I recently read a post that said, “Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly.” These words were everything to me.
There was a time when I would have scrolled right past that post in a dismissive funk because I had no clue how that could be either possible or desirable. I never accepted that I was allowed to do anything poorly—I had to do everything perfectly. These words were heresy, they were offensive to too many gods, or rather, too many of my inner demons who lived under the dictatorship of the God of perfectionism.
This article is for the perfectionists and recovering perfectionists out there who want their lives back. It comes from a personal place: I am a recovering perfectionist.
“And now, pay attention to your breathing.. Breath is portable and the most intimate way we have of connecting to ourselves and our bodies.”
How often have you heard a phrase like that spoken in yoga class, or during meditation? How many apps and guided meditations do you think exist which make breathwork the priority practice?
It is true that our breath is a portal to intimacy. Our breathing space is a personal space and we each have our own relationship with breathing, which is informed by our experiences and emotions and might be different on any given day, or time, of our lives.
I personally don’t believe the universe tests us, and I find it a problematic idea to entertain. Living life as if something bigger than you is out to prove you wrong or right is, to my mind, a miserable way to live that leaves little room for self-forgiveness, risk-taking, creativity and experimentation, authentic learning, and a healthy free will. What if the universe wasn’t testing you, but loving you?
1. You don’t feel comfortable in your inner space.
It is natural for all of us to have voices in our inner space that are unwelcoming, self-critical or harsh and that can put us off going inside. But this is exactly where our practice is. We are gifted the chance to cultivate a good inner space: a sanctuary in which we have a chance to befriend ourselves for life. Just as when we cultivate a garden, every time we enter our inner world we can fertilise it with love, compassion and nurture until eventually it is our favourite place in which to hang out and always right there for us, whatever we are going through.
Practice
In cultivating your inner space, what would make it feel warm, safe and welcoming? What qualities of attention can you give yourself that make you feel safe and loved and able to open up freely? Think about what you need from life and from those who meet you. Think about how you like to treat life and people. Think about the times when you have been well supported by friends, a therapist or others in your life and how they held space for you. Practice bringing those same qualities into your inner space. They may be a sympathetic ear and gaze; compassion, warmth, generosity, tenderness, devotion to your feelings and wellbeing, cheerfulness or encouragement – or anything else that meets a need in you to feel accepted, and whole.
When you hear yourself being mean to yourself in meditation, you have choices. You can notice, be compassionate, and say “meanness is not my technique” and move on. Or you can understand the thought is a wound and work to begin to gently heal the thought. For example, if the thought is “you are never good enough”, you can remind yourself that every day you show up and do your best and you can call to mind and celebrate all the wonderful ways you have touched peoples’ lives and all the creations you are proud of. This is healing for that wound that creates that thought.
2. You Are Following A Rule Book As If It Is Gospel
While rules can make you feel more secure, they are not useful in meditation, which is at its best an energetically free and boundless space. We often have to spend our days encumbered by rules and we need a space to go to where we can recover our innate love of freedom and adventure.
The general guideline for meditation (note: not a rule, but an approach) is that your meditation practice should feel as far as possible familiar and natural to your particular individual being and that it should be as effortless as watching your favourite movie, listening to your child telling you about their day or stroking your pet.
Practice
What are some of the “rules” you have heard about meditation? Rules about making your mind blank and closing your eyes, sitting cross-legged and being completely still, not allowing your mind to wander or daydream for instance, come from the traditions of monks living in monasteries thousands of years ago and who were practicing ways of leaving the world, their bodies, their families and friends. These ways of practicing can be very lonely in our bodies today and hard. We do not want to find ourselves practicing loneliness in meditation, but by accident we are doing exactly this when we follow these methods designed for other people in other lives thousands of years ago. A healthy approach is to inhabit our own body when we meditate and to follow our own natural way, while cultivating meditation skills that deepen our awareness and help us meet any obstacles we may encounter.
It’s a funny thing, but we humans do tend to fall for the thought- frame that if something isn’t hard, it won’t work. Maybe this goes back to being given foul-tasting medicine as a child?
The desire for discomfort as a path towards feeling and growing is different from an experience of learning and growing from something we have found uncomfortable. In our daily lives, we will experience plenty of moments and situations that are hard – do we really need to intentionally practice “hard” in the healing space of meditation? A perspective to consider is, that when we feel hard things arising in meditation, we can use our range of skills to create space to hold and tend to them. We do not need to block, discipline or ignore any part of ourselves in order to be with what is hard. We are learning that hard is okay, and that often, “hard” blossoms into “healed” if our loving and welcoming attention allows it.
Meditating is generally easy and natural for our bodies because our ability to meditate is hard-wired and innate. It comes from inside us. It becomes harder when we make it harder. If you are finding meditation hard, it might be because you are using the wrong technique, following an imaginary rule or perhaps feeling uncomfortable with certain thoughts and feelings that are arising for you (see 1).
Practice
Think about moments that spontaneously draw your body into a sense of beauty, of being moved, of love, of fullness, of ease. Maybe you feel like that when you are gazing at the ocean, or taking your favourite walk or laughing round the dinner table with friends. And you suddenly feeling moved with heart-bursting fullness and gratitude for having friends and being alive. That is how your body feels in spontaneous meditative moments. And you did not make it hard for yourself to have those moments. Make a note of these and bond with the feelings your body has at these times so you can practice getting close to your real being, rather than imposing techniques on yourself that may have been invented for other beings or are imaginary. This is a way of finding that same welcome and effortlessness in your more formal practice. (A “formal practice” simply means you have consciously chosen the time to attend to and enjoy your inner world and its relationship with the magic and mystery of life. Another phrase might be “intentional practice”)
Tip: If you are finding meditation hard or lonely, find ways to deliberately invite more joy into it. For example, make a playlist of your favourite songs and make listening to them and being touched by them your meditation gateway. Go for a walk and make your meditation about looking around you and welcoming the diversity of life – all the insects, plants, flowers, trees, the sky, the air, the water, the buildings, cars, restaurants, people etc. The connectivity of life. You are a part of all of this abundance. Walk with it and breathe from it.
4. You Think You Don’t have Time To Meditate
It is ironic perhaps in the age of distractions from devices and social media, that we might feel guilty about taking time to look out of the window and daydream! If you can scroll through all your social media platforms for 10 minutes several times a day then you know you have time to meditate. You may tell yourself otherwise, but it’s simply not true. Your tendency to look at your phone is a sign you need a break and some time out in another space.
Practice
That same instinct is your call from within to meditate. Learn to recognise it as such and try using that time to be with your inner world – you can fantasise, daydream, laugh, get curious, express yourself and revisit favourite moments in meditation – basically that’s pretty much what you do with your smart phone. It’s up to you what you want from your “inner social media pages” and feed. Try it.
5. You feel Guilty For Spending Time and Space For Yourself And When You Meditate it Feels “too busy”
These two common obstacles are deeply connected and here is your exactly where your practice is. Many of us are taught that we must earn the luxury of time and space to ourselves. When we are a child, we think nothing of playing or daydreaming a day away and this is healthy for us – we are encouraged in this (hopefully!). Recovering that permission means recognising you have this obstacle – guilt – and working with it to make it something positive and healthy – the permission to be yourself, follow your instincts and self-tend.
