So Simple a Child Can Teach It
August 24, 2011 at 12:52 pm | Posted in beliefs, family, fun, Uncategorized | Leave a commentTags: learning from children, The Sedona Method
See, all you have to do is open your arms and let it go.
On the Sedona Method 4-in-1 Audio course a woman asks Hale how to introduce The Sedona Method to her kids and he recommends that with children the best thing to do is live it, and that even more than what you do children look at what you’re being. Hale goes on to say that many parents artificially try to ‘do the right thing’ around our children but feeling-wise we haven’t shifted. It struck me how similar this is to what Katie says: if I think someone needs to do The Work, I need to do it.
I’ve needed to hear these messages over and over as I have at times felt a strong urge to force my kids – and the whole world, including myself – to let go, be happy, peaceful… Nowadays I usually just welcome that urge, and allow it to pass, and this often has results I could never have imagined.
As well as being fluent in The Work, the girls both know the Method and that they can ask for support to release if they want it. LB often asks to release, particularly around bedtime if she has trouble getting to sleep. Lolo, on the other hand is pretty happy-go-lucky and only rarely worries about much. Although a while ago she liked listening to the story of how Lester Levenson originally developed the process, she has hardly ever done any Sedona Method. Or so I thought. Then a week or so ago I was feeling upset about something and Lolo asked if I’d like to release. Of course I said yes! Her version of The Sedona Method was a little different and really great for anyone who might have resistance to welcoming or letting go, as I was at that moment.
“What are you feeling?” she asked.
I told her I felt sad.
“Would you invite it in and give it a cup of tea?”
I was already smiling by then. Yes, I could invite my sadness in and give it a cup of tea.
“And a cookie?”
Oh, yes, that was no problem either.
“Would you let it choose when it’s time to leave?”
Yes, I would do that too.
“Could you watch it going off down the hill on a bouncy space-hopper?”
By then I was laughing and hugging Lolo. And she didn’t stop there. Sensing I was still holding on, she asked the questions again and up popped an underlying emotion I hadn’t even realised I was feeling. Releasing that has left me a lot freer around a long-standing issue.
So if you’re struggling with any issue that feels sticky, or if life has become a bit too serious, then I invite you try The Lolo Method. And please let me know how it works for you!
Not Crying Over Spilt Milk
August 20, 2009 at 10:12 pm | Posted in emotions, family, parenting | Leave a comment
“When we are present discipline isn’t even an issue, whereas when we are distracted by beliefs about how children should be life becomes a battle of wills, an endless task of trying to mould children into whatever they currently are not!”
That quote is from one of my earlier posts. Being present, aware, awake - whatever you like to call it - is something I sometimes am, and sometimes am not. I’ve written quite a bit about what it’s like when I’m not present (by which I mean reacting in a conditioned way instead of being aware of what’s going on inside of me and what might be going on inside of someone else) so this article is about the difference awareness brings to discipline.
One recent Sunday morning the girls were downstairs eating breakfast, my husband was at work, and I was upstairs doing one of those Sunday morning somethings, like reading a book or taking the cat off the bed because his paws were muddy. I heard the sound of an argument from below and then LB came screaming up stairs and past the bedroom door.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. Or fresh from reading Non-Violent Communication by Marshall Rosenberg, I may even have shown more empathy, saying, “You are upset.” But I can’t guarantee it. I can’t guarantee that any of what I’m about to write is exactly as it happened, but it’s near enough.
LB replied, between wails, that she and Lolo had had a fight. “She was by the fridge and I asked her to get me a spoon. She said no.”Choke, sob. “So I shouted at her please do it and she still wouldn’t.”Choke, sob. “And then I went to hit her and she was holding the milk, and I hit the milk and now it’s everywhere!” Huge choke, huge sob, and then back to wailing.
“The milk is everywhere?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. It’s everywhere.”
“Is it on the carpet?” (We have a Turkish rug fairly close to the table.)
She shook her head.
“Then it’s not everywhere,” I said. “And if it’s not on the carpet it can be cleaned. Have you wiped any of it up?”
