Just One Glass .....

For anyone not raised in the UK, the relationship the British appear to have with alcohol may seem a little bewildering (although as a nation, we are not unique in our apparent obsession to over-indulge). Ultimately though, it’s one’s own relationship to anything and everything that’s more pertinent.

As a young adult, I drank quite liberally, because I wanted to ….. or at least I assumed I did. It was certainly the case that I fitted in better socially by doing so, and I felt accepted. Thinking back, I don’t know if I really wanted alcohol, or if I wanted to please those who seemed to want me to drink. My decisions were made quite unconsciously, even before the effects of the alcohol took hold.

Social situations now are different because alcohol no longer appeals to me. In some ways, I would like to claim that this virtual cessation has been a fully conscious decision on my part, but in fact, it’s been more of an evolution, it’s just happened. However, I have made one very conscious decision, and although it can, and maybe should, be applied broadly, the issue of drinking is a good place to start. The decision is to examine my set of ‘rules’ in respect of my relationship to alcohol. The rules of the early days were plentiful and yet more or less the same in terms of the outcome: ‘Thou shalt drink in social situations, and be outwardly irritated if the need to drive / take antibiotics etc inhibits this freedom.’ ‘Thou shalt accept alcohol whenever it is offered, because to refuse is …… feeble?’ ‘Thou shalt sometimes drink too much in order to be a source of entertainment to others, and if too much proves way too much then the ensuing hangover is at least the next day’s topic of conversation (along with the entertainment provided beforehand), and thou shalt experience a hint of inexplicable pride.’

I don’t regret the abandonment of these rules, but what have I replaced them with? Is it that my body is a temple and must not be defiled by such poison? Is it a quiet belief that abstinence makes me a better person? (And what does this mean on those rare occasions that I do have a drink?) Even I have wondered if there might be some truth in one or both of these, and this is why I want to take a look at my set of personal rules, the unconscious rules with which I govern my life: do they limit me, or do they contribute to my freedom and enjoyment of life? I suspect it’s the former. Maybe it is being unaware of the rules, rather than the rules themselves, that needs to be addressed, the unacknowledged shoulds and should nots about how life should look, and how one should behave.

Perhaps decisions are best made fully consciously in the moment, in line with what is real, and feels right. This approach may not make my social interactions easier: I can’t wear a label if I don’t have a fixed rule, but whether or not others wish to classify me, needn’t become my concern. My concern is surely that I’m living authentically and true to myself? There’s no real freedom or joy in unconsciously agreeing to a set of hidden rules, whatever their origin; instead, an attitude of self compassion and self respect will likely prove to be all that’s needed to make the most appropriate, fully conscious decisions in any given moment.

The Mittens Are Off

May I invite you to pretend for a moment? To pretend that you’re visiting a world much like this one, in fact so much like this one that as you observe the children, you see almost no differences. Closer examination of the general population however, reveals a mystery, something you just don’t understand. It’s their hands. Those with their hands on view here are in the minority whilst the rest are wearing what you can only describe as mittens, although some are much more robust, more like boxing gloves. You learn from a lady you meet that her father taught her the piano when she was a child. Playing used to make her heart sing, but the mittens make it too difficult, the dexterity she used to display, is so impaired now that she avoids any opportunities that come her way to play the instrument she once loved so much. Another shows you the hooks he’s holding in each each hand. They’re widely available here and do allow him to perform some of the tasks that he used to rely on his fingers for, but he readily admits that he’s overused them and now he can’t unfurl his fingers; or rather he could, over time, if he were prepared to relinquish the hooks, but he’s learnt to depend on them. Others you meet demonstrate countless other difficulties that you take for granted such as easily turning the pages of a book, putting ribbons in your hair or a tie round your neck. The clothing here has become very functional, and life has become noisier as voice recognition is the only way to write emails and text messages. They've explained their stories, but you still don’t really know why they cover their hands, and why they cannot or will not remove the mittens. There is joy here, but it’s muted as so few people live to their full potential.

