley was an Ashkenazi Jew from South Africa (with its entrenched racial tensions) and Shaimaa was an Arab Muslim from Egypt (with its class tensions). Their memoir shows the intertwining of different cultures on the stories they shared and how their story was influenced by their life in Qatar.

Shelley and Shaimaa explain what shaped them, broke them and the ways they returned to “wholeness”. At different times in their shared storytelling they communicated their individual experiences and reactions in the form of a reflective poem.

Janelle offers a series of writing prompts which are available from her website by subscribing to her newsletter: 10 Memoir-Writing Prompts for Healing and Transformation. Her blog, which contains interviews with creative writers, essays on writing and reviews of websites, is a potentially fertile ground for other prompts.

Creating a theme for a memoir

The process of writing to story prompts enables us to discern various themes, common threads, in our life story. We can then choose a theme to shape our memoir – exploring which stories in our life serve the theme. Janelle explained that the selected theme then becomes a “tool for discernment” – assisting us to decide what stories to include and what to exclude. We can potentially use the discarded stories as the basis for another memoir.

This process of choosing a theme reminds me of my process in writing my doctoral thesis – the data collected could have been the basis for several different theses but I had to decide what was my central “claim to knowledge” and what data I could include to warrant that claim. This involved then deciding what elements supported the core thesis and should be included and what should be left out. I created a folder to store the other ideas and concepts for perusing at a later date. When I submitted my thesis, I revisited my folder and produced a number of articles including one on the art of thesis writing as a movement through the Seven Chakras, from the Base Chakra to the Crown Chakra – a reflection on my thesis writing journey. The thesis also incorporated my reflections on my role as a change manager within the Taxation Office – a potential theme for a memoir.

Janelle noted that memoir writers often write more than one memoir as they have several themes running through their lives. The Australian author Shelley Davidow, for example, wrote 4 memoirs – Runaways (2022), Shadow Sisters (2018), Fail Brilliantly (2017) and Whisperings in the Blood (2016).

Janelle explained that a memoir becomes a meaning-making force that enhances agency and autonomy. She shared her story of heartbreak and challenge that left her feeling abandoned and hurt. Through writing, social support and somatic healing she was able to reframe her story from that of victim to someone with skills, choice-points and the opportunity for further personal development through self-employment. She rewrote her story by “piecing together somatic healing and memoir-writing as an act of service” that enables people to avoid the disempowerment of a victim mentality and experience agency through creating a new self-story in the form of a memoir.

In her podcast, Janelle talks to storytellers and memoir writers along with healers. The transformative conversations cover not only memoir-writing but also healing, narrative therapy and embodiment. Through the podcast, storytellers share how they have moved from victimhood to personal freedom and agency.

Reflection

Janelle has used her blog as a source of “personal mythmaking” by reflecting on her own life experiences as she shared insights on topics related to writing and healing. Her essay and audio on “How to Shift Resistance” is a good example.

I have found that in writing this current blog, I have been able to share my personal reflections on the topics I was writing about. In the process I have been sharing my life story. In reviewing the 775 posts I have published to date, I have been able to identify several core themes that would serve as the focus of separate memoirs. I have now chosen one focal theme and begun writing my first memoir using the Kindle Create program as my writing and formatting process.

As we grow in mindfulness through somatic practices, reflection, blogging and memoir-writing, we can increase our self-awareness and sense of agency and reframe our life stories.

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Image by Firmbee from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

The Space Between – Overcoming Overwhelm

Susan Sontag, in her book Illness as Metaphor, reminds us that we have dual citizenship – “in the kingdom of the well and in the kingdom of the sick”. At some point in our life we move from one to the other “even for a spell”. For chronic illness suffers this can be a very long spell which is part of the inherent challenge of chronic illness.

When Susan wrote about illness she was suffering from breast cancer at the time and took issue with the metaphors and myths that surrounded this form of illness. Myths include the idea that illness is “a punishment for moral degradation”. In her view, such myths only added to the burden of illness and failed to create space for healing. Susan also took exception to military metaphors such as “battle”,” war” and “survival” used to describe illness from cancer. She suggested that these metaphors negatively affect patient’s physical and mental wellbeing as they induce fear, guilt, and a sense of isolation – factors along with the illness itself contributing to overwhelm.