Practice
Inside all of us is a craving for time and space away from all the calls to action. When we deny that call, we build up stress within our bodies which can be manifest in all kinds of ways in our lives. There is a time for action and a time for rest and repair. When we take that space, we see how busy our inner world has been while we have been away! Welcome the busyness – all it wants is to be recognised. In addition, all these thoughts and feelings are the hum of life inside you. Just as the rainforest is busy and noisy yet so serene and magical, so is the life inside of you. The more willing you are to enter deeply there and experience the buzzing and activity, the deeper you will go and the more magic and serenity you will find.
The practice is to tolerate feelings of urgency and stressful thoughts while continuing to rest within yourself. This is why your personal gateway is important – be it music, or a delicious cup of tea, a thought you love to hang out with, an affirmation, mantra, connecting to the spirit of your breath, a special place you love to be in such as your deck or garden. Explore.
In our instinctive meditation approach, we welcome every obstacle and make it an ally. Never be put off by an obstacle.
Where does a need to compare ourselves with others come from? What forces might be at play when it becomes a ruling state of awareness? And perhaps most importantly—in the interests of our emotional security, mental health, and delightful human capacity to be completely and unapologetically ourselves—how might we overcome it? In this article, I offer some insight into the comparison trap and a range of tips for getting out of it.
Speaking on the Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis podcast, I talk about the importance of finding time for ourselves and cultivating an inner space that can welcome everything we are feeling and experiencing without a need to perform, filter or block. This is Instinctive Meditation, an approach to meditation which is so relevant, rewarding and effortless that meditation feels luxurious and supportive, rather than a chore.
Creating guided meditations is a joy for me and a favourite part of my work as a meditation coach.
Of course, you don’t have to use a guided meditation when you meditate. Our bodies also enjoy music, the natural sounds around us or silence. Our own feelings, our imaginations and the natural rest-repair rhythms of our bodies can take us into an inner journey without our needing to do anything at all except show up. That being said, in my own experience and that of my students, a guided meditation can provide all kinds of benefits.
Meditation is an inner self-care practice where we have a fantastic opportunity to cultivate skills we can bring to our lives to increase our health and happiness. Although many people hear the word “meditation” and see the stereotypical cartoon of a person sitting in lotus and focussing on their breath, meditation can be something much more nourishing, dynamic and life-enhancing than that, and certainly much more active in our individual healing.
Whether you are using a guided meditation, attending a class or taking your inner journey privately, here are a few tips I have published on overcomingms.org for making your meditation experience a rich and rewarding one.
There is a great question for unlocking exactly the meditation, action or micro-practice meant for us, and it is: “What Do I Need Right Now?”
Right now, our mind-bodies are craving a healthy, practical, and appealing connection to ourselves and to all that is happening to support our nervous systems in their work of de-stressing and healing. We need a meditation space where we can cultivate such engagement with an embrace of positive qualities of attention that include welcome, love, compassion, and curiosity—rather than a sterile space of non-judgment and clinical self-witnessing.
In this article, I offer you a repertoire of accessible, practical practices designed to meet a whole range of specific needs we may have right now. There is no requirement to find a special place or move away from what you are doing. You do not have to change anything about yourself or worry about how busy your brain is or how intense your feelings are. You can bring these practices into where you are, who you are, and what you have available right now.
There is way too much shame in the modern world. It is a sickness – and all of us have it in our power to transform this shame. Kindness goes a long way, as does respectful and compassionate listening. Understanding we have different bodies and different experiences and allowing each other to feel confident in making our personal choices is often the difference between supporting someone in their suffering and making someone’s suffering worse.
A few months ago, a reader in the yoga teaching community commented under a post in the Shut Up & Yoga Forum Facebook group: “Lately I have been approached at my studio by apprentice teachers who are struggling with mental health problems but are afraid to go on medications. I’d say more than five, less than ten. They are afraid it will make them not a yogi and they are asking me how I do what I do and still practice. I think it’s crazy that this is an expectation, and I’d love you guys to cover this.”
When I saw this request for more exploration of such an important topic, I knew I wanted to throw my hat into the ring. This is an issue we are almost entirely silent on in our yoga community and its bedfellows. And yet this individual’s experience is far from rare.
The run-up to Christmas can be a tender time for our hearts. There might be no experience more exquisitely painful than that procured by being unable to reach the “magic” being piped relentlessly through every shop speaker and flashed across every screen. The experience that everywhere we turn there is a Christmas we cannot have can bring intense suffering.
As a mentor, I see a lot of people struggling at this time of year, and in full disclosure, I have to work extra-closely with my own heart in this season too. In acknowledgement of how important and wonderful it is when we share our strategies in this journey of the heart that is being human, I reached out to my community here in Brisbane, Australia, to ask them how they look after themselves and others and address the challenges of the season.
I believe the most meaningful work we do is when we share and connect in honest ways. What follows is a selection of strategies from real humans who have found ways to care for the aches in their hearts around the holiday season.
Is your phone secretly attacking your personal space and stealing your inner peace?
Credit: Adriano de Gironimo on Unsplash
What is the first thing you do when your alarm goes off in the morning, or when the sunshine gently rouses you from slumber? Before you have completely emerged from the depths of your inner dream world, before your eyes have adjusted to the light and while your vision is still partially assimilating, before your consciousness has transitioned in its own time, from interior to exterior awareness, what do you do? What is the first energy you capture as you come back once more into your embodiment and life?
Where to do you place your anchor, as you start to greet your life in this day?
Credit: Bruce Marsh on Unsplash
Do you perhaps reach for your phone?
Do you perhaps click onto a social media app and begin to thumb through words and images?
Whose is the first breath you breathe, whose dreams are those you give your attention to, whose voice is the first you hear?
Is it yours?
Or is it perhaps, the voices of a hundred – maybe more – other people, mainly strangers. Voices which say Do This! Don’t Do That! Here’s A Message That May be Just For You! And Here is Another Message that Directly Conflicts With That Other Message! So Read Some More Messages To Be Sure! Surely One of These Messages is Just For You!
And with these messages might there be pictures, offered through a hundred different filters, that together fill your head with imagery for every variety of breakfast, eaten in every variety of location, hastening your own inner vision to take a back seat and possibly for your digestion never to get a breakfast of its own?
Credit: Eaters Collective on Unsplash
As you scroll through these partial other- worlds, do you feel the first rumblings of a low-level anxiety? Do you feel a tug in your gut or a subtle quickening of your heart- beat? Is there perhaps an indefinable current of something like dread, something like insecurity, infecting your energy?
Are you feeling, perhaps, your own soul being tugged out of your body and beyond it? Like a retina, quietly detaching from the back of the eye and leaving someone visionless because they never felt it happening or perhaps simply came habituated to the subtle visual disturbances. Do you even feel at all, your own self leaving you behind?