“No,” LB wailed, and tried to run off. She often runs off and hides in a cupboard if she thinks she’s done something wrong or if she’s in conflict with someone. I could have let her, go, and sometimes I might have, but that day instead I held her and hugged her. “You feel ashamed,” I said. “Will hiding away change that feeling?” As she continued to wail, I asked what she thought would help. She wailed some more.
I told her I thought she’d feel better after she’d cleaned it up, that hiding wouldn’t stop the feelings of shame, and that she’d be better off coming downstairs. She angrily told me to stop repeating myself. (I hadn’t noticed that I had, but I’d mentioned the word shame twice, and that’s what LB objected to.) I suggested we go and clean up the mess together. She hesitantly agreed.
Downstairs Lolo was busy mopping up the table with a hand towel, so I suggested to LB that she could clean the milk off the floor and wall. “I can’t do it!” She wailed. “There’s too much.”
“You feel overwhelmed, but looks worse than it is,” I replied. “Liquid always does.
Lolo held up the milk carton and said, “Look there’s not very much spilled at all.”
As I filled a bucket with soapy water, Lolo said, “I like mopping up, can I do it?”
I heard myself say, “Thank you, but no. I know you’re trying to be kind to LB, but she needs the feeling of having cleared up the mess. I would be kinder to let her do it.” (It was one of those times when words come out and afterwards I realise their truth. To me, those moments are pure joy, moments when I know I’m not in control, and something wonderful is taking place. I often experience similar moments when I’m writing fiction and a story goes off in a direction I never imagined.)
Lolo understood, and while she and I finished cleaning the table LB mopped the wall and floor.
LB’s relief after she’d cleaned up was obvious. We’ve talked about it since, and she says that she felt self-forgiveness afterwards. Later that same morning the girls were in their bedroom tidying out some boxes. I heard LB’s raised voice again. “I did hit you,” she was saying, “and I’m sorry.”
It turned out she’d thrown something to Lolo and had hit her. Lolo said it was okay, but LB wanted the chance to apologise!
I’ve long believed that punishment doesn’t work. Yet, I’ve resorted to it many times. There are so many beliefs in Western culture that children are bad or wild and need to be tamed that it is challenging to simply trust ourselves and our children. If I had followed a punishing route that Sunday I would have ordered LB downstairs to clean up the mess she made, and I would have reprimanded her for hitting Lolo. I might have worried that I ‘should’ issue some sort of sanction, have tried to think up one that fitted the crime, and felt guilty because I couldn’t come up with anything. She, meantime, would have been screaming that wasn’t fair, that I always picked on her and that if Lolo hadn’t refused to bring her a spoon it wouldn’t have happened. If I had managed to force her to clean up the mess she would have done it with resentment. We would have had a morning of misery and she would have learned that the way to get people to do what you want is to use force, and that as she was being punished for doing just that adults weren’t to be trusted. And she would have had no sense that I understood how she was feeling.
Instead what she learned was that cleaning up a mess she’d made wasn’t so hard as she’d imagined, and that she felt better afterwards. She was able to use that learning a few days later. She was in the bathroom making flower waters (as eleven year-old girls do). Petals were soaking in pots on top of a chest of drawers full of swimming gear. She knocked a pot. Water and petals floated towards the swimming costumes. LB wailed. “Oh no! It’s everywhere. It’s all ruined!”
I reminded her that the milk hadn’t been as hard to clean up as she’d imagined, and she calmed right down. Within seconds she had wiped it up.
It also got me thinking about making amends and wondering where I run away instead of cleaning up messes I’ve made. Hmm…
PS
I mentioned Non-Violent Communication at the beginning of this article. “Nonviolent Communication (also called Compassionate Communication) can be used in any interaction. NVC provides practical skills in language, awareness, and using power to communicate in ways that inspire compassionate giving and receiving toward meeting the needs of all concerned.” (From the web-site: http://www.cnvc.org/ )
I go on reading about other processes not because The Work doesn’t work, but because it does. As my thinking changes I understand in ways I couldn’t in the past. I read an introduction to NVC years ago, and thought I’d never be able to do it properly, so I didn’t explore it. Then a few months ago I saw a video clip of an interview with Marshall Rosenberg, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smEXGNui2OQ and realised that NVC wasn’t about getting the words right, but about learning to think in terms of needs instead of judgements. Rosenberg says, “All language which criticises others is simply an expression of an unmet need.” And that applies to ourselves as much as to others.
