The Joy Diet: Treats

This week's ingredient is to add at least 3 treats a day: one after your risk for the day and two just because. Martha Beck's definition of a treat is something that makes you feel like smiling. For me, this idea, lead me back to my InterPlay training.

In InterPlay, there is a concept called the Physicality of Grace. In English, there is not a good, common word for what we feel when we feel the opposite of stress. There are some that come close, but nothing that really captures it. In InterPlay, we use the Physicality of Grace to refer to how our bodies feel when we feel the opposite of stressed. Sometimes, it is easier to understand if you start by noticing how your body feels under stress. Then, when you think about the opposite of stress, you can feel how your body feels and call that feeling the physicality of grace. Once you notice the things that make you feel the physicality of grace, you can choose to increase them in your life. For me, this week, I tried to find treats that really gave me a full body experience of grace, not just made me feel like smiling.

My primary treat all week has been to use the super-minimalist version of the InterPlay seated warm-up every time I remember it - and to teach it to my kids because it is more fun in a group. Here are the instructions:

• Take a deep breath and let it out on a sigh. Repeat. Again. And once more if it would feel good.
• Shake out a hand.
• Shake out the other hand.
• Shake out a leg.
• Shake out the other leg.
• Shake out whatever you are sitting on. (Shake out your whole body if you are standing).

Just this much of the warm-up always makes me feel better. In fact, just step one usually makes me feel better. The kids like the shaking out though, so we do that together. Once they think that this is something we do, I'll teach them the rest of the warm-up and we'll be able to make that part of our day, too. But, for now, I love that I have finally really started integrating InterPlay practice instead of just InterPlay philosophy into my parenting.

For a good summary of InterPlay, check out Grethen Wegner on InterPlay.

I have noticed things that make me smile and chosen them this week. The things that make us smile are unique. Nobody else will smile at exactly the same things I smile at. Our bodies are all different. Our brains are all different. We perceive and interact with the world differently. We all need to discover for ourselves what makes us smile.

For me, this week, the list of treats has included:

• driving through hills looking at the fall leaves.
• chai
• licorice tea
• wrestling with the kids
• reading about the history of Islamic achievements in art and science.
• fake hip-hop dancing in my living room
• the smell of freshly baked bread
• walking in the wind
• long baths with eucalyptus epsom salts
• white wine and sweet potato fries
• the warmth in my hand of a particular cup when the tea is still almost at boiling temperature.
• listening to music that I love but haven't heard for ages
  

Interestingly, I have noticed that I am yearning for new experiences - especially new music - as part of my treats. So, part of my treating myself for the next few weeks should include searching out new music to notice what my body yearns to listen to and dance to now.

There is a richness to life when I choose these little treats. My overall life may be exactly the same, with the same frustrations and limitations, but the joy despite the frustrations makes it all seem less oppressive. I'll be choosing those treats more often.

How about you? How will you treat yourself?

The Joy Diet: Risk

This week's daily task was to take a step towards our true desires that felt risky. This is the chapter I have been waiting for. I am chronically risk-averse and need nudging and support to keep taking the steps that feel risky to me. Martha Beck instructs us to take the smallest step that feels risky that moves us towards our desires. The hope is that these baby steps will stretch our comfort zones without overwhelming us. It is advice that resonates deeply with me; advice that I know in my mind and forget to practice in my body.

As I worked with Risk this week, I realized that I have difficulty asking for help and I have grandiose dreams that I fail to make progress towards because I don't break the process into small enough chunks. This "smallest step that feels risky" is really useful for me. Each time I think of a risk, I should be asking myself if there is something smaller that still feels risky that I should be doing instead. When I am unable to think of a smaller step that feels risky, the risk feels more manageable.

Some of my dreams seem so big that simply taking a concrete step towards them feels dangerous. I have been surprised at how risky it feels to get information to further a project I am passionate about. Simply moving forward at all is unnerving. It is as though the smallest step confirms that I have chosen to walk this scary path towards a dream that I will be devastated to see fail. And yet, being paralyzed by my fear has not made me feel good about my life - so maybe, just maybe, it is time to face the fear and act anyway.