Credit: picture by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash
We Know we Can Survive Without A Mobile Phone
For most of my life, a phone was something plugged into a socket in the wall of one’s home or office. I was in my early thirties when I got my first cell-phone and literally, that was for texting from my train commute in London to say exactly that, “I am on the train.”
I probably didn’t even need to say that, but I had the phone, and everyone else was doing it.
Before such times, we didn’t feel the need to announce our pending departures and arrivals. We didn’t need to share our comings-and-goings, let alone our breakfasts and our every private thought, with anyone outside of our closest inner circles.
Emotional Theft
Now of course I have a smart phone like anyone else, and which for a generous spattering of years was switched on all the time as if I were boundary-less and ultra-available – two things which are unequivocally untrue.
It took me a while to wake up to my own hypocrisy. If I know –which I absolutely do – that I can and must empower my health and thriving by taking authority with where I invest my energy and where I don’t – then I need to be super-aware of the power of this little device to try and hijack that authority from me.
I used to be that person who switched her phone on every morning before even taking a yawn and a stretch. This bothers me for so many reasons, two of which are that I am a pretty aware a kind of person, indeed I teach awareness for a living – and that I wasn’t even born into this world where logging onto other peoples’ lives and voices before one’s own is seen as an entirely reasonable and healthy habit to have.
Indeed, I have had many a conversation with young people in which I have attempted to explain to them that “in my day” people could still do their homework and find their way home before Google, and that being in a car without a phone doesn’t actually mean that if you run out of petrol, you will be in the gravest danger.
Credit: picture Neil Soni on Unsplash
The trouble with addiction is that it tends not to announce itself, but to creep up on you unawares. You don’t even know you are addicted to something: you simply are. The essence of a habit is that it is automatic. The habit itself has all the power. It is mindless. We use that word all the time about our phones – “mindless scrolling”. It is a classic state of unawareness and we know that the state of unawareness – of not knowing – can be a quiet state of profound danger.
What you do begin to notice however is how you are just not feeling good any more.
Our bodies don’t give us uncomfortable feelings for no reason. They don’t make us feel bad as an explicable means of self -torture. They feel bad to alert us that some action is required from us to make us feel better.
It is a simple and efficient exchange of energy. Our job is to wake up and step up. Wake up to what aspects of our daily health and lifestyle are affecting our feelings in ways we simply aren’t willing to tolerate any more and then step up for ourselves in the ways which always bring results. Those ways are investing in what nurtures good feelings and distancing ourselves from what is disturbing our personal balance and inner peace.
A big part of being kind to ourselves is offering ourselves time and space and creating protection around that with boundaries.
Phones, aps and social media are neither innately bad nor innately good. Like everything in your life, it depends on what prominence you give it and how it serves you. Here are some things you might like to consider when you examine your relationship to your phone and social media.
1. Could you easily let go of social media for a day, a week, or longer?
If not, then you could be somewhere in the territory of addiction. There is a diagnosable condition called “Nomophobia” – literally, a phobia of being without phone or internet. Empower your self-leadership by asking yourself why being without social media presents such a threat to you and try and drill down into what that threat actually is. What would you miss? What would you lose? How would your life suffer? Then ask yourself, but what if social media never existed? Would I be feeling all these things then? Asking these questions gives you a chance to see if you have simply lost control of a habit or whether there is some deeper need for healing that is being masked by social-media-led behaviours of numbing or avoidance.
2. How susceptible are you to outside messages?
The world thinks a lot of thoughts and so do you. If you are losing track of your own thoughts in the noise and clutter of everyone else’s then you might not want to indulge so much in this over-crowding of your head-space. Some highly sensitive and empathic people are embodiers – they are more widely open to external energies than others. This community needs to be particularly boundary-aware or it is possible not to know which are your genuine thoughts, feelings and opinions and which are others. That gets dangerous if you act on an impulse that is not your own. If you feel you have this level of empathy, unless you have developed mastery-level boundaries and protection, you might consider a high level caution when entering the digital space. (You might like to read this blog or watch this video for some ideas)
3. How does your mood change when you are on social media?
The only true way of discovering this is to deliberately get conscious of how you feel on days you are spending a lot of time on social media compared with days when you have been without it. Notice for instance, whether a sense of security and generally high mood starts to diminish after a while of scrolling through other peoples’ posts. There has been a raft of research from the areas of neuroscience and psychology that attest to a rise in mood disorders, depression and anxiety associated with mobile phone use and engagement with social media. Is Instagram a worthy guardian of your sanity, literally?
4. How much time do you enjoy in your own company, dreaming your own dreams and having your own thoughts and feelings?
For the benefit of our mental health and inner security it is essential that we have time in our own company, listening to ourselves. Self- relationship is our primary relationship. People are already reporting that real-life relationships can be negatively affected by peoples’ engagement in relationships online. There is even a new word in the lexicon – “phubbing” – to describe someone checking their texts while someone else is talking to them. Imagine that every time you are looking away from yourself at your phone every time you are giving a platform other than your own world your precious time and space, you are doing exactly that. And it is just plain rude and disrespectful.
5. Do you often find yourself questioning yourself, losing a sense of your own intuition, inner guidance and sense of self?
Within a few minutes of scrolling through your social media account, you can be here, there and everywhere. You can be in the political territory of right, left and centre, the geographical space of everywhere between the two poles and up into outer- space, you can be anywhere in time from the stone age to the future, you can be issued edicts from religions and atheism, you can be entertained with comedy, tragedy and downright farce. You can be in everyone’s body, at everyone’s table and caught up in everyone’s head but your own. You can be in heaven and in hell. This is on the one hand thrilling and lively and on the other, downright un-grounding. Know yourself. Can you truly be in all these spaces and still feel your own centre, your own guidance and your own truth? Can you feel your own ground? Or are you beginning to lose yourself a little or a lot? This is too important a question not to ask.
6. Are you sharing too much of yourself?
The fuel of social media is sharing. That is why right at the top of the page, Facebook asks you to post a status update.
Do you feel your business is everyone’s business?
Sharing is not a bad thing – it can be generous, supportive and touch peoples’ lives.
It is a great way of keeping in touch with friends and family you don’t see very often.
However, it has become perhaps more of a social expectation than was the case before social media.
It can seem sometimes that not sharing your every thought and feeling is ungenerous or even dysfunctional.
Neither of these is true.
It is entirely up to you what you share, how you share, when you share it and with whom.
Before you share anything of yourself online, I urge you to be mindful and protect all the possible outcomes because deleting a post doesn’t mean that no one ever sees it. Never put anything out there unless you are sure you want it to be known.
And remember to keep some things private -secret even – and just for you. You don’t owe Facebook anything – however to be successful, Facebook needs you to think that you do.
7. Get real and informed about the deliberate manipulation these apps run on
Journalist Catherine Price, in her book How to Break Up With your Phone, explains that Instagram “has created code that deliberately holds back on showing users new ‘likes’ so that it can deliver a bunch of them in a sudden rush at the most effective moment possible—meaning the moment at which seeing new likes will discourage you from closing the app.”