You’re glad to return from that world that made you feel a little sad and despondent. It’s good to be back to normal. Walking through the park, you smile as you hear the excitement of the children in the play park, and there are three children playing tag around the trees, laughing and squealing at the anticipation of being caught. One of the children asks their father to play too, but he tells them he’s too old to run around. He isn’t old, but his breathing is laboured just with walking, and his gait isn’t very easy or fluid thanks to the excess weight he’s carrying. Later that day you talk to your neighbour, and you offer her some fruit as you think you may have bought a little too much. She declines as she isn’t sure if any of it might interact with her medication. She’d rather not be taking the medication - she’s been on it for a few years, and there are side-effects - but she doesn’t know of another way to manage the problem. She reveals that a friend has suggested that she manage the condition with a change to her diet and for a moment you’re curious, is she going to try it? But then she laughs, and you feel you’re being invited to join in and laugh too at the absurdity of doing something no doctor has ever so much as mentioned to her. No, she’ll stick with the tablets. For a moment, your thoughts jump back to the weird world of the mitten-clad hands, but you try to shake it off and carry on with the day. It won’t go away. The news you’re reading in the paper is about the soaring rates of obesity and type two diabetes, and in your mind you re-trace your walk back home with the heavy bag of shopping, remembering the huddle of customers standing at the counter of a fast food restaurant, and your surprise at how many of them seemed to prefer to consume their purchases from paper bags or cardboard boxes whilst walking, or standing at the bus stop. You’re faced with the reality that you live in a world where the beauty and joy of eating real foods that have captured the energy of the sun have been replaced by industrialised commodities which cannot function harmoniously in the human body. What you took for normal, is actually just commonplace. Everywhere you go now confirms this; so many people with so many limitations from minor ones to the more disabling and destructive, from the immediately apparent to the complaints of ‘sluggishness’ and low moods, and so much of it attributable, at least in part, to an eating culture that seems to promise so much, but is instead an ugly, painful and costly process of deprivation.

It’s time then, to turn away from that which is currently ‘normal’. Time to ensure that you know how to love what your body cries out for, to see the joy in eating real food, to understand the influences behind the collective and personal eating patterns that are forging such a disconnection with nature, and to gently and compassionately overturn them.

21 Days

It’s day two, (day one is best forgotten, it wasn’t a roaring success) and I’m bounding optimistically towards the station. It’s one of those little un-manned-request-stop kind of stations, so I’m quite surprised to see so many people there; it easily runs into double figures! Having arrived in good time, I’m a little peeved that the train hasn’t, and I’m about to get started on a silent tirade about British trains being incapable of arriving on time even if the starting point is only one stop away, but quickly stop myself from a full-blown rant and swap the ring I’m wearing from the finger on my right hand, to one on my left. Saved by the ring! The train is quite late now and there’s a group of people indulging in what I rather cynically call the great British pastime of complaining to the wrong person. It’s only when I realise that feeling smug about not being engaged in their negativity is actually negative too, that I swap the ring back to the original finger. The ring swapping is just meant to break into whatever negative stream I have running through my head, or worse still, out of my mouth! and ‘re-route’ me. I’ve read somewhere that you can change a habit, re-wire your brain effectively, in 21 days, and I decided to give it a go. For the next 19 days I’m going to be swapping the ring from one hand to the other every time I catch myself criticising, judging, blaming, complaining (unconstructively) not to mention verbally abusing myself!