So You Want to be a good parent? It that true?
December 3, 2008 at 10:45 am | Posted in beliefs, family, parenting, society | 3 CommentsI’m guessing that about two out of every three readers of this blog are parents. (Okay, two out of THE three readers, and the other one is Pam – Hi Pam!)
If you’re not a parent you might think this post doesn’t apply to you, and I’d say that it might. As you read it, perhaps you can think of other situations where you think you want to be ‘good’ – a good spouse, employee, teacher.
There’s nothing obviously stressful about wanting to be good at something, so it might not seem worth questioning that belief. Yet I’ve found that often it’s the beliefs that seem so very reasonable that generate most stress. I’ve read that stress is caused either by trying to push away or to hold on. This makes a lot of sense to me. We push away what we think will do us harm, and try to hold on to what we think will bring us peace. Holding on creates tension. (If you find this hard to imagine stop reading for a moment and pick up something on your desk. Hold it tightly and notice what happens to your hand!) So the very act of trying to cling on makes it harder to do or be what we think we should.
Then there’s the word ‘want’. I want to be a good parent. Want can mean lack. If you want something you don’t have it (or at least you don’t believe you have it), so if I want to be a good parent, that implies that I’m not. For me, one of the most important sub-questions I’ve heard Katie ask is, “What images come into your mind when you think this thought?” What I’ve noticed, many times is that when I think I have to be or do something its opposite also comes into my mind. I think I want to be kind and patient, and images appear of me nagging and criticising my children. I think I should be a good parent, and my mind fills with pictures of people telling me I’m not. The day that I first noticed this was long before I’d discovered “The Work”.
The girls were still little – three and four. I had pain that a doctor told me was fybromyalgia. It could take years to get better, so I’d read. (It didn’t.) Some days I couldn’t lift the girls, couldn’t open the garage door. Yoga helped, so I had started doing yoga in the mornings. That particular morning I hadn’t done my yoga when the girls woke up. After breakfast they wanted to go swimming. I explained I needed to do yoga first, and they wanted to join in. Sounds idyllic doesn’t it? And wasn’t I such a wonderful mother, introducing my children to wholesome activities like yoga at such an young age? That was what I wanted to believe. How virtuous I felt saying, yes, I would show them what to do.
It didn’t work out like that. I can’t remember exactly what happened instead. Either they thought they’d do their own version of the exercises, or they climbed all over me when I lay down. It could have been cute and fun, we could have invented some new exercises, had I not had a head full of people telling me how a good parent should be. “You should take control, not let them run riot,” ran the commentary in my head. So I snapped at the girls to stop messing about and do what I showed them. The internal rant switched from taking my side to theirs, and carried on, “Look at you, you idiot. Yoga is supposed to be relaxing. How are they ever going to find it relaxing if you snap at them? They’re only little kids! Lighten up for goodness sake. If you’d been more organised and got up earlier you could have finished yoga ages ago.”
Strangely enough, this didn’t help me relax! Strangely enough, this snarling voice didn’t bring serenity to that yoga session! But that voice in my head didn’t shut up. I told the girls I knew they hadn’t done anything wrong, that I was trying not to be angry, and we got ready for the pool. Meanwhile old nagging-voice told me I was useless at getting organised. As we set off for the pool, it said, “You can’t go swimming now. It’s far too late. By the time you get back lunch will be late, and the girls will be hungry. Any decent mother would be better organised at feeding them.” We took a detour via a corner shop and bought muffins, but that only momentarily quieted my self-criticism. It wasn’t proper food, not the sort of thing a decent mother fed her kids. And lunch would still be far too late.
I kept listening to the voices in my head, trying to please them, not realising then that I didn’t have to believe a word they said. I had to be a good parent, and I was failing. Miserably. I’d say sorry to the girls, say I knew it wasn’t their fault, but the next minute I’d start snapping again. About the only time I stopped snapping that morning was when we were in the pool. My four-year-old pointed this out (who says wisdom comes with age?) Now, I can see that the reasons were simple – in the pool we were all doing something we loved, the self-criticism let up and I was able to focus on them and what we were doing instead of trying to please some imaginary audience.
