Teacher Relearns a Lesson

When I was teaching “Choosing to Change”, a course for Tobacco Cessation, I used several experiential techniques to help smokers handle cravings so they could become non-smokers. I never promised them their cravings would go away, but I did promise they could survive them. I ran across these exercises again today when I was cleaning my office. I needed the lesson, not because I want to stop smoking, but because I just want to stop feeling sad.

Our minds are so strong. Mental images dash about from one picture to another and can leave us confused or out of sorts. Other images can fire off all manner of hormonal releases in our bodies. Just remember a romantic encounter and feel your sexual organs perk-up. Focus on every strange sound around you while walking down a street at night and feel adrenalin rush in as your heart beats faster and your breathing shallows.

When we’ve experienced any kind of trauma or ecstasy, imprints remain. All our experiences involve not just a brain memory but a physical, emotional, and spiritual memory of that experience as well. The next time a similar situation of greater or lesser degree occurs, we can have a similar response either appropriate or inappropriate to the degree of that trigger.

One of the techniques I employed required that a clothes pin be attached to a finger. It was meant to cause a bit of discomfort. Each class participant was told to concentrate on the pinching sensation and report the degree of pain. The longer they concentrated on it, the more intense the pinch became. Then I had them slap their other hand against their leg and asked again for a report on their degree of pain. They admitted there was less sense of pinching but they really felt the slapping. When they focused entirely on the slapping, they had no feeling of pinching. I had them switch their attention between the pinch and the slapping several times until they finally got the point. They could choose which sensation on which to focus.

All this now helps me realize again I am responsible for what my mind can do. I can rerun my current situation which involves a high degree of loss and see all the details of my last two years of experiences, or I can look outside myself and see what there is next to do: turn oak leaves into the garden, change the generator oil, finish sewing a birthday present. I can choose to focus on my pain of aloness, or I can call someone to share a dinner or an outing. Even with regards to the events in the world, I have a choice: I can watch every news program and worry about the bombings in Israel, the loss of life in Afganistan, the value of the dollar and the state of the economy, or I can cook soup and take it to someone alone and on chemotherapy. I have any number of other things I can do to help myself or others within the framework of my life.

I can choose to change the focus of my mind. My situation and that of the world may not change, but I will survive and move through it all.

Another Beginning

Since a journey begins with a single step, then perhaps a blog can start with one word. That, at least, was my thought as I stared at this blank page.

My inclination to write my thoughts has been tempered by my hesitancy to share the repetition of my emotions which have ridden higher than the summer sun as it crosses the sky and lower than the deepest rift in the ocean. I fell into this inability to write by getting caught in the admonition that what if no one wants to read about this emotional rollercoaster ride of mine. Everyone is having their own problems these days. Everyone has lost, is losing, or is about to lose someone or something dear to them. It might be a loved one, and it could be their home. I am not the only one, and with this I became self-conscious about my runaway emotions, not wanting to admit that I might be having trouble with my ‘insights’ by not being inspired by my own revelations. They weren’t sticking to me.

I didn’t want to admit I wasn’t stable, that I couldn’t be an example of how to be in control of my situation, let alone myself.

A friend reminded me I wasn’t supposed to be. My focus was my process, sharing the difficulties of widowhood with all its stumbling moments, sharing the fact that somehow I was getting through it, and sharing the glimmers of hope I saw periodically.

I pondered this. There have been times when I was in fetal position and didn’t know what to hope for except that the pain in my belly might go away.

It, I am glad to report, is lessening. My mind has alternately moved from numbness to one with an occasional idea that has led to an action but then back to a period of paralysis until I can get up again.

I don’t know what I would be doing without the women friends who take turns calling and checking up on me. I couldn’t get through many of my days without my growing relationship with flower essences and my personal processing supported by several techniques I’ve been learning, such as process coaching, EFT, and of course Reiki and praying with my chanupa.

After a sauna session last week, I looked out the glass door at the decking. To the right I saw a fuzzy caterpillar purposely scuttling across the slatted deck. He/she followed some unseen path, once getting sidetracked by a scratch in the weathered wood. He/she returned to is chilling path next to an abyss much larger than its own width between the wooden planks. He/she would veer toward the dark pit then save itself. Finally it stopped, seemed to assess its position. Aiming directly at the far plank of wood, he/she pitched itself across what must’ve seemed like a ravine then pulled its many legs onto a new 'terra firma'. Head down, he/she continued to the left of me on the new board, its many feet following each other.

How could I deny the lesson? ‘Keep going forward, Earlene, and, when it’s time to make the leap to another plank on the path, just do it. Just take the next first step; just write the next first word.’