Finding Comfort and Strength in Difficult Times

A reminder that the Library of Guided Practices is always available to you online, with meditations themed by grounding, self-compassion, working with thoughts, and so on. 

For this week's MindLetter, a bumper edition, in response to the pressures and uncertainty around us. Make yourself a cup of tea, and drink it in a warm place, with something lovely in your line of sight.

Finding Comfort and Strength in Difficult Times

We are in tricky times. The general pattern of malaise, in this season of filigree leaf and fractal seedheads, is clear: through and through. Strikes, variably trustworthy media information, and disruption and uncertainty congeal into a broad institutional sense of trouble. Alongside, our people encounter the challenges of living and working in a capital city that – though beautiful and inspiring in many ways – endures its own crunches of capital inimical to human flourishing. Meanwhile, the wider world continually exhibits how the personal is geopolitical; then there is simply life itself, with its confusing, frustrating and even fearful entanglements of mind and body, citizens and souls.

In this climate, where unspecified existential dread can creep upon a person like an October fog, internal voices of doom may hover close at hand, in the opposite of the Lego hook: a subconscious clarion gong intoning ‘everything is awful’. When there seems to be only one direction of travel, it is only human to oscillate between feelings, fire-fighting what’s before us, while dank existential fog rises up all around, impeding our view. In times like these, we need wise practices, alternative ways through, to find solid ground under our feet.

Here are some to explore. You might cycle between them, and always bookend your exploration of the tougher terrain with sustenance, and resource.

1. Comfort: ground, anchor, steady

Going to ground is a fundamental animal response. When in overwhelm, restoring some capacity in the nervous system is often what’s needed to move through a problem in a way that doesn’t just recapitulate what first brought it into being. In very dark moments, make this the literal ground: put a blanket, duvet or favourite quilt down on the floor, and try sitting, soles of feet flat and knees pointed to the ceiling, back supported by a wall or the front of a sofa, with a cushion in between. Tune in to the sensations of contact between feet and floor, back and wall. You might press the feet into the floor, or rub the shins with your hands. By reminding yourself that you are right here, in this body in this moment, you are letting your nervous system understand that the tiger is not right here, right this minute. Whatever comes next, you are here, and you are ok.

To find your ground at other times, seek out whatever brings you some clear signal of comfort, safety, or relief. Curl up in an armchair with favourite book or music, just for ten minutes, if that’s all you have; pull out a warm shawl from the cupboard – you need this, now, anyway – and wrap yourself up in it until you are little but a protruding nose. Curate your environment: make a pile of your comfort reads – PG Wodehouse, children’s literature, wise teachers, or Cosmos, by Carl Sagan – and put them on your kitchen table, so that you will see them three times a day. Even if you don’t have time to read them, they will sit there reminding you of your longevity and resourcefulness. You got through before, and you will again.

When you feel chilled with fear, or antsy with agitation, warm and steady yourself with a hot water bottle wrapped in something soft. Extract the Best Mug, that you never use because it is so nice, and make the Best Tea in it. If you can’t seem to drag yourself away from your phone, deliberately go to your favourite photos and joy-scroll. Remind yourself of the walk you took, or the sweet face of your godchild. Then get outdoors, feel your feet on the ground, scuffle in some leaves, smell the autumn air, look for Arthur’s Seat or Berwick Law, feel yourself emplaced on the earth. Keep the poem you remember you once loved close at hand, like a talisman, and repeat it under your breath. Reach out to friends, to fellow travellers, write a card for that godchild: love is, for so many of us, the best anchor.

2. Strength: get to know the strong emotions

With a little more capacity comes the possibility of wise attention to what is here. This is not a martyred surrender to overwhelming feelings, nor a playbook of their most compelling imagined futures, but a pragmatic, gentle presence to their texture and form. It is knowing these emotions clearly, from the body up, that will help you harness their strength.

Here are some that you may find.

Anger, the emotion of tremendous energy; the one that creates boundaries, says a fierce ‘no’. Locate your anger in your body – a heat in the chest or a pressure in the belly – and allow yourself to feel its bubbling and roiling. You are not feeding it, throwing more furious narratives upon the fire, but listening to it, attuning to its heat and brightness. Listen too for the insight that emerges, the nub of what you need to do, say, or write next. The energy of anger can help move you forward when you are stuck, mark the boundary of what you will no longer tolerate; but watch for when anger becomes a habit, a gnawing resentment that does little to foster justice but everything to burn you to the ground. Lean back into grounding, then, and turn to the wise companion practice below.

Fear is our mind rendered a spinning top in flight. It, too, has something important to tell us: that something we care for needs our attention, caution, best reflection, allies. When stuck in it, for days or months or years, fear will make you shut down, quit early, or never show up; it will isolate you from those who could help, and turn those you fear into monsters. So honour your humanity by feeling your feet on the ground and your back against the wall, and drop into the actual presence of fear in your body, what it would have you know: the tug, squeeze, jangle or jitter. Feel how this can be in your body, but here too are the feet on the floor, and out there, the wind is blowing in the trees. Listen for the insight: that little hint. There is always a kernel of wisdom in fear, if you remember to feel the ground, breathe, and wait.

Grief, for all its pain, has a profound sense of health at its heart, because we grieve the loss only of what truly matters to us. Hold onto that golden thread, the life or love or beauty of it, when grief seems to wash you away. The body may feel hot or cold; grief can merge with anger and fear in a rollercoaster of losses, past or imagined future. Keep your feet on the floor, and tune into that steadiness amidst the waves as they come, knowing that they roll over and through, that there is ground beneath them, and that sooner or later the tide goes out.

Often it is not right away, but sometime later, that we realise what listening to strong emotions enabled us to learn, shift, or change. Think of yourself like the great red sandstone cliffs at Dunbar, moved and shaped by eons of sea, majestic, still standing.

3. The Wise Companion

When the ground feels like a cold place, and feelings embroil us only further in their spider’s web, reach beyond what you can see.

Settle yourself in that grounded posture – the sensory input will help speak safety to your nervous system – and close your eyes, or lower them softly down, and bring to mind a wise companion.

This could be a dear friend, parent, teacher, spiritual figure, favourite writer or artist; perhaps someone who was once good to you, or accompanied you through a hard time before. Maybe your wisest companion is the sense of the whole cosmos, or the geese flying over Aberlady. Whoever and whatever you choose, sense their presence, their goodness, near or far. Stay close to the body in this practice, the felt sense of bringing this being into awareness, the glow of them on the inside of your eyelids, even if it’s very small, the merest glimmer.

Set your compass upon that glimmer. Attune your whole aching sorrowful self to the existence of that glimmer, that pocket of goodness that is at once in your nervous system and out there in the world, a truth as small as the grain of sand in your pocket or as solid as the rocks at Dunbar. That goodness is for you, and with you. You don’t need to force it, or worry if it slips out of sight. Stay looking in the same direction, as if you were out at sea, and it will glow again. Feel its presence. Let it be there with you.

If this is a practice you revisit regularly, you might begin to offer the waves that come – the anger, fear, or grief – to the wise friend, spiritual figure, cosmos, passing geese. You might have the sense of stepping to the side as the wave approaches, aikido-style, so that it can give itself over to something wiser and bigger than you. Let the wave go, not because you are dropping it, but because its own wisdom and inherent strength best emerge from this dance, rather than from clinging tightly, or battling fiercely. Let the energy of its motion make its way through to form solid ground under your feet.

I wish you comfort and strength in your weekend ahead. Wrap up warm.

All best wishes,

Kitty