Many of my desires this week have been very simple. I have been sick, so I have had many desires about resting to recover. As the stay-at-home mother of 4 small children, I have to work really hard to get rest for myself. This week, I desperately needed more sleep than I can get while continuing to maintain all of my chores and responsibilities at the house. My husband works incredibly hard at a stressful job and it feels like a huge imposition to ask him to take time off work to watch the kids when I need a sick day - even if he works from home during some of the time he is in charge. Nevertheless, this week, on the day I felt worst, I asked him to take some time off. Speaking up and sharing my need felt very vulnerable. At the same time, it felt strong to acknowledge that I really needed somebody to take care of me.

I have also taken some risks with some of my friends by being honest about some of the parenting challenges that I am facing right now - particularly one that makes me question my own abilities as a parent. By exposing myself, I opened the door to deeper intimacy and more honest conversation from both sides, thereby improving my friendships while getting the sense of perspective I desperately needed.

And, I have taken a few risks that involve working with the vague professional dreams I have to turn them into practical adventures. These are the truly scary things for me and the ones I need the most nudging to accomplish. I am hoping that a few small steps will turn into momentum.

I can tell from my experience this week that a daily practice of risk has the potential to take me down amazing paths. It is also clear that I will need the Treats, Laughter, Play, Connection, and Feasting of the rest of the book to support me through the Risks.

The Joy Diet: Creativity

The task this week: Every day, conceptualize and write down at least one new, concrete idea that will help you obtain something your heart desires.

This was my hardest week so far, simply because I wasn't committed to making the time for my "Nothing" practice and missed several days of that practice. Because I know that I can be deluded by surface desires if I don't get the meditative time in, I chose not to focus on deep desires on the days that I didn't meditate. Instead, I chose to act on a small desire: drinking a particular flavor of tea, dancing in the kitchen, playing with the kids when I "should" have been cleaning. I know from experience that honouring those small desires makes it easier to sit with the bigger ones, so I trusted that I was getting something out of the process, while realizing that I wasn't quite doing the assignment.

On the days that I did make time for doing Nothing, I did write down ideas about things I could do to obtain the most important desire of the day. Doing this, I realized a few things.

• I know the sensible things to do to pursue most of my desires. My block is in actually taking action, not knowing what I should be doing.
• I tend to think very sensibly about tasks. Beck has some ideas of ways to get beyond the obvious and rational actions - and I should probably experiment with those more.
• I have made a lot of to do lists of things I could do to pursue my desires in the past, but I haven't always been sure they were my true heart desires.

My conclusions from this practice so far are:

• Don't rush to an action plan until you know where you want to go.
• Keep to the path. Next week is Risk, and I bet we'll be looking at some of the things that have stopped me taking action in the past. I certainly hope so. It would be good to move past this place of coming up with actions I could take and to push into taking them.
  

Although I am anxious to move forward into risk and action, it is also clear that I need to not rush the process that is starting with this Joy Diet. I need to step back and deepen my practices on the first menu items. I need to keep taking baby steps and trust that the path will continue. And the most important baby step is the first one - taking time each day to do nothing.

The Joy Diet: Desire

Menu Item 3 on the Joy Diet is Desire. And, by "desire", Martha Beck means what your heart really wants. Her theory is that if you honour your deepest desires, you will be on the path to an authentic, joyful life. In this chapter, she has some techniques for distinguishing the things you think you want from the things you truly desire. Part of the trick is asking yourself what you want after you have rested in nothing and then, being honest with yourself, asking "what do I want?" See how menu items 1 and 2 are still in the picture. The other part of the trick is some follow-up questions once you have reached that point.

I was not surprised to discover that I am not in touch with my deep desires at the moment. Most of my current desires have to do with finding time and space to really deepen my meditations and listen for the wisdom of my body about how to move forward into satisfying my own needs. However, I did have one real "aha" moment that I have no doubt will prove to be useful.

