4-minute mental health

Health is the most important thing, right?

You’ve heard someone say that, I’m sure – a friend who survived a health scare, a coworker who battled burnout, or a family member who had a terrible accident.

Tough moments bring people to the realization that no matter the material success, our state of being is the most important thing.

So why do we let ourselves wade around in our own negative energy? If health is the most important thing, why do we allow ourselves to suffer so many small pricks of discontent, then wonder why our problems feel unsolvable?

That wasn’t a gotcha question to make you feel bad about feeling stuck – not at all. This whole piece is about giving you the freedom to solve yourself first.

Asking “why do I feel this way?” will make whatever it is worse. The empowered pivot is “where am I in this moment with myself?” Emotions don’t tell us how to solve a problem, or how we got into a pickle. Emotions tell us how we are right now.

Asking “where am I in this moment with myself?” gives you the right to be your own best friend.

For two years I couldn’t put weight on my right hand. A healthy wrist allows me to do things I love to do – practices that help me feel happy, strong, and confident. I can do these practices anywhere – no gym needed - freedom. Healing and having this freedom again has been incredible. I am so grateful.

If non-life threatening wrist healing can make a huge difference, so too can prioritizing learning to manage emotions through the self. We tend to reach for something outside because it is fundamentally difficult to connect to yourself. A lot of our reaching is unconscious. Some of it even looks kinda healthy.

To handle life well, relearn to manage your state through the self because there is an emotional layer that makes decisions on your behalf based upon past experiences.

Rarely can we fix challenging current circumstances from current emotions, unless we are talking about life or death urgency and the influx of adrenaline that hides pain so you can fight and run.

We don’t prioritize mental health in small doses that would support everything other damn thing because most of us suffer to some degree from one of four basic human wounds. These wounds either diminish our felt experiences in the moment in order to keep going, amplify our pain, or make us helpless – paralyzed.

All pain and comfort originate from four basic human wounds that we can navigate with practice.

The four basic human wounds are:

Right To Exist: not being free to be you, to take up space within yourself and in the world versus owning yourself right to exist. This wound is the root of our inclination to avoid feeling with overthinking that ironically just makes the original feeling worse.

Separateness: insecurity in separateness from others and no separateness from incorrect ideas of self versus being ok with yourself in your ultimate aloneness (which is actually unification – oneness.) Separateness causes pain when you put your worth in the hands of another person, or when you attach to diminishing beliefs about yourself.

Learned Helplessness: persistent and limiting fear of survival based on a belief in your own incapableness versus having faith and confidence in your capabilities. This one leads to talking yourself out of small steps towards feeling better because it’s all hopeless – the mountain is too high.

Absolute & Ultimate loneliness: feelings of abandonment and rejection versus feeling connected to your Higher Self and others. This one is sneaky. It’s the person who does every wellness hack and has a lot of success but is still deeply unsettled.

Yesterday I closed our annual Yellowstone retreat. We had 21 guests from age 21 - 86. Each event feels more fulfilling because I’ve been taking my own medicine. The great thing about this stuff is there’s no danger of an overdose – except maybe talking about it.

When you don’t have to prove it to your friends and family but they feel the difference in you and start relating to you differently that’s when you know it’s working.

When I recognize where I am in the moment and use my tools to shift, I have so much more to give.

The last day of the retreat was just breakfast and goodbyes then a shuttle at 8:30 so folks could catch flights. I had been up since 5am to teach a “mindfulness in the workplace” module to a group of interns at an investment banking firm, and very, very tired from the retreat week.

I used to really struggle with sleep. Not so much anymore, but sometimes these events get me so wired that it’s hard to wind down at night. I do my best to just accept, knowing that it’s learned helplessness that would lead me to spin out that I’ll never sleep again.

As soon as the guests were in the shuttle and a few others headed out for further explorations around Montana in rental cars, I set to work packing the Yoga props, gymnastic rings, kettlebells, packable saunas, and a bunch of other odds and ends. I filled the truck and drove back over to my cabin.

The wide dirt road winds past the near corral, through one ranch gate, then another, and past the spring-fed pond that was echoing with laughter all week. I stopped to open a closed gate, pulled through, got out, and latched it again because the rule on a ranch is always leave a gate how you found it.

My cabin is a one room beauty with an antler chandelier and beautiful woodwork. There are windows on all sides and at night the breeze from the West drops from Sheep Mountain right to our bedside. Bella had already packed most of our personal stuff, and I was grateful she had done that.

Bella left to head back to town to meet her mom, and I had some time alone. I stood still on the small porch and set the timer for 10 minutes to begin my standing practice with a simple form in stillness. I knew that I could be tired all day or I could be tired yet clear and feel accomplished from having done this one small thing, this thirty-minute practice of watching sensation pass through my body while holding my arms in different positions.

It’s wild how fickle the mind is. I can finish a 21-person retreat and receive glowing compliments non-stop at departure, but if I don’t manage myself the rest of the day, go right down a spiral.

So I stood still on the porch with my packed truck waiting by the tall grass and a good breeze going. A few minutes in, this whole piece came to me, that nothing is more important than health, and we know this, but we still avoid uplifting ourselves when how we feel is the single most important thing to do in any situation.

So what to do? Start small. Here’s the protocol:

Sit down if you can. Look straight ahead and relax your stomach.
Put your tongue on the roof of your mouth.
Breathe down – not too hard – but feel your edges expand a little.
How are you right now? How have you been feeling?
Feel how it’s been to be you.
Does how you’ve been feeling relate to a basic human wound?
Pause. Close your eyes.
Stay with it for a few moments.
Ask yourself, how would it feel if things worked out?
Name the feeling.
Feel it.
Then, what emotion can drive with to get where you want to go?
Now - start breathing like this: in 4, hold 4, out 4, hold 4, and while you’re doing that, generate more of the feeling you’re going to drive with.
Add a small smile.
Continue for 2-3 minutes.

Repeat for the rest of your life.