Given the way that tensions are ratcheting up for those of us who live in the US as we enter the last days before our Presidential election, I thought I’d share with you a little exercise you can do to help you recover your inner peace if it gets disturbed. I call it “R&R.”
In military lingo, ”R&R” stands for “rest and recuperation,” and that’s a fine way to deal with stress—to rest from it so your mind and body can normalize. But in this exercise, “R&R” stands for “Release and Receive.”
It’s a kind of first-aid or emergency exercise you can use whenever you notice that you’re feeling an upsetting negative response to a situation or remark.
Here’s how you do it:
Step I: Release
First, notice where the feeling is located in your body. Is it in your chest? Your throat? Your belly? Your shoulders?
Next, find a way to describe it to yourself. Is it hot or cold? Is it solid, or liquid or gaseous? What color is it? How dense is it?
Is it in motion? Is it, for example, throbbing? Or is it still, like a rock? Try to get a good, clear sense of what this negative sensation really feels like.
Once you have it described, see if you can name it. Is it anger? frustration? Sadness? Disgust? Hurt? Disappointment? Fear? Some combination of those?
If you can’t identify the emotion, give the feeling any name to remember it by, like “Sally” or “Fred,” (No offense to any Sallys or Freds out there!) in case you want to call it up for a conversation later.
Now imagine that you’re pulling it, the whole negative feeling, from your body and placing it the palm of your hand. Raise it up so you’re eye to eye with the feeling and can have a talk with it.
Tell it that you know it’s trying to serve you in some way but that you can’t give it the attention it deserves right now, so you’re going to send it to the Wait Space (a little space in a back corner of your mind). Then curl your fingers over it and squeeze it down into a tiny little speck. Now open your palm and gently blow it away.
This completes the “Release” part of the exercise. You can, by the way, do it very quickly. You can even do it completely in your imagination if you are in circumstances where you can’t easily hold the feeling in your hand. But do it as thoroughly as your situation permits.
Step II: Receive
Once you have blown your negative feeling away to the Wait Space, keep your palm open and face up.
Imagine a stream of refreshing comfort, understanding, forgiveness, and peace flowing into it, and from there, into your whole being.
Bonus: The Conversation
To get the maximum benefit from this little exercise, follow up when time permits by having a little conversation with the negative feeling you parked in the Wait Space.
First, open your palm and invite the feeling that you sent to the Wait Space to return. Feel it land on your palm and lift it to where you can comfortably talk with it.
Begin by thanking it for caring so much about you and your values that it made itself so big and loud. Ask it if it has anything that it wants to tell you about why the situation seemed so important and what it wanted for you.Then listen for whatever insights might present themselves.
Ask it if it has anything more that it wants you to know. And when it is finished showing or telling you all that it wants to share, ask if it’s okay for you to let it go now, thank it again, and watch it dissolve away.
This follow up lets you receive the lessons to be learned from the upsetting situation. It can provide you with truly meaningful insights about what happened, why you responded the way you did, and how you might respond in a more effective and helpful way in similar situations that come along.
You may find it worthwhile to do a little run-through with the process right now, recalling a past upset or an imaginary confrontation of some kind. That will make it more real for you and help you install it in your mind as a helpful tool to pull out when it’s needed.
Many of us have deeply held beliefs that we have attached to candidates, parties, or issues in the upcoming election. And it’s our tendency as humans to seek out evidence for our beliefs and to identify with them.
Remember that someone who has chosen to attach his or her beliefs to an opposing side may very well, at the core of things, want the same things you do: well-being for us all.
Each of us can see differing paths for achieving the same ends, and the fact is that if people truly knew how to attain the world of goodness, fairness, and peace for all – the world that we all want – we would have already built it. Right now, we’re all struggling toward it together in a big trial and error dance.
Share your ideas with each other. But bear in mind that vehement arguing does little to persuade. And by all means, please vote.
Then, knowing you have done all that you can do to influence the outcome, return your focus to living the values that lie at the heart of your choices.
Radiate loving kindness and remember, no matter how things may sometimes seem, each of us can be a source of light and comfort in our personal worlds.
Wishing you a week of calm and peace, regardless of the turmoil that surrounds us.
Warmly,
Susan
susan@notesfromthewoods.com
Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from Pixabay