Slow Down, Laugh, Listen

Each week, Health columnist Elaine St. James tells us how simplifying our lives can lighten our load--physically, spiritually, mentally and materially.

Today, as part of our August plan to de-stress, we excerpt from her bestseller, “Inner Simplicity: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul” (Hyperion, 1995). Here are 10 of those ways.

Spend Time Each Day in Nature

Many cultures throughout history have thought of nature as an integral and necessary part of their inner lives. Our society, for the most part, has lost contact with the restorative, healing, and inspirational power of the great outdoors.

Make spending time with nature an important part of your spiritual pursuits. If walking is included in your daily regimen, make sure that in addition to the exercise and fresh air benefits of being outdoors, you also connect on an inner level with the beauty of the sun and the sky and the earth.

Start each walk with a deep, invigorating breath of fresh air, and an appreciation of the weather, no matter what it’s doing. Make a point of delighting in the trees and birds and flowers and plant life on your route. Let the glories of nature energize your body, heal your psyche, and uplift your spirit.

If you don’t exercise outdoors, at the very least make certain you spend a few moments each day appreciating and drawing energy from nature. Plan to leave your house five minutes early tomorrow morning. Before you get into your car or hop on the train, use that time to notice the patterns of clouds in the sky or the dew on the grass. Or, take five minutes before you come into the house when you return from work, and simply acknowledge the closing of another day.

When weather permits, have your lunch outdoors on a park bench, or on the grass under the shade of a tree, and use the time to quietly commune with nature. If the air is clean, do some deep breathing to energize your body and your mind.

Before you go to bed at night, get into the habit of simply opening the front door and stepping outside for a few minutes. Encourage your spouse and your children to join you. You can all enjoy a deep breath of fresh air, and get lost in a silent, meditative look at the night sky.

If you live in the city and are surrounded by tall buildings and concrete, make a special point of taking advantage of nearby parks or nature walks. Be sure your schedule includes weekend trips to places where nature’s beauty has been allowed to flourish, and where you can use the power of the cosmos to get in touch with who you really are.

Laugh a Lot

Every day for the next week, spend five or 10 minutes laughing, first thing in the morning. Do this in your sanctuary, at your kitchen table, or wherever works for you. This won’t be easy. We are not encouraged to laugh a lot in this culture. But if you do it, you’ll be amazed at the insight it will give you.

You’ll probably have to start by faking it. You may have to fake it all the way through. That’s OK. Pretend you’re an actor, laughing for a part. It’s easier if you stand, or sit on the edge of a chair. After the first few times, your stomach muscles will ache a bit. It’s nothing to worry about. Keep at it.

When you’re finished laughing, sit quietly and let your body and your psyche and your soul absorb the benefits of this. Then start your day.

It’s very powerful to do this with someone else who is amenable, but don’t let the absence of an available person keep you from laughing. It’s just as effective to do it on your own. Don’t start crying during the laughing. The crying comes later.

When the week is up, or possibly even sooner, you’ll see that it’s possible for you to laugh at anything; that laughter is a choice. That’s a very powerful tool to have when you’re working on some of this harder stuff. It’s a powerful tool to have, period.

As you move along in your quest, and as you encounter seemingly difficult situations, don’t forget to use this tool. It will change your life.

Also, make a point of spending time with people who make you laugh. Rent funny videos. Read funny books. Laughing is so good for the soul.

Cry a Lot

Crying a lot is harder than laughing a lot. Crying is discouraged in our culture even more than laughing is. But it’s such a powerful tool for clearing out the stuff that gets in the way of our inner growth.

It’s possible you need to cry and you’re not aware of it. Or maybe you live much of your life on the brink of tears.

In either case, arrange your schedule so you can cry every day for the next week, or however long is necessary. You can do it in the same 30 days you’re doing the laughing, or you can do it in the subsequent 30 days. Now that you’ve simplified your life, you’ll have the time.

Allow 30 minutes for the crying; longer if possible. You’ll need at least that much time to get the floodgates open. If you get a good cry going, don’t stop just because the time is up. Cry to the end of the cry.

As with the laughing, you may need to fake it to begin with. The more drama you can put into it to start with, the better. You may go for several days with only fake tears.

That’s all right. Eventually real tears will come. Keep at it until they do.

My friend Cindy recently went through a difficult divorce. She is a strong, mother-earth kind of woman who has spent many years letting everyone else cry on her shoulder. But when it came time for her own tears, she had difficulty in letting them flow.

Finally she started renting tear-jerker videos. She would sit in front of the VCR with a box of Kleenex, crying her eyes out, initially over some plot line on celluloid, and eventually over her own life. It took her a couple of months to get through all her tears, but it allowed her to grieve and then released her so she could get on with her life.

We’ve been told for so long that it’s not OK to cry. But it is OK. In fact, it’s desirable. More than that, it’s vital. The energy we’ve been using to hold back the tears is getting in the way of being who we truly are. Let that energy go, and cry. It’ll free you.

Dance

Find a time and a place where you won’t be disturbed for 30 to 40 minutes, or even longer. Wear loose-fitting, comfortable clothes. Put on some music you truly connect with. It can be classical, rock, jazz, drums, whatever. Turn it up as loud as you dare, but not so loud you invade someone else’s peace and quiet.