According to Price, the cluttered territory of links and ads and the short bursts of attention that are required by scrolling and swiping and tweeting result in a contradiction in terms: “an intensely focused state of distraction.”
“This type of frequent, focused distraction,” she says, “isn’t just capable of creating long-lasting changes in our brains; it is particularly good at doing so.”
I personally don’t like giving my precious neural pathways over to be re-architected and repositioned without my knowledge and consent. Reading Price’s informed book has really clued me into how not-in-charge of my relationship with social media the platforms themselves want me to be.
8. Are you lonely?
Populating your internal space with virtual crowds of people might feel like a cure for loneliness but in many ways, it is sustaining it. While you are staying in a room, glued to your phone, there are real people (and really good people) outside who, just like you, are looking for company and connection.
9. Is your job to satisfy peoples’ need for attention?
One of the dysfunctional uses of social media is by people who need “likes” and comments on their sharing to validate them in some way. The other side of that is we may feel at the mercy of everything seeking our attention and a misplaced sense of obligation to satisfy everyone else’s need for attention but our own. You could consider stopping scrolling for a moment, closing your eyes, and taking three deep breaths for yourself. or turning your head to the window and gazing on some of the beauty out there. Those things are worth a “like” too. And they will reward you with something far more nourishing than a tick in a box.
10. Are You Accepting the Full Invitation Offered by This Remarkable Life?
Are you spending time alone and time with others? Time inside and time outdoors? Times taking it easy and time taking risks and challenging yourself? Are you connecting to your dreams and desires and acting and moving in ways to progress them and make them happen? Does the air around you feel fresh or stagnant? When was the last time you were enthralled by birdsong, captivated by the moon, high as a kite on dancing, moved beyond words by the smile of your child? Have you felt the sun kissing your skin and the breeze playing with your hair as if to say “I am life, loving you back with devotion”? Are you regularly so in the flow of creation – planting your garden, painting a picture, playing music, writing a story, playing an imaginative game with your kids, building a wall….that you lose a sense of time and space? Life is enticing. It reaches out to us with open arms, longing to draw us into its magic. The world shimmers with mystery and surprise. There are miracles and wonders and moments we never dreamed could happen. Inside of you is an amazing bright being with so much to reveal to you. There are secret places within you far more enticing than anything the internet has to show you.
In the end, that little oblong square that is your phone can promise you nothing but more phone.
The world beyond it promises much, much more.
And logging into it requires no internet and no device.
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Would you like some practices and meditations for replenishing your energies, inspiring a strong sense of self and for claiming your power and your boundaries?
My album Strong Sensitive Soul has 19 tracks including talks, meditations, affirmations and instructional material just those that.
Modern humans are little armies of marchers. We “get through” things, we move on, we keep going – ideally in a forward direction.
We don’t pause very often, we no longer do as our forefathers did and tell each other stories of past heroic achievements, to remember and pay respects to our ancestral history and lineage.
Even the much used Be Present trope seems to be a command against looking back.
“Don’t look back, you’re not going that way” wins the award for bumper-sticker-most-likely-to-be-spotted-in-a-traffic-jam.
Picture Credit: Zach Minor on Unsplash
There is a problem with refusing to look anywhere but forwards and its name is self-doubt. When we are self-doubting, we can come up with any number of reasons why we might not be able to do something in the present or future. Self-doubt is powerful, it can be overwhelming. And yet throughout each of our lives is a path of perfect evidence to suggest that the idea that we cannot do something, or will never be able to do something successfully, is quite plainly false.
Looking back is exactly what we should be doing.
Once upon a time there were things you couldn’t do, and now you can. How often do you celebrate those triumphs? How often do you remind yourself that you have the resources to move beyond fear, to turn things around, to create new opportunities for yourself? How often do you celebrate your recovery and healing?
When I was a lot younger I had a car accident, after which I refused to drive again for ten years. I felt I could not trust myself in the driving seat. I did not feel safe at the wheel.
Now I drive everywhere and all the time. But I never forget what it took to get me there. I never forget my courage, my determination and what it took to rebuild my trust and sense of safety. Every now and again as I am driving on the highway, windows rolled down, singing along to the radio at the top of my voice, I hear a voice in my head saying “Girl, look at you now!”
I will never forget how amazing it is that I returned to a place from which I thought I would be exiled forever.
In those moments, I feel the steering wheel between my hands, I hear the roar of the traffic around me and I see the road stretched out in front, and a life-affirming, celebrating voice resonates through my whole being:
“Wow, look at me!”
It may be a small things to most people – driving a car. An everyday, ordinary thing. But to me it is a big thing, an extraordinary thing that represents hope and healing and the capacity we all have to do the things we think we cannot do.
This voice is telling me I am the embodiment of healing. This voice is telling me I can take charge of change. This voice is speaking to me of the power of belief in inner resources, this voice is reminding me I am a transformer and therefore I can never be stuck. This voice is singing a mantra to me: “Wow – Me”
It is because of this that I encourage all my clients to have a personal “Wow-me” meditation in their repertoire. It simply involves acknowledging all the things you have done that you once thought you would never do. It is a much-loved one in the repertoire.
I suggest they might even keep a journal by their bed, much like a gratitude journal but in this case a “Celebrate Me” journal.
Celebrate your spirit and your spirit will celebrate you back and empower you in those moments when self-doubt attempts to lure you away from what is your to follow.
My album Strong Sensitive Soul has a track “Inner Strength” – a meditation which may help during those times when you need to reclaim your “wow me”. I also recommend “I Am Proud of All My Efforts” – a free-to-listen meditation on my Soundcloud.
In this article I published recently on Shut Up & Yoga, I discuss my own experience of when meditation can be unhelpful and even harmful. This is a great way to explain how the meditation I practise is different, as an instinctive and innate part of who we are.
I am honoured to now be a contributor to the Shut Up & Yoga Community.
Many popularly-taught meditation techniques are failing people with anxiety. There are healthy ways to bring your anxiety to meditation, but you have to be aware that some approaches can make things worse. So what are the healthy and helpful approaches to meditating with anxiety? Read more on my latest blog on Yogi Spirit.
Call it logging into your higher self or reaching into your deeper being – or, for some people, connecting to natural wisdom which feels like common sense – we all have access to intuition. It is a native, innate part of being human. It’s just that we don’t all use our intuition or use it as powerfully as we could.
That is often the reason why we might find ourselves in places situations or relationships where we know we don’t belong, wondering how on earth we got there.
When we do engage with all our currents of inner wisdom and guidance – our energy, our feelings, our subtle-sensing beyond what is obvious and logical – we often find we make our best decisions. We meet the people we cannot imagine living life without, we find our dream job – the one that seems as if it were made perfectly and specifically for us – we manifest our best and most delightful creations. We follow our hearts into spaces which are healthy, joyful and meaningful, we curate our own world, rather having one imposed upon us like an ill-fitting outfit.
Personally, the more I have connected to all the sources of these currents, the more I live in daily gratitude and awe at how wonderful it is to be able to trust my intuition, my depths, my inner guide whose soul reason-for-being is to ensure my health, freedom and happiness and that I serve in the way the world is best served by me.
