Tag Archives: improving life

HAVE YOU GOT A SACRED SPACE?

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We all know what someone means when they describe somewhere as a hellhole, yet I don’t think we are as clear about what it means to have a sacred space. We get it muddled with religious things instead of recognising sacred spaces as essential to our well-being.

Sacred means holy or blessed. It has come to be associated with churches and temples, yet there are so many more sacred spaces than that – and not all those spaces designated as sacred have the real feeling of a truly sacred space.

For me, a sacred space has the immediate effect of calming and quieting me. It has an atmosphere imbued with peace and comfort, where we can settle and re-centre ourselves. It is by this effect that I would say we recognise the sacred spaces.

They may be old churches or cathedrals, they may be Buddhist or Hindu temples, they may be a synagogue or a mosque – any such buildings that seem to have the air and stones filled with peace and goodwill.

On the other hand, a sacred space could be out in nature – maybe a site of ancient worship, or maybe just a place blessed by being allowed to maintain its natural state of grace, calm and perspective. There are meadows, woodlands, hilltops, valleys, riverbanks, beaches, that just elicit an ‘Aaah!’ from us when we reach that space and sit in it for a moment.

These sacred spaces are important for our well-being. When life is busy, hectic, turbulent, we all benefit from a little while in a place that exudes calm.

So recognise and take advantage of the ones that work for you, and seek them out, to soothe your soul.

And consider the possibility of creating a sacred space of your own. I created a labyrinth in one of my gardens – you don’t need to go that far!! Just dedicate a small part of your garden, or of an indoors room, as a sacred space for you. Put beautiful, peace-provoking things in it to look at or feel, and make it easy to sit there for a while. Give it your own blessing, in your own way.

We all deserve moments of peace and calm in our lives, and sacred spaces give us that for free, so use them and add your moment of peace to the sacred atmosphere there.

HAVE YOU NOTICED THE FREE GIFTS COMING YOUR WAY TODAY?

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When I visit Maui, it is impossible to ignore the free gifts we all get offered every day, because they are there in front of me – and maybe that is because I am not being busy with my life, and therefore take the time to notice them. I’m talking about the weather that enables our plants to grow. I’m talking about the fruit and vegetables we have to eat as a result of that weather – OK, I know that in the UK we have to pay for them unless we grow our own!

Then there are trees and flowers with their individuality, beauty and changing nature, there are hills and mountains, beach and sea – landscapes of all types to delight the eyes. And what about the birds that sing, the butterflies that dance around the flowers, the bees gathering nectar – so many beautiful things that we can appreciate at no cost.

Just spending a little while noticing what the world offers us to enjoy for free is a great way of feeding our soul, and there is always something available. I watched a lovely little video where people in a not very pleasant neighbourhood were given an empty picture frame and asked to find something beautiful to frame with it. By looking around and up instead of just walking through, they all found something to frame. (This group does lots of great things like this. If you want to take a look, here’s the link to their site: https://www.youtube.com/user/soulpancake ).

Noticing these free gifts gives us a little space in our hectic lives, a chance to regain some perspective. When you watch the birds, the plants, the stars, they exemplify the natural way of being in the world. They don’t rush, they don’t struggle against how things are, they don’t worry about what might happen next! They remind us that we are natural living beings too, even if we are not conscious of it.

There is also something calming about the rhythm of nature: rain on the window, wind in the trees, birds flying – it all has a soothing effect on us and quiets down our bodies and minds.

So give yourself five minutes every day just to notice and appreciate the gifts of the world around us, and allow yourself a little break from the pressures of everyday life.

 

‘What is this life if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs

And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,

Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,

Streams full of stars, like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,

And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can

Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,

We have no time to stand and stare.’

By William Henry Davies

HUGS

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Anyone who knows me will know that I’m a ‘touchy-feely’ person, as one of my colleagues described me. I tend to make physical contact with people when I’m with them, and I love hugs! They are a simple and direct way of expressing love – no messy awkward words, just a warm embrace.

Do you give and get hugs enough? Several years ago, we did an event for Comic Relief where we gave out almost free hugs in the city centre; a donation of any kind got you a big heartfelt hug. It was both heart-warming and heart-breaking. There were people who said they hadn’t been hugged for over a year; there were teenagers who came back for second and third go’s; there were parents who sent their children forward for a hug. We hugged so many people that our arms ached at the end of it! It felt as if we were offering a public service that was desperately needed, and appreciated. Yet we are all capable of giving a hug to someone.

The benefits of hugs are enormous, to the giver and the receiver: both automatically release oxytocin into their bloodstreams with a heartfelt hug. This affects us emotionally – we feel happier – and also physically: it helps us to stay healthy. And hugs are a form of communication that goes past the ‘edges’ that can develop between us and goes to the core of just showing affection.

