deep breaths

I’m not usually awake before the alarm (or Tom) but I was today. I left my phone where it was, charging in my study.

I went straight outside to my garden and meditated, without the app, without the timer. Deep breaths.

I did my morning pages. Had a coffee and watered the garden. Marvelled at the new leaves and pods that two days of heat has produced in my garden. No podcast, no music, no distractions. Just the relative peace of my street waking up for the day. Birds cackling to themselves in the trees. Deep breaths.

I just wanted to savour whatever window of time I could snatch where I didn’t know what had happened and anything could still be possible.

I think I’d like to start every day like this. Only without the gut-churning anxiety!

Sending a huge hug to everyone who needs one today.

when the bottle breaks

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay

“Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” - Andre Gide

I think we are getting a very clear message from the Universe that we need to get better at living in the moment.

When I started a daily meditation practice nearly three years ago, my aim was to get better at living in the present and meeting life on its own terms. To relinquish my need for control and simply be here now in my life instead of creating an identity out of stories, whether they were past dramas and traumas, or worries about a future that hadn’t happened yet.

I can’t say I’ve mastered it. I still get lost in drama and stories every now and then. But right now, with everything the world is facing, I am grateful for my meditation practice. For the past three years, I have been training my mind to accept every thought it has, including my deepest fears, and to listen to them with mindfulness and compassion.

And yet, until the recent pandemic crisis unfolded, I was still just as guilty as the next person of putting things off until X happens or when I’m fit enough to run a half-marathon again or when I’ve had my hair cut/brows waxed or whatever feeble excuse it might have been.

I still did this, despite having learned the lesson long ago that the present moment is all we have. A lesson which current circumstances are really hammering home.

Let me tell you a story.

A few years ago now, I was living in a tiny flat in the centre of London and I had a bottle of expensive body lotion on my dressing table. It was a Christmas gift and I'd been saving it - but for what, I'm not sure.  I would occasionally put a tiny daube of it on my hands when they felt dry and I wanted them to smell nice.  That's what I was doing one morning as I was about to leave the house for work, just picking up the bottle to put a tiny bit on my hands and be on my way. 

I must have squeezed the bottle too tightly because the next thing I knew, the bottle had broken, with jagged pieces of sharp plastic now sticking out of the thick lotion, and it had also sprayed lotion on to the floor and the wall. Just what you want when you’re running for a train, right?

Luckily, once I had wiped up the mess and got rid of the shards, I realised that if I lay the bottle on its side, with the broken side up, I could still use what was left of the lotion.  But it couldn’t be "saved" any more.  I would have to use it. So I did and, for the few weeks it lasted, I smelled lovely.

Why am I telling you this? you might ask. Because, like many epiphanies, it was a very small thing that held a much larger lesson.

Once my bottle was broken, that was it.  I couldn't save the body lotion for another day or once we move to the new house or whatever reason I wasn't allowing myself to just use it.  I had to use it now.  I had to just get on with it. The choice had been taken away from me. As it has with many far more basic everyday essentials, things we used to take for granted, now.

I don't think there is anything wrong with saving things for "best" or for a special treat. When you do indulgent things all the time, they stop becoming special and just become the norm.  So I think it's important to have a balance and definitely have some things that you do save for special times to add to that sense of occasion, and truly savour them when you do. 

But I'm not talking about buying a bottle of Pol Roger every weekend (though that would be amazing) and indulging in all kinds of extravagances as a distraction, although we all need those occasionally.  I’m also not talking about blowing your rent money on things you don’t need or can’t afford when you need to prioritise other things at this time.

What I'm talking about are the small things that you deny yourself, or put off, or only let yourself have when you’ve “earned” them, when actually those things would add so much joy and contentment to your life right now.

It could be a mug of that gorgeous, vanilla-scented loose leaf tea you love. The expensive shower gel that makes you think of ripe pears and spring flowers. New bath towels. Using the ‘good’ wine glasses, or the pretty dinner plates that your Mum gave you once a week, not just once a year.

It might not even be a thing. It could be allowing yourself to plant a garden. Get a puppy or a kitten. Learning to knit or play the piano.

Why, before everything changed, were you denying yourself these things? Why would you not have wanted to be the happiest and most fulfilled that you could possibly be? And are those reasons still valid now? It’s worth thinking about.

You never know when the choice is going to be taken away from you or when the illusion of control will be shattered. When you realise that even the ability to put something off for another time, an undefined moment in the future, was a privilege in itself.