One of the ways we can understand what needs to be done to access our intuitive flow and live with the resulting abundant benefits, is to look at the habits and lifestyles of people who are thriving in their highly intuitive traits.
Here are 10 traits shared by highly intuitive people.
Highly intuitive people are self-aware – they listen to and learn about themselves from within. They are interested in, and pay attention to, their feelings, physical sensations and instincts. They also honour their realms of awareness beyond logical thinking, such as the content of their dreams and daydreams.
They feel inward before they feel outward into the world, getting clear on what their own vibrations are before looking for more information from outside. This habit allows them to be discerning about what they receive from the world and what they don’t, rather than arbitrarily soaking up all the energies coming their way.
They pay great respect to the physical manifestation of intuition in their bodies – trusting “gut feelings”, noticing what literally lights their hearts and allowing their bodies to take a reading on things before submitting them to their minds for more attention. They take time to ground their feelings, rather than asking their feelings to submit themselves to the patterns of their minds.
They are able to distinguish between what is learned information and training they may have encoded and what is their natural, innate wisdom. They do their work to release anything that has a hold on them that does not truly belong to them – body, mind and soul.
They have done inner work that enables them to identify what makes them feel fearful or insecure, so that they do not confuse feelings of fear, dread or doubt with intuition.
They spend lots of time alone and make spending time alone with themselves a priority. They especially cherish time spent in nature, which is clearing and nourishing. They use their personal space to listen to their inner voices and simply to breathe with their own energies. They are wise to the value of taking time away from stimuli such as screens, crowds and small-talk which are energy-draining.
They have befriended all parts of themselves and have learned to trust themselves, by honouring their needs and their feelings. This way they are in touch with themselves and are able to connect with and discern what is valuable intuition and what is simply chat
They follow their hearts. They are more interested in what brings them love, joy and a sense of meaning than they are in superficial values of what people “should” and “shouldn’t” do. In fact, the word “should” is pretty much banned from their internal language. Being mindful of their hearts as a priority, makes them truly heart-centred people who attract great friendships and radiate love, light and compassion.
They have a vibrancy about them as they know how to replenish in the sanctuary of their own energy fields. Their heart centred approach and sensitive awareness allows them to seek out and draw in that which is most healthy and vitalising for them as an individual.
Highly intuitive people prize their individuality. They trust their inner wisdom even when it might not make sense to anyone else. They would rather risk offending someone else’s sensibilities than dishonouring their own truth and wisdom. They are therefore empowered and powerful people who enjoy a sense of freedom from external systems and are immune to attempts by others to control or dis-empower them. They won’t be squeezed into a box because they live in their own, perfect, energy container.
If you are aware of external forces which are conflicting with your ability to fully receive yourself and your deep knowing, you may like to try this affirmation-meditation“I Choose To Claim My Power”.
Photo Credits all from Unsplash: Rhett Wesley, Ihor Malytskyi, Aditya Saxena, Brandon Wong, Jeremy Yap, Jimena, Jack B and Priscilla du Preez
How often have you got to the end of the day feeling frustrated by what has been left undone? How often do you feel as if you are carrying the burden of the unticked boxes on your to-do-list like a physical weight that won’t release you from a nagging tension that hinders you from feeling truly present with your evening – your family, your unwind-time, your ability to fall peacefully into sleep?
There is a reason why our minds refuse to let us get easily off the hook of getting-everything-done. It’s important to understand that reason and to see why it doesn’t serve our capacity for relaxation, pleasure and healing – the vital components of a physically and emotionally healthy being. It’s important to have alternative strategies to simply being seduced by stress.
Imagine, if you will, you were once among the earliest inhabitants of Earth. There you found yourself, without a map or guidebook for survival except for your instincts and experience. At that time, you were effectively responsible for the entire creation and longevity of humanity. You were the architects of the world we have now, billions of years later.
This is a big job. I’ll bet this job is bigger than any job you have in your life right now.
Whoever or whatever created you has ensured that you will get the job done right. You will need to be alert and awake most of the time, taking a schedule of shorter sleeps and even while resting, vigilant for the danger of being carried off in your sleep, or killed. You needed to be on a kind of permanent emergency button. As Rick Hanson says in his brilliantly-elucidating Ted Talk “Hardwiring Happiness”, our ancestors were probably nervous, cranky people, constantly on edge for danger. The catastrophic effects of stress that we are seeing our populations dealing with these days – heart attacks, mental health problems and stress-related immune-system diseases – were not an issue or a warning sign for our ancestors who were only living until about thirty years old. No. They needed only to focus on getting the job done and getting the job done well.
In the simplest of terms, our emergency button is alive and well. We have the same brains as our ancestors. We also have the same capacity for rest and healing and unlike our ancestors, a much wider range of opportunity to collaborate with that part. We don’t need to rely on short sleeps and we can’t afford to either. Neither do we have the advantage of a highly-physical life, as they did.
Our needs have changed but our brains are still giving us the “get it all done and get it all done well” cue, with the same level of accompanying stress hormones aimed at keeping us safe and alive.
Here’s where it gets interesting, and profound. Humans have two natural states of being: the action state and the recovery-from-action state. The action state is our motivation and enthusiasm and “get-up-and-go” feeling, with all the accompanying neurotransmitters and biological processes such as increased blood flow to organs and pumping heart. We feel comfortable in this “stress” state for periods of time, which is good, as it is what allows us to do the things we want to do in our lives with enthusiasm and vigour. However, we also need to balance the stress state with the rest/repair state – the one we go into naturally when we are feeling relaxed or in a state of pleasure – the one you hopefully get into when you are on vacation, making love, listening to music you enjoy or enjoying time in nature, and all the other myriad gateways we have to joy, pleasure and ease.
Our bodies will remain in the state of action for as long as we allow them to, or until we collapse. They will also give us cues, little nudges, to release the pressure and take a mini break from action. For those working in an office at a desk, that prompt can come as an urge to look up from the screen and gaze out of a window, stretch or daydream, for a few minutes. A few minutes of these kinds of “mini vacations” here and there throughout the day adds up to a super-dose of soothing and repair for the nervous system. Our bodies have the ability to refresh quickly. Basically, we are collaborating with our intuitive processes and reminding our muscles, cells and nerves that there is an “off switch” to our emergency button and we can come off it at any time we choose.
Indeed, our job is to choose. Every time we agree we should be getting everything done, and all the time, we are resisting our capacity for healing the wear-and-tear that every single body experiences in daily life. After a while, after years, of such behaviours, the backlog gets harder to fix. The build up is similar to the difference between having food residue and hard plaque on your teeth. One can be cleared with a quick brushing and flossing, the becomes inflammatory gum disease that risks us losing our teeth. We know we have to clean our teeth every day. We have to remember that we must come off the emergency button every day.
We need to be able to emphatically down tools with a happy heart that is satisfied with all our efforts and totally comfortable with things left unfinished.