So far so good, but then someone checks the live train up-dates on their phone and we all huddle round to find out what’s happening. The train has been cancelled. No explanation, just cancelled and there we all are waiting for a non-existent train. Tempers start to rise and everyone has a story about how the train company has let them down before. I get stuck in with my own story; it feels good to be part of this group and my story’s a good one so everyone’s listening to me. Stuff the inexpensive finger jewellery, I push it out of my consciousness, and nod supportively to those who’ve taken over from me with their stories. It’s only when it’s all over and the group has dispersed that the buzz subsides and it doesn’t feel so good anymore, in fact I liken it to a sugar rush and the dip that follows. So does this mean I’m addicted to this kind of negativity? I swap the ring over. I don’t enjoy the idea that I might be even worse than I thought I was before I started this experiment, so I try arguing with myself that this really is shabby treatment from the train company, and therefore maybe I’m justified in reacting like this? I choose to ignore the fact that they’ve actually got me to my destination far more times than they haven’t, and I’m irritated when I see a ‘complaints’ phone number on the billboard near to where I’m sitting. What good would that do? So now I’m indulging in the great British pastime with myself! I’m effectively complaining to myself, unwilling to complain to someone who just might be able to do something about it.

When I do finally board a train, I switch my attention to the complete absence of a reply to a text message that I sent hours ago, and swing so frequently from feeling offended to letting it go, that I imagine other passengers must be thinking I have some kind of nervous tic as I constantly move my ring from one hand to another. Reaching my destination LATE now has somehow licenced me to cast judgement over anybody who dares to dawdle in front of me and slow me down further. My fingers are feeling sore.

On around day 16, I’m out and about again but in a different town and I do actually feel different. There have been some good days, as well as some that have been every bit as challenging as the one above when I might have given up if it weren’t for the knowledge that where I started from isn’t somewhere worth returning to. But this day I would classify as good, although by and large, I’m ‘classifying’ a little less now in an attempt to break the judgement habit. Something MUST be different because not only am I feeling buoyant, but complete strangers are smiling at me for no apparent reason. I go with the flow just until the point where doubt sets in and I wonder if I’ve misinterpreted their smiles and in fact they’re an expression of amusement, so I quickly make a few checks. My clothing seems to be doing what I had in mind when I started the day, and reflections in shop windows reveal nothing untoward about my hair or face. So maybe I can just accept this as it is. And now I’m smiling for no apparent reason.

By day 21 I’ve already realised that although I haven’t magically transformed into an all-round nice person, there has been a shift and I feel more in control. Added to that, I’m generally a little more easy-going on myself which is an outcome that I hadn’t anticipated: I’d started in the hope that I might feel less angry when the world doesn’t work the way I want it to, and there’s still plenty of progress to be made there, but this starting point will be an invaluable basis in the weeks and months, even years to come. I know I can do this. The glimpses I’ve had have been enough to know that with continued awareness of my thoughts, the world will continue to look different and the potential is exciting, but for now, the realisation that I don’t have to be a prisoner in my own head, tormented by whatever happens, what might happen, or what I assume to have happened, well that's a sense of peace that’s been unattainable for way too long. 

Just A Thought ....

Have you ever examined a single raindrop? If you touch it, it loses its form and gradually evaporates. However, the effect of multiple raindrops is much more apparent and enduring. Over time, water can literally change the landscape, wearing away rock, making grooves in the earth’s surface, nurturing plant life, animals, and humans, or instead it can cause devastation. I don’t need to convince anyone of this, we can each see it for ourselves.

It’s the unseen and intangible that typically proves more challenging. How do we imagine a thought to be? It’s easy to assume, that like the single raindrop, a thought appears momentarily and then evaporates. The analogy with water works well; the raindrop may evaporate, but the fact that we can no longer see it belies the fact that it persists in an altered form, it cannot be destroyed, eliminated from existence. It’s much the same for the single thought, a measurable vibration of energy that cannot be destroyed.

Just as the single raindrop has virtually no impact on wherever it lands, so it is with the single thought. But equally, the combined effect of thoughts can be life-enhancing or damaging. This is where the parallel with water must end, although only partially; it is not just the volume of thoughts that creates an impact but also their nature.

