A Peaceful Resolution » Opening

The Nourishment Barometer

Andrew Lightheart — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:55:22 +0000

Since I’ve been doing yoga most days and writing some (thanks to Bindu’s great project) I’ve actually been feeling something I’ve not felt in a long time.

Nourished.

The past decade or so

I have worked for myself for 8 or 9 years out of the past 15.
Four or five of those have been in another country, where I’m always scared I’m going to be thrown out.
I have been working on seriously unhealthy money habits, and overwhelming procrastination. I have moved through a whole bunch of terror that was underneath that, and things are now moving pretty smoothly.
I have put on some weight. My waist was 30 when I was thirty. It has gone up an inch per year. I’m 35. I have looked at and looked away from that for years and years. I’m not fat, but I’m naturally skinny so…
I spent three years training in a very demanding spiritual discipline, then had to leave because it didn’t jibe with my corporate business.
I have run a business that traditionally rides on methods of sales with which I am deeply uncomfortable. Up until recently, I have spent seven years feeling every day that I need to pick up the phone and start calling companies.
And, oh yeah, there was the recession thing…?

And you know what?

I’m tired.

When I look inside, there is a part of me that is shrivelled, starving, dry.

Part of recovering from procrastination and getting sober with money was being ultra-vigilant for avoidance and complacency. This has left me even more sensitive to any kind of over-indulgence of what I want.

On the flip-side, it has stopped me seeing my life how it really is, which is pretty freaking great.

The past few weeks

We’ve decided to move back to the UK, where we have a small buffer of money to keep us going, rent is cheap, and we can get any mix of part-time, full-time or freelance jobs.
I have been doing 30 minutes of Yin Yoga, a particularly slow kind of yoga that unwinds.
I have been writing most days.
Past three months, I’ve been counting food points, and I’m losing half a kilo a week, apart from my birthday weeks when I stayed steady.
About a month ago, I bought Jen Louden’s Conditions of Enoughness programme, which is helping me to see what my real capacity is as a human being, not a superhero on a particularly good day.

And mainly I’m feeling this grief and relief. Regrief (ha ha). A part of me feels finally seen, finally slightly looked after. Breathing, letting go, sipping water, eating a little.

And you know what? Not only is the world not falling apart, but, actually, things are coming together.

I have a few months to begin putting together some helpful courses both on presentation skills for small business owners and on some of this un-freak-out-ery stuff.
I will have space in my day for the kind of ‘sales’ that suits me – quiet, online hanging out.
I will also have space for yoga, for meditation, for walks, for family.

And I’m beginning to grow a new barometer – a nourishment barometer.

I can tell when I’m being nourished, and when I’ve flipped into something else, often a bit sugar-y.

And it’s good. Warm. Loose. Still. Quiet. With a quiet grin.

I can eat without reading something.

I know.

And I want to say thank you to you guys for being such a support – you turning up with me on Twitter and in the comments here has helped me see that this is a good direction.

I’m thinking that, maybe, it’s gonna be alright.

***

Comments? Got ‘em? I love ‘em.

What’s your experience of nourishment?

Remember: no advice, no dogma, please. Just half-thoughts, things-that-occur-to-you-right-now, experiences, tiny budding things.

My experience of opening

Andrew Lightheart — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:02:24 +0000

Seeing as I expect to learn some stuff about opening in my Year of Opening, I thought it might be useful to benchmark my experience of opening and see if and how it changes over time.

(If you’re freaked out by woo-woo, move along, please).

In the past couple of days, I’ve moved opening up my priority list. I’ve set a reminder on my phone to go off during daylight hours on the hour. The reminder just says, ‘Opening?’

Amazing what that does to create a ribbon through my day. Also shows how unconscious I get when not reminded.

Coming into the present

When I get the reminder, one of the first things I find is that I come into the present moment. My experience is that I kind of wake up, like coming out of a reverie or a daydream, and notice my surroundings more. Everything comes into sharper focus, and I notice more than what’s in my central vision.

Relaxing habitual mental tension

I find myself relaxing my slight habitual straining-at-the-lead. I notice the thoughts that want me to want to be somewhere else, doing something else, or at least thinking something else, and drop quietly, even for just a moment, into experiencing what I’m experiencing.

Becoming a bit more peripheral

My habitual mental/emotional/’energetic’ set up is somewhat tunnel visioned, somewhat focused on my central vision, somewhat angled internally. When I open, it seems like I become more aware of the peripheries, not just in terms of vision, but also of my limbs, and the space around my thoughts/feelings.

Dropping commentary on what’s happening

Just for a second, I drop my mental story about what’s happening. What’s surprising is how easy this often is, it’s just so unconscious that I don’t notice.

Physically relaxing

On a mundane level, I find myself breathing deeper, relaxing my shoulders, softening my face. Sometimes I let go of my stomach muscles, and at times get conscious of the soles of my feet.

***

I have some idea that there are levels or depths or parts or something to opening (indeed, I have experienced these from time to time) so I wonder if other things will grow from this practice.

***

Yeah, not really a comment-y post, more of a benchmark.

But, you know, feel free…

My Year of Opening

Andrew Lightheart — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 02:08:19 +0000

I’ve written about Opening before as an essential part of navigating conflict.

I’m looking for a bit of focus in my life on my blog.

So, in the shadow of Julie and Julia, etcetereteretera, I’m entering a year.

A year of Opening.

It’s not a year of calm

Last night I wrote this:

***

My Year of Calm

Towards:

gentle
warm
opening
conscious

Away from:

grumpy
snarly
suppressing
closing
pretending

Especially in times of:

crisis and
conflict

Then I put two little arrows around the last two:

conflict and
crisis

It scans better.

But…

Calm does not hold inside it the values I’m looking for.

