Ep 91 Engaging Calm

“Being calm” seems to be all the rage these days. But what we need at any given moment isn’t always the same. On this week’s podcast we share about how desperately each of us has needed this calm lately and the wide array of things we’ve been doing in order to get back to those places of stillness. What are some of your go-to ways of finding your center? We’d love to hear from you. 

Additional Resources
App: Calm app
Book: My Deepest Me by Janice Lynne Lundy
Website: Fork over Knives: Plant-Based Recipes
Kombucha: Rude Brew Kombucha

#SpiritualPractices #BreathPrayers #Stillness #CandleMeditation #Awareness #SpiritualJourney #BreathMeditation #LovingKindness #CoRegulation 

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Transcript

Ep 91 Engaging Calm

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

calm, calmness, rhythms, parasympathetic

Dominic Kaiser  00:06

Welcome to The Contemplative Life. Three pastors, friends and spiritual companions help us explore spirituality through a contemplative lens.
 
I'm Christina Roberts.
I'm Chris Roberts.
I'm Kristina, We're glad you joined us well. 

Chris Roberts  00:24

Hello, it is great to be with you today. On the podcast, we want to talk about this idea of calm and what is the big attraction to being calm. There's an app, Calm, one of the top grossing apps over the past couple of years. And I have a candle that says, Calm and Stillness. And so this idea in our world, in our society, that we need calmness, and what does calmness have to offer us? I thought it would be an interesting topic to bring to our podcast to talk about how do we achieve calm? What is calmness? And do we really need it?

Kristina Kaiser  01:08

Oh, my goodness, I can tell you, I definitely need it. I have shared with some people recently, as all of our kids have gone back to school.  Three out of four of them are in new schools, new environments, new experiences. It is varying levels of “Oh my goodness, so scary”.  And I have found myself needing any number of techniques in order to find calm in the midst of it. But one that has kind of saved the day for me, I picked up just last month. I was doing this reflection guide and a book called My Deepest Me by Janice Lundy and she had named this thing called the “Sacred Ah”. I had never  heard of such a thing. But after you hear it, then it makes so much sense. We've all heard of, “Oh, take a deep breath or take a calming, grounding breath, a centering breath.”  But in this instance, you take the breath and then on the exhale, you say, ah, and then the invitation goes on. Just like if you need to create a forceful or a longer or a louder or quieter one, you can tailor this “ah” to your moment. And I have found this work. It's simple, it's doable.  I actually start to feel calm, and I have needed the calm,

Christina Roberts  02:39

I think calm is appealing to all of us, hence your point, Chris, about naming candles at the store calm or the app that you're referring to.  I think for me, one thing that contributes to a sense of calm is routine, rhythms and schedules. I love the flexibility and sort of fluid nature of the summer months and not having a schedule. And then also I like to transition into fall where you kind of are dictated by school schedules or things like that.  Where you have to get up and go to bed at certain times. And there's maybe sports schedules. And I think I find that that does bring a sense of calm, knowing what to expect, and getting into these helpful rhythms. So that's something that I think my personality type would lean into that as a way into calm.

Chris Roberts  03:21

I love what both of you guys are mentioning, except for the word sacred. Sacred is a triggering word for me. I feel like the contemplative or anything contemplative, they always attach to this word sacred to it. But anyway, I'm letting that go. I'm letting the word sacred and I'm hearing what you're saying about “ah”.

I also resonated with this pit in your stomach. I think we have these moments, whether our schedule is too busy, our emotions are too out there. We can't even identify or name all the different emotions that we're having at one time. And so yes, I resonate that rhythms help us to have a sense of calm because we know what's in front of us. We know where we're going. Also just taking moments of stillness, quiet, calmness, whatever you want to say, are very important. 

Recently, my emotions have kind of been all over the place. Probably because of all that is going on in my life. And if I am not in a place of calm, I tend to react rather than act. And someone said that the opposite of contemplation isn't action, but it's reaction. And so that is something that I'm trying to achieve in my life, this place of being contemplative, where I act rather than react. And so with all these emotions out there, I mentioned a candle. And my candle is named stillness and calm. And so for me, it's been super helpful to even just take a moment to light that candle and sit and let the smell and let the flame quiet down all that is churning. And we talked about that pit in our stomach, that pit in my stomach just seems to rise. And I develop, instead of a myopic view, I develop more of a bird's eye view.  Everything is okay. Yes, there are some unknowns out there, but I can let that go. 

