Blogging for World Mental Health Day

Today, World Mental Health Day, sees the launch of 'In Case of Spiritual Emergency' - a valuable resource for mental health professionals and others. The key tool for coping with crisis that I present in my new book is Mindfulness. So for World Mental Health Day I'd like to share my article that was published in last month's issue of Yoga Magazine.

Ten Top Tips for Bringing Mindfulness into Your Daily Life

Too busy? Too stressed? The benefits of meditation have long been recognised, but not everybody wants or likes to meditate. Mindfulness is meditation’s twin sister. We can incorporate it easily into our existing daily routine, without having to find extra time or do formal sitting meditation on a cushion. Mindfulness helps us to be in the present moment, without dwelling on the past or worrying about something that hasn’t even happened in the future.  And if you do meditate regularly, then Mindfulness will come to you even more easily!

1                    Choose one meal a day that you’re going to eat mindfully. Do you talk, read or even walk about while you’re eating? This will be the one meal when you give yourself permission to simply eat. So choose a mealtime when you know you can be alone and sit down to really savour those flavours. Explore the colours, textures, tastes of each and every mouthful. Enjoy!

2                    When walking, whether to the local shop or from one office building to another, incorporate mindful walking into your day. Drop down into your body. Feel the soles of your feet against the ground with each step you take. Stay focussed on the physical sensations of the movement. If your mind wanders off, gently bring it back to the soles of your feet. Start with a few minutes and gradually build up to 10-15 minutes.

3                    Introduce 3-minute ‘breathing spaces’ into your day. These are mini-mini-meditations; great little tools with big benefits! So whether you need a break from the computer screen or need to centre yourself after driving somewhere or between clients, try this. Ideally, sit in a chair with your feet flat on the ground and close your eyes. If that’s not possible, don’t worry – these can even be done standing in the queue at the supermarket checkout! Start by checking in with yourself. How are you doing right now, physically, mentally, emotionally? We’re not trying to change anything. We’re just noticing how it is right now, what’s present for us right now. When you’ve had time to do that, take your attention to the breath. Follow it for a few cycles, simply noticing the physical movement and sensations. When you’re ready you can re-engage with the day feeling refreshed.

4                    If, like most of us, your mind tends to be very busy, notice what kind of thinking the mind is engaged in. For example, is it rehearsing a conversation, planning, brooding, catastrophising, daydreaming, drafting an email? Just becoming aware of the kind of activity the mind is busy with can help us to step back a little, cultivate the observer and be more in the present moment.

5                    Does over-work and too much stress leave you feeling tired, dull and flat? Whilst acknowledging how we’re feeling, we can intentionally seek out the pleasurable, the beautiful, the enjoyable. A good question to ask when we’re struggling is ‘what else is in my experience right now?’ There will always be something, no matter how small or subtle, that is positive in our experience right now. Maybe you can feel the breeze on your skin, maybe the cup of tea you’re holding feels warm in your hands ...

6                    Find ways of being kind and gentle with yourself. Notice when comfort eating or flopping in front of the telly is self-defeating and find real treats for yourself. Bring awareness and mindfulness into your self-care and self-nurturing.

7                    If you have a daily yoga practice, you’re probably already practising Mindfulness! The way we bring ourselves into the present moment is through the body and the five senses. So during your practice really focus on the physical sensations. When the mind wanders off simply bring it back patiently, without any sense of judgement.

8                    Choose one routine activity a day to practise Mindfulness. That might be cleaning your teeth, having a shower or washing up. Spend that time really focussing on the physical sensations of the hot water on your skin, the taste of the toothpaste and so on. Involve as many of the five senses as possible to help you be totally in the present moment.

9                    Changing our relationship to what we find difficult lies at the heart of Mindfulness. Our default mode is to resist anything we find painful, physically or emotionally. We don’t want it to be happening; we want it to go away. Unfortunately this only makes our suffering worse. If we can gently turn towards it, say ‘hello’ to it, life will become easier. Start by noticing where you might be resisting aspects of your experience. Be compassionate towards yourself.

10                If stress, whether caused by work, relationships or health, is a major concern for you, consider finding a Mindfulness course to help you learn the tools for a better quality of life. Whatever issue or problem you’re struggling with, Mindfulness can’t and won’t make it go away; what it can and will do is help you to cope and look after yourself.

