Getting Unstuck: Mindfulness and Inertia

Source: John Hain/Pixabay, altered with Prisma

It's such a relief for most of us (fingers crossed, vaccine-boosted) that it's feeling safer to go outside and play again. Yes, this is a problem more gradually resolving for those of us privileged ones, not still laboring under COVID or its demoralizing, long-haul after-effects. (And, also not under cruel attack via the whims of malevolent autocrats.) But yeah, it's been a long haul, all around.

A recent trend I've witnessed in my clinical practice—a minor "pandemic" of its own might be too strong a term—is the difficulty a lot of folks are having in breaking the inertia of the last two-plus years. This heavy gravity is often a physical phenomenon, but I'm also seeing it in struggles to re-engage personal goals and plans, social contacts and relationships, and more.

I can interpret this existential hitch in our giddy-up, in restarting our engines, in a few ways (interpretations are my thing):

• It's a kind of residual defensive coping, staying under the radar just a little longer from a truly world-historical traumatic era;
• It's a conditioned preference for a now-entrained familiarity with life in a kind of crouch, duck-and-cover having its own basic sense of security and certainty;
• It's a closing-in of the broader benefits of opening out to experience in favor of a practiced kind of loss of mindful awareness—favoring predictable routines in couch-surfing, binge-watching, etc.

Yes, mindfulness can help here, both at rest and in motion.

The Sitting P(art)

The various tractor beams holding us back from relaunch may be identifiable with only a little sweat, but it takes some extra effort in mindful attention to understand them. Sitting meditation has its role here, in opening to the felt experience of obstacles and blockades. In Practical Mindfulness, I frame out some exercises in what I refer to as "theme ingredient" work. (You Iron Chef fans will get it.) Here's the summary:

• After some initial rust-shaking, focusing on the breath, body, etc., we can pivot the object of our awareness to a scene in mind—in this case, a moment of "stuck," of "speed bump and me," of "roach motel of my own initiative." That might have been this morning's skipping of a walk around the block, or last weekend's bailing out on an intention to call a friend back. That deliberate setting of a scene—that's the "theme"; instead of a tray of wagyu beef or spiky anemones, we present ourselves an experience to work with. (Knives are unnecessary.)
• This exercise isn't an analysis, but instead a memory-driven, imaginal replay of the experience, and watching what happens to us in that replay. Is there a quick tune-out to dullness? A physical heaviness? Guilty tension that rises up in emotion? A flood of thoughts about contagion?
• Like all meditative practice, we sit in awareness of the target, until it degrades, dissipates, or flat-out goes dark. And like all practice, as we come back we limit the judgy stuff, and just notice what arose in awareness and maybe what seemed to pull us off track. Reset, try it again. And again. This is a practice that takes some, um, practice, pacing, and grace. Go at it for a few minutes, then a break back to basic breath-watching. Then another stretch of working with the theme.

(We may notice that engaging in this routine may itself challenge the dynamics of initiation versus avoidance we're wrestling with—all for us to notice, and attend to. Heh.)

The Moving P(art)

Understanding better that causal backstory, of what may be driving our existential Velcro, is absolutely helpful. But frankly, it's not essential. We can use a different kind of mindful practice to clear the speed bump and get back going. But here, we can employ a different kind of mindful practice. Remember that any experience, whether at rest or in motion, can be an anchor for observation, a target to work with.

Mindful movement practices are so very common these days in our culture that you can't unroll a yoga mat without running into one. Yes, yoga (in regular and extra hot flavors) is a mindful movement practice. So are Qi Gong and Tai Chi. There risks a kind of "spiritual calisthenics" vibe to these practices, complete with fussing over perfect forms and movements and approved fruit-scented stretchy pants.

It's all good. But the goal is a simple one: observe the sensation as the object of mindful observation. Instead of the breath going in and out, it's the feeling of an arm swaying, of a set of muscles holding a pose, of gravity, of the soles of our feet touching the ground. Any and all of these are experiences to attend to, lose, and regain. Lather, rinse, repeat. (Come to think of it, "mindful shampooing" is just another practice.)

Take a walk. That 1,000-mile cliche starts with a single step.

• Start with a low bar—gravity, comfy shoes, five or 10 minutes in the morning, at lunch, and make your pandemic pooch happy in the early evening.
• But no earbuds, or holding your smartphone in front of you like some high-tech water douser. (Getting hit by a car is a radical experience to avoid.) Instead, pay simple attention to the soles of your feet. To the feeling of motion. To the sensory cues: sights, smells, the touch of wind and weather, the sounds; the tug of your canine on the lead; even out to all of it in awareness.
• Like with sitting practice, expect inevitable distraction into discursive thought (they painted their shutters that color?), or tuning out. Like always ... yup, that'll happen. Reset, back at it.

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You can truly apply this to any activity of project or activity that's stuck in neutral; creative, artistic, interpersonal, whatever. For a moment, ditch the outcome, other than initiation and some careful observation. Make it a kind of play.