Staying fully alive in lockdown
Going with the flow
One warm lockdown afternoon in late May, my four and five year old broke the tap in our garden and water spewed out over the patio with full force for a good five minutes as I tried in vain to shut it off. It was firmly stuck.
What supernatural strength they accessed to lodge it open like that still confounds me. While I turned the water off at the mains the kids revelled in the ice cold muddy swimming pool they had accidentally created. Were they the slightest bit concerned? Not at all. Instead, they stripped naked and rolled around in the water. They were thrilled by the freshness of the water and the opportunity it created to play. They egged each other on to lie on their tummies and experience it’s bracing chill.
In the body and in the moment
They were all energy and all body. Totally in the moment; very little thinking went on in their heads about consequences: whether we needed to call a plumber, how dirty they were getting, how dirty the floor would get when they realised they needed the loo and had to traipse in. All that thinking buzzed around in my head only.
Just to be really clear I’m not claiming any kind of parenting skill here. This wasn’t some gentle or conscious parenting practice that was going on. This was ‘dear God I have totally given up here and I’ll let them do whatever they are doing for a little bit of peace’.
It was the umpteenth time we’d spent together in the garden during lockdown. But they were still seizing the moment with complete relish. Each day they awake with excitement about all the possibilities of the day ahead. They receive each day as an invitation.
I have found my children to be my greatest teachers on what it means to live in the present moment and how to be fully alive.
Right here, right nowThey aren’t waiting for some perfect future state when everything is just right. They aren’t worried about what happened yesterday or last year. By and large they are only ever really interested in what is going on right here, right now. If it’s good they feel it fully and express it. And if it’s not so good – they likewise feel it fully and express it, and then when they are ready, they let it go.
As I work with women to help them feel fully alive... to find ways to love the life they are living - in all its guts and glory and imperfection - its joys and sorrows... as I work to experience this aliveness and love of life myself, I am learning what my children seem to know innately:
1. It’s difficult to be fully alive if you are only in your head; thinking, and not in your body; experiencing
2. Any stories you have about yourself, (I can’t do this) your day (this is groundhog day), your life (I can’t believe that I am X years old and I still haven’t done/got/experienced xyz) tend to be a barrier to experiencing the now
3. If you’re not in the now you can’t be fully alive. Life is only ever happening in the now. If you’re not in the now – then you’re living a virtual life. You’re just thinking about life not actually experiencing it. You can’t feel aliveness thinking about the past or worrying or fantasizing about the future.
4. I’m also beginning to explore whether it is possible to be fully present and in control. I suspect it isn’t. Because there is something about total presence that involves total let go. More on that another time perhaps.
A virtual life
Our habit as adults is not to be in our body. We are conditioned over the years to be increasingly in our heads. Arguably, our entire education system is devised to create this disembodiment. We are encouraged to live in and only value what happens in the left pre-frontal cortex of the brain. The less time we spend embodied, the harder it becomes for us to be present. The harder it is for us to be present, the less time we spend in our bodies. It is a vicious circle that can lead to a sleep walking state; forever thinking, thinking, thinking. Not actually being here at all. Just in our heads.
The imbalance of too much thinking
I’m not saying that thinking isn’t important or valuable. It allows us to be creative, plan our actions and solve problems. But being in the analytical brain the whole time and over thinking is unbalanced in the same way that if we were to spend the whole time focused on what was going on in our gut (which interestingly has more neurons than our brain) we’d have a very limited life experience. What’s more, compulsive thinking is exhausting, disconnecting and means we’re constantly in problem-fixing / criticism / judgement mode. It is not fully living, it’s a distraction from life, and it’s not much fun at all.
Coming home to the body
One way out of the sleep walking is to open to our senses. You can do it right now. Just take a moment to feel the body resting on your sofa as you read this. What parts of your body are you inhabiting? Is there any numbness, energy, tension, aliveness, discomfort, or even pain in your body? All of that is not in any way unusual by the way. Can you feel your breath? What can you smell? What can you see when you take your eyes off these words? What is between you and being at home in your body right now? Is there any unwillingness to go there? To feel? That is also not unusual. Be kind to yourself.
The point of connection
When we are fully in our bodies we feel more connection to our hearts, more connected to each other, more a part of the natural world around us and more compassionate for ourselves. This has been my experience with ecstatic awakening dance 100% of the time! And there are many other routes to feeling connected, open and alive. Bathing in ice cold water is one that my children and Wim Hoff fans alike can attest to.
That afternoon, my children’s antics escalated as they made wet prints with their bottoms on the remaining dry sections of the patio. They thought it was absolutely hilarious. I found myself beginning to agree with them and let go too. It certainly took hand and foot printing with paints to another level!
May we all have the spontaneity and aliveness that when the tap breaks we play in the water!