The Trance of Keeping It All Together

By Nancy Hall, M.A.

My son had a hard time adjusting to first grade. He’d come home tired and crabby, and the smallest provocation would trigger a full-blown meltdown. I’m talking nuclear. I had heard about other kids being very tired after a full school day, but I was not prepared for such hard-core trench warfare.

My dear friend Sue has kids older than mine, and she explained the dynamic perfectly. Imagine you start your day with an empty tray, like the ones servers carry in restaurants. Someone walks by and places a half-full glass of water on your tray. “No big deal,” you think. “I can handle just one glass.” Then another person places another glass on your tray; a third person does the same. “It’s just a few glasses. I can arrange them just so and everything is in balance.” Now imagine that throughout your whole day, people are adding to your tray. It gets fuller and fuller and harder and harder to keep steady. When you think you’ve got just about all you can handle, one more person comes by and puts a teeny-tiny Dixie cup of water on the tray and **KERPLOOSH!** Everything goes flying. Glasses. Water. The tray ends up on the ground. But it was just one teeny-tiny Dixie cup? How could it create such a calamity?

My insightful friend pointed out that this is what first grade is like. As my son went through his day, his metaphorical tray was getting loaded up. And all it took was me adding my little Dixie cup for him to buckle under all that pressure.

As we grow up, we get better at stacking things on our trays. But we can be so caught up in trying to balance and hold on to everything, that we don’t realize that we’re buckling under the pressure as well. Our arm and hand certainly send signals, but we ignore them, telling ourselves that we can handle the pressure and take on just a little bit more.

Our bodies are very good and sending messages to our brains when we’re in physical or emotional distress. Our stomachs tie up in knots; our heads pound. When we practice mindfulness, we can begin to pay attention to these important cues.

Meditation is a path to mindfulness. It allows us to take time to listen to our bodies so we can learn what we need to attend to. While meditation might seem passive, it is actually quite active. It is simultaneously a stillness and an awakening. Meditation does not have to be complicated but it requires a commitment.

So as you go through your day, make the commitment to becoming a bit more mindful. That way, you can adjust accordingly to avoid upending your tray.

Join me this Saturday, 9/27, noon-2pm, at The Awakening Center for a meditation workshop. Registration is required and the fee is $20. Contact me at nancyhalltac@gmail.com to sign up.

Also, I will be starting a weekly meditation group in October. Visit and “Like” The Awakening Center’s Facebook page or check back here for details as they come!

Outside In

Simply touching something warm may make you feel warmly toward others, finds a study in the Oct 24 issue of Science (Vol. 322, No. 5,091). Yale researchers asked undergraduate study participants to hold a cup of coffee- either hot or iced- and then to rate the personality traits of a fictitious person. Those who had held the hot coffee saw the person as more generous, sociable and good-natured than those who had held the cold cup. Lead author Lawrence Williams, PhD, now at the University of Colorado at Boulder, says the findings suggest that people may be more sensitive to cues in their physical environments than we often think. “We shouldn’t underestimate the importance of our surroundings in shaping our thoughts, feelings and actions,” he says.

- Monitor on Psychology, January 2009 Vol.40, No.1

I never thought too much about my morning cup of coffee- until I stumbled upon this excerpt. I know, like most people, a little bit about the mind-body connection- sufficient sleep is crucial for mental performance, a good workout can produce endorphins which contribute to a positive mood, adequate food is necessary to keep the mind functioning optimally.

But “simply touching something warm may make you feel warmly toward others”? Wow. I sure could use that piece of information the next time I’m feeling crabby toward my husband.

I was fascinated by what the Yale researchers found because their study demonstrated just how impactful the environment is on not only our inner thoughts and feelings toward ourselves, but also toward others. It seems to me that that warm cuppa joe made the holder of the cup feel warm inside (feel good about themselves) so that the holder could feel warm toward others (feel good about everyone else).

It is pretty obvious that we can’t really feel good toward others without taking care of ourselves first, but many people in today’s modern hustle and bustle neglect to put self-care on the top of their to-do list. So many of us (me included) run around with crazy schedules, trying to take care of others in our lives without taking the time to rest or re-charge.

If this study is true, then one significant step that we can take toward self-care is changing the negative influencers in our surroundings. Is your cubicle at work cluttered and uninspiring? Are your walls at home a gloomy shade of gray? Do you spend a lot of time watching sad movies? Do you take the time to make hot, home-cooked dinners, or are most of your meals eaten cold, out of a plastic box?

Taking care of yourself and your relationships could be as simple as surrounding yourself with things you love, consuming foods that warm your heart, and listening to music that can bring you to lovely faraway places. If we can change the outside, then maybe how we feel inside can also change.

As for me, the next time I feel irritation and impatience arising toward my loved ones, I’m going to fix myself a nice mug of hot tea, breathe, and turn on the radio to the jazz channel.

Warmly,
Jolene Hwee

Jolene is a Master's level intern at TAC. She co-leads the Tuesday night ANAD support group.