Susan was concerned that inaccurate myths and inappropriate metaphors induced a sense of helplessness, detracted from the biological nature of Illness and ignored the scientific evidence that many illnesses are curable through breakthroughs in modern medicine.

Finding agency in the space between

In a previous post, I discussed ways to develop agency in the space between illness and wellness (however temporary). This included strategies for exercising agency as a writer, employing education and research and exploring options in our recreational and/or artistic endeavours. I gave the illustration of Lucy and her exercise of creative agency through piano playing despite being totally blind and experiencing multiple mental health issues including autism.

Fighting misinformation to overcome overwhelm

Mal Uchida, writing for Havard Medicine, recounts her experience of having the COVID-19 vaccination while pregnant. She was publicly attacked in social media and received multiple forms of hate mail for her stand for the health of her unborn child. While expressing empathy for people who held the contrary view about the efficacy of the vaccination, she continued to advocate for its potential health benefits. Being both a mother and a child psychologist, she was able to empathise with parents who were making the really difficult decisions associated with raising children.

Mal attempted to counter misinformation and associated overwhelm and fear by sharing her own struggles, discussing relevant scientific information and enlisting the aid of the media and Japanese Government to communicate her message. She acknowledged the dilemma for parents, expressed empathy and compassion and sought to provide accurate, up-to-date information.

Strategies for managing overwhelm during life transitions

There are many transitions that we experience in life – including from childhood to adulthood, from wellness to illness, from a current job to a new job, from marriage to divorce, from loss to gain, from working to retirement. Mindfulness can help us to effectively overcome the overwhelm involved in the transitions in our life. For example, Dr. Shalini Bahl, author of Return to Mindfulness, offers an 8-week online course titled, From Overwhelm to Clarity: Mindfulness Skills for Breaking Free and Living Fully. This course involves a supportive community and offers mindfulness micro-practices designed to develop awareness, compassion, inner calm, joy, energy and equanimity.

Storytelling can help us to unearth our manufactured “life story” – that often involves “negative self-stories” that undermine us and create overwhelm. An integral part of storytelling is a supportive community that enables us to be truly honest with ourselves by providing “supportive challenge” – questioning our assumptions about ourselves and others while offering support to be the best person that we can be.

Reframing can help us cope better with life’s transitions such as aging or menopause. It involves changing our “negative narrative” and exploring the opportunities provided by “a different stage of life”. Marianne Cronin in her novel, The One hundred Years of Lenni and Margot, provides an example of reframing by Margot who is 83 years old and suffering from a terminal illness. Margot comments, when sharing stories, that at her stage of life she is “a childless mother, husbandless wife, a parentless daughter”. Instead of dwelling on the inherent losses involved in her stage of life she notes that “it was sad, but also freeing” because she was “no longer anybody’s” and was free to go anywhere and do anything she wanted. Margot ended up establishing a deeply personal relationship with17 year old Lenni through storytelling and the shared experience of a terminal illness.

Wintering – the process of letting light into the darkness in our life – can help us to identify the opportunities in the spaces between, e.g. between wellness and illness. We can let the light into our lives and the darkness of overwhelm through gratitude, intentional breathing, exploring nature and focusing on self-care through “rest and retreat”. Writing a reflective poem (as I did in my wintering blog post), can help us to reduce overwhelm and identify a way forward. It can even help us to see the “gift of illness”.

I have found that education and research have helped me to deal with the potential overwhelm of a chronic illness. I’ve been able to access resources about my MCAS condition through participation in global summits, reading expert articles and enrolling in a relevant, mindfulness-based course for tempering reactivity of the vagus nerve involved in MCAS. There are many free resources available online for specific illnesses, such as the Guide for Driving with Epilepsy that covers manifestations of epilepsy and essential considerations and safety tips when driving.

A meditation to overcome overwhelm

Mitra Manesh, meditation trainer with UCLA, offers one of their weekly meditations on the topic, Working with Overwhelm. In this guided meditation, Mitra discusses the causes of overwhelm in today’s fast-moving, complex global environment. Factors contributing to overwhelm include climate change, international wars and conflicts, economic uncertainty, rapid technological innovation and the changing global political environment.