That day was the first time I realised that trying to live up to what I imagined other people believed a good parent should be was preventing me from being able to be the best parent I could. I didn’t know about The Work then, but it’s interesting to look back and see how I would have been different without the thought. It’s not hard to see, because for part of the day, I was that person. For part of even that day filled with self-doubt and frustration, I was a woman in a pool, playing with her children, enjoying their company. I can also see that what prevented me from staying that way when we left the pool was fear. Fear of other people’s disapproval, and also fear that without this constant nagging voice pointing out my errors I wouldn’t know how to do the right thing. A few years before this, as LB changed from baby into toddler I scoured bookshops looking for a parenting book that explained what was acceptable behaviour in a toddler, and what I should correct. It took me a while to realise that nobody could tell me this, that for each parent the answer is different. Later I came to realise that my confusion came from never having learned to trust my own inner voice, and that is why I find The Work so valuable. It’s not about adding any new rules, but about letting go. Even the turnarounds aren’t new rules to be followed, but options to explore.
What turnarounds might you find for ‘I want to be good parent”?
I don’t want to be a good parent. Not if it means following someone else’s ‘rules’, and trying to live based on what I imagine will get me approval.
I want to be a good child. Yes, is that a child is open to learn.
The thought “I want to be a good parent,” loosened its hold on me that day, but it came visiting many times since, and still occasionally does. When I write for this blog it whispers, “You can’t say that, people will think you’re a bad parent.” Now, after years of doing The Work, I know I don’t have to believe it, and that what people think is their business and doesn’t threaten me in any way.
Are We Ill At Ease With Illness?
October 15, 2008 at 11:43 am | Posted in family, society | 2 CommentsTags: illness
The girls have both been ill lately, and one or the other has been off school for weeks, which is largely the reason it’s taken me so long to post.
I find it fascinating to notice the mass of contradictory beliefs in society, and in me, connected to illness. Western cultures seem to believe that we have to fight illnesses, be they life-threatening like cancer or heart disease, or more ordinary like the common cold. (Though the common cold that Lolo had as a baby meant nine days in intensive care on a ventilator.) I’ve heard of companies that reprimand employees for being off sick, and in the UK we have TV ads for cold cures that suggest you can swallow the potion and get straight back to work. The alternative, it seems, is to huddle in bed with a hot water bottle, nose dripping, feeling totally miserable and sorry for yourself.
So when I start to feel ill, or my children are, thoughts come popping into my head, thoughts I once would have believed or fought, and now instead I question. Here’s a selection:
It’s weak to be ill.
I should find a way to prevent my children getting ill.
Teachers/other parents/people will think I’m doing something wrong if my children are off school.
People won’t believe me that the Buteyko Method works if my children are ill.
I shouldn’t be ill.
I’ve too much to do to be ill.
I won’t be able to cope.
One morning recently, noticing my sore throat, runny nose, headache, I also noticed these last three thoughts, and that I was seeing only the options of fight or give in and collapse – and that led to feelings of anxiety and tiredness.
What if there was a different way? What if instead of letting my mind run off into the future it stayed right where I was? What if instead of imaging the day ahead with all the struggles I’d go through because I was ill, I took each moment as it came? In other words, who would I be without the thought that I couldn’t cope?
Interesting this – I’d be living in the now, right here, with no stories of struggle.
What if illnesses aren’t the enemy? If we were to treat illnesses instead as teachers, how would we see them differently? How would we feel differently about them? I’ve read many articles about people who have developed disabilities or debilitating illnesses such as cancer, and who have come to see them as a gift. (I’m reading Michael J. Fox’s book Lucky Man right now, and that’s how he describes his Parkinson’s disease, and says that the ten years since he was diagnosed have been the best of this life – though he also writes he has been criticised by others for saying this and that it is a gift that keeps taking.) I’ve not experienced serious illness myself, so I have no idea how I would react, and if you or anyone you know are in that situation, I certainly am not suggesting that you should look on your illness as a gift – if you don’t. I simply notice that for some people it is possible to see things that way, and this inspires me when I think about my own minor ailments. I guess the fear is that if we stop regarding illness as the enemy we will be overwhelmed by it. Yet, what if illness is perhaps a signal that somewhere, somehow we are out of balance? Would we stop looking for cures then, or would we approach the search for a cure with less – or maybe even no – fear?
