Splash No. 126 - Focus on the Feeling

Focus on the Feeling

Despite trying every meditation app under the sun and going through many periods of a consistent meditation practice, I’m bad at meditating. Sitting still with my eyes for too long always makes me think of all of the things that I need to do— filling me with motivation to do some task that isn’t important at all. Yet, without realizing it, I’ve somehow adopted the practice of naming my emotions and focusing on where I feel them in my body whenever I start to feel overwhelmed. Inspired by my many “body scan” meditations, I find myself mentally focusing on different parts of my body, figuring out what I feel.

When I’m lucky, focusing on the feeling and naming it makes it disappear, like turning on the light to realize that the monster in the closet that was just the shadows of all of the laundry that you need to do (though that might be scarier). It’s bizarre that anxiety can be dispelled by just noticing that my stomach feels as knotted as a pretzel and uttering the words “I’m anxious,” like the lamest Harry Potter spell ever created. It doesn’t work 100% of the time, but it’s shifted how I think about the world. It reminds me of how my mind and body are in constant conversation — affecting each other, often in unobvious ways. And more importantly, it teaches me that the way that I experience the world isn’t fixed by the nature of my body or the nature of my mind — each can be used to alter the other, shift my experience in whatever manner I may want to.

My mental health is the most stable it has been for a while. I’m working out more than ever, in hopes that I can build and maintain this weird meat-puppet well enough to keep my mind in check. And beyond my regular emotion check-ins, I no longer see my emotions as things that happen to me, but rather moments to be experienced and understood. For anxiety, when naming and noticing don’t work, I focus on the feeling,  and let my mind question and understand where it comes from. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes I just have gas. In any case, it’s a big step up from the paralysis of just trying to avoid the feeling, and each time, I learn a little bit more about myself. On the flip side, I find great joy in focusing on experiencing my moments of joy — the shortness of breath from laughing too hard, tautness of cheeks from smiling too much. In this focus, the feeling expands to fill my mind. Everything is brighter.

That being said, I am in no way some sort of Zen master. I still spend over six hours on my phone a day, tweet excessively, and get worn out if I watch too many episodes of a thriller at once. I’ve just found a practice that I sometimes remember to do, which sometimes makes it easier for me to accept my life the way that it is and experience it a little bit more smoothly. And maybe it could sometimes work for you, too.

The new president may not be a white supremacist, but there's still work to be done. With each day, we move closer to a more equitable world. Reminders:
 

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Nikhil