If you are a perfectionist, you will find this hard. If you are someone who believes-without-question a voice which tells you that you are only as worthy as the amount you achieve in a day, you will find this hard. If you have not practised relaxation for a long time because you cannot resist the pressure of the emergency button, you will find this hard.
Like everything, it takes practice – lots of practice – for something to become intuitive and second nature.
In the case of the emergency button, we are fortunate that we get to practice every day. Every day we will be called by our love of action and called by our love of healing and rest. Our job – our empowerment – is to be discerning about answering each call in a way which brings us to a balanced energy body and a satisfying, productive and peaceful life.
Here are some ways to come to terms with your unfinished business and allow yourself to down tools and relax at the end of the day.
Begin to orientate yourself towards the truth. Life is never finished. Nothing is ever fully done and that is a good thing. We are privileged to live in the flow of an ever-regenerating universe. From sunrise to sunset, from Winter to Spring, from breath to breath, we are in beginnings, not endings.
Ask yourself whether not feeling like you have done enough is affecting your sense of being whole and embracing yourself exactly as you are – here, now, alive and uniquely gifted with a single individuality. You are not a robo-vac or a computer constantly churning out data. You are a human experiencing life. The range of life available to you is way beyond a to-do list or a pile of dishes waiting to be washed. The opposite of “finished” is possibility, uncovered territory, freedom and space.
Get comfortable with the fact nothing is ever finished. When you finally do take your last breath on Earth, you are unlikely to leave with your bag packed and all your ducks left in a row. There may be a half-read book lying open on your bedside table, a half-drunk cup of coffee next to the sink, an email you began but never finished. Signs of life. It is perfectly okay and natural and normal that there will be things left undone. Things, in fact, that have been begun. Life continuing, even up until the very end of your part in it.
It can be a habit to self-impose a rule of not starting something new until something else is finished. This is not the way things grow and live in bigger nature. In a garden, there are seeds and buds and fully- fledged flowers all appearing at any one time, and there are also plants which are retiring from life. I like to think of “begun” rather than “undone”. We are always creating beginnings. It is a fallacy to think something needs to be finished in order for something else to begin.
We can get into habits of being constantly dissatisfied with ourselves. Humans have a tendency to heat-seek what they haven’t done rather than what they have – what they failed to achieve rather than their many daily successes and delights. We can correct this balance by, at the end of the day, deliberately paying attention to those moments in our day which were satisfying, delightful, even remarkable. We can deliberately place our radar on the things we did do and give them a fair reception. Gratitude journals are popular, but you may also think of inventing something for yourself like a “Congratulate-me” journal where you record the activities of your day which gave you a sense of achievement, satisfaction and pleasure. As often-externalised modern beings, we really need to pay attention to where we are pleasing ourselves.
Actually add to your to-do list things that fall under the category of pleasure, relaxation, rest and delight. This will (a) train your brain to be alert for those things and for you to be accountable and (b) allow for the same dopamine rush as we get when we achieve anything.
Did you know indeed, that the very act of ticking something off your to-do-list triggers the release of the happy chemical dopamine into your system? If you are someone who often forgets to write something on your list and then does it and feels a moment of disappointment that you cannot tick it off, this is your permission to add the thing once done anyway and give it a big tick. It’s actually healthy.
Have a “down tools” ritual, a gateway which allows you to transition wholly from one action phase to a rest/repair/healing phase. That could be a shower when you get home from work, or talking the dog for a walk, or mean that you are savouring glass of wine and watching the sun setting its orange aura on the close of day. It could mean making the physical act of taking off work clothes, putting your laptop out of sight or switching off your phone more intentional. Be mindful of this important transition – from daytime to evening. Maybe take a few conscious moments before you leave work or at the doorway to your home to tune into your body and breathe, deciding what you want to leave at work and what you want to bring forward into your home.
If you like guided meditations, here are three which might help you.
Just knowing we can be an ally to the natural rhythms of our bodies and remain in a constantly-healing state can bring us a deep sense of confidence about life. We can flow from action to healing seamlessly, as we are wired by nature to do. Rather than feeling we are always running behind our lives, trying to catch up, we can allow a full life to become a fulfilled life, without any need at all for everything to be completed.
Photo credits – all on Unsplash: Atharva Tulsi, Tyler Lillico, Rob Mulally, Anton Sharov, Jeremy Bishop
I meet sensitive people all the time. As an empath myself, I am drawn to kindred spirits. In my work as a mentor, I find that many people who come to me are Sensitive Souls.
What amazes me though, is that so many sensitive people have not identified themselves as that or if they have, they have misunderstood what sensitivity means and can see it as a weakness or a failing rather than the strength and gift that it truly is when it is valued, protected and allowed to thrive.
When we are diagnosed with a serious chronic illness, we can find ourselves worrying that our lives will be impoverished and potentially a story of loss and suffering. I have lived with MS for 24 years and mine is a story of gain and of healing. Thankfully, though there have been times of tremendous struggle in my past as I learned to navigate life with such a volatile illness, I achieved everything I hoped to in my life and far more.
Strange as it may be to read this, I give a large part of the credit for this to my journey with MS.
I wrote this article to share some of the valuable and life-enhancing lessons that working positively, proactively and holistically with my MS has given me. These insights and ways of approaching myself and life would have been just as valuable to me had I not I had MS. MS has simply been the pathway to a better understanding of how to thrive.
Release the day and drift away. When crossing the portal into sleep, our bodies like to go through a process of feeling safe and cosy, of putting the day we have had away with positivity and welcoming the seeping of relaxation into our bones, as the tense and weary parts of ourselves sing their song of having lived another precious day.
I created this meditation to take you through that portal into sleep. To release the day and drift away. Snuggle down and settle in, sleeping beauties. A delicious night’s sleep awaits you. Sweet dreams, my friends.
One of the problems with meditation is that there is a lot of chatter and received wisdom about it swirling around that people take into their practices as unquestionable truths. Some of these ideas come simply from misunderstanding and confused language that has become part of the meditation lexicon. Others are practices used for lives other than the ones you might have and were never meant for our lives, a key example being meditation practices which have developed around monkhood, for celibate men living thousands of years ago and who had renounced life.
Nothing is more heartbreaking to me than people who have given up meditation because they have given over their natural instincts and inner resources to systems not designed for them or misleading meditation instructions.
So that being said….let’s bust some myths and reclaim a healthy and life-affirming approach to meditation. I haven’t invented this by the way – this healthy approach has been adopted by us humans since the beginning of time and is backed up by robust, replicated science.
“We Have To Concentrate in Meditation”
In life, there are thousands of ways in which we have to concentrate. We all have to concentrate on something and most of the time. We all come into a different range of ability to concentrate, so yes, we sometimes need practice. But meditation is not the place to come. Meditation is not the place we come to in order to improve our concentration skills. We can go to concentration practices for that. Meditation is not a concentration practice.”