For years my fear of the breathing difficulties Lolo experienced with colds led me on a panicky search for a cure. It’s probably six years since the day that she got furious at me about something, (I’ve conveniently forgotten my crime!) and as she raged at me she began struggling to breathe and needed her inhaler. Yet, though I noticed the link between her outburst and her breathing, I missed the opportunity in this. It didn’t occur to me then, for instance, to notice what happened to my own breathing when I felt upset. And a few years later when someone gave me an article about the Buteyko breathing method, it took me months, maybe even a year, to ring a teacher. Why? I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. Probably because of beliefs I had such as: ‘Doctors wouldn’t like it.’ I have yet to meet a doctor who complains about it, and when I discussed it with the asthma nurse at our clinic, she said it was very effective. But fear rarely lets evidence stand in the way.
I am aware that I still hold many crazy beliefs about health, and accepting that is oddly peaceful. I don’t have to try to force myself to drop unhealthy beliefs about health! That seems similar to trying to force my body to be well. I read more and more about research that indicates placebos are as effective as drugs, and when we read this it’s easy to start thinking if a dummy pill can do it we should be able to simply heal ourselves. Some people seem to find this comes relatively easily, and others don’t. I tend to think we all have lessons that help us become more aware of the inherent wholeness of our being, and that certain situations recur in our lives because that’s how we learn. So if you or I experience recurring illness, for instance, it’s not because we’re inherently weak, stupid or careless, but because these illnesses bring to the surface beliefs that tell us we are, and we then get the chance to question these beliefs and more toward love.
Parent’s Intuition
June 23, 2008 at 11:53 am | Posted in family, parenting, society | Leave a commentTags: sleep problems
A different style of post today.
Yesterday in a newsagent I picked up a parenting magazine and flicked through it. I read a short article about research that claims to have shown that children whose parents are with them as they fall asleep or who are taken into the parental bed if they wake in the night will more likely continue to have sleep problems as older children.
Hmm, I wonder, could this be a bit like the research that showed babies who had a night light grew up to be short sighted? That research came out when LB was a year or so old, and I fretted about it long enough to switch her light off one night. She screamed, the light went back on, and some time later the researchers realised that they had overlooked one fairly vital piece of information – babies with night-lights tend to have parents who are short sighted! (And no, I’m not but my husband is.)
So am I now going to beat myself up over all those nights I picked LB up and took her through to our bed in the middle of the night? Am I going to assume that’s why she still occasionally has bad dreams? (The article suggested these children more often had bad dreams.) Or am I going to take a wild guess that these researchers may just have overlooked important information – for instance that children with high levels of anxiety or who get scared at night may well have parents who sit with them as they go to sleep and who soothe them when they wake in the night? It gets even more interesting – I looked up the magazine’s web-site and found a mass of information about children and sleep, including evidence that controlled crying creates stress chemicals in a child, whereas co-sleeping reduces them. So who do you believe?
This post is not a argument about whether you should take your baby to be with you or not – I think that what works for any family depends on so many factors unique to them that it is impossible to generalise. I can’t help feeling that instead of doing endless studies to prove one way of parenting is better then another, it would be more useful to encourage parents to trust their own intuition.
Going back to LB – not long after Lolo was born (and while she was still in hospital so our lives were somewhat disrupted) a “sleep expert” asked me what I did when LB woke in the night. I told her it depended how LB was – if I hugged her and laid her down and she settled quickly I tucked her up in her own bed. If she was clearly distressed and unable to settle I took her into my bed. “You’re confusing her,” the expert said. “You must always be consistent, always leave her, or always take her into your bed.” Being consistent was apparently more important than trusting my instincts or responding to the needs of my child at any given moment. Probably that sleep expert did my a huge favour – her advice seemed so utterly crazy to me that it may have been when I began to listen to that small voice of wisdom inside of me, the voice that told me I knew my daughter better than any expert.