10 September, World Suicide Prevention Day

Excerpt
The Dark Night of the Soul

Often associated with depression, the dark night of the soul is perhaps one of the most perilous forms spiritual emergency can take, because of the danger of suicide. Reaching out for support is imperative at such times. In the UK there is an excellent non-medical facility in London for anyone who is feeling suicidal, the MayTree Foundation. You can stay there for up to four nights, with someone available 24 hours, to help you through the worst time (http://www.maytree.org.uk/). Alternatively, call the Samaritans on 08457 90 90 90 or, in America, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 1-800-273-8255, both 24 hours a day.
       Contrary to popular belief, the dark night of the soul is not only about pain and misery. It is as much about the freshly dawning light that can break through after the totally debilitating times of the dark night. A helpful book on the subject is Gerald May’s The Dark Night of the Soul: A Psychiatrist Explores the Connection Between Darkness and Spiritual Growth. Drawing on his clinical experience, May writes that depression and the 'dark night' often go hand in hand, in the same way that we have seen how other spiritual crises can be accompanied by psychotic-type symptoms. He considers it not helpful to try to separate them out, the important thing being to treat the depression where present and to support the 'dark night'.

Join us for the ‘virtual’ book launch!

World Mental Health Day, Monday 10 October 2011

7.30pm GMT (11.30am PST, 2.30pm EST)

I’m very excited about creating a truly international book launch event! I hope you’ll join me on World Mental Health Day in dialogue with my special guests, all from the comfort of your own home. You’ll need to pre-register for this free webinar event.

Pre-register right here, right now!

I’ll be joined by two people featured in the book, Kimberley Jones and Emma Goude, sharing their experience of spiritual emergence and emergency. We’ll also hear from Kaia Nightingale of the Canadian Spiritual Emergence Service and from Ted Esser, Operations Manager for the Spiritual Emergence Network (USA). I’m delighted that Carol Shaw from publishers Findhorn Press will also be joining us. And of course I’ll say a few words about the book too!

Exclusively, for World Mental Health Day ONLY, you can buy a signed copy of the book from The Academy of Living Wisdom. If you would like me to write a personal message inside the front cover, you can type that in when you make your purchase.

Not joined a webinar before? No need to worry; it’s simple. All you’ll need to do is log on at 7.30pm, follow the link we’ll have already sent you and sit back and enjoy!

I look forward to welcoming you to this exciting international launch event!

Don’t forget to pre-register!

Ask the Author…AND…YouTube trailer

My web radio interview with interviewer Sandie Sedgbeer from America's Awakening Zone was a great success...she asked me many pertinent and tough questions, and the interview went on a whole hour followed by another half hour of listener questions.

If you missed it, do try and listen to the archive; you can catch it from the Awakening Zone website.

My book trailer is now up-and-running on on YouTube ... here's the link: YouTube Trailer Film 

Please do leave me comments on both this and the radio interview on my blog.

My book is a book of extremes; the terror and the bliss, the danger and the opportunity, as the psyche moves through its very own Hero’s Journey towards wholeness. Spiritual Emergency can be dangerous yet we can turn the experience into the wonderful opportunity for healing and growth ... my book shows how I achieved that.

Shamanic Healing in the Amzon

Last time you changed your car (assuming that like me you still haven’t quite managed to give the habit up) did you notice that what you had previously thought was a fairly obscure or obsolete model suddenly seemed to be everywhere? It’s like that for me with spiritual emergency. Everywhere I go I seem to meet people who’ve been through the process. The language they use may differ, but the experience is essentially that.

‘Incandescent, exhilarating, sensuous, cocky, magnificent, explosive. A raging oratorio.’ This is how Richard Mabey of The Times describes the book Wild. I recently had the privilege to not only meet its author, Jay Griffiths, but to spend several days in her company. Jay doesn’t use the language of spiritual emergency and emergence, but it seems clear to me that this is indeed what she has been through. Very early on in the book she writes:

‘The first part of this journey began by being lost. I had lost my way in a wasteland of the mind, in a long and dark depression, pathless, bleak and bewildered, not knowing which way to turn. Weeks leaked into months, lank and unlovely as greasy hair. I couldn’t walk, couldn’t write, and it felt as if I couldn’t survive the violence of my unhappiness. I had a repeated image in my mind of a little night-light guttering in the wind and I had to wrap my hand around it to protect the tiny pale flame on the brink of being extinguished. I was protecting something very ancient and unmetropolitan: something shy, naked and elemental – the soul.

...

One May morning during this long depression I was sitting in my little rented flat in Hackney, in tears. The phone rang. It was an anthropologist ... whose work with Amazonian shamans intrigued me. He asked how I was, in the kind of voice that encourages an open response. I’m drowning, I choked.

He invited me to meet him in Peru the following September, to visit shamans he knew there, and to drink ayahuasca. Ayahuasca is a shamanic drug, the Amazon’s most powerful medicine, which is used to treat – among other things – depression.

