In or Against the “Flow”

I awakened early in the morning, 1:50 AM to be specific, in a bed in the quasi-Victorian guest room of my mother’s home feeling agitated After looking at my cell phone and noting the time I reacted with frustrated disgust. “Not again.” This has not been an unusual occurrence over the past year full as it has been with changes and adjustments. I turned over to try and return to sleep. No use.

At about 2:00 AM I finally gave up the attempt and decided to take the time to practice mindfulness. I sat in the comfortable wingback chair turned on the soft light of the lamp opposite me and sat. This I did with an initial focus on the breath. In and out. “Smoothly now,” I thought. In and out. Then I switched foci to a body scan and there was plenty of tension in various regions to attend to. “Release the tension,” I thought. 30 minutes later, the tension unabated, I got up again in frustration. I did some stretching and flexing to try and evoke a relaxation response but to no avail. 

I climbed into bed deciding to give up on the effort and toss and turn until exhaustion overtook me. And then my eyes opened widely, “That’s it!”

I rose again, turned on the light, and sat in the chair. This time, however, I closed my eyes, smiled at my agitation, nodded my head in greeting, and thought,  “Welcome my old friend. Sit with me while I breathe.” I then focused comfortably and lightly on my breaths. A short time later I felt the familiar burst of dopamine and norepinephrine producing feelings of excitement and pleasure and peace. “Ah, that’s nice. Let’s hold onto this one (but if I do that I might not sleep a wink the rest of the night).” At that moment the agitation began to rise again and an image of my hands clutching at the good feelings came to my mind. 

‘Oh, that’s right. I can’t cling to anything even this.” And I released the feeling  ,nodded to the agitation, and returned to the practice of watching my breath, accepting whatever arose, and releasing it all. 30 minutes later at 3:37 I tried to get out the chair and into bed. I was fully awake but so relaxed I could barely rise. I climbed into bed and fell asleep in moments. 

Clinging to things that are temporary produces frustration. Pushing away uncomfortable feelings that are there does the same. Sometimes it is good to look deeply into the uncomfortable experiences to see what it is they want to say. To try to ignore an important message at this time would be counterproductive. Sometimes these feelings simply have no clear voice and in this case they didn’t. In this case compassionate acceptance was the ticket and I needed to do just that. In this case I needed to learn that uncomfortable feelings just sometimes come and that acceptance of uncomfortable feelings allows them to “flow” while clinging to good feelings itself produces the agitation I was seeking with all my bag of tricks to rid myself of.