We all have this wisdom, we all know instinctively how to look after our children and ourselves, and I sincerely hope that in some small way this blog can help others learn to trust that wisdom – others including well-meaning sleep experts!
Every Breath You Take
June 2, 2008 at 10:52 am | Posted in Buteyko, family, family patterns | 1 CommentTags: asthma, Buteyko
Lolo was born a little early – three months and two days to be exact. We’re incredibly lucky, not just because she survived, but because her only obvious the long term repercussion was a tendency to get asthma whenever she got a cold. You might notice I’ve used past tense. I can’t say for sure she won’t asthma again, but I’m optimistic.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when we had a fold-out bed permanently ready in our bedroom for those nights when she was taking sixty breaths a minute and I feared each one would be her last.
I wanted to avoid steroid inhalers, so we tried all sorts of complementary therapies. For a while homeopathy seemed to control the attacks but choosing the correct remedy was challenging to say the least, and strangely enough, asthma attacks don’t always come when your homeopath is at home, waiting for a frantic mother to call! Lolo ended up on oral steroids so often that the preventative inhaler became essential. Even so, by the time she started school she was getting more prolonged attacks with every cold.
Then I read about a woman whose asthma had healed with the Buteyko Method of breathing. Buteyko was a Russian doctor who discovered that people with asthma were over-breathing – sounds crazy but several clinical trials have shown his technique to be effective in reducing asthma. The theory is that when we over-breathe we lose too much carbon dioxide, and it is essential for getting oxygen from our haemoglobin into the body. When we exercise or when we get stressed our breathing naturally increases. That’s fine, so long as it settles back when the exercise or danger is over. Of course, nowadays the dangers we face are rarely things we need big breathing for – that bear of a motorist you’re so mad at isn’t actually a bear at all, but your body breathes big, ready to bop him over the head or flee like the wind. And so, meeting bears on a daily basis on the way to work, you breathe in just a little too much over a long period of time, and that’s how you end up with a big breathing habit. (With Lolo it probably started because she needed ventilating as a baby, and because of lung infections she had in her first few months of life. I’ve also seen her go into an asthma attack after getting upset and angry.)
There was no Buteyko teacher in our city, so I didn’t pursue it. Then after Lolo had once again missed a week of school I rang any teacher within sixty miles, and one was willing to come five days in a row to teach Lolo in our home, provided we paid his petrol – an indication of the passion Buteyko teachers show.
Lolo was less passionate about doing the exercises. We persevered, and for almost two years she got by without an attack. We reduced her inhaler, she seemed to manage.
But she didn’t see why she should do her exercises when her sister was playing or reading a book. Her ‘Steps’ were just an annoying thing that her annoying mother asked her to do, and if she spoke in the middle of them or opened her mouth and took a huge gulp of air, then her totally annoying mother asked her to do them all over again. Not cool. And her annoying mother sometimes got annoyed too, so now there were two people having tantrums and flouncing about the place. If Daddy wasn’t at work it was easier to get him to supervise; he didn’t usually make her redo them if she cheated, he often didn’t even notice the sneaky breaths she took in the middle when she was supposed to be holding her breath.
The asthma came back. My thoughts ran something like this: I’m a failure. It’s my fault because my anxiety stresses her too, and that’s why she has asthma. Buteyko’s nonsense anyway, it doesn’t really work – I was just grabbing at straws, and so what if there have been clinical trials that show its effectiveness, it’s not working for us. I look such a fool, since I’ve told dozens of people it works. It’s all my own stupid fault, and I might as well give up and just accept she’s going to be on a steroid inhaler for the rest of her life. And on and on…
But I do The Work, so I knew I didn’t have to believe any of those thoughts.
I’m a failure – is that true? Hmm, now I think about it: two years asthma-free could be considered a success, and this attack was mild compared to what she used to get. And let’s not take this quite so personally, just how is it ‘my’ failure or success really?
How do I react when I think this thought? I feel like giving up, which of course would make me even more of a failure in my mind. I feel angry and guilty, and want to find someone else to blame so I don’t have to feel that guilt. I imagine people sneering at me, saying what an idiot I am.