When we save things for "later" or "for when X happens", we’re convincing ourselves that the future is going to be somehow better than what we're experiencing right now, in the present.  The truth is, the future is an illusion - it doesn't exist yet.  And the past is gone.  All we have is now.

So don’t put off your big dreams and your tiny joyful indulgences for another day, for a far off time where you envision you might be happier, more deserving, more accomplished, more worthy.

You are worthy of your dreams and your desires in life, right now. Just as you are.  

I realise that some things you want to do or treat yourself to may not be advisable or particularly do-able right now. You’re probably prioritising the basics like food and medicine and making sure your loved ones are OK over fancy hand cream, as I am.

But things won’t always be this way.

When all of this is over, I hope you will go and do all those things you’ve put off. And in the meantime, let yourself have the small moments of happiness and pleasure in your every day, whatever they might be for you. Don't wait until the bottle breaks. Or until you’re forced to stay at home.

Tell me, how are you going to look after yourself and live in the moment today?

what I've learned from meditating for 250 days in a row

"Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don't be afraid." - Fredrich Buechner

Apart from brushing my teeth, drinking coffee and telling Tom I love him, I don't think I've ever done anything every day for such a sustained period of time.

But on Saturday, Insight Timer* told me I had just meditated for 250 days in a row.

How does that feel, you might ask?

It's hard to explain, but I guess a rambling blog post is a good place to try. I don't know if I feel calmer - and calm was definitely something I wanted to feel more of this time last year, when my old friend anxiety had moved back in. After 250 consecutive days of meditation, if anything I think I feel my emotions more.

But perhaps the difference is knowing I *can* sit with them, and they will pass. I no longer feel afraid of anger, sadness or loneliness. All things I used to avoid feeling if I possibly could.

I don't feel at one with the Universe. There have been no giant revelations or moments of enlightenment. But there has been a clearing, of sorts. I do feel like I know my mind better. 

I have become more conscious of things in my life - and within myself - that I'd like (and need) to change. 

When you force yourself to get still at least once a day, you slowly learn how to switch your mind off, even if it's only for a few seconds at a time.

Those moments - those fleeting, precious seconds when I am actually not thinking and am just there, all breath, in my body and all I can hear are cars on the street, or the rattle and creak of the floorboards, or the wind or birds outside, or the oven warming up, or my neighbour leaving for the day, and my mind is empty and quiet, and I can feel the quietness of it - are bliss.

I meditate for an average of 10 minutes at a time. Occasionally I do 20 minutes, like I did this morning. I'd like to build up to more. That feeling - where everything drops away and I witness my mind emptying and getting still - has only ever lasted for a few seconds, so far. I've never been able to maintain it for very long but those few seconds are always worth it. They make me think "ah, this is the point of it all."

Meditation has helped me find ways to relax, to check in, to be in the present throughout the day, not just when I've got the app timer running. When you force yourself to stop and just be where you are right now, you start to realise how much of our mind's energy is spent fretting over the past and the future. 

Stress has not vanished from my life because I've been meditating every day. If anything, I'm more aware of how stress feels in my body. But when that happens, I employ a breathing technique which clears the mind and helps me relax. 

Meditation has helped me to be (slightly) more patient with and forgiving of myself, which I hope will translate into my interactions with others. 

It's become a wonderful way to start the day. I meditate before I do anything - no checking my phone first, and ideally immediately afterward I write in my journal or do Morning Pages (but that doesn't always happen). Once I've meditated, I go into the kitchen and find Tom has made a coffee for me (and unloaded the dishwasher!) and sit there, taking in the taste of the coffee, feeling reset for the day, my senses heightened.

Meditation has helped me feel more peaceful and content in my heart. Every time I hear the closing bell, I feel reassured that I'm a good person doing my best, trying to be kind, improve and move forward.

And that's worth making time for each day.

So what if instead of fearing the power of dark thoughts, we used our minds’ power to create safe havens within ourselves to explore them. Maybe literally envisioning cocoons inside our hearts where we can sit before cozy fires, hot drinks in hand, and ask of our fear and laziness and depression and shame and lust and rage and whatever other thing we might otherwise try to ignore: What is it you’d like to say to me? What indispensable nourishment do you have for the Life of trust I want to live? – Kristen Noelle (via Leonie Wise)

* Insight Timer is a free app and is the one I use based on recommendations from friends and well-wishers. I absolutely love it and am not being paid to mention it in any way! I just wanted to share because it has genuinely improved my life. 

adventures in meditation, part one

Every year, I've made a resolution to learn to meditate and start a meditation practice.

