Tag Archives: nourishing

Silence

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‘Silence is essential. We need silence, just as much as we need air, just as much as plants need light. If our minds are crowded with words and thoughts, there is no space for us.’ Thich Nhat Hanh

What is the place of silence in our lives? We might call for a minute’s silence to honour the memory of someone. We might go for a walk by ourselves, and allow ourselves to fully absorb the sights, sounds, smells and sensations around us. Most meditation retreats have periods of silence, and we may also practice silence during our own meditation at home, or during a yoga class. Yet for many of us, silence is in short supply – it’s quite common to be bombarded by sounds just about wherever we go. Over time, we can become desensitised to sounds, and barely notice their effects. Yet sounds can have quite a profound impact on our bodies and minds, and can add to our level of stress and anxiety.
Of course there is no such thing as complete silence – there will always be some sounds around us. Yet we can consciously take time out from talking and interacting with people, from filling every available space with radios and TVs, and simply come back to a sense of ourselves, just as we are, without distractions or busyness. If we’re not used to being in silence, this can feel uncomfortable at first. Over time, however, we might find that these periods of intentional silence can be very nourishing for our spirit. It’s as if we open up more space in our lives, instead of feeling hemmed in by too many thoughts and words. By giving ourselves this space, we allow ourselves room to breathe and to grow.
Not all silence is beneficial. We might have been the unfortunate recipients of the ‘silent treatment’, which is really a form of aggression. Or we may have been silenced in some way when we wanted to speak out, to be heard. Some people yearn for a lot of silence in their lives, while others are content with brief periods. We may not wish to join an order of silent monks, but still find great benefit from bringing more periods of intentional silence into our lives.
Practice idea:
Choose one way in which you can bring more silence into your day. It might be driving without the radio, or setting aside ten minutes for sitting in silence, or eating one meal in silence by yourself. What do you notice?
Anja Tanhane

Nourishing our spirit – Part 2

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(Dear reader, I am now publishing the blogs on a monthly basis. If you’re a subscriber, they will arrive in your inbox on the 10th of each month. I hope you continue to enjoy them, and that you’re finding them helpful!)

Last week, we looked at setting aside a place in our home which symbolises our intention to nourish our spirit. Just as important as creating a place is to create time – intentional time where we put aside everyday concerns for a while and allow ourselves to be present – to shift, in the words of Jon Kabat-Zinn, from the ‘doing’ mode to the ‘being’ mode. Many religious practices are designed to do just this – to say, in effect: During this time, our focus shifts away from everyday tasks and to a sense of something larger than our small, self-centered ego. We open ourselves up to feelings of connectedness; to a sense, perhaps, that just to be is enough for now.

There are many ways in which we can nourish our spirit. For some of us it might be walking in nature, playing or listening to music, meditating or painting. We might take 20 minutes out of a busy day to simply to sit in silence. It could be reading an inspirational book, saying a prayer, watching over a sleeping child, or playing with the dog in the park. We might be silently absorbed in a craft project, or spend the afternoon gardening.

We don’t need a formal religious practice in order to nourish our spirit. We do, however, need to set this time aside to focus mainly on whatever we’re doing, rather than spending the whole time anxiously worrying or planning or scheming. This is where learning meditation can be helpful, as it allows us to become more skilled at placing our focus where we choose it to be, rather than jumping all over the place like the ‘monkey mind’ which Buddhists sometimes talk about.

This doesn’t mean that the occasional anxious thought or planning mind won’t appear – it definitely will. Through regular meditation, we can become more skilled at noticing this earlier, and returning back to our focus more quickly. So when we do find the precious opportunity to engage in an activity which nourishes our spirits, we can be more present, and therefore allow ourselves to be really nourished by it.

Weekly practice idea:

What nourishes your spirit? Write down ten things in your life which feel nourishing for you. Looking at the list, how often to you create time and space in your life for these activities?

Anja Tanhane

Nourishing our spirit

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‘Nourishing our spirit’ is the final of Christopher Germer’s ‘Five pathways to self-compassion’. It could be considered one of the most important areas in our lives, to nourish our spirit, but what does this mean? When our lives are very busy, it’s easy to not give much time to this question, and yet when I explore the five pathways to compassion with participants at retreats, ‘nourishing our spirits’ often comes up as an area which they feel is being neglected in their lives. It seems that as humans, we respond well to rituals. Yet they need to be rituals we are comfortable with, which don’t become restrictive or a burden. There is that wonderful Zen saying – ‘don’t mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon.’ Rituals are the finger which point us in the direction of our spirit, the moon, but they’re not an end in themselves. Yet with no ritual at all in our lives, we can feel adrift, rushing from one task to the next, with little time to pause and reflect.

Many cultures set aside an area in their house for religious symbols – it could be a small shrine, a cross, a statue or book. By creating this area in our home, we’re saying – this too is an important part of my life. It could be a small display of pictures, sea shells, a flower, a meaningful statue, a book of poetry or readings, perhaps a candle or incense. A place we can visit on a regular basis, where we can stop and reflect. It could be a corner in the garden where we like to sit and just be. It doesn’t need to be showy or elaborate – something simple and meaningful often works best. The Buddhist word for mindfulness is ‘sati’, which literally means ‘to remember’. Having an area set aside helps us ‘to remember’, to also give this area of our lives importance and time.