Okay, I can see that lot’s pretty stressful. So who would I be without this thought?
Hunting through the magazine I read a few days before to find the phone number of a Buteyko teacher who now covers this city. Taking Lolo to see her for a refresher course. Discovering it wasn’t so much about success or failure as about learning from mistakes and moving on.
Lolo learned too. She learned that if she opens her mouth in the middle of her steps and takes a sneaky breath then she’s cheating herself, not me. Days later we discovered that she had a belief, “I’ll never to able to do it.” And when we looked at that belief she discovered there was no way she could know that, and that believing it made her not want to try, made her feel like – guess what – a failure, angry, and thinking, “It’s not fair.”
Without the thought she would just do her steps and see what happened.
And what happened was she gradually began to do more and more, her breathing got better and better. Two months ago she could only hold her breath comfortably for five seconds, now she usually manages between thirty-five and thirty-nine seconds. She swam a width of the local swimming pool underwater a couple of weeks ago. (About twenty metres.) She can hold her breath longer than I can now, considerably longer. She has a cold just now, and so far, no asthma.
In the interests of balance I’ve been surfing the internet reading about various trials and opinions on Buteyko, and what I found was a huge number of sites with evidence it works and a few that say we don’t know enough yet to know that. Usually the doubters also say it seems to work for some patients so long as they are willing to put in the effort required to do the exercises. In other words it’s easier to take a puff on an inhaler, but easier for how long and at what cost?
It may not surprise you that LB and I are now doing the exercises – they can help with a lot more than just asthma. I’ve been doing them for a week now, and I notice a difference – I went for a run a few hours ago, and didn’t puff and pant and need to breathe through my mouth. I can’t pretend I’ve found it easy; I’m still getting used to breathing into my abdomen (I breathe too high) and the exercises have brought some interesting beliefs to the fore. Yes, one of them was “I’ll never to able to do it,” and no, I don’t feel guilty that I passed that belief on to my child, just pleased that we can do The Work on these beliefs as they appear.
If you are interested in knowing more about Buteyko, there are teachers in many parts of the world. I found this article particularly good at explaining why it works.
http://www.buteyko.co.nz/buteyko/work/default.cfm
I also recommend this article by Una Mooney, which provides an illuminating explanation of development of asthma in young children.
http://www.buteykoinscotland.co.uk/children.htm
Not That I’m Obsessive or Anything…
May 14, 2008 at 11:28 am | Posted in emotions, family | 1 CommentTags: the work of bryon katie
Okay, here’s yet another post about those little things we love to hate – and I don’t mean the kids, I mean feelings! There’s a saying that probably has a teensy bit of truth in it – we teach what we need to learn!
LB was feeling miserable a couple of nights ago. (This isn’t her real name by the way: I’m using aliases for the girls. This may change as I get more used to blogging. She suggested I call her Petal or Clover, but LB at least is a family nickname.) She has a cold – again – and she’d hurt her foot. I’d looked at it, her dad had looked at it, her friend’s mum had looked at it, her piano teacher had looked at it. We all agreed: there were a couple of bruises but no swelling so it was probably sprained.
But when your sister’s broken arm and your auntie’s broken arms weren’t picked up till the next day… if you’re LB you panic even if it is the next day. She had broken a bone. She was sure of it. She needed to go to Accident and Emergency. She might have managed to walk home from school, she might have managed to climb the stairs, but she couldn’t manage to do the breathing exercises both girls do at bedtime. (The Buteyko Method and for children the exercises involve walking.)
I was, shall we say, a tad frustrated. Usually I understand LB pretty well, having a similar sort of joyful, relaxed, bouncy, light-hearted personality. But strangely that night, nothing I said made it any better. I felt like I couldn’t connect with her at all. And okay yes – nothing I said to myself made it any better: she should listen to me, she shouldn’t get herself in such a state, I don’t know what to do, if she’d just listen to me she’d see how ridiculous she’s being, yabber, yabber, yabber…
“Come on angel, you can do it.” Kind words maybe, but said in an exasperated voice they didn’t inspire much confidence. I was irritated. She knew it. She wailed. I used the exasperated voice again.
