I want to tell you about how I relax and also get things done.

Last week I found myself saying, ‘I wish I could get away for a couple of weeks!’ A couple of weeks off when I’m ready, might be ideal –but sometimes, for a million good reasons, now really isn’t the time. And yet, those million good reasons have started to feel heavy… life has become stressful… I really need the break.

Instinctively, I begin to reach for what it is I need. I sink into the feeling of the need to relax. I focus on the exact feeling of what it’s like to get away from it all: that tranquil, spacious, no-pressure, spontaneous, at-ease feeling.

And then, all of a sudden, I find myself remembering that I can have this right now! It happens as I say to myself’ yes, that’s what I need–but…’ and the next moment the ‘yes… but’ flips, and becomes ‘but… yes!': and I’m back on permanent vacation.

And there are just two things I need to do, to stay on vacation and also do my day:

First, I thin out what I put on my plan for the day–mostly just my appointments stay (and I’m always careful not to overbook those).
I’ll also keep one or two other things that have to do with something I care about. What I’m doing is making lots of room for responding spontaneously, in the moment.

Second, about the things that could turn into a ‘gotta’ on my list, I ask myself–‘what’s a relaxing way to handle this?’

Answering that question this morning, I found myself walking to the bank with my deposits.

On the way there I enjoyed the sunshine and fresh air after last night’s rain; as I made the deposit I chatted with the teller who also likes to walk in the morning; and on the way back, I sank deep into feeling my body in motion.

And right now, I’m feeling how much I like the people whose checks I deposited. There’s a glow around the whole experience–
instead of a job, it’s turned into a nourishing, relaxing, high point of the day.

As most of you know, my mother is somewhere in the process of dying.   When I first accepted medical power of attorney for her, we talked about how she would want me to make decisions for her. She wanted me to first consider her comfort and quality of life.  For her, quality of life was mostly about getting to spend time with her loved ones.  Also, she didn’t want her life artificially prolonged.  As her caregiver, I’ve tried to think as she would have, if she could think for herself.

A few weeks ago she stopped talking.  She also began to look miserable, but without words she couldn’t tell me what was wrong.

Bit by bit I’ve been teasing out what the miserableness is, and what might help her to be more comfortable.  In this teasing out, I’ve been paying attention to what my body knows in this situation.  I hope that if I write a bit about how I’ve been doing that, it may help someone else in a similar situation.

First there was just the agonized feeling of helplessness, not knowing what was wrong and not knowing what to do.  After some basic self-care, I had to find a good relationship to that agonized helplessness.  It was important to neither shut it out, nor be swallowed up by it.

I didn’t want to shut it out because it’s the activity of my heart.  What is real in my heart right now, is the core of heartfelt action.  But if I’m swallowed up by what’s happening in my heart there’s no room for freedom of movement.  So it’s important to be in a good relationship to the activity of my heart.

To form this good relationship in the intensities of this particular time, I drew on a skill I’ve developed over time in other painful situations: the skill of being with myself as if the hurting place were a little child who had fallen down.  I keep the hurting one reassuring company while I go about my day.  (There’s more I could say about how I do this–but I’ll have to save that for another day so I don’t run out of room for the point of this post.

Next came a willingness not to assume anything.  She had stopped eating and had been prescribed an appetite stimulant: was this the right way?  Was eating now traumatic for her?  Was it time to stop eating, or was it just that her mind didn’t quite know how, anymore?  I kept thinking about how she didn’t want her life to be artificially prolonged… were we now doing that?

The next morning I woke with the feeling, ‘just go and observe.’ Usually when I visit I talk to her about what is happening with her loved ones, and tell her things that might help her orient a bit.  I was always so engaged in trying to communicate and offer her comfort, that there had been no room just to sit and watch and take in what I saw.

But now, I could see that I needed to discover things I didn’t know. For instance, I wanted to know how she looked at mealtimes.  Did she look like she was being forced to do something that was no longer right for her?  Should she maybe be allowed to just stop eating and drinking, and go through the next steps of dying?

Getting beyond these questions, though, I realized that I just wanted to watch with as few preconceptions as possible, and see what happened.

So I went, and sat quietly, nearly as though I were meditating and the happenings in the room were each just the next thing arising. When the nurse came in, I told her I was ‘just observing’.  I named the problem: “she’s not communicating, and she looks miserable.”  Then I moved to a chair across the room to be out of the way while the nurse did whatever she’d come to do.

She asked my mother a question: “are you feeling okay?”  She asked it routinely, almost rhetorically, as she kept on with what she was doing.  My mother didn’t respond.

The nurse looked over at me, stopped what she was doing and tried asking again.  Then I saw it start to register that my mother wasn’t able to talk.  At that point the nurse started to ask other questions,to investigate that dawning awareness.   (I’d mentioned my concern to her before, but not while she was in the room with my mother.  So before, she’d responded to me from her idea of how my mother was, instead of her own direct observation in the moment.)

Now the nurse began to be present in the room.  She told me that she’d been meaning to tell me that my mother hadn’t been able to swallow her supplements since she got back from the hospital six weeks ago.  She wondered whether the doctor might just stop prescribing them since she couldn’t take them.  Here was another bit of information.