Now not everyone is a hugger – some people shrink away from that full embrace. The colleague I mentioned earlier, who said I was touchy-feely was just embarrassed if I went to hug him. So we developed a different form. He would lightly punch my arm and I would hold his fist there for a second or two with my hand. Sounds daft doesn’t it! But even that much physical contact makes a difference to how we feel, more than words ever can.

So put an arm round a shoulder, touch an arm, hold a hand for a moment, or go for that big hug, and share a moment of that health-giving connection – it’s good for all of us!

THE FULL CONNECTION

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Recently I have been reminded of how much difference it makes to our connection with others to be able to be with them, in the same space.

I went to see Nigel Kennedy play his latest version of The Four Seasons by Vivaldi. The man is outstanding as a violinist and elicits divine music from his instrument, but seeing him live is a far bigger experience then just hearing him play. He is delightful, down-to-earth, funny and engaging, and he creates far more than just his music. He inspires those who play in his orchestra to give of their best as well, and makes everyone feel part of a special experience. It is so much more than you could ever get from a recording!

Although I don’t know him personally, I feel as if we are connected, and my soul is fed by his humanity as well as his music – a double whammy of delight.

I have also recently had the chance to spend time with a darling friend whom I only see occasionally. We talk often on the phone and are very close, but live a long way from each other. That closeness is enriched every time we do actually meet up. Being physically there with him allows us to feel connected in a way that a phone call can never do. Words cannot replicate the experience of actually being with someone you love and who loves you – in fact, words are the least of it. There is a visceral, heart-led level of communication that only happens when we are in the same physical space.

Now there is a caveat: this effect is true whether it is a positive or negative experience, because the amplification of our reactions and emotions happens in both directions. So it is important to differentiate between those you already feel positively about and those you already feel negatively about. On the other hand, if we go into a situation with someone else we’re not sure of with an open heart, open to the possibility of it being an enrichment of our relationship, then it is often a way of enhancing the relationship by connecting at the level of our common humanity.

At the very least, give yourself the delight, whenever possible, of making this full connection with those who feed your soul. We are designed, as humans, to make this type of connection with each other, and to thrive on it. We are depriving ourselves and others if we limit our contact to recordings, emails, Facebook, phones.

There is nothing that lifts the spirit like a full connection with someone – so get as much of it as you can!

THE RIGHT TIME

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We all know that time doesn’t exactly work like its supposed to. Our chronological description of time, carefully measured in seconds, minutes, hours, doesn’t match with our actual experience of it. Sometimes a minute seems like ages, and sometimes an hour flies by and we wonder where the time went. This makes our lives more complex because we have to balance our experience of time with the expectation that we will work to the clock, so we can coincide with others in meetings, mealtimes, train timetables etc.

And there is another version of time as well, that most of us ignore, because there’s enough to handle already! Yet it is related to our real experience of time and can be very useful to us, should we choose to rediscover it.

The ancient Greeks had two words for time. There was ‘chronos’, the measurement of time passing – where we get chronological from. And there was also ‘kairos’, which means the right time – we have no real equivalent in modern language.

This version of time is the one that astrology is related to. It is where everything is aligned to give us the opportunity to do something easily, effortlessly, in the right way.

When we happen to hit the right time, we generally see it as a coincidence or happy accident. For example, we decide to call someone who is never available and they answer the phone with time to talk, or we put our house up for sale and it is snapped up straight away.

Yet we do not have to hope for the happy accident – we have an innate sense of kairos. We can learn to listen to ourselves and follow our feelings to help us to use kairos to make our lives easier. Our sense of kairos doesn’t come from our reasoning heads. They tend to work to chronos, and give themselves away by saying things like: ‘I should do xxx this morning’ or ‘I need to tackle that issue with the kids this evening’. If there’s a should, ought, got to, must, need to in there, it’s not likely to be kairos – those words refer to the logical version of time, not the perfect opportunity.

The sense of kairos comes from our guts, and bypasses our reasoning, our logic. Science has now proved that we have what they call the enteric brain: neurotransmitters in our guts that are exactly like those in our brains. And it seems that we receive initial information about the world around us here first – gut instinct is alive and well, and a proven fact!

This awareness of the perfect opportunity for something is, I believe, an amalgam of information that we don’t realise consciously that we receive, a wisdom that we often don’t recognise in ourselves. It is an instantaneous assessment of both our state and information from the world around us that gives us an accurate conclusion – either this is the right time or it isn’t.

So next time you feel that gut response that says to avoid the motorway route, follow it. Next time you suddenly think of an old friend, give them a call. Get in the habit of listening to your gut responses and follow them whenever you can, and you will find that kairos is available to you, and can make your life easier.

YOU’RE INFECTIOUS!

