Crusing down the River of Calm

 I know, you are saying, “I can’t find calm!  It’s easy for you, a Reiki master, you live in calm.” Hah.  Hah and ha.  It couldn’t be farther from the truth, but I will say this, I have learned to appreciate when the river of calm presents itself.

I take my favorite book (at the moment) with me, a diet Coke or lemonade (depending on my mood), cuddle up with cats, and give myself permission to just chill.

Depending on my schedule, that might only mean 20 minutes.  Maybe it’s several hours at the end of a full day.  Maybe, just maybe, I can even take a whole day and totally devote the experience to swimming in pure, unadulterated calmness.  Aaaaahhhhh, like floating in the turquoise seas of the Caribbean.  Utterly tranquil.

I hear the arguments already.  “I have a family to support” or “There’s no time in my day for this”.  Then, I would argue back that you are still in survival mode and have not shifted to that next place.

In order to thrive, survival has to come to a pause.  Only in survival, you are literally living in fear.  Thriving is realizing that yes, there is fear, but for this moment, for this hour, for this day, I’m choosing not to direct my attention there, but instead, to this place of pause.  Honor the pause.

Just say that phrase.  Try it.  How does that make you feel?

Ok, now, expand it a little bit more, go ahead, 5 more minutes of honoring the pause will not detrimentally impact your current circumstance.

Can you go for another 5 more?

You are half-way to 20 minutes.  Look at that.  Practice some more.

Integrate this way of thriving into each day and you’ll begin to see there is more room for calmness, more room to float on the river, to be supported because you’ve let go of fear.

You will switch being in the survival mode of ordinary reality to the thriving mode of both ordinary and non-ordinary reality, and that, my friend, is where the magic truly begins.

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After the Crisis the Calm

So, after the big survival event is over, whatever that might be for you, making a move, ending a relationship, basically getting out of the way of perceived danger, what do you do?

Embrace the calm.  But ahh, easier said than done.  If you are used to a life that is constantly one crisis after another, one upheaval only to be superseded by another, how do you exist in the calm that naturally follows?

Your nervous system has been heightened, your biochemical enzymes that produce the fight or flight within are still swirling around.

It’s easy for me to say, well, do some Reiki and come back to your center.  But that’s not always the easiest technique to use, especially if your mind is still running a mile a minute, surveying the environment for the next possible stressor.

But it’s worth a shot, the Reiki technique, that is.  And if you find, after 20 minutes of applying hands-on healing you are still no better off than before, my suggestion is to use the nervous energy that is still swirling about and do something with it.

That might take the activity of cleaning or clearing your space.  It’s like taking stock of where you are, piece by piece.  Maybe it’s sorting through all the papers you had to grab with you when you were fired from the job.  Maybe it’s sorting through a box of belongings your ex dumped on your doorstep.

If neither applies, clear out your closets.  What doesn’t fit you any more or what don’t you wear?  Use the energy and start to clear space.  Open space allows for more calm.  Clutter promotes anxiety.

Maybe, just maybe, as you sort through things you realize you’ve put some tasks on the back burner because you were too busy dealing with the impending doom to care about much else.

What needs your attention now?  It’s an exercise in getting back to basics and utilizing the remaining angst for productive outcome.

Still don’t have the focus for this?  Take the angst into the physical realm and go for a jog, run, swim, lift some weights.  The energy that remains has to go somewhere, and stirring up inside you is like being in a perpetual gerbil wheel.  Step off the track and watch what happens.

Getting back to calm continues tomorrow…

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