She suggests that we can view overwhelm by envisaging a cup that represents a certain level of personal capacity to which we add information and visual overload, social media obsession, family and economic challenges, health issues and workplace friction and changes. The resultant overflow represents our overwhelm.

In her guided meditation Mitra encourages us to use visualisation and cultivation of options for moving forward. She suggests that we envisage walking through a gate to a large open space with grassy slopes, a water feature, trees and a fresh breeze. Taking deep breaths to imbibe the fresh clean air, we can begin to relax and feel supported within this visualised environment. The options for moving forward then include:

accepting something within our current reality (that we are resisting or denying)
letting go of a constraining mindset
thinking about who or what might assist us to move forward
focusing on something we can do now that is doable and important (“don’t look at the pile” that is the source of overwhelm – focus on one thing!).

We can return at any time to the envisaged, spacious landscape which provides “lots to choose from” and offers openness, support and potential wellness.

Reflection

When I participated in Mitra’s meditation on how to work with overwhelm it helped me to reduce overwhelm I was experiencing in a small area of my life, writing this particular blog post. We had just come out of the other side of a week-long cyclone and I was finding it difficult to focus on my writing. After doing the meditation I found that I could move forward by accepting the disruptive nature of recent events, changing my expectations and letting go of a framework for the article that was constraining rather than freeing me.

Simultaneously, I received an email from Shalini about her course, From Overwhelm to Clarity, and this gave me added incentive to adopt a new framework for the blog post around the concept of “overwhelm”. While writing this blog post represents a small area of my life, writer’s block had the effect of negatively impacting other areas of my life such as my ability to concentrate and focus on what I was doing.

Growing mindfulness through meditation, Tai Chi and micro-practices such as intentional breathing can help us to relax and rest, see a way forward, and adopt creative solutions to the disabling effects of overwhelm.

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Image by Plutozoom from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Exercising Agency When Living with a Chronic Illness

There is a story in chronic illness – it’s evolution, it’s manifestation, our proactive attempts to manage it and its resolution (whatever form that takes). Managing chronic illness invariably involves the three “As” – acceptance, accommodation and agency.

Agency refers to our capacity to have some control over our internal and/or external environment. Typically, chronic illness reduces our agency in various areas of our life because it creates some form of disability which can be far reaching or limited in its manifestation in our day-to-day lives. The challenge for people with chronic illness is to limit the loss of agency where possible and increase its presence in other areas of our life.

How to develop agency as a writer with a chronic illness

In a previous post, I discussed ways to develop agency when we are trying to write while having a chronic illness. In that post, I discussed specific strategies relating to writing such as setting your own pace, finding a comfortable location for writing, writing a reflective poem and starting small.

I have developed agency in my own writing despite having MCAS, a chronic disease affecting the immune system. One form of accommodation I have adopted is to reduce my expectations about the frequency with which I produce a blog post. I have also written a series of reflective poems to help me manage the symptoms and feelings associated with MCAS. I have also started a new writing enterprise in the form of a co-authored book on management (now in its first draft stage). I have had to exercise self-compassion with this project because of the setbacks I have experienced during my writing efforts – setbacks such as the bankruptcy of our contracted publisher, the loss of data, the serious illness of my coauthor, and a week-long cyclone and associated anxiety and disruptions.

Developing agency through research and education

In an earlier post when I discussed a holistic approach to MCAS and histamine intolerance, I mentioned the work of Beth O’Hara, FN, a sufferer from multiple chronic illnesses. Beth used her illness to motivate herself to research her own health solutions and to create the Mast Cell 360 facility which offers paid, holistic health interventions as well as free resources. Her research and her own clinical practice highlighted the role of the nervous system in the development and expansion of MCAS.

Beth’s proactive approach to understanding the role of the nervous system in MCAS was to provide a specialised, online course to help MCAS sufferers gain control of their nervous system which is variously dysregulated with MCAS. Her self-help program, Master Class to Reboot the Mast Cell Nervous System, gives sufferers some degree of agency over their own health improvement.

