3 things I want to remember about play

Stuart Brown, MD, the director of The National Institute for Play, says that people who do not engage in play pose a health risk: stress-related diseases, depression, addictions, interpersonal violence, and so on. Statements like these interest me, but they rarely cause me to make any real changes in my life. Like most folks, until I am personally affected I can coast along letting good enough be good enough.

But since it’s time for me to post a blog entry, and since I’ve had a heavier than usual work schedule and have neglected play lately, I’ve come up with 3 statements about what I know about myself regarding play. These 3 statements are now written on my bathroom mirror (I’ve also drawn a nifty lipstick rendering of a balloon ninja girl).  

1. Play is not frivolous.
The truly great advances of this generation will be made by those who can make outrageous connections, and only a mind which knows how to play can do that. -Nagle Jackson

No matter how many times I’ve returned to a work project with clearer thinking, renewed enthusiasm, greater efficiency, and even flashes of brilliance after taking a play break, I can still forget how amazingly beneficial play is, regarding it as something to do only AFTER I’ve finished working. What hooey!

Dr. Brown points out that even animals seem to play, even though what matters most in the animal kingdom is survival. When I relegate play to the "When I have leftover time" category, I shift into bare essential survival mode. I start confusing being reverent with being serious, at which point I go about my work, and my life, all wrong.

Tootsie with some of her favorite toys. RIP, sweet Tootsie.

2. I’m happier when I play.
We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing. -Benjamin Franklin

Dr. Brown goes so far as to say that the opposite of play is depression. And as anyone who has experienced depression knows, when you're in the midst of depression, it's pretty much impossible to motivate yourself to play.

For me to feel playful, it helps to remember how I liked to play as a child. This reflection usually points me to the forms of play that I enjoy most right now.

As a child I liked to— 

• Ride my bicycle. I still love to ride my bike around the neighborhood. Heading in the direction of distant music from the ice cream truck means that it's going to be a super fun ride. A few years ago I biked from Tucson to Mexico...what a blast! 

• Form bands in friends’ garages. Only a few minutes of running my fingers over the piano keys makes space in my body and mind like nothing else can. (Funny that I now record songs using an app called Garage Band.)

• Tell stories. Blogging was something that I swore off for years. While I haven't yet found my full-on blog groove, blogging is becoming more and more like storytelling play to me.

• Do flips. "Flips" is the word that my friends and I used for moving our body. Many of my happiest moments still involve some kind of body movement: yoga, kickboxing, busting a move for no reason when nobody is looking.

• Make funny noises. I still make funny noises. 

• Rollerskate. When heelies came out I had a flashback rush of joy and bought a pair immediately. I'm still a little afraid of them and they mainly stay in my closet, but I haven't given up on messing around with these. Just seeing the box makes me happy.

• Cook with my Easy Bake Oven. The kitchen is a giant laboratory for me to mix this with that. I can get lost in food play for hours.

• Play School and Haunted House. I had to be the teacher...or the main ghost.

Schoolmarm/ghost hybrid

3. Play makes relationships something special.
You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation. -Plato

When I meet someone, I like to imagine how they might describe themselves in a personal ad—if total honesty were such a thing in those ads (I like to imagine a personal ad description for myself too—on the “good” days and on the "feel like pooey" days). 

If I were looking for friendship, a romantic connection, or a work relationship, if the person wrote I do not play, no matter how many other amazing qualities they listed...NEXT!

I would totally answer their personal ad. 

If I Had My Life to Live Over, by Nadine Stair (age 85)

I'd dare to make more mistakes next time.

I'd relax, I would limber up.

I would be sillier than I have been this trip.

I would take fewer things seriously.

I would take more chances.

I would climb more mountains and swim more rivers.

I would eat more ice cream and less beans.

I would perhaps have more actual troubles, 

but I'd have fewer imaginary ones.

You see, I'm one of those people who live 

sensibly and sanely hour after hour, 

day after day.

Oh, I've had my moments,

And if I had it to do over again, 

I'd have more of them.

In fact, I'd try to have nothing else.

Just moments, one after another,

instead of living so many years ahead of each day.

I've been one of those people who never goes anywhere 

without a thermometer, a hot water bottle, a raincoat

and a parachute.

If I had to do it again, I would travel lighter than I have.

If I had my life to live over,

I would start barefoot earlier in the spring

and stay that way later in the fall.

I would go to more dances.

I would ride more merry-go-rounds.

I would pick more daisies.

Returning to your senses when overwhelmed

In crazy times, the practice of returning to our 5 senses is a fundamental way to restore sanity, or at least to get us moving in that direction. For example, you've just learned that your nemesis at work has gotten a promotion, in part because they claimed ownership of work that you completed. Your face gets red, your heart pounds, your throat constricts, and your mind races. 

1. See.
Notice something small. Don't worry about what it is, just choose something close by and see it. Maybe it's a leaf or a corner of a table. You might notice its color, shape, movement, the way that light reflects on its surface, and so on. Let your visual awareness stay on this object for as long or as little as you like, then gradually allow your field of vision to broaden and return to fuller vision.

