mental-health

fionabeth13

Stopping and Resting

I have been reconnecting to mindfulness practise in the past few weeks. I’m a student of Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and his teachings have, over the past seven years or so, literally saved my life.

But last year I got myself into a pickle. I really, really wanted to dive into belonging to the community of Plum Village

I had studied with their courses in the UK for several years, joined a sangha (online, because travelling can be a challenge) and begun a regular practise of mindful breathing and walking.

But I needed that extra thing, to belong, to receive the Five Mindfulness Trainings, to become One of Us.

Maybe this has its roots in a lifelong feeling of being Other, or outside, maybe in not being allowed to join the popular kids’ games at school, maybe in my astrology or neurodiversity or any one of a hundred other psychological gifts that makes up the unique brain of a human creature.

Whatever it was, the deep desire, the heartfelt aspiration, had been with me for a number of years. I prepared as best I could, I booked onto a retreat where the ceremony to receive the trainings would be offered. I bought appropriate luggage for a somewhat disabled person to carry on a long-ish solo journey. I planned the travel.

In the week before the retreat my symptoms started to flare. I ignored them. I was going. This was my moment. But, as anyone living with long-term health needs knows, when the body knows, it knows.

By the day of the retreat I was really not feeling my best, I could not walk effectively, and was lost as to how I would make a journey of several hundred miles by train, with luggage, alone, to participate. In that moment of fear and loss I sent my apologies. I was angry that my body had (again) “let me down”. I felt that there had been insurmountable obstacles to my participating and belonging, and I was hurt and sad. The hurt and sadness was so deep I stopped my practise, maybe this was just not for me, and it was time to let go.

I don’t know how many times this has to happen before I really listen. I have a sense that Thay would smile at me, and very gently remind me that I was too attached to the idea of the Mindfulness Trainings. That standing up in a ceremony is not what makes a practitioner. What makes a practitioner is, well, practise. That the journey is just that, a journey, not a destination. That we practise every moment we are alive, not just in retreats or sanghas or even on our cushion.

So I am beginning again, smiling at my own rules which tie me in knots (or is that nots) and ever so gently breathing into the gift of stopping and resting.

Breathing in, I know I am breathing in, breathing out, I know I am breathing out.

Breathing in, I allow my body to stop, breathing out I allow my mind to rest.

fionabeth13

The Wheel Turns

White plum blossom on our allotment tree – photo by Fiona Beth

This morning I went to the allotment and the plum blossom was out, bubbling over the bare, grey branches, shocking against a rain streaked sky.

Like the blossom I feel I am emerging from a long winter. Somewhere in 2023 I put myself back in a box I had long been trying to leave behind. It felt comfortable, safe, played to my strengths. And it helped me find my feet, in a new part of the country. Sometimes too much new is overwhelming and that comfy, old shirt that is really past its best is the only thing that will do.

Living with chronic health needs is always an evolution. Eventually, despite loving the people and the knowledge that there was still a lot of work there I could help with, I had to listen to the body’s wisdom. Last week I worked my final day as a primary school teacher. It was a day of gifts. We made a hole in a piece of paper big enough for a teacher to climb through (with many yells of excitement and disbelief), we had a battle to create the longest ever paperchain from a single sheet of A4 (and the kids beat the teacher, more jubilation), and they created supersonic paper planes and helicopters that fell with speed and style.

In between the sunlight and sleet showers, the kind words and goodbye hugs, the knot began to untie. I was crawling under the tables retrieving felt tip pens and stray scraps of paper, when I felt it loosen.

And here I am. Starting a new chapter. The journey so far has been plotted at every step, I have always known what I am going to next, a goodbye was the prelude to new horizons. This time the path is not mapped, as I try a different way to shape life’s pattern. The old one leads to burn out, sickness, limping around with a stick and bed rest on sunny days when I want to be out in the wild.

This one? I know there will be days on the plot, setting seeds and tending crops, and moments of wonder watching the birds and garden wildlife at home. I know there will be walks in the woods to count bees or pick litter. I hope there will be plenty of space for reading, freshly brewed tea and long conversations with kindred spirits.

Beyond that, the path will unfold, in its own time, as I seek to listen to a wilder wisdom.