My Aikido dojo has been doing online practice classes since the lockdown began, a complex gift as it is such an embodied, connected practice; and yet some practice is better than no practice. In a recent class, Sensei had us do a basic staff strike, one I’d already practiced perhaps hundreds of times. “At this level of practice it should be a relief,” he said, like coming back to an old friend. comforting amidst the stressors of practicing at a higher level with greater intensity and depth.
Foundational practices tend to be tedious and typically ones that enthusiastic beginners want to rush through on the way to getting to the real stuff. The glory stuff. The scary stuff. Yet it is these practices that never leave us, and make it possible to meet the demands of the heavy stuff. Basics never leave us. When we move into overwhelming complexity, we can return to them—for relief, but also as an opportunity to practice new depths, receive new teachings, and discover challenges we were too inexperienced to face before. In the basics are the entirety of the discipline.
There is a practice I learned from my honored former spiritual teacher, which is available in their book Evolutionary Witchcraft, which has many variations. We use a cup of water, and intentional breathing. We identify that within us that needs cleansing, releasing, or forgiveness. We use toning of a sacred sound to enact that transformation.
This is a practice I’ve also done perhaps hundreds of times and still am seeking to master. Recently I reflected on its components in the light of all that I’ve learned about the nervous system and the psyche since I first practiced it. Certain practices are found to soothe the stress response, bringing us to a state of calmness, such as toning or singing, drinking water, slowing down the breath, and consciously labeling our painful feelings. All of which is contained in this simple ritual.
The explanation given as to how this practice “worked” was quite different from a discussion of vagal theory, with language that emerged from and reflected the spiritual and cultural context in which the practice was embedded. We have hundreds to thousands of practices like this, practices of our ancestors, which a post-“Enlightenment” rationalism dismissed as superstition, and now have “rediscovered” and packaged with fancier, scientific language. Now we talk about the vagal nerve, the parasympathetic nervous system, the hemispheres of the brain. Like it didn’t count until we could scientifically justify it.
Even our current explanations as to why and how these practices “work” are wrong in some way that we’ve yet to discover. New paradigms will come that overturn our thinking and explanatory models. Yet no matter what we call it, or why we think it works, we’ll find that breathing slowly, soft gaze, drinking water, singing and chanting, dancing in community, and visualization affects us in a calming and enlivening way.
We do not always have to understand intellectually how things work, or why they are, to benefit from the practice. Sometimes understanding emerges from engaging in the practice repeatedly, allowing it to teach us, watching how it shifts our experience. The practice always has something new to teach us.
In a sense, our work is to both let the practice teach us, and to enliven the practice by passing it along with the language and knowing of the age in which we live.
I am thinking of this, with great relief, in the midst of an existential crisis. The problems are enormous and overwhelming, greater than any one of us can solve, and right now the possibility of mass cooperation seems quite unlikely. I hear so many of us wondering what’s the point, why bother, and how we can meaningfully participate in this situation. I hear many of us hoping for there to be a clear answer and finding none.
As a therapist, I’ve accumulated many tricks, pieces of sharp insight, and helpful knowings, and still there are times when sitting with a client and we reach a moment that feels so overwhelming and insoluble that we fall silent in the face of it. I feel both of us longing for a simple solution. And often, the best move is to return to a basic, foundational practice.
For me, that is listening. Deeply. To seek understanding of the client, both who they are and where they struggle, on their own terms. Without that foundation of listening, attunement, and understanding, all the complex and exciting interventions fail.
My greatest offering is to practice that deep listening, and in the listening and seeking to understand, a safety emerges that makes possible for the answers begin to unfold in their own time.
It is a relief to return to the practice of simply listening, like reconnecting with an old friend. A friend who still has mysteries to teach and challenges to offer. The entirety of the therapeutic discipline is contained in learning to listen well. How do I know I am listening? How does the client know I am listening? What helps me to understand? What helps the client to feel understood? What emerges in that space when listening and understanding connect?
You have your own work, your own disciplines that you follow, and I offer to you today the invitation to consider what your foundational practices are. What is a basic skill to which you can return? What can it teach you today about the work before you?
If nothing else, remember that caring for yourself is a discipline and offers its own basics. Drinking enough water. Eating well. Sleep hygiene. Moving your body. Resting your body.
