How Full is Your Glass?

On Thursday two weeks ago, we were rallied to go outside our houses and clap for the carers. Its a tradition that was begun in Europe and made its way, via a Danish yoga teacher, to our shores. And as many of us had hoped after the first week, this is now to be a regular event.
Clap for our Carers, Every Thursday at 8pm, for the foreseeable future. In the diary. In ink.
Whilst we struggle with the inevitable and very real ups and downs of being locked in our homes, carers and key workers up and down the country are being asked to put themselves on the line and be at the very epicentre of this pandemic. The accounts of what NHS doctors and nurses are coping with, as the cases mount and the beds fill, is sobering to say the least. Even the most level headed doctors I know, and it so often comes with the territory, are saying they’ve never experienced anything like it. Not just the overwhelm of numbers, or the hours they are required to spend dressed in stifling protective equipment, breathing in CO2 build up behind their masks, but also just the sheer hopelessness of so many of the cases. Not being able to help is surely the dread of every doctor.
To applaud them, as well as everyone else involved in front line work or keeping the wheels running on whats left of society is- quite frankly- the very least we can do.
And when we all clap, I hope they can hear it. Or see the spine tingling footage that circulates of it afterwards. So they get the uplift that will hopefully come when they know there is a groundswell of support across the country, willing them onwards.
Expressions of gratitude have a measurable impact on the mind. Those being clapped are lifted by the appreciation. And, so too, are those showing the gratitude. It is said, that in clapping we resurrect long held associations with previous positive experiences- a moment of delight when a child hits a new milestone, an impulsive standing ovation at the theatre, raucous applause at a sporting event or the viscerally electric experience of clapping, in unison, arms aloft, at a music festival. They are sounds that we might have to do without this summer, but the well of memories can be drawn upon, when we bring our hands together.
As my yoga teacher Max Strom once said to me, the amazing thing about gratitude as a sentiment is that when you feel it, you don't have room for anything else. When it takes up residence in the mind ( or in the heart, for I think thats actually where you feel it most) it crowds out all else. Which makes it the perfect antidote to anxiety or despair.
Sometimes we feel gratitude spontaneously. Even in the midst of a global pandemic, or perhaps because of it, we will wake up some mornings, grateful simply for the dawn chorus, or the shaft of sunlight that comes through our window or the fact that our situations are easier than some. And other days, rightfully, we will feel floored by the experience of lockdown and isolation, totting up what’s been cancelled & commiserating our losses.
And it is on these days that the practice of gratitude becomes important. For practicing gratitude has an uncanny way of changing our perspective. In my yoga class last week I told a story about my son when he was little. When he was still very little - too little to be involved- I had started to make a point of telling the children all about my day when I picked them up, to give them a template for when i asked of theirs. The result was often vivid levels of detail about what they’d eaten, what they’d played, who had say what and to whom.
When my youngest was able to speak, the too got involved. I noticed, over the years, that he would always start with a lament. With what had gone wrong, and more often than not, something had.
One day I decided to tell him about the expression of the glass being ‘ either half empty or half full’. We even got a glass out so he could visualise it. I explained that even though the glass was the theoretically the same, our perspective could make it look very different. Afterwards, I suggested that when we spoke about our day we could start with the positive things. Of course there was still room for lament, I assured him, but that wit might be helpful to start with the good. I then watched, as over the days and months, his perspective very naturally but very definitely began to change.
This is exactly what we are doing when we keep a gratitude diary. Or tagging three gratitudes on to the end of our meditations, or stopping for a moment ( and we have been gifted a lot more of those recently) to drink in a smell, to go on a long slow walk or simply pause with our thoughts and a cup of tea. We are helping to shift our own perspective. As with all habits of the mind, it can be slow to start with. Re-grooving doesn't happen over night. But the more we practice gratitude, the more we look for reasons - be they big but better still small-in the midst of our now narrowed lives, the more we we hone - little by little- our capacity to see the glass as being a little fuller.
​

THINGS I HAVE LOVED THIS WEEK-
Listening to Louis Armstrong and Aretha Franklin’s Album ‘Cheek to Cheek’ & imagining what it would be like to have them as grandparents. (I have it on vinyl but you can listen on spotify too).
Opening the advent calendar that is my online zoom yoga classes, to find all the shining faces in their living rooms. Thank you to all of you who turn up to the mat, you are my tonic too.
Rereading ‘The Gift from the Sea’ by Ann Morrow Lindbergh, It sits by my bedside always, and every time I reread it, it tells me something that is so relevant. Like it can read my mind.
Moon bathing in the garden and listening to Ali Gunning’s lyrical words and immensely powerful gong playing with the whole family wrapped in sleeping bags. I can not recommend the experience more highly. For future zoom gong baths with Ali click here.
The times when everyone has done the washing up without being asked and without arguing. Think this last one might be my all time favourite.