She sat down the floor and cried. “You’re horrible. It’s not fair. Everybody is being horrible to me.”
I told her I knew I was believing things that weren’t true – I wouldn’t have been feeling stressed otherwise. Lolo and I told her we loved her. We hugged her. I told her I didn’t want to make her feel wrong or bad, and that I was struggling to deal with my own thoughts. We read a story together, got her exercises done.
I still felt rotten. I knew I was believing thoughts that left me feeling inadequate, and I could still feel the urge to make it her fault, so that I could feel ‘good.’ Being aware of that helped a bit, helped me to keep the words in my head instead of going off into the rant I so, so wanted to. I knew acting on my uncomfortable feelings would only make me feel worse.
LB got into bed, and then she started to panic again. We studied her foot, and it looked the same as it had before – a couple of bruises, no swelling. This didn’t reassure her. Now I was starting to panic. Then I thought about how I can often feel helpless in the face of another person’s misery, as if I ‘should’ be able to help, but can’t. I realised I was thinking, “I need to find a way to stop her doing this or something terrible will happen.”
Instead of trying to get LB to change it was time to look at my own thought. I told her what I’d been believing, and thanked her for giving me the opportunity to see it. Once the thought was out in the open it was easy to see it wasn’t true – I can’t see into the future!
LB snuggled into me, smiled and said, “How do you treat others when you believe that thought?” (If you aren’t familiar with The Work, this is a sub-question of the third question in the process: “How do you react when you think that thought?”)
I smiled too. “I get annoyed at them, raise my voice. I try to make them change, try to make them wrong.”
“And how would you treat people without that thought?” she asked. (A variation on the fourth question: “Who would you be without the thought?”)
“I’d listen to them, not feel scared of them or what they might do. I’d be more relaxed, able to hear them, be with them, and see a bit more of how it was for them.”
The last part in the process of The Work is to turn the statement around, so my statement became: “I don’t need to stop her because nothing terrible will happen.” And: “I don’t need to stop her because something wonderful will happen. ” It did – for a start we got to look at what happens when you believe a thought that’s not true! That’s pretty good. We got to snuggle up together, to reach understanding together.
This doesn’t end there.
Later I go back to check on LB. She’s still awake, still fretting about her foot. I start to feel irritated again.
“I want Betsy back,” she whines. (Betsy is a friend of hers who has gone away for a few months – again not her real name.)
Oh, boy, so now I’m supposed to get her back to am I? What do you think I am some kind of magician? I’m supposed to solve everything am I? Mothers are supposed to have all the answers are they?
Hey, wait a minute, I’m making this all up, she hasn’t said any of it. Oops.
I tell her I can see my irritation comes because I’m thinking she wants me to do something about it and that makes me feel useless because there’s nothing I can do to make it better for her. I tell her it’s up to me to deal with my thoughts about that, and in the meantime maybe she could help by not saying she wants her friend back. “Because it’s not true is it?” I ask. “You don’t really want her to leave her family and come back do you, or for them all to come back from their big holiday just because of you? “
“No,” she agreed. “I don’t.”
“Maybe instead you say, ‘I miss Betsy, and I feel sad because of that.’ Then we can hug and I can let you know I understand. I often miss friends too, so I know how it feels.”
As we hug, we notice that when she believes she wants her friend back it creates conflict inside her because it’s not true.
Then LB smiles and says, “I miss my old foot.” I tell her she’ll get that foot back soon. She closes her eyes.
I sit there as she falls asleep. I hadn’t planned to say any of that, but now, not only does it make sense, I wonder what things I believe I want but don’t really want at all? What conflict do I create in myself by believing that I do?
PS Just as I finished this post a newsletter arrived from Carol Skolnick at Soul Surgery with a pertinent article about accepting depression and finding the benefits in it. You can read the article here http://soulsurgery.blogspot.com/2008/05/depression-or-correction.html
Her latest article is also well worth a look:
http://soulsurgery.blogspot.com/2008/05/on-not-minimizing-human-suffering.html
To find out more about The Work go to:http://www.thework.com/index.asp
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