When I met Steve Jobs as a child, he was my hero. He had just started NeXT and gave me a t-shirt that he signed with the message "Let's go change the world." And, I always felt that was my goal, but I have never known what kind of change ws meaningful to me, so I never knew where best to put my efforts. At the same time, I have always wanted to be famous, but I never had a sense of what kind of fame for what kind of thing would really feel like I had made it. I had an insight that combined both of those impulses into a new one. I'm sure it is still a beginning image and that it will change as I listen for my desires, so I am not going to share it openly here. I have a history of committing to shallow desires and running headlong into worlds that were not what I would have chosen if I had sat still and listened more deeply before taking active steps. I want not to do that this time.

Next week, The Joy Diet starts the process of moving forward more actively by calling us towards using our creativity in service of our desires. So, I am trusting the process and chosing to slow things down and spend more time with the baby steps of discovery rather than leaping recklessly.

Thanksgiving

3 years after moving north from the United States, I still haven't got the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday into my system.

When I was 17, I travelled in Europe with a friend of mine. While we were staying in England, she commented that she had expected to experience culture shock in France and Italy, but hadn't expected England to be so different. I feel similarly about Thanksgiving in Canada. It is similar enough to Thanksgiving in the US that I expect it to feel similar and different enough that it throws me for a loop every year.

The obvious difference between the two holidays is the date. By celebrating Thanksgiving in early October, the whole schedule changes. In the US, I was usually caught off-guard by Halloween -- which I thought of as the warning that I should prepare for Thanksgiving and Christmas. With Thanksgiving before Halloween, there is no early warning system. Thanksgiving arrives with a jolt before the new school year schedules have solidified into habitual routines.

But, there are subtler differences that disconcert me more than the simple date change. The whole holiday feels different. The weather is different, warmer. The days are shorter. It just seems to be the wrong season for Thanksgiving. I had a similar sensation during my first few years in California. The days were too warm in November for my body to believe it was really Thanksgiving. Now, I am back in the climate where I first grew to know Thanksgiving as a holiday, but the days still feel too warm because it is October instead of November. And, the extra daylight is also confusing.

In addition, Thanksgiving is a smaller holiday in Canada. It is a one-day holiday instead of a two-day holiday -- and a different day of the week to boot. In the US, Thanksgiving is the one truly national holiday. Everybody celebrates it. Because it is a 4-day weekend, people are willing to travel longer distances than they would for a 3-day weekend. Everybody celebrates on Thursday -- whether they feast in the afternoon or evening. Because Thanksgiving in Canada is a Monday and people work on the Tuesday, evening feast meals are often held over the preceding weekend rather than on the day itself - so not everybody feasts on the same day.

There is not the deluge of advertising around the holiday. Partially, this is because Canadian holidays do not have the retail focus of American holidays. But, this is also affected by the date of the celebration. By the end of November, Christmas is looming. In October, there is still Halloween to come. Shopping is not yet focused on the end of year spree.

Put all those things together and the harvest festivals with the same name in the two countries feel completely different in my body. I expect that it will take a few years for me to become comfortable with this new Canadian festival. I may even come to prefer it. But, for right now, it is still unsettling.

This year, however, I am hugely thankful that we will be celebrating with extended family. My parents are taking advantage of the American Columbus Day holiday to visit us and celebrate Thanksgiving, Canadian-style.

Street Hockey Beginnings

We live in hockey country.

Three of the kids on our block play very serious competitive hockey. Spring and fall find games of hockey in the street. Although the main players are the kids who live on the street, there are often fathers who join in.

Andy and I are not particularly sports-minded. Our hobbies are creative and artistic. Our physical exercise tends to be solitary activities (biking, mountain climbing, yoga, working out at the gym, dancing) rather than competitive team sports. We haven't enrolled Patrick in many sports activities as he finds them challenging and we have been unable to find teams where he would be rewarded for trying hard. We are being dragged into sports by our two youngest boys. William in particular has natural athletic ability, and picks things up just by watching other children. Michael enjoys ball games, but they don't come quite so easily to him.