(All this may sound like the nurse didn’t really care–but this isn’t true.  I know her to care about my mother; I’ve heard it in her voice in the past.  It’s just that she’s really really busy and some kinds of knowing need time to slow down before they become available: time she doesn’t have.)

When the nurse left, I moved back to my close position and just sat and watched.  I told my mother that I knew she couldn’t tell me what was wrong, and I was trying to figure it out by observing.

(In theory this is too difficult a thought for someone with advanced Alzheimer’s to follow. But I’ve found that some complex ideas do get through, and if she was able to take in that message maybe she would feel some comfort from it.  This is one place where keeping an open place for my heart’s activity encouraged me do something that I might not have thought to do, had I pushed the feelings away.)

It started to dawn on me that her skin looked kind of crepey.  She had just been given a liter of fluid by IV a day before, so that dry crepey-ness seemed out of place.  Her skin has always looked beautiful, and I realized that the way her skin looks is one way she can still communicate.  Her skin looked dry. Even after that liter of fluid, it still looked dry.

At lunch, I paid attention to how she was drinking.  She drank readily when offered something. (She also looked peaceful as they fed her–which answered my first question.)

Later, thinking back on everything I’d seen, I realized the cup in her room was sitting upside down next to the water pitcher.  And that the nurse hadn’t offered her water when she was in.  Nor had the aides.

Now it was the weekend–different nurse.  I talked to her about dehydration.  She said, “the staff is supposed to be offering her water whenever they change her.”  Light dawned: if you tell the aides to offer fluid when they’ve just had the job of changing the patient, and they’re already overworked, how easy it is to quite genuinely forget to offer the patient fluids which will just add to the workload!

So the weekend nurse and I talked about what to do.  She said she could focus on it on the weekend when she was there in charge, but not during the week.  But she was wise to the ways of the institution, and she had a brainstorm: if my mother were on a catheter, they would be monitoring fluid intake and output.  Even without a catheter, the doctor could still order them to track it.  That record keeping would remind them to give her fluid.

So I called her doctor and arranged it, and after several days her skin began to look more plump again.

There were other strands of my observations which I’ve not mentioned here, and which I worked with similarly–but this post is getting long so I won’t go into more detail.  I hope that the way the process unfolded is now clear enough to maybe be helpful to someone else.

If you’re in a similar situation and this post has given rise to questions I might be able to answer, please feel free to ask them in the comments below.  I’ll do my best!

This morning it’s raining.  It’s a gentle day: the rain is gentle, as is the slight cool of the air.

A walk in the rain might have been nice, but I was drawn towards sitting meditation instead.  I’ve been moving at a steady clip all week. My body in its wisdom knew that a deliberate pause for a few minutes now, would give my movement a more generous space.

So I sit.

And I notice.

First I notice that I am nearly in here with my experience, but not quite.  I just notice it, I don’t force anything… I let it be just as it was before, except noticed.

Then I notice that my shoulders are pulled forward a bit.  As soon as I notice, they want to move up, and back, and drop.  The space in my chest becomes more generous.

And I sit.  And notice.

Ah, what’s this going on on my left side?  It’s pulled down more on that side. What would it like there?  …to relax up, rib by rib. and then open below the ribs.  I feel like an accordian pulling open on the left.  Now things feel more even and upright.

But not quite!  I’m slanted back just a tiny bit from straight-up-and-down.  It’s my chest that’s back behind my waist.  As I watch, it comes forward just a tiiiiiny bit.  Mmmm, that feels solid and good.  My breathing slows now that there’s more room for it.  I slow, as my breathing slows.

I sit a few minutes more, savoring my alignment, and my breath, and my pace.

And at last I rise, bringing this new pace into the movement of the day.

A reader just wrote and told me that he was trying my focusing/relaxing exercise for his shoulders–but he suspected that his own tension was from hunching over his laptop.  I wrote back with what I’ve done myself about the laptop-in-lap problem.  At some point in the ensuing interaction I realized that this might be helpful to others, so here ’tis:

Start with a compact, lightweight laptop-sized USB keyboard.  Mine’s a Datavision with super-easy key action–I can type on this thing for hours without wearing out my fingers.

Next add a good solid music stand that will let you adjust its height.  Mine is made by Proline and is stable, portable, and highly adjustable.    Since it’s made from aluminum, it also keeps the laptop cool.   Adjust the height of the music stand so that when you put your laptop on it, your eyes are at the same height as the screen when you are sitting comfortably.

Plug the keyboard into your USB port, put it in your lap, sit back, and enjoy.

There’s one last important detail: taking good care of your eyes.  It works wonders to look away from the screen every 20 or 30 minutes.   But it can be hard to remember to do that.  Easy solution: a desktop timer/reminder.  I’ve been using OneAlert.  Besides guarding my eyes, it helps me remember to take out the recycling and water the plants, too.

Total cost?  Just over $100.

If you have other good tips which can make using a laptop more ergonomic, please share them in a comment below.

