TOUCH AS A LIFELINE – DAY 6
Let touch work magic on your mood.
Depression, despair, anxiety, irritation, frustration, anger…
All totally normal reactions (and rather rational in some ways) to what we cope with. But our mood tends to add another layer of misery, by making us feel ‘less than’ we know we can be at other times, or think we ought to be now. So the hole gets deeper.
Self-judgement, self-rejection and self-hatred can easily add to the torrent of storm-thinking and pull us into a perfect storm of a bad day. And even a bad night’s sleep too. It just ruins the day. It ruins NOW.
The magic trick we have been learning together is to use touch to pull us back towards the things around us. There is peace in a moment of noticing. As Mary Oliver says: “Meanwhile the world goes on”. There is a mysterious silver rope dangling over that hole we have fallen in that we can climb up.
Today, how about using the touch of your body in movement? If you are out walking, or just around your home, see if it’s possible to notice some of these things, over and over again:
• The breeze on your skin
• The touch of your jeans or T-shirt rubbing over your skin
• The way your knees bend and flex to make you move forward
• The touch of air as it moves across your tongue or nostrils
• The feel of your shoulders dropping, your jaw softening
So simple. But if you let touch pull you out of downward-spiralling thoughts, you get a moment of connection with NOW: back into the miracle of breathing, moving and living.
Remember, your mind will – for sure, I promise – pull you back into thinking. Just do NOW is a circuit breaker. It’s not yet a new circuit board – but that’s coming if you repeat this every day.
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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