It’s remarkable to me now that the ‘thought is energy’ revelation made me sit up and take notice; I simply hadn’t stopped to consider it before, and yet I was at least vaguely aware of the consequences of (mostly negative) thinking. It’s no hardship to understand that there’s some link between anxious thoughts and stress, for example; haven’t we all experienced a racing heart beat in the face of something we’re afraid of? And there’s enough science around to support our hunches that feeling like this repeatedly is likely to lead to a tipping point, the point where symptoms of stress-related illness begin to emerge. The difficulty we face is dealing with that sense of inevitability: stressful events can’t always be avoided, therefore the resulting stress in the body is equally unavoidable. But is it?

Once I’ve worn a ‘stress groove’ in my brain, anything I associate with the origins of that stress can have me in panic mode before I’ve had chance to evaluate it. Let me give an example: travelling back home after a holiday some years ago, the train pulled into the station at Dalton-in-Furness, not my stop, and sent shock waves through my body, or to be more accurate, that was my experience; Dalton is a benign little town where nothing ever happened to me. My stop was next, however, and being at home meant being kept awake at weekends by the sound of loud music from my next door neighbour, and this is what arriving at the-next-but-one station signalled for me. At the back of my mind, throughout my ‘suffering’, I was aware that not everyone would respond the way I was doing; were they just made of stronger stuff, or was there something I could do differently?

I now know that the latter is certainly relevant. If I can create a ‘stress groove’, however unwittingly, then I must also have the capacity to reverse the process, and even create ‘peace grooves’! The process may not be particularly swift or easy, but then how long did it take me to build up so much anxiety that the sight of a small, innocuous Furness town could have my body preparing for fight or flight?

The key is awareness. The study of neuroplasticity has shown quite definitively that we can literally influence the physical structure of our brains, but to acquire new grooves that will bring us more peace (and subsequently better health!), we must become aware of our thoughts, which is quite different from the typical default position whereby our thoughts control us and all our reactions. If this is new to you, just stop for a moment, and put all your focus on one thing whether it be a part of your body, an external object or your breathing. Notice when a thought comes. Decide to let it pass. When other thoughts arise, let them go too. This is a type of mental training, you might say, and just as regular physical training builds muscle, regular thought observation (or mindfulness meditation) strengthens areas of the brain that allow for greater peace, more focus, clarity, and efficiency as well as the potential to lead to more spiritual understandings if that is your choice.

There are some excellent books that expand on any of the above: the power of thoughts, neuroplasticity, brain and mind, meditation and mindfulness. I am happy to recommend any that I have read.

Tranquility's Potential

Picture a room with a large table. Many people are gathered around this table and the buzz of chatter is unrelenting. Some are having a heated discussion, each certain that he is right and this must be demonstrated! Others are talking excitedly about forthcoming plans, while some are complaining about the way things are. At the opposite end of the table from you is a woman, strikingly serene and saying very little, however when she does speak, you see a transformation in the faces of those nearest to her, those who can hear her. You want to hear what she has to say, but the noise in the room makes it impossible. With concerted effort, you focus all of your attention on her, moving your focus away from the chatter. You realise that although you cannot hear her voice, you can begin to get a sense of what she’s conveying by looking for other clues: her gestures, the movement of her lips. Over the course of the evening, you return your attention to her again and again, sometimes she isn’t speaking, sometimes you struggle to decipher what she’s saying, but just occasionally, you understand and you have a sense of contentment and gratitude, as what you’ve gleaned from her has great meaning for you.

What if a similar scenario plays out in our heads, but the chatter is all our own? What are we missing? We’re conditioned to believe that excitement is synonymous with activity and stimulation, but is it not exciting to obtain answers to questions, solutions to problems? It is in a state of peaceful tranquility that answers to even difficult questions can be found. It requires that we take the focus of our attention away from our ‘chatter’ and let it rest on the peace and serenity beneath it, knowing that answers do come if we’re patiently persistent in our efforts.

If meditation is proving difficult, ask a question at the start and let it go. Adopt a childlike excitement for ‘what might happen next’ and stay alert, ready for an answer. Be open-minded; each time is different, you may not get an answer this time, you may get answers to other questions or you may be inspired by something completely new. The possibilities are limitless.