[Yesterday in my post about restorative walking, I mentioned ‘emptying the shoulders’ in passing.  A reader picked up on the phrase and commented on it, which prompted me to write more about it today.]

Notice how your shoulders feel right now.

If you’re really lucky, they may feel like you haven’t got a care in the world.  But for most of us, there will be tension.

Exactly what that tension feels like, will be different for each person, different even day to day.  The imagery that goes with emptying your shoulders of tension will be different too.

For some people the experience of tension in the shoulders might feel like a hot fullness.  For others it might be a feeling of heaviness.  For someone else, the shoulders might feel frozen.  Another might experience it as a tight pain.

My reader from yesterday had a lovely image of letting the tension drain out like a hot liquid.

For someone who experiences it as heaviness, it might feel good to visualize removing a heavy backpack.

For someone whose shoulders feel really frozen and tight, emptying the shoulders might feel like letting them melt and become fluid.

If you start by feeling how it is in your shoulders right now, then you can invite the right way of emptying them to come to you.  Don’t think it out.  Just let your curiosity play a little: ‘I wonder how…’.  Leave a little open space for the question while you stay with the feeling as it is.

I’m paying attention to my own shoulders right now.  The feeling is a little prickly.  I see an image of a burr.

I wait for a moment with that image and the sensation that goes with it…

I see myself picking burrs out of a sweater.  A grey sweater.  (The imagery can be vey specific and the little details can be oddly powerful.  Something about it being a sweater, and grey, is right for this moment so I take it in just like that.)

The image comes of someone sitting behind me, picking burrs out of the grey sweater across my shoulders.  Lots of little burrs.  It feels great!

I’m stretchng, and yawning.

This past week, I was dealing with a difficult, time-consuming situation.  By the time I could step back a little I was drained of energy.  My body was tense and tight.  I needed a restorative walk.

I just got back from that walk feeling balanced, relaxed, and at peace.  I’d like to share with you part of what I did that made it so effective.

First, I took my walk in the morning.

A tough week takes its toll on body rhythms.  Fortunately, these rhythms are easy to re-set if you know how.  Our bodies are programmed to respond to morning light to keep our rhythms in sync with the natural world.  This re-rhythming is augmented by the rhythmic movement of walking.

I began my walk this morning by paying attention to my breathing and posture.  For the first five or ten minutes I breathed in for four steps, then out for eight steps.  I loosened my shoulders, and let them circle back and drop into their natural, relaxed back-and-down position.

These breathing and posture changes ‘re-set’ my autonomic nervous system, helping the sympathetic system let down and supporting the calm quiet of the parasympathetic system.  I felt myself settling back into the feeling of being in ordinary time with a regular routine.

Next I began to rest in sensory experience.  I focused first on just that most basic of senses, the sense of touch.  I gave all my attention to the sensation of each foot connecting with the earth just-so.  Then I noticed other physical sensations of walking, like the feeling of my hips in motion.  I felt the breeze, and the temperature of the air.

Once I was grounded in my own movement, I added other senses. I started with smell, which is nearly as primal as touch.  This led naturally to the sense of sight, as the scent of late-season flowers invited me to find where they were blooming.

When I turned for home, I deepened my relaxation a little further.  I softened the muscles around my eyes, especially at my temples.  And I let my shoulders and arms go very loose and light, playing ‘empty coat sleeves’.  I let them swing freely, however they were moved by the movement of walking.

As I reached home, I noticed how easy it was to climb the stairs.  Time it took? —about 20 minutes.

My simple recipe, summarized:

• walk in the morning light
• use breathing and posture to ‘talk’ to the autonomic nervous system
• move deep into sensory exploration
• soften the eyes
• empty the shoulders

If you try my recipe, don’t feel like you need to add all the ingredients at first.  Just pick two or three that sound especially good to start with.  Over time you can add the others.

It would be a pleasure to read about your experiences with this way of walking, if you’d like to share them below:

I am an adventurer when it comes to meditation.  It’s not that I’ll try anything and everything — but I do like to play.

Walking meditation is the most basic kind for me.  When I need to come home again, walking meditation is how I get there.

Often I’ll synchronize my breath and my steps.  So you can imagine my ‘hello!’ when I saw a book called Breathwalk at Half Price Books.

A lot of it was old-shoe familiar.  But there was one new thing… he incorporated a mantra in the rhythm of the walking and breathing.

You, dear reader, (having read the title of this post, after all) can probably see this coming… but I didn’t.  I tried his 4-note mantra in rhythm with my steps.  I tried it, in fact, for several weeks—not all the time, but just enough.

This morning I decided I wanted just the freshness of the morning and my empty mind.  I took a step.  The mantra stepped out with me.  I pushed it away.  It wouldn’t go.

I decided to just walk, no meditation.  The mantra paid no attention.  It was stuck in my mind like a song, entrained to my steps.  What to do?

Finally, I did what any self-respecting person would do when they’ve got a song stuck in their head–I thought of another one:

“I stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole,
and the little skunk said, ‘why bless my soul,
take it out, take it out, remove it!’

I stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole,
and the little skunk said, ‘why bless my soul,
take it out, take it out, remove it!’

I removed it… too late!”

That removed it.