Last weekend, one of our neighbors invited William, Michael and Jocelyn to borrow mini hockey sticks and balls and hit the balls around in their driveway. To say that it was a huge hit might be an understatement. They didn't want to return the borrowed equipment.

The following day, Andy and Patrick bought mini hockey sticks for everybody. We got the four kids out on our driveway with sticks and balls and our mini soccer goal. Two other kids joined in. There was no organization beyond a vague encouragement for Patrick to actually practice shooting on goal and a safety patrol of adults collecting balls that rolled into the street.

It was a swirl of balls and children accompanied by squeals of glee.

Since then, the weather has included a lot of rain and there has not been another opportunity to get out and play. William, in particular, is very upset about this and has been asking to go out and play hockey several times a day.

We'll have to see what the fall weather is like, to see how much we get out on the street. But, there is no question that we will be joining the crowds on the street playing hockey in the spring.

The spirit of Hockey has infiltrated our lives.

The Joy Diet: Truth

Menu Item #2 in the Joy Diet is Truth. The assignment is to tell ourselves the truth about our experience at least once a day - in the context of having found the place of stillness through the practice of Nothing. That sounds fancy, but it is simple. And, like so many simple things, it can be very hard.

When Beck talks about Truth, she is not talking about philosophical Truth. She is talking about the reality of our moments of experience: What am I feeling now; I want this; This makes me angry; This is what is happening to me in this moment. Her theory is that denying the reality of these truths disrupts our ability to experience joy.

The practice is to settle into meditation - or whatever form our practice of Nothing takes. Then, we are to ask ourselves "What hurts?" Once we have identified a source of pain (physical or emotional), we are to ask ourselves whether what hurts is a real thing or a story we are telling ourselves. If it is a story that we are telling ourselves, then we are urged to question the story and see if we can turn the story around and make one that serves to bring joy and peace rather than pain.

This week has been very challenging for me. I have resisted sitting for my 15 minutes of Nothing. When I have investigated why I have been resisting stilling my mind and body enough to see these truths, the reason has been obvious. I am afraid of what will come up. I have not been experiencing more joy this week. Rather, I have been experiencing a lot of anxiety. When I explore the anxiety, I discover it is another face of fear.

Three years ago, I was grieving for the family of four that I had always wanted. I had a wonderful son, but had been unable to give him the sibling that I had always envisioned. After a series of miscarriages and testing that failed to identify a cause, I was giving up. My husband and I had chosen to move to a new country. I was giving away or selling all the baby things that I had saved to use with a second child. I was cleansing myself of my previously envisioned world for a new start in a new place with a complete family of three. But, I never had a chance to finish that grieving process and start that new life. In the middle of the of the move, I got pregnant again - with triplets - and I was carrying the pregnancy successfully.

I have done a good job of dealing with the logistics of this new life, but I have not taken the time to process more than the most basic of emotional realities. And, in order to keep myself going, I have not let myself feel the inconvenient emotions and think the inconvenient thoughts any more than absolutely necessary. So, buried somewhere in my body are a series of thoughts that I have not allowed myself to be aware of - thoughts that are poisoning my existence. And, I am scared to open myself up and see what lies underneath. And yet, I believe that these blocked thoughts are preventing me from enjoying the moments of joy in my life fully.

Even as I write this, I find myself questioning how much I am willing to say in a public forum. I find myself writing and then deleting some of the specifics of my experience. I know that it would make my writing more powerful if I were to speak these truths, but it is too frightening to put the words out into public. But, the practices of this week mean that I have allowed myself to think and feel more of my own truth than I did last week - and that is a good thing.

It is time for me to dance. The greatest tool in my arsenal for getting to the truths that need to be released but are hard to speak is InterPlay. InterPlay is a body-wisdom practice that uses fun and incremental practices to connect us to the wisdom of our bodies through paying attention to our own embodied experiences. Sitting with Nothing and actively thinking about Truth is scary for me and brings up anxiety. Playing and Dancing with InterPlay is a way for me to touch the same truths that Martha Beck is talking about in a less anxiety-producing form. They both lead to the same place - a place that this week has shown me I need to get back to: the Here and Now of my reality.