Through this Reboot Course I came to better understand the components of the nervous system and how the nervous system interacts with other systems of the body (e.g. the digestive system). The Roadmap incorporated in the course gave me insight into the vagal nervous system, factors impacting it and manifestations of damage to the vagal nerves. More importantly, the Roadmap provides strategies to address vagal nerve excitation based on the level involved. In other words, through this Reboot Course I have a way of exercising agency over my own nervous system and its level of excitation. This provides a proactive way of managing the nervous system element of MCAS which according to Beth represents 50% of the recovery protocol.

Typically, a chronic illness will have a pattern – good days, bad days; good periods, bad periods (of variable duration). Once we understand the pattern of our chronic illness (how it manifests itself from day to day), we can exercise agency by utilising the “good” times to undertake what we consider to be important and productive. This can involve writing prose or poetry, engaging in social work or undertaking part-time employment as Jennifer Crystal did with her part-time teaching while she experienced the difficult aspects of Lyme Disease.

Exercising agency in our recreational activity

Agency can also extend to our recreational activity – we can shape our activities to fit our physical, emotional and/or mental ups and downs. I play social tennis despite having MCAS which often means that my ankles and legs are swollen and I have arthritis in one of the fingers I use to hold a tennis racquet.

I have found that swelling in my ankles reduces my mobility. I find that the lack of mobility is very frustrating as this used to be a strength of my tennis game (I was a champion sprinter during secondary school). Now with the swelling I feel anchored on the spot, not able to accelerate forward.

As the inflammation is caused by sensitivity to some foods and drinks, it is within my control to limit these to reduce the swelling and improve my mobility. This, however, is easier said than done as it severely restricts what I can eat and drink.

Another related area of agency with regard to the quality and enjoyment of my tennis game is undertaking exercise on a daily basis – including walking, a daily exercise routine (designed by my exercise physiologist) and my Tai Chi routine.

I re-learnt recently that most of the power of a tennis shot comes from your legs, not your arms or hands. I was getting very frustrated with the arthritic pain in my fingers which caused me to lose power in my arms and hands. However, I have found that by bending my knees with each shot (as I used to do), I can restrict the pain in my fingers and hands and increase the accuracy and power of my tennis shot.

An added benefit of this form of agency is that by bending my knees I unconsciously activate my body memory so that I can access a wider range of tennis shots than I would normally play without the knee-bending. You only have to watch Grand Slam tennis to see how much players, both male and female, rely on bending their knees to gain power and to play a wide range of tennis shots (some even kneel at times to absorb the power of an opponent’s shot). So the simple act of knee-bending gives me a form of agency that increases both the quality and enjoyment of my social tennis.

Reflection

The challenge with chronic illness is to identify areas for increased agency and to experiment with particular strategies to activate whatever agency we can find in whatever window of opportunity reveals itself. Mindfulness practices such as meditation, conscious breathing, reflection and Tai Chi can help us to be open to opportunities for agency and to act on them. As we grow in mindfulness, we can gain insight, heighten creativity and develop the courage to act on our increased self-awareness.

The story of Lucy, a 13 year old blind girl who is also neurodiverse, is an outstanding example of what is possible when we focus on our strengths rather than our deficits. Lucy is a prodigal pianist who has wowed audiences in places such as Leeds Train Station with her rendition of the extremely complex Chopin piece “Nocturne in B-flat Minor Op.9 No.1”. She competed in a public piano competition with three other gifted pianists who were selected by Lang Lang, world famous pianist who was “speechless” with her performance and chose Lucy as the best of the four pianists.

Lucy achieved agency in the form of her creativity and musicality, playing complex classical pieces for audiences, by utilising her strengths despite her obvious disabilities. She has highly developed hearing and an incredible sense of touch – she learned to play the piano by placing her fingers under the fingers of her piano teacher as he depressed each key. Her sensitivity in playing the classical pieces astounded Lang Lang. She played at the Coronation Concert at Windsor Castle on 7 May 2023. Lucy has since produced a classical piano CD, simply called Lucy – The Album. Lucy’s story and her training through the Amber Trust and her teacher, Daniel, is available on video.

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Image by yoshitaka2 from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.