I've been making that resolution for about nine years, maybe longer.

The reason I kept trying? Because every interview with or profile of anyone I admire - whether they're a writer, a public figure, an entrepreneur, or just a generally enlightened and content person - usually mentions meditation in some way. That it is key to their creative practice, to balance, to keeping calm, to staying sane. That it opens the door between the person they are, or have to be in the world, and the person they want to be.

At the start of this year, a friend gifted me Danielle LaPorte's The Desire Map, a much-spoken of phenomena in the online world that gets a lot of traction around New Year, and with good reason - it's a pretty effective system for driving down into what you really want for your life.  One of the activities is 'Core Desired Feelings' and after much excavation and brainstorming, two of my four were 'calm' and 'wise'.

Much of the work in programmes like this centres very much around action and sovereignty when it comes to what you want to happen in your life. In other words, what do you have to do to feel the way you want to feel? What is something you can do, that is within your control, right now to get you closer to where you want to be?

The answer for those two particular desires I had identified in myself was.....meditate.

So, around the same time I did the Desire Map work, I began experimenting with meditation with the help of a wonderful (and free!) app I highly recommend called Insight Timer. This is the moment to tell you this is not a sponsored post, in any way, I just love this app! I think Laura might have recommended it to me too.

The app was great. But instantly I was reminded of why I had abandoned all previous attempts - because my mind was so manic, it wouldn't focus. I could barely get through 60 seconds.

"Just focus on your breath" - sounds easy, am I right? Wrong.  

After many months now, the trick that has helped me the most in learning to meditate has been thinking of my mind as a puppy in training. What do you say to a puppy when you're trying to teach it? 

"Stay."

So every time I notice my mind wandering in meditation, as it always does, I call it to heel like I would an adorable puppy. Hearing the word "stay" does jolt my mind back to the task at hand. A few breaths and it will stay, like a good mind. Then it wanders off again, and I gently grab it by the collar and lead it back. 

It's a nice metaphor, when it works! But my mind isn't always a cute puppy that comes back obediently when it's called. Sometimes meditation for me is like finding the puppy has destroyed the couch, chewed your favourite books and done its business everywhere. Moments like those, I set the timer for 2 minutes and that has to be enough. Miraculously, those 2 minutes do the trick. 

The benefits of meditation are seeping into other aspects of my life too. I find I'm calmer in general, able to let things go a lot faster than I used to. I get pissed off, of course but I allow myself to feel it, for five or ten minutes and then, frankly, I get bored and move on! I've also found I'm sleeping better thanks to meditation, even when I'm anxious. Even when I wake up for no reason and can't get back to sleep - the anger and panic at only being 5 hours away from the alarm going off, and then 4, and so on, has dissipated dramatically. I find that I can rest in those moments, even if I don't go back to sleep straight away. 

I meditated for 53 days straight over March and April, usually in the evenings, after work, before bed. It seemed to be working. I had gone from barely being able to do 5 minutes to doing guided meditations for half an hour or more. I was on a roll!

But then I lost my winning streak thanks to just one stressful and busy day at the end of April, where making time to meditate merely slipped my mind. Hardly a major crime. But over the next few days, I had one day on, one day off, and it just didn't work. Perhaps the practice hadn't been so carefully carved out as I thought. I found myself feeling really out of sorts and realised that meditation had come to be an essential part of my routine, like perfume, caffeine and morning pages. I didn't feel myself without it. Much like running. 

It didn't matter that I'd fallen off the wagon. In fact, there was no wagon. It's a practice. I just had to start again. 

Meditation has become part of my daily routine. My rule is "meditation before social media", which means I meditate as soon as I wake up, happily filling the space between being conscious and the coffee being ready.

I didn't expect it to change my life, but it really has. 

"Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end." – Jiddu Krishnamurti

More on this subject to come, as I feel it will be quite an adventure, as the post title hints! 

Do you meditate regularly? How do you find it?

rise from the ashes

I have learned many things about life over the years....this is one of them. It seems to be a theme coming through in my daily meditation practice too. Casting off the limits I have placed on myself even though I have ironically preached the "no limits" message in the past. Fresh from sleep, the rise and fall, in and out, of my breath in meditation feels like bellows on the coals of a fire that has yearned for so long to burst into flames.

I think when life tries to limit us, it's a test. The real limits come from us ("if *you* give in and let it"). We always have a choice, even when we don't like the options.

I'm ready to play a bit harder now. I'm ready to rise from the ashes.