Yes, I said.

Why don’t you take a few days to think about it? he asked. It would be an expensive flight, a big trip.

No, I said. I knew a lifeline when I was thrown one.

So I learned Spanish, withdrew all the money I had in the world, bought an open return, dubbined my boots and left.’

The remarkable cure that Jay experienced is of course as much to do with the skill of the shaman, which she describes in some detail, as the properties of the ayahuasca. The journey shamans go through to become powerful healers is itself a Hero’s Journey through spiritual emergence and emergency. Whether they are initiated by ritual or experience spontaneous psychosis which acts as their initiation, the process is exacting, a death and a re-birth into their new life as a shaman, as a healer.

Indigenous peoples have so much to teach us about caring for our souls, our psyches, our mental health. Their approaches cannot, however, be used out of context. Ayahuasca used on its own without an expert shamanic guide to accompany your soul on the journey can be highly dangerous. The environment too is essential. I imagine the veils between the realms to be translucent in the wilds of the Amazon. There must be precious few places in Europe where the raw energy of nature is as clear or as clean as in the rain forests.

Many indigenous cultures have shamans, although again the language, the names, may be different. In Case of Spiritual Emergency covers the Brazilian approach of working with the spirit realms to heal mental health. In the book, I also touch on the initiation, in the African jungle, of Malidoma Somé, into life as a medicine man.

Jay Griffiths is an extraordinary woman who has written an extraordinary book. Her courage spills out from the pages. And so it is for every person who goes through the process of birthing the psyche into wholeness, the process of spiritual emergency and emergence. The gift Jay gives us is that she can communicate something of that through her extraordinary writing, capturing something of the process, offering us some clues and helping us to find our way through the jungle.

LIVE ON WEB RADIO

In-depth Radio Interview

Here’s your chance to ask me anything you want about my new book ‘In Case of Spiritual Emergency’!

I’m being interviewed by Sandie Sedgbeer of Awakening Zone – live…on Tuesday 26 July at 8pm UK time, Noon PDT (USA West Coast). The interview is due to last a whole hour, followed by half an hour for your questions. That’s what I call in-depth!

‘In Case of Spiritual Emergency’ is a book of extremes; the terror and the bliss, the danger and the opportunity, as the psyche moves through its very own Hero’s Journey towards wholeness. I’ll be telling Sandie why spiritual emergency is so dangerous and what we can do to turn the experience into the wonderful opportunity for healing and growth that it can be.

All you have to do to listen in to the show is go to Awakening Zone, click on the episode ‘In Case of Spiritual Emergency’ in Today's Shows and click ‘listen’. It couldn’t be easier!

If you’d like to phone in with a question or comment, you’ll need to dial in on 001 714 364 4353. Awakening Zone is based in California but there are several low cost tariffs for phoning the USA from the UK; for example you can dial 0843 375 0011 (with Planet Talk) before entering the actual telephone number and pay only 0.5p a minute.

The number would like this:

0843 375 0011 - then listen to Planet Talk’s brief intro then dial - 001 714 364 4353

It’ll be lovely to speak with you on web radio. Don’t miss this unique chance!

Trailer film for ‘In Case of Spiritual Emergency’

STOP PRESS

COPIES AVAILABLE NOW!

If you pre-ordered your copy then you’re no doubt already reading it! I’m very impressed with the Speedy Gonzales efficiency of Findhorn Press’s distributor Deep Books. And I’m very much looking forward to hearing your first responses.

This is a momentous and poignant time for me. Almost a year ago my mother died and I was offered the contract by Findhorn Press, the two events happening simultaneously. An ending and a new beginning, a death and a re-birth, which is what spiritual emergence and emergency is all about. Letting go to make way for the new. I’m still astounded by the bizarre timing, though I trust it implicitly.

I find myself marvelling at the process of giving birth. Bringing the book into this world has been such a huge birthing process. Not only have I produced a book, with Findhorn Press the trusty midwife, I’ve also given birth to myself. As a writer.

Delivering the manuscript turned out to be just the beginning of the labour. The final push came with checking the proofs, in what must surely be Guiness-Book-of-Records-time. For every woman going through delivery there’s a whole team working flat out around her. Enter Findhorn Press, centre stage. Once the proofs were signed off, like many mothers who’ve just been through the horrors of labour, I thought, ‘never again!’. But of course that soon fades in the proud moment of holding the baby book (already I’m planning the next!). And now, like all proud parents, I want to give my newborn the best possible start in life. I hope you’ll join me in helping to make that possible. Spread the word! Thank you!