Calm quite easily involves suppressing, and fakeness. For me, it needs to be ok to feel angry, scared, embarrassed.

So I realised it needed to be my year of Opening.

Opening towards what I’m feeling, towards what’s happening around me.

Treating the present moment as if I’d invited it in, to paraphrase Pema Chödrön.

And besides, it reduces to YoO. YoO!

Hyuh.

So, er, what now?

Something I’m glad about is that this won’t entail me changing anything about the details of my life, or even what happens here (on-the-blog here).

I’d like to carry on researching the mechanisms of crisis and conflict (sorry, conflict and crisis), emotion, the mind…

But I just have a hunch that Opening is a key.

So… I’ll be opening, I’ll be writing, you’ll be reading, maybe you’ll be commenting when the urge moves you…

It’s good.

And there’ll be a significant test towards the end: Christmas.

And who knows – if I can find out something useful that I can teach, I’d love that.

So (*whinnies lips*) – Day One.

There are a lot of people in here

Andrew Lightheart — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:04:14 +0000

This week I was in a situation where a Person I Care About was in pain.

(Been working out how I can be a) transparent and b) protect the privacy of the people around me and Person I Care About seems to work. I’ve seen that movie where the person does stand-up and the content is about the people in their life and everyone gets all upset. And wasn’t that a Will and Grace episode too? Anyway – not going to be that person.)

Ordinarily, I would have dreaded that, and probably poked and poked them (either to cheer up, or to let me know what I can do) until some fighting happened. I know, not pretty. Seems my ability to distance myself gets lost somewhere.

However, as I noticed myself closing (rather than opening), I had a flash.

Parts, characters, many I’s

In hypnosis there is a practice where you talk to a part that is causing you a problem and see if, by listening to it and presuming that it has your best interests at heart, you can find a better way that it can do its work.

Havi also does a bit of this in a talking-to-monsters kind of way.

My friend Ceri showed me a diagram once that I think was based on Ouspensky’s work. It looked like a honeycomb with an ‘I’ in each one. It represents the idea that there are lots of selves in our psyche, each unaware of the others, and each one thinking it is the Self.

In our meditation school, there’s a similar idea called characters.

Or, as my friend Jane once said to me when I was freaking out on a meditation/regression retreat feeling pulled in a hundred different directions:

‘Yeah… there’s a lot of people in there, eh?’

Awareness yay

In the middle of realising that I was about to pick a fight, I payed attention to what I was feeling.
Irritation.

Coming from?

Fear.

When I felt the qualities of the part that was scared, I noticed that it felt like a young part.

There’s a whole piece of work you can do at this point about talking to that part and finding out what it needs and stuff – very useful. This was 2am, so I wasn’t really that into doing anything that complex.

All I did was kind of internally ask if there was a part that wasn’t freaked out who could look after everyone (including the young part that was scared).

Turns out that there was – an adult part that can hold its own in an emotionally demanding situation.

Grown up.

Able to keep perspective and realise that this was only a moment that would pass. Able to focus on the needs of the other person.

Result!

No fighting. No poking until fighting happened. Less stress. Bigger biceps.*

(*Ok not that last one. That’s an aspiration. If I could find the inner part that had bigger arms and could make him come to the surface, that would be great. Sigh.)

Lesson for you

Yeah – no.

I’m not going to do that blog thing about, ‘Next time YOU find yourself in a conflict situation, you should…’

It’s all a bit moral-at-the-end-of-the-story Littlest Hobo for me.

I find it useful sometimes rather than say, ‘I hate this,’ or ‘I don’t know what to do,’ sometimes it can be useful to say, ‘I part of me hates this,’ or ‘A part of me wants to do this and a part of me is scared.’

Helps.

(And, yeah, I’d be thrilled if you left a comment or subscribed to my new-born blog, but hey, you knew that.)

Navigating conflict

Andrew Lightheart — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:15:37 +0000

I’m a big one for over-riding principles. I think it helps to have a framework to put things into.

Whilst reading and noticing what happens for me during conflict, plus what works when dealing with emotions in my meditation practice, I think that the thing that makes the most difference is opening.

I’m even going to give it a capital letter to distinguish it from ordinary opening (cf cans, doors).

So: Opening.

Opening up vs closing down

I’ve been trying to map what I mean by Opening – as it’s pretty clear from my experience.

When I’m Opening, I’m softening, not trying to fight against what I’m feeling/experiencing, I’m moving away from the echo-chamber of the mind that makes drama into DRAMAAA!

My muscles are relaxing, I’m sensitive to the energy flows around me (if you’re into that kind of thing), I’m maybe breathing a bit slower and deeper.

Opening is the direct opposite of closing (which doesn’t get a capital letter because it’s BAD).

Closing is clenching, hardening, tensing. It sometimes has a bit of launching-at-the-other-person’s-throat in it, other times a cold, immovable you’re-no-son-of-mine to it.

Whatever, it’s harsh, and involves closing off to options (closing, get it?)

Example?

Err… off the top of my head…

The other day I was in a meeting with a client and a colleague. The colleague suggested something that I might do with the client which I thought, in a totally objective if not god-like way, was totally stupid.

Rather than taking it in my stride, I immediately closed. I got defensive, smiled coldly… you know, dealt with it in a really adult way.

Noticing is the thing

The thing I was proud of was that I noticed the closing.

First step.

This week, I’m going to watch when I open, and when I close.

The thing I like about this as a practice is that you don’t need to wait to be in a stress-y situation to give it a go.

My question: Am I opening? Am I opening?

Update on Friday.

(I’d like to put a link here to related posts, but, hey, there are only three of them so far… )

(In a not-witholding-things-from-you way, I totally think that I need to write a ‘better’ post, with more details, more examples, more something. I’m hitting Publish anyway.)