Meeting Discomfort to Feel More Alive

When was the last time you dipped just your little toe, or both feet, or even all of you, into something freezing cold when it wasn’t even summer? In the morning when you shower under the warmth of that waterfall cascading about your shoulders and down your body, will you follow on with a jet of cold spray – or do you avoid turning that tap, deciding to pass on the shudders that would ensue? Our relationship with something as innocuous as cold water might have a thing or two to reveal about our relationship to certain kinds of emotions. That was the interesting thing I discovered this weekend when I had the delight of spending time with a mountain river, as it rushed past its lush, steep banks lined with the beauty and grace of sheoaks.

You would have giggled if you could have seen me in the scene that unfolded. There I was, sitting on a boulder not far from the water’s edge, and squinting in winter’s morning sun as I discarded my trainers and socks. No sooner had I stood up again, than I jolted straight into intimate relationship with the tumble of smooth and pointed grey stones that re-arched my feet, and that invited me to step with respect and reverence for their nature. Toppling here and there, with arms outstretched and flailing, I had inched my way to the river and slipped my feet into the cool. With not a second to think, a sharp intake of breath had seemed to “do’’ me. I had spluttered as the iciness nipped in play at my flesh, gasping in surprise as its slippery handshake welcomed my feet, and then wincing when its popsicle fingernails proceeded to cut me to the bone in over-excitement at my visit. You can imagine what happened next, me being me! Yes indeed, out burst forth the best expletive I had, followed by a tirade of colourful others at full blast, and a bit of hopping about while I looked around me hoping no-one could see or hear. For a moment or two I stood there, my extremities deadened and numbed with shock.

I considered getting out.

But as I got my breath back, I decided to stop telling myself the story of “numb” and of numb being “bad’’ or of the water being “unbearably freezing’’, and what I noticed was that I was able to then keep my feet submerged. I waded into the current coursing down the central channel of the river, the water midway up my shins. Standing still again, I brought my awareness to the physical sensations. To my surprise, my feet were not as numb as I had thought. As I breathed out and down into the numbness, sensations galore bubbled up to greet me. There was zinging, pinging, throbbing, and pulsing! I could distinguish each toe in its own right – each one talking to me, alive. At the same time, I was aware of all my toes vibrating as a collective. Rather than feel “only’’ my foot,  I could sense my ankle, my heel, my sole – aware of each part in its own right, and altogether at once as the entity that had lived in my shoe not minutes before. Each part was zapping, and its cells jumping and pumping. In peeling off all ideas of numbness, and just being present to the sensations and hanging out with them, I had experienced what else was there for me in that moment. And what was there for me was my very aliveness!

That’s when I heard what mountain-river was trying to tell me.

Meeting our feelings can be like this too! 

You know how there are some feelings we would rather not feel or be present to? The ones we can spend huge energy trying to avoid at all costs, and are terrified we will be swamped by if we did open to feeling them? Sometimes we walk about numb in life when we don’t even think we are. I know that’s been the case for me at times. And I see many clients who know they have been numb but who confessed it was the only alternative they could think of, to the pain of feeling again.

And so we live our lives trying to play the game of control and manipulation with our feelings. We’ll yank our foot out of the iciness of mountain-river, so to speak, thinking we are still choosing to feel really alive in life – yet controlling that this only be in certain areas and only with the emotions we feel happier with. We might tell ourselves now is not a convenient time to feel, or that it’s not the right time to “go there’’. We may believe it will be too scary to feel, or that we might go out of control. We tell ourselves to get over it, get on with it, and soldier on. We may keep people at bay, stay busy, shut down life-choices, or even decide we are someone who doesn’t do feelings. We can even try to numb to our feelings through using alcohol, smoking, watching TV, hours of facebook – or by sleeping, overworking, or deciding we will only let ourselves feel “good’’ feelings. We have even tried perhaps to rush our feelings, hurry up to get them over and done with but in so doing so, cheated ourselves of meeting their fullness and gifts and wisdom.

All because we fear or dislike the discomfort.

But mountain-river invites us to consider its sparkling wisdom: that we have to feel through the discomfort if we want to come more fully alive to ourselves. Just feeling the emotions we are comfortable with (the deliciousness in the morning of that warm water under the shower), will not bring us to a larger experience of our aliveness. In fact it ensures we limit the experience of our aliveness. And because our basic orientation in life and in our emotional life is then one of limitation, we inadvertently restrict our experience of the amount of joy and bliss available to us too. Mountain-river teaches us that it’s exactly in those places within and those emotions where we want to hold our breath and contract, where we must instead breathe out, and meet the sensations beyond the labels designed to keep them at bay. And we can learn how to do this. Beyond that apparent numbness or the avoidance of uncomfortable emotions, is sheer aliveness and open-heartedness, our birth-right if we choose to experience it. And it is not necessarily something to be rushed either. Sometimes, as with grief, the place to start is by feeling the sensation of numbness and staying there until it introduces us to what lies beneath.

The more I had stood there in that river, fully alive to my feet, the more all those sensations had seeped into my entire being and experience. As I had looked around me, everything had become infused with more colour, more contrast, more brightness, more life. The chattering of Willy Wagtail in his black and white feathered coat was now livelier and louder to me. The spray from the water had transformed before my eyes into a myriad rainbow drops. As I watched the swallows flitting about in the air, I felt certain I could literally see their salmon-pink breasts pulsing with energy. And just as the tree was doing ahead of me in the darkness of shadow, with its roots stepped down to the water, so too did I reach down and cup my hands to taste the freshness and purity of river’s elixir.

In meeting the discomfort that Saturday morning, and in removing even the definition of it as being “discomfort”, I had opened my heart to the aliveness of everything around me and in me. I had opened my heart to more of what it is to feel alive. Sure, it isn’t the only way to open to more of this, to be openhearted. But it was the opportunity that presented to me in that moment. And after all, the moment…is all we ever really have.

What about you? I’m curious! What feeling do you most experience with “discomfort’’ and how do you respond or react to that? In what ways have you noticed that your reluctance to feel certain feelings cuts you off from feeling more alive? And, for fun, how game are you to have a freezing cold shower in the next few days, if it’s not what you would normally do? (Go on, you know you can do it!)

 

Looking forward to hearing from you.

I’ll be in the kitchen stewing apples and cinnamon 😉

With love, Caroline x