“We Have To Sit Still in Meditation”
More than ever, we are a sedentary lot. We sit in cars, we sit at desks, we sit on sofas and watch TV. Our bodies, all the while are building a craving for movement. When we come to meditation in particular, we may very well feel this craving and start to feel fidgety and restless. Welcome this restlessness and ask your body what it wants to do with it. Dance has been a vessel of meditation in many cultures since ancient times, for instance. People who walk often find they get clearer about thoughts, have “aha” moments or creative ideas while they are walking. Even if you are sitting or lying down to rest during meditation, you can still respond to your body’s impulse for movement. For example, by swaying, rolling, moving your arms or hands.
“We Have To Endure Pain And “Transcend” Our Bodies During Meditation”
List the benefits of ignoring pain. Are there any? Our bodies are one of the allies of our intuition. Should we really suppress what they are telling us? Meditation is improved the more you are able to relax. Any holding or enduring of pain is counter to that. Further, we need to bring attention to that relaxation process. When we come to meditate and we begin to relax, often the first thing we feel is those little-to-big stresses and strains the body has been holding onto until we are not too busy to attend to them. Bringing attention to our bodies is a very important part of meditation. Not only does it allow the tense and painful parts to relax and release, but it can bring tour notice things we may need to bring to the attention to of a doctor or other professional healer in the outside world. Our bodies love this attention. So much so, that simply breathing with everything they alert us to can bring them respite, healing and renewal.
“We Have To Block Our Thoughts in Meditation”
If you try to stop thinking in meditation, you will fail. We stop thinking when we are brain dead. While we are vibrantly alive, we have the gift of this miraculous tool of consciousness, that deeply bonds us into being and expressing. If you want to make yourself really unhappy in meditation, shame yourself for having thoughts. If you want to be with your own naturalness and miracle of your whole mind/body/system, then welcome every impulse of the mind as expressions of the energy circulating inside you.
“We Mustn’t Let Our Minds Drift in Meditation”
Clouds drift, water drifts, feathers drift on the breeze……Nature is full of drifting. And so is your innate nature. There can be few things as relaxing and expansive as letting your awareness roam freely. Scientific research shows that we need to daydream to thrive. R.E.M. – the dreaming phase of sleep – is the most important element of the cycle. When sleep is interrupted and people miss this phase, they are deprived of essential rest. Decisions are harder to make, impulses are slower, moods are turbulent and they are likely to have more accidents. The benefits of meditation – clarity, restedness, peace, restored vitality – will not be there if natural dreaming and drifting is blocked from its range.
“We Must Close Our Eyes in Meditation”
Why? When you lose yourself in your lover’s eyes, take in a breathtaking view of the ocean or gaze in awe at a sumptuous sunset, are your eyes open or closed?
Like many meditation instructions, this one is often accepted without question. When you think about it, there is no rationale to back this precept up.
I have had many a student who, on being given permission to keep their eyes open, found it transformed their practice. All meditation is enhanced exponentially by engaging even one of our senses. A great way to open your meditation is to let your eyes roam and settle on something that draws them in and then rest your gaze there and feel as you do, your inner world unleashed.
You may find, like I do, that your eyes spontaneously move between both open and closed during the cycle of meditation – the way I explain this is sometimes I draw from the beyond and others, from within, and between those two realms is a connecting thread, a pulse.
You may like to experiment for yourself. And remember the saying – the eyes are the windows of the soul. It might be nice to keep those soul-windows open now and then, and see what comes into vision.
“We Mustn’t Have Emotions In Meditation”
To me, this is such a sad instruction. It is like being told we aren’t allowed to feel what we really feel. We come into meditation to experience intimacy with the flow of life as particular to us, not distance. Every day, life is touching us in myriad ways, with the unwritten agreement that at some stage we will come inside and feel those touches and tend to them. Emotion is – e-motion; energy in motion. Have you ever had a moment of spontaneous cherishing of someone or something and felt your whole heart fill and thrum with feeling? Behind that feeling will be your heart’s journey in the past and the present and even its perception of the future. All wrapped up in a sense of deep blessing. That kind of feeling-awareness is meditative. Our emotions play the song of our lives. It is worth listening to that song and entering it more deeply.
“We Must Be In The Now where “Being In the Now” means in the present only”
Do you have memories that you cherish so deeply that when you play them over in your head, your whole body tingles with feeling, as if you were right back to where you were then? Are you looking forward to something so much that every time to bring that thing to mind – especially if you go into the rich detail of it – you have a wild sense of being thrilled to be alive? Have you ever been so enchanted by a dream or fantasy that it seems as real and fulfilling to you as your ordinary life?
Our inner being is perfectly capable of cycling through many realms and this adds to our enjoyment and appreciation if life.
Great poets, visionaries, artists and film-makers have used this innate “time-travelling” ability we have to produce breath-taking creations and inventions.
The present in one dimension can feel very monochrome for a meditator. If you can be present in all the dimensions – well, then you get to meditate in colour.
There is a sweeter, softer voice inside you, waiting.
All you have to do is go inside and listen.
Listen to the beat of your own heart, listen to the whisper of your breath, listen to the call of your longings and desires, listen the roar of your love.
The love that flows through you speaks to you and shows itself this way.
For a moment, leave the commands and opinions of the world and be with the life inside you.
There is a sweeter, softer voice inside you, waiting.
The ability to empathise is possibly the most important of all human qualities.
It motivates us toward acts of compassion that can be life-changing, and even life-saving, to those on the receiving end. It becomes a precious gift to those around us when we can be where they are and offer them space to be deeply heard, seen, felt, and received.
Having someone else’s pain, fears, anger, and judgement fully inhabit you, however, can be a massive unwanted burden.
Click here to read my article published on Elephant Journal on how can recognise that you are holding onto energy that doesn’t belong to you,
A short, portable, do-it-anywhere-anytime-practice which is totally effective. For when you are feeling anxious … panicky … overwhelmed … over-stressed.
One breath to find your feet and ground.
One breath to find your body and come right back inside it.
One breath to feel your invincible, steady spirit.
It only takes three breaths.
Here, I explain the technique and we practice it – which takes more time than doing it of course. It’s very simple and based on principles backed by science. One you have this one tucked under your belt, you have a saviour inside you for those times that affect your ability to be function, feel safe and be bright.
Need a shot of confidence?
The most powerful person in the room is the person with the best breathing pattern.
Perhaps you have to speak publicly and feel vulnerable and shy. Perhaps you have an important meeting or crucial conversation and want to feel steady and make an impact.
Maybe there is someone in your life you need to be there for, spreading an energy of stability and peace.
This is a standing breath and affirmation practice for just those situations and any time when you are feeling wobbly and need to feel in charge. You can use it to prepare and rehearse and while you are in the situation itself. really works.
I do not know when you were born, but the first thing I want to say is thank you for coming.
Maybe you were a child who knew things that other people didn’t know.
Maybe sometimes the sense of that knowing lit within you a pathway of deep trust and instinctive guidance which kept you quietly strong. And free.
Maybe sometimes that same sense of knowing came into conflict with a world that didn’t care for what could not be rationally explained. Maybe sometimes you felt alone or ashamed.