Christina Roberts  05:47

That's important to name because, of course, in the midst of the rhythms of schedules, there are the moments where I am not calm. And I think for me, I've been really trying to pay attention to my body and awareness. And there's the sympathetic nervous system, which is that fight flight, I'm getting worked up.  And the parasympathetic is for me that calm.  So I've noticed, even as recently as last night, something happened. I don't remember, the kids did something and I began to react. And then immediately I was like, Okay, nope.  I went to my parasympathetic, I put my hand on my chest to kind of calm myself to say, okay, you don't have to be reactionary right now.   You can be into your parasympathetic nervous system. And so that's important to me. Even if it's mid sentence, the reaction, catching myself, and then somehow placing a hand somewhere on my body that we can bring calm here, it doesn't have to be this reactionary moment. So I think it's important to acknowledge that there are these things that we have to do to get to those spaces.

Kristina Kaiser  06:48

Yeah, I love what you're saying.  I feel like that awareness piece just to even first say, Oh, I'm aware that I have a reaction right there, it's present to me. And I read something recently that talked a little bit about the journey of all of it.  You might only be able to notice it for a long time, before you can actually do something about it. And then maybe sometimes you'll be able to do something and then more often, it just takes time. But it strikes me how a lot of us don't know what to do. And so one of our kids, they have this new thing at school where through there's 3, 30-minute periods that are called flex time, and there's a separate app that manages it. And for some reason, it got messed up one day, and this brand new to school, all the nerves as it is.  As best I can understand, there was a panic attack at lunch.  Shaking, and the eyes are tearing up and nobody around knows what to do.  All of these adults, no idea how to help her.  Do you want to go to the nurse? And I love all the nurses in the world. Our kids have gone to many nurses.  But we have a running joke that if you go to the nurse, she'll probably get an ice pack. And so, she's recounting this story and do you want to go to the nurse?  Do you think they would have given you an ice pack?  But the moment she sat down, she started doing math, because math is calming to her. It's like a little puzzle that she can solve. And then she had a very good friend who was very skilled for her. Let's take some deep breaths. Let's get you some chocolate. I think I'm pretty sure that the child spent their fun money on my child to make them calm. But there was this kind of thing where the child knew what to do. Or my child's friend knew what to do. The grownups did not know what to do. It was just too scary to experience this person that was in distress. Is there this kind of way we can become competent a little bit in calmness and how to engage calm? 

Chris Roberts  09:09

That's a great question. And it's also good noticing that some adults don't have what it takes to help with calmness. Our middle child yesterday put her jacket on and got stung by a wasp. And she went to the nurse's office, and they gave her an ice pack.  She probably needed some Benadryl. But yes, I got an ice pack. But one of the things that I think my middle child has done is washing her hands and running water over her wrist. And it reminded me I have a friend who would do the loving kindness meditation as much as needed within a day. And they would do it whenever they would wash their hands and sometimes they would even just go wash their hands and that act of washing their hands and saying, May you be happy, may you be healthy.  Whatever tools that we need, washing our hands is something that we all should do probably about 20 times a day. Where can you engage in some of these practices, where can you achieve this? This calmness, the stillness that you need? 

Christina Roberts  10:15

Both of these stories are beautiful. And I think something else that comes to mind for me is that oftentimes, if we're not calm, then there's uncomfortable emotions that we're feeling.  Whether it's stressful, or anger, or confusion, or whatever it is. And I think sometimes, too, yes, there are practices. But sometimes, maybe there's a conversation that needs to be had to bring a sense of calm.  Maybe I had an interaction with someone, and I'm unclear about that. And so it's causing me a little bit of discomfort or anxiety or confusion. And so having that difficult conversation, or maybe I had a conversation, but I need to go back, because there were a couple pieces that aren't quite bringing that calm to me. And so I think that there's these personal practices that we are mentioning.  I love the chocolate and the friend helping to co-regulate your child. And then also, I think, sometimes just taking the initiative of I actually need to get this out and have a conversation about this in order to turn that corner. And that's also very valid and needed at times as well.

Chris Roberts  11:11

Yeah, I like that. I think also whenever we're invited into things, sometimes there may be challenging emotions, or they may be challenging obstacles.  Or there may be challenges as we're invited into a new endeavor.  Sometimes it seems open and this openness shouldn't be inviting challenging emotions. But we're having a conversation the other day, Christina Roberts, that there's this new possibility. And with this new possibility, there was a bit of discomfort and embracing the uncomfortableness. The uncomfortableness meant having some difficult conversations with some individuals that probably didn't want this new thing to happen. There was a bit of hesitancy on their part. And so I think whenever we experience openness, sometimes it can feel like Oh, this, this should be great. Why am I not calm? And I think we're not calm because there are these external forces at work.  We need to have conversations. We need to have interactions before we can achieve that level of calmness. So yeah, I really appreciate you bringing that up. 