Weekly practice idea:

Set aside ten minutes, and either with pen and paper, or in silent reflection, ask yourself, ‘my spirit feels nourished when…’ Be open to what emerges.

Anja Tanhane

Nourishing our thoughts

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Considering they’re ephemeral and secret, our thoughts can be amazingly powerful. We usually have pretty clear ideas about what kind of thoughts are acceptable to us, and which ones are not. Sometimes we may feel bombarded by our thoughts, to the point they become oppressive; whereas at other times, we might feel quite at ease with the way they come and go in our minds. At times our thinking can lead us astray, causing us to lose touch with what’s going on. We’ve probably all had the disconcerting experience of believing something to be true, only to find out later that it wasn’t. This can be the case with abstract facts, but can also include our judgments about people, including ourselves. We seem to be most vulnerable to being lead astray in our thinking when we are feeling stressed or under threat in some way. In those circumstances, it’s easy to mistake the rope for a snake, or the tired look on the face of a colleague for a disapproving frown which might spell trouble for us.

In the coming weeks we will look at how we can often over-identify with our thoughts, and some strategies for loosening their grip on us. In the meantime, it can be interesting to reflect on how we actually nourish our thoughts. Just as the food we eat has an impact on our bodies, so do the sense impressions we receive impact on our thoughts. This doesn’t mean we should try to become puritanical, and only allow ‘pure’ sounds, sights etc into our consciousness. Yet the sensory information we take in does make a difference. An extreme example might be someone who is locked in their room, playing violent video games for 18 hours every day. Or else listening to angry talk-back radio all day long, gradually allowing the anger and hostility to seep into their mind. We can easily see how neither of those scenarios are conducive to clear and compassionate thinking. At the other end of the spectrum, spending even ten minutes in a pleasant outdoor environment such as a nice park or garden can allow our thinking to become more calm and positive.

We don’t want to build a ‘cone of silence’ around us, but on the other hand, we often do have choices about some of the sensory information we nourish our thinking with. Nowadays, I find that I often drive without the radio on. This doesn’t mean I have a rule that I’m ‘not allowed’ to listen to the radio when I drive. Sometimes I listen to the radio, and other times I listen to music. Yet after a busy day, it’s often a relief to not add yet more information to a mind which has already been buzzing for hours at work.

Weekly practice idea:

This week, pay attention to the ways in which you ‘feed’ your thinking mind. What do you notice, and what might this mean?

Anja Tanhane

Holiday favourites – nourishing ourselves

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We are continually nourishing ourselves – each next breath in brings a fresh supply of oxygen; most of us eat several meals a day and often plenty of snacks in between; we nourish ourselves by spending time with like-minded people, pursuing sports and hobbies, walking in nature, or listening to music.

If we live in an affluent society, there is usually no shortage of nourishment to choose from, and yet, ironically, the quality of our nourishment is often quite poor. For example, very few people breathe in a way which fills up our lungs fully. Most people habitually take a shallow breath, high in the chest, and never get the health benefits, relaxation, and the nourishment of deep, diaphragmatic breathing. The food we eat may also give us more empty calories than valuable nourishment. It can take considerable discipline and planning to ensure we have a healthy meal, when there are so many quick, easy, unhealthy alternatives about.

If we’re feeling stressed and time-poor, the quality of our interpersonal relationships can suffer. And by the time we collapse exhausted on the couch in the evening, who has the energy to read a novel or poetry or philosophy? Instead we might find ourselves flicking restlessly between TV channels, all 2000 of them, without finding anything we actually feel like watching.

Even when we do eat a healthy meal, we might wolf it down so fast we get indigestion. We might have finally found the time to go for a walk in nature, but barely notice our surroundings because we’re thinking about work. We’ve finally opened that novel which has been sitting on our bedside table since Christmas 2003, but by page 7 we find ourselves reading the same paragraph again and again as our concentration wanes.

How we nourish ourselves depends both on the quality of nourishment, and on our openness to allowing ourselves to be nourished. We can be like hydrophobic soil which is so dry and depleted, when it does actually rain the water runs straight off because the soil can’t absorb it. A healthy soil will absorb the water, a depleted soil rejects it. That’s why it’s so difficult to help some people, often those who need the most help. Their inner resources are so depleted, they either reject the water, or the water runs straight through them like through a pipe, with little impact on their wellbeing.

Regular mindfulness meditation can help us become more receptive to the nourishment which is present in our lives. The nourishment of a ten minute tea break, the kind smile from the girl at the supermarket check-out, the piece of music which lifts us up. We can also become more attuned to when nourishment is needed, to when our inner resources are becoming depleted, and so take steps to replenish ourselves before we collapse in exhaustion.

Weekly practice idea:

Pick something you find nourishing, and set some time aside for it. During this time, allow yourself to be open and relaxed, and really absorb the sense of being nourished. How does it feel?

Anja Tanhane