TOUCH AS A LIFELINE – DAY 3
It’s raining and my mind says I hate rain.
Minds have so many opinions, based on:
1. past personal experience
2. other people’s experiences, which we internalised as children.
Minds get stuck into thought patterns or habits. We can think the same thing over and over again until it becomes the truth, a fact. Thought-storms are patterns of thinking that accidentally got stuck in our heads. But touch can pull us right back to today. Maybe what we think we don’t like can be tolerated, rather than avoided. It may even be more pleasant than old thinking patterns would have us believe!
Mindfulness reverses our ‘training’ of blanking the nice stuff. It takes us back to our childhood, when seeing and touching a slug for the first time was utterly mesmerising, captivating. A real WOW! moment.
Today’s invitation is to do a ‘touch safari’.
Some ideas for exploring touch and texture:
• Is the rain cold, or not so cold?
• How does grass feel on bare feet?
• What does your pet’s fur really feel like?
• How does the skin on your inner elbow feel to your fingertip?
• How does a sip of coffee feel inside the mouth, on the gums, teeth, tongue? We may know the taste of a drink, but the texture?
Drawing your attention into touch and texture interrupts the flow of storm-thinking.
Be curious and take as much time as you can on your touch safari.
We all need more WOW! moments. I hope you’ll find some today.
Inspirational Poem
Linda France: Dreaming the real
I’m lying down looking at the colour
of sky falling through trees, dreaming
the real, tasting what it feels like to love it.
Why did it take me so long to let go, simply
exhale, so the day could breathe itself in
and open without me standing in the way?
How could I forget the grace of my own body,
strong as this blue, tender as the white
of the wild blossom, warm as midday light?
Let me practise a patience bold enough
to hold every weather, trusting the elements,
the beauty of rain, all its shades of grey.
I want whatever’s real to be enough. At least
it’s a place to begin. And to master the art
of loving it; feel it love me back under my skin.
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