Kristina Kaiser  12:33

I agree. The interpersonal is definitely part of the calming experience. And even as you're talking, I'm realizing another strange one. Recently, I showed up to an appointment, and they were like, oh, no, it's tomorrow.  No, it's not. They didn't say anything. And they're like, We would never do that. And I was like, you've done that before. I was angry.  It's hard to manage six schedules. And I realized, I need to get out my energy.  I am so angry and the only thing that's going to get me to calm down is to utilize my body in a forceful way in order to release some of this because I am legitimately angry. I can't…this poor man standing here is not the place that I can unleash that.  He's just the receptionist. And so yeah, it's funny, you would think we're talking about the “ah”, and I won't use the word sacred, because I don't want to trigger Chris. But there's the ah, or there's the cup of tea or the shower. But sometimes it's like, I need to physically get it out of my body. And so that one comes to mind too.

Christina Roberts  13:52

And that's important to acknowledge because I do think, or at least for me, when the word calm comes up, you picture sitting by a serene lake, or meditating or something. But I do think sometimes, that happened to me, Kristina a couple of weeks ago, where there was a mistake on the schedule.  I was pretty sure it was on their end and not mine. And I started to walk away. And it's like, no, I made the trip out here. I rearranged my schedule. And so I had to advocate for myself. And sure enough, they had made a mistake, and they squeezed me in. So sometimes there's that to get calm, there's a different kind of energy of exerting yourself and taking up the space that can lead to calm.  It's not always passive. Some of that is the chill passive kind of stuff. But some of it is like taking up the space, the yang energy, if you will.

Chris Roberts  14:37

I love that. I think that is very helpful. I think advocating for ourselves is something that we need to do, but also having graciousness. I think some of the things that have been brought up...our world is not quite back to normal. We're still suffering from the losses in the workforce. You know, anybody's gone out to eat anytime recently, they have noticed that Oh, wow, they're really short staffed, it takes a little bit longer for my food to get here, these expectations that I once had, I'm going to have to negotiate within myself.  If anybody's ever tried to get a therapy appointment, they're booked.  They're booked solid. There are these ways in which we can engage that I hope our listeners will find very helpful.

Christina Roberts  15:28

Yeah, I think that's great that you're naming that because even with advocating for myself in that particular situation then I was so grateful.  I wasn't a jerk about it, but it was like, Could you check that?  It was going to be another 45 minutes before they could get me in. And so I was like, That's okay. I'm grateful to do that. And I went and did something and was able to kind of help that release.  It brought calm to me so that I could go into the appointment, very grateful.  They were apologizing, and it was a lovely exchange. And so I like you saying that we do maybe have to manage our expectations around that and negotiate our expectations. I think that's a great way to put it to get to that place of calm and gratitude or whatever. Emotion might follow that calmness. So thank you for saying that. 

Chris Roberts  16:13

Well, thank you for listening. It has been a pleasure to be with you today.

Now is the part of our podcast where we talk about what we are into this week. 

Kristina Kaiser  16:32

Well, speaking of calm it is once again the soccer season, which I don't think has anything to do with calm for our kids. But I love going out on Sunday afternoon, bringing the lawn chairs, setting it down on the side and just watching the kids play. It's not high stakes, they don't even keep score because they're still so young. The kids are hysterical. So we get lots of laughs. Oh my gosh, it is the highlight. I love it. Very fun.

Christina Roberts  17:01

I am into Fork over Knives. And I think I actually heard about this from you, Kristina Kaiser, but it's this lovely website with all different sorts of vegetarian vegan recipes. And it's so fun because it's just stretching my imagination.  I am still a meat eater, but just different ways that I can incorporate grains and vegetables and baking and cooking. And so it's been a really fun website to engage with. So I am into Forks Over Knives. 

Chris Roberts  17:26

I have been engaging with that as well since I have to eat the same food that you eat in our house. And normally I would be begrudging a little bit but this is a journey that I've been on with you. But that isn't what I'm into. Speaking of calm, I have been into kombucha.  There is a local kombucha here in Madison called Rude Brew.  It's made not too far from our house, and it has lots of probiotics in it. That really helps my digestive system. It calms my digestive system and helps me out with these probiotics. So I have been into Rude Brew Kombucha. 

Well, thank you so much for being with us today. It's been a pleasure. 

Dominic Kaiser 18:14

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