Maybe you were also a child who felt things so strongly that there were times it seemed were your heart to stretch any further it might break apart. And that was wonderful when what you felt was joy or love or wonder but brought the kind of pain that can kill you when what you were absorbing seemed to be the sum total of all the world’s suffering.
Maybe sometimes you felt you could not speak your own language in your own country. Maybe you even felt homesick in your own home.
Perhaps as you grew up, you tried to develop a thick skin, or were told to. And then found yourself between that rock and that hard place of being either in a skin so thick no joy or tenderness could reach you or still encased in something so translucent, soft and fragile it didn’t feel like skin at all. Nothing can bounce off a skin like that – everything penetrates.
I too am one who know some things beyond knowing and this I know. We need sensitive people. Sensitive souls are keepers of integrity in this world. They are the healers, the peacemakers, the sages and the visionaries. The whole world needs you, sensitive souls. Now more than ever in the evolution of human consciousness. And we need you to be strong, supple and resilient in body, mind and soul.
So look after yourselves, Sensitives. And with at least the same amount of passion, commitment and compassion as you look after others.
As a soul mentor and coach, I am seeing increasing numbers of young empaths who hold such light, I can literally see it sparkling outside their body. They give with ferocious generosity. They change things. They see with a clear eye. These souls can literally love a person back to life. The main conundrum they bring to me is this: how can we keep going, how can we stay physically and mentally healthy when we are picking up so much toxic energy all the time that it is hurting us? How can we do our light-work when we are weak and exhausted?
The answer lies in daily self-care strategies. In this case, self-care for your sensing self, self-care for your psyche, self -care for your energy body.
There are so many things to bring into your tool kit and your world which I could share with you but there is one most important first step.
The very first step is to embrace, claim and love your sensitivity. This is your gift. It is here for a reason and the reason is not to deter you but to empower you. Be inspired by yourself – by the depth of your perception, the willingness of your courageous heart to care and by the inhuman strength you were able to draw from your magical self in order to survive whatever you had to survive and conquer in your childhood in order to stay close to yourself and keep your sensitivity intact.
And that ocean of compassion you hold in your heart for the world? Turn that tide directly into yourself and to all the spaces that might have had to lean on addiction, over-protection or unwise hiding-places for a while in order to keep going. Forgive yourself and promise to offer yourself something better and healthy and sweet.
Know in fact that from same source is indeed your source of self-care: that you DO care so deeply about looking after your gift is what will keep it strong. That the world cannot have it unless you say so. That it is something tender and distinctive. Know that it is okay and important to shelter and protect but you can do that in ways which are fiercely self-loving and empowering, ways which are healthy. You don’t have to hide yourself now. And the world wants your gifts. But let your shelters be the beautiful spaces that fortify and light you up: places in nature, the dance floor, hang outs with your tribe of like-minded beings, your meditation space, the yoga studio, the food that nourishes you, those things that pleasure and inspire you until you are full and replete with goodness. Play like a child
Do some of these every day. Lots of them. As often as you can. Do not miss a day. Fill up, fill up.
You will feel your power, you will visit it often, you will enjoy it, celebrate it, nourish it, rest it and renew it. Your love of your gift and its capacity to thrive in supernatural ways will remind you that Sensitive is Strong and there is nothing you need fear.
This is how you cast a spell of protection around you and your sensitive self. You find out how you thrive. You pursue those things with discipline. You use the magic mantra No to build a sacred boundary whenever you can between you and what drains or depletes you – including people, places, activities. And you love yourself every damned day.
Do you not have the right kind of space, routine, body, breathing pattern, mind-set?
What if I were to say to you – don’t worry about any of that. You have at your fingertips the one only really important thing you need to be able to meditate. You have you.
And don’t worry about how little time you have. The most essential of all meditation practices requires only one commitment and it has nothing to do with time.
And if you think the two most important words in meditation might be “Be present” or “Just breathe”, you might consider again.
The two most important words in meditation are Show Up.
Show up for yourself. Show up for yourself exactly as you are. Show up for yourself as you would show up for a dear friend to whom your door is always wide open and who can do and say no wrong and should you hope, be able to be completely themselves in your company.
As soon as you make a conscious decision to be conscious you are showing up.
If it takes pausing for a few conscious breaths only – it doesn’t matter – you showed up. If it takes pausing on the threshold of an argument you don’t want to have, holding back a thought you choose not to express, saying no to an invitation it doesn’t serve you to accept or any other moment where you have a choice how to protect and serve and give your energy…. That pause is you showing up.
Meditation is an awareness practice. Every time we are conscious and aware and awake to our energy – how we are feeling – and the way it is vibing with external energies – how we are being touched by life – we are in this awareness.
Here’s a Show Up For Yourself meditation in 125 words. You can pause and linger in it or you can be with it for a few breaths. You can do it at the start of your day, the middle, the end and any moments in between. It is powerful and it shifts things.
Here it is. Wherever you are right now, you can begin.
Show up for yourself. Be with yourself for a moment. Feel your feet on the ground, earthing you. Feel the air on your skin as a bigger presence supporting and welcoming your expansion and growth. Take your hand to your heart and breathe there. Ask yourself how you are. Offer yourself some goodness. Take a moment with your eyes wide open to greet yourself and life and honour that ever constant, and yet miraculous, relationship. You are you. And you are alive at this particular time in eternity. And each moment is a new moment. Now take one conscious step or stride towards continuation, from a place of wholeness in the totality of life.
I was recently administered oxygen on a long haul flight when I became afflicted by the dreaded motion sickness. That big canister of goodness had an extraordinary effect on me. “The colour has really returned to you face!” exclaimed one of the cabin crew delightedly. Other flight attendants went onto share stories of the huge benefits they or other passengers had felt from being given the same good air. And a good breath of fresh air makes all the difference when nursing a hangover or feeling sleepy.
You may have noticed that meditation teachers go on about breathing a lot. Why is breathing so important? Well, if you think about it, it is the source of life itself and not only that, but of everything that’s good in us. Breathing well matters because it influences our energy levels, mental alertness, digestion and moods and emotions. When you begin to feel a drop in any of these, notice how you are breathing Are you taking a full, long breath from your abdomen or is your breathing shallow and centred high up in your body, around your chest area? How is your posture – are you making enough room inside you for the musculature of your breathing to do its job properly?
One thing breathing can make a huge difference to is fatigue. I have been so conscious of this when working with the symptoms of MS, which I have had all my adult life. Good breathing has substantially lessened the impact of fatigue on my life and anyone who has experienced regular bouts of fatigue will know what a huge difference that makes to absolutely EVERYTHING.
When I was diagnosed with MS I felt a very strong intention rise up inside me. Not only to manage but to THRIVE. Thank you to the wonderful Nom Foods – whose commitment to healthy snacks is also inspired by a personal health journey – for publishing my piece.
I had a mantra when I was first diagnosed – literally, sitting in the neurologist’s office looking at my MRI results and the lesions which dotted my spine – words rose up from the depths of me like a blazing fire and settled into my being where they have never stopped pulsing. “I want to keep my vibrancy high.”
Read more here about the role nutrition has played in my well-being.