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We talk sometimes about someone’s laugh being infectious – did you know that it really is? I love this bit of science, because it says so much about what we’re really like as humans.

So, in our brains, we all have something called mirror neurons. Thye detect the facial expression of others and switch on our facial muscles to mirror their expression. We may not exactly reproduce their smile or frown, but the micro-muscles that create that expression are switched on and begin to move. And the micro-muscular movement in our faces is directly driven by our emotions at the time – it can’t be disguised. We all know that we can tell the difference between a false smile and a real one, and our mirror neurons are what detect the difference for us – we mirror it and then feel the difference in ourselves.

This is a level of biological empathy that we may not be aware of, but it is built into us. Scientists believe that it is part of our survival mechanism: we need to relate to and understand others in order to thrive, and by re-creating their facial expressions in ourselves, we get a sense of what they’re feeling and therefore how to respond to them.

This is one of the reasons why communication is so much more effective when it’s face-to-face – we are much more aware of what is going on with the other person, because we are replicating it in our bodies. It also explains why moods are ‘catching’, and whole groups of people can be affected by someone’s mood at the time.

So since we are so powerful, let’s use it for the good! If I know that others will pick up on my facial expression and therefore my mood, I can consciously choose to shift my state to a good one. If I am feeling frustrated standing in a queue, I can choose instead to use the time to spread some friendliness to those around me. If I am feeling fed up today, I can look for someone who looks happy, and let them infect me! And when I’m feeling good, then I can catch the eye of others and give them a dose of my good mood!

Come on, let’s infect the world with our good moods, and lighten our life!

DOING NOTHING

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Do you ever do nothing? I was thinking about doing nothing today, and I realised that it has two very different connotations, neither of which is very useful.

  1. ‘I did nothing today’ implies that you wasted your day, achieved nothing worthwhile.
  2. ‘Just do nothing’ implies sitting in some form of calm meditative state that most of us never manage to reach.

Behind both of these connotations is the concept of some sort of failure on our part, of not being good enough.

In the first example, we berate ourselves for not doing anything ‘important’. We may have allowed ourselves to relax, watch a movie or read a book, instead of household chores. We may have talked with a friend for a while, played with the dog – and we discount all of these things by calling them nothing! Should we not be proud of ourselves for breaking out of the spell of duty and obligation, and for giving ourselves a bit of a breather, where we can recover from the pressure we usually put ourselves under!

In the second example, we berate ourselves for being no good at something that most people find really difficult – a level of stillness of the mind and body that Buddhist monks spend years of training to achieve. Yet all of us do sometimes reach that quieting of the busy mind – maybe by gardening or walking in the countryside, or listening to music we love.

So I thought that it was time we took on a third, more useful connotation of doing nothing. Doing nothing means not doing anything because I had to do it, from obligation, duty or self-pushing. It means I’ve only done what I felt like doing.

Now that’s better isn’t it!

I find that if I allow myself to sit and stare out of the window for a while in the morning, something begins to motivate me to action. I might decide to clean that window, or to write a blog, or to clear some of that post that’s piled up.

And if I stop whatever I’m doing when I’ve had enough of that, and allow myself to sit down with a cup of coffee and a book, rather than feeling I must finish now I’ve started, my energies re-gather in me, and there comes a point where I’m off again. This time I may finish whatever it was, or I may do something different.

What is happening is that I am following my natural ebb and flow. That means that what I do is done easily and effectively, and I stay in a relaxed yet energised state.

It’s not easy to trust our natural wisdom like this – we have been taught to over-ride it since early childhood – but it is a far better way to maintain a healthy balance in our lives.

So let’s redefine doing nothing. It means:

  1. Doing things I enjoy, that are relaxing, that enhance my relationships and my life
  2. Doing things that calm my mind and give me a break from its chatter
  3. Doing what I feel like doing, for as long as I feel like doing it

Come on let’s all do lots of nothing!!

BUILDING CONNECTION

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I was reflecting on the lovely connection I have with my Pilates teacher, Liz, after my lesson this morning, and thinking about how much it enhances what I gain from those lessons. The extra value of being treated as a unique individual is that it feeds a fundamental requirement we have as humans.

Our brains are wired to be connected to others – it’s part of our survival mechanisms. We learned early on in our evolution that we would survive much more easily if we joined with others and shared the difficulties and the good times, and that produced a strong drive to be connected. It is well proven that if a child is deprived of connection, they do not grow physically as well, and they do not develop their emotional ad intellectual intelligence in the same way. Connection is vital to us.

So what is connection? The word connect actually means to bind with, be tied to. It is a strong link with someone else, not just a passing, temporary link that is released as soon as it’s made. It’s the difference between a limp handshake, and a firm handshake with positive eye contact: we connect emotionally as well as physically.