Figurine spotted during a walk outside Gampo Abbey

2. Smell.
Close your eyes and breathe in. As air enters the nostrils, notice the scents that register on the inbreath. Breathe out fully. Repeat. Does the scent change if you turn your head to the side, if you stand up or sit down, if you move to a different area of the room that you're in? If there seems to be an absence of scent, notice the breath itself in the nostrils—its temperature, and so on.

3. Taste.
If no food or drink is in your mouth, does taste still register? Does moving the tongue in the mouth affect taste? Does taste register more in the front of your mouth or at the back? Perhaps you'd like to drink water, bite into an apple, and so on. While closing your eyes, allow the flavors to register. Notice the world of sensations inside your mouth as you eat.

4. Hear.
Close your eyes and notice sounds. No need to label the source of sounds (footsteps, telephone, and so on); just hear the sounds: ping, bang, sssssss. Do the sounds seem to be near your ears or far away? inside of you or beyond yourself? Without reaching out for sounds in a seeking way, what sounds do you notice?

Screeching bats: Royal Botanic Gardens Melbourne

5. Touch.
Place one or both of your hands on yourself: over your heart area, on your cheeks, your shoulders (perhaps give yourself a gentle shoulder massage), curved around your forehead, on your belly. Do this tenderly. Close your eyes and feel the sensation of your own gentle touch. We really do have at our fingertips what we need to bring ourselves back into balance.

Mindful, by Mary Oliver

Every day

I see or hear

something

that more or less

kills me

with delight,

that leaves me

like a needle

in the haystack

of light.

It was what I was born for -

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world -

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

Nor am I talking

about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,

the very extravagant -

but of the ordinary,

the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.

Oh, good scholar,

I say to myself,

how can you help

but grow wise

with such teachings

as these -

the untrimmable light

of the world,

the ocean's shine,

the prayers that are made

out of grass?

New Year’s resolutions: BAH!

As December ticks down, many of us reflect on the year that is ending. I’ve even made a list of contemplation points to help me do this (email me if you'd like to receive this reflection list: rebecca@rebeccaeldridge.com). But while deliberate, compassionate reflection can be healthy and helpful, when it comes to making resolutions for the coming year, only one word comes to mind: BAH!

I feel this way because New Year’s resolutions often smack of reprimand—I'm fat: I will eat less chocolate and more broccoli. These almost always sound eerily similar to statements that "naughty" students are made to write again and again as punishment: I will be better. I will be better. 

Javier told me that when he entered 4th grade and was allowed to participate in his first Confession, that a checklist of childhood “sins" was supplied to him—sins such as "I was mean to my sister." It’s no wonder that on a little Valentine made for his parents are written the words “I will try to be a better boy.” The feelings of inadequacy that we carry around usually have early origins. Why establish resolutions as adults that stoke those feelings?

What if we made a resolution not to make resolutions—deciding not to impose on our bodies, our minds, and our hearts even more messages of not being good enough, worthy enough, and so on (women can pick up any magazine in the checkout line for those messages; men, I assume the same for you).

To this end I’ve created an anti-resolution: it goes by the acronym BAH. In 2013 when I’m feeling inadequate, anxious, angry, shut down, puffed up, and so on, the only thing that I resolve to do, for myself, is to practice BAH:
1. Breathe.
(Big, full breaths that soften the face, shoulders, and belly)
2. Ask So what?
("So what that I'm feeling _______ right now?")
3. Hold off on answering.
(I don't need to have an answer for why I'm feeling what I'm feeling. I can let feeling it be okay for now.)

I can imagine how the practice of BAH might play out: I’ll be grocery shopping (I love to grocery shop), and will have dark chocolate, coffee, fresh cilantro, and other goodies in my cart. I’ll get in line to pay. The line will be long, and I don’t mind long lines. That’s when it will happen: a new line will open and people behind me will dash over to it. 

Line-dashing is one of my hangups. It bugs me. A lot. It bugs me so much that I once lunged out of line and held my arms out to block the people who were dashing from the back to get to the new line (this was many years ago, but I can’t swear that I will never do it again). 

Have I told you that I once worked at Trader Joe’s? It was clear to me that I could work there when I saw that the training included how to open a new line: we were to walk to the person who had been waiting in line for the longest period of time and invite him or her to the newly opened line, helping them with their cart.

After my last day at TJ's. I got to keep the box cutter.

Can you hear how my thinking is totally loaded regarding this grocery line-dashing issue? I’ve written too much about it already but I’m still typing. That’s what happens when we talk, write, or think about a hangup (you’ll know your own hangups because they come with complete mental dialogues that you know by heart and play over and over and over, often at 2am).

While resolving to directly oppose our "flaws," such as deciding to “show more patience," makes intellectual sense, hangups don’t respond to intellect. Remembering that back in January we promised to be more patient will likely do little more than leave us feeling like failures when on August 17 the old desire arises to leap out of line to set the world back on its axis. We need something simple and real in the crazy moments. 