‘Networking’ doesn’t do it – although it should as it comes from the same root meaning! – and nor does friends on Facebook. We need more than that: the personal touch. It’s recognition of us as a person, our individuality, our humanity. It’s proper human contact, noticing how someone is, delighting in their good times, sympathising with their not so good times, accepting them however they are, rather than only wanting to know their ‘shiny bits.

We gain a lot from connecting with others. It makes us feel good, it feeds our minds, bodies and spirits, so build these connections whenever you can. Talk for a moment with the checkout operator, the person in the queue with you. Greet a new acquaintance as if they could be a good friend. Hug your family and friends, and tell them you love them whatever mood they’re in.

Connect and enrich your life, and that of those around you – feed our humanity.

WHAT IS YOUR FUNDAMENTAL METAPHOR?

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We all use metaphor in our everyday language. You think we don’t? Do you ever battle or fight against anything? Do you slip or slide into a bad mood? Do some things just flow for you? Do ideas blossom or grow? Our everyday phrases are full of metaphor, and we don’t realise it consciously.

Once we become aware of it, we can choose to use this tendency well, to help us. You see, metaphor is a powerful way of encapsulating how we experience something and has a major effect on our mood and attitude. It influences how we filter our experience, what we notice.

I was watching a programme where someone was arguing that ‘glass half empty’ and ‘glass half full’ were the same thing and it made me cross! That may be logical, but this variation of metaphor is not logical, it’s based on emotion and attitude. A ‘glass half empty’ person notices what’s wrong, and is discontent, unhappy with their lot, whereas the ‘glass half full’ person notices what’s good, what’s right, and is more optimistic and cheerful. Which would you rather be?

Metaphors relate to our beliefs about what it is like to be in the world and drive our way of reacting to events in our life. If we have absorbed the belief that life is a struggle, we will tend to use ‘battleground’ metaphor: ‘my idea was shot down by the boss’, ‘I had to fight to get my point across, ‘I won out in the end’. This set of metaphors is very prevalent in western industrial culture.

On the other hand, we may have absorbed the belief that there is a natural order to things, so we have growth, dormancy, ebb and flow, highs and lows.

Now neither of these is right or wrong, true or false. The question is, which is more useful as a guiding principle for living your life well? And we can choose.

Although fundamental beliefs about how the world works tend to be absorbed unconsciously when we are young, we can change them if we become conscious of them.

  1. We can begin to notice the less useful metaphors we apply to ourselves and our lives and consciously adapt them
  2. We can begin to notice the more useful metaphors we come up with and consciously reinforce them
  3. We can choose to have a fundamental belief that the world is supportive of us and works with us as it does in nature, and look consciously for evidence to support that belief

So next time you are battling your way through your day, just ask yourself how else you would handle that day if the world were supportive of you.

And enjoy the days where you know that you are in the flow if it!!

COMFORT

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I was preparing a programme the other day, and was looking at things that comfort us as part of it. It suddenly struck me that the original meaning of the word comfort is: things that give us strength, that bring us back to our own power. This puts quite a different slant on what makes us feel comfortable.

For example, we often talk about comfort eating, and it has a derogatory feel to it, yet if you think about it as food that gives us strength, we are more likely to choose to eat a hearty home-made soup or casserole than a packet of biscuits. Similarly, comfortable clothes shift from old clothes we slop abut in to the clothing that makes us feel ready to deal with our day in an empowered way.

Notice that this doesn’t mean that we have to ‘dress up’ or not eat those chocolates: it isn’t another set of rules about what we should do. It just means we ask ourselves what would make me feel more ‘myself’, more at my best. I used to have a neighbour who would shower and put on make-up before she did anything else, every single morning and I never understood it. She would say that she wasn’t comfortable dealing with anyone or anything until she had done that – and she had two small boys, so I thought it was incredible to do all that for yourself before sorting out the kids – what vanity! Now I understand – she was just giving herself a chance to be in her power. My comfort in the morning is my 15 minutes of quiet time, 2 cups of coffee – same effect, different method – and I took years longer than her to realise how important it is!

This definition of comfort has got me thinking about lots of other things in a different way: ‘feel-good’ movies, which comfort me by reminding me of the best of human qualities; music that lifts the spirit; jewellery that represents me being fully me; objects that remind me of times when I was on form.

So what comforts – things that strengthen you – do you have available to you, to use more often? What helps you to feel more you, more in your own power? Look at what you choose to eat, what you choose to wear, because they are affecting you in your day. And when you need that extra something, when you are feeling a bit off, how can you add to your own comfort? What reminds you of the real you that you could use to help yourself?

There are so many ways we can help ourselves to be more comfortable, to be ourselves. So give yourself some lovely comfortable days!