It’s interesting that one definition for resolve is “to break a complex notion into simpler ones.” We might consider “I will be more patient” as a complex notion, and BAH as steps of a simpler notion: to stand honestly in the moment. So in the line when Mr. or Ms. “Gotta Be First” makes the mad dash, the simplicity of BAH may just help restore my sanity. There will be no evaluation required as to whether or not I’m being patient, if I could be more patient, what being patient should look like, and so on. I will be left standing in line—breathing, feeling. 

Practicing BAH actually mirrors what occurs when we meditate: During meditation we 1) sit and breathe, then 2) when we realize that instead of being aware of our breath, we’ve been carried off into thought, we 3) return our awareness back to the breath. 

With BAH, similarly, we 1) Breathe, 2) Ask "So what that I'm feeling _____ right now?" (this helps us connect with what we’re feeling and makes space for the story line that’s going to come up anyway), then 3) Hold off on answering the So what? question (this lands us right back at simply breathing, accepting the moment and our feelings). If we decide to take action from this vantage point, the action will be a response instead of a reaction.

An interesting note: While writing this post, I learned that BAH is also a texting acronym for Bored As Hell. Sometimes our hangups are perpetuated because of the rush that we get from being hung up: we act on them with fervor, hoping that our actions will prove how right we are, how good we are, how smart we are, and so on. When we stop perpetuating our hangups, it's true—we may find ourselves Bored As Hell. (Feeling bored? Breathe. So what that you're feeling bored? No need to answer that. Just breathe.)

So if you decide to practice BAH when the SHTF, and you find yourself BAH...DWAI. AAMOF, I’d be surprised if that didn’t happen. THNQ!

Guest House, by Rumi

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent 
as a guide from beyond.

What does my nervous system have to do with meditation? Or “Get this monkey off my back.”

Do you replay things in your mind that happened yesterday, last week, years ago? Or maybe you awaken in the night to rehearse what you will do if such-and-such happens in the future? If so, you know the effects of thoughts-gone-wild: muscle tension, headache, stomachache, anxiety, sleep disturbance, increased blood pressure, and more. The fight-or-flight chemicals that allowed cavemen to outrun saber-toothed tigers still surge today, with many of us able to do little more than hold on for dear life in the midst of our incessant mind chatter (aka “monkey mind”).

This is not helping.

Mindfulness practice involves dropping beneath monkey mind to simply be with things as they are; it’s a practice of “coming back” to what the moment actually entails. Do you remember home base in the game of hide-and-seek? “Coming back” during the practice of mindfulness is like making it to home base: we’re still in the game, but we’re relating to it from a totally different vantage point than from when we were hiding or running around trying to avoid being caught.

And avoiding being caught is so very natural for us; we’re hardwired to scan the environment for threats, and the nervous system supports us in this. When an event is perceived as a threat (whether that event is, say, being followed by someone in a dark alley or being belittled by someone in a business meeting), the autonomic nervous system (ANS) kicks it up a notch, releasing stress hormones into the bloodstream. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) then responds by preparing us to fight, flee, or freeze. 

This is a brilliant system. If we are in fact being followed in a dark alley, we need increased heart rate, rapid breathing, more blood flow to the muscles, adrenaline rush, and so on; it’s time to run away! But in a business meeting? There’s the rub. We’re almost never in imminent danger, yet many of us are in a state of autonomic dysregulation, feeling as though our SNS switch is stuck in the “powered up” position. This can make it feel as though even when things are going okay, it’s certainly only a matter of time before the ball drops again.

I've lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened. 

                                                                                                            -Mark Twain

Enter mindfulness practice, which, again, allows us to return to the present moment. One practice of mindfulness involves coming back, again and again and again, to the sensation of breathing as a way to be present. This repeated coming back can be about as exciting as brushing our teeth at times. But just as our desire for good dental health keeps us brushing, the desire for good mind-body health can keep us practicing mindfulness meditation. With this return to the breath, we learn to return to the present moment, without the accompanying pain, anger, anxiety, depression, and myriad of other monkey mind outcomes. The parasympathetic nervous system (PSNS) can serve to return us to a sense of calm. 

A favorite "coming back" spot at Karme Choling, Vermont

Without this ability to come back, we have no choice but to continue to spin our story lines until we pop back to the moment by happenstance. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of attending to the moment fully and intentionally, not by happenstance. Unlimited choice exists in the little gap of clear-headedness that comes from realizing that we’re lost in thought, at which point we’re no longer lost at all. Of course we also have the choice to go right back to letting our story lines about past and future spin themselves and pull us around like puppets, but ideally we choose to stop thinking our life and get back to living it. 

Between stimulus and response there is a space. 
In that space is our power to choose our response. 
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

-Viktor Frankl

***************

This 12-minute video features a BBC correspondent who describes his initial skepticism at being asked to participate in an 8-week mindfulness course: “I was totally phobic about beards, sandals, incense, and anything to do with Eastern mysticism.” Hear how once he understands that these things have nothing to do with taking a mindfulness course (and that even Marines practice mindfulness), he takes the course and finds himself quite transformed (also see what his brain scan shows after he participates in the course). And hear a woman with chronic pain talk about what the practice of mindfulness does for her.

Challenge: See if you can identify the female reporter’s misunderstanding of what occurs during mindfulness practice (listen to what she says beginning at the 9:13 mark).