Stand in the middle of the room, close your eyes, and start to feel the music. Let it move through your entire body. Breathe with it. Move your head and arms and your upper body with it. Bend at the waist with it. Still standing in one place, move your feet with it, keeping your eyes closed, sway and gyrate with it, totally absorbing the music into your being.

Slowly open your eyes and start moving around the room with the music. Create your own dance. Whirl and twirl or rock and stomp. Do whatever you need to do to become one with the music. Be totally uninhibited, spontaneous, and ecstatic. It may take you a time or two before you can really let yourself go. Keep at it until that happens.

When the music ends, fall to the floor and lie on your back. Keep your eyes open and gradually, slowly, and with total awareness bring your consciousness back into your body. Stay there absorbing the silence until your breathing returns to normal. Then slowly stand up, and give a slight bow of gratitude to the music and the universe.

Do this every day for a couple of weeks and you will begin to feel incredibly uplifted, lighthearted, and joyous.

If you do this in a group, each person should dance on their own, aware of the others, but not dancing with anyone else. A shorter version of this dance is an incredibly enlivening way to begin your inner support group meeting. Or, every now and then, use the entire meeting time to dance.

Have Weekend Retreats at Home

If you’re working on establishing a level of inner simplicity, few things you can do will give you a better boost than a formal retreat. But if you’re not quite ready to do that, or you can’t take the time now, arranging your own retreat at home might be the next best thing.

Obviously, having a weekend retreat at home will be easier if you’re single or if your spouse and/or children are either away for the weekend or receptive to the idea of your taking some time on your own.

Set aside your normal weekend routine. Plan to start your quiet time by dinner on Friday evening and carry it through Sunday evening. Unplug the phone, and tell your family and friends that you won’t be available until Monday morning. Plan not to answer the door.

Turn off your TV and your radio; put newspapers and magazines away.

Take your watch off so you are not concerned with time. Wear loose-fitting comfortable clothes. Avoid the type of food and drink or other substances that will lower your energy.

Do whatever you need to do to your space to make it as pleasant and as conducive to quiet reflection as possible. Air out the rooms; bring in fresh flowers; provide candles or incense or essential oils. Have everything you might want at hand so you won’t have to dash out into the world.

Spend your time in silent reflection. Meditate. Do yoga or gentle stretching. Practice deep breathing. Write in your journal. Create your inner affirmations and visualizations, and start practicing them. Watch sunrises and sunsets. Take a mini-sunbath to keep your mind and spirits elevated. Spend time in nature. Stroll in the early morning or evening, away from people and traffic. Sit quietly, not thinking, just being with the moment. Ask for guidance and be open to whatever messages come to you from the universe.

Go to bed early and get up with the sun, or even earlier. If you rarely get to experience the joy of the birth of a new day, this is a good time to start.

Prepare your meals with love and awareness. Eat in silence.

Get Rid of Your Anger

Every morning for the next week before you start your day, go to your bedroom, close the door, and pile all your pillows in the center at the head of the bed. Kneel on the bed with the pillows in front of you. Bow gently to your inner self and to the universe. Then start beating the living daylights out of the pillows.

Do this as a spiritual exercise. Use either your fists, or another pillow, or a plastic baseball bat. Do it for five to 10 minutes, or longer if that feels appropriate.

When the time is up, fall into a heap on the bed and breathe deeply until you catch your breath. When you’ve come back to your center, get up, kneel on the bed as before, and bow again to yourself and the universe. Then go about your day.

You won’t believe the incredible feeling of lightness you’ll have after doing this. There are so many messages waiting to come to us, but they can’t easily move through the negativity of anger and the bad feelings we frequently carry with us.

Get in touch with how you deal with anger. Do you clam up? Do you harbor burning thoughts? Do you take your anger out on others? Whenever you find yourself reacting in these or any other counterproductive ways of denying anger, go to the pillows and beat the living daylights out of them for at least five minutes, or as long as it takes. Teach your kids to do this too.

If you have any anger you’ve been carrying around, or if you even suspect that you might, this will be one of the most powerful and liberating things you can do.

You may have to replace your pillows frequently. But that’s probably preferable to having to replace your stomach lining, or a heart valve.

Learn to Enjoy the Silence

In order to hear what’s happening on an inner level, we have to cut back as much as possible on the external racket. Start becoming aware of the continuously high noise levels you are subjected to every day.

It often begins with the nerve-jangling clamor of the alarm clock, the buzz of an electric toothbrush, or the blast of a hair dryer. This is followed by the drone of the latest news report or the babble of morning talk shows. Then comes the revving of car engines, and the honking of horns in rush hour.

Our days are often filled with the 9-to-5 sounds of ringing telephones and office equipment, not to mention the countless interruptions of co-workers, customers, and bosses.

Even if you work at home, there can be a constant din from which there is seldom any respite.

On weekends there’s the often ear-shattering roar of lawn mowers or leaf blowers. How can we possibly hear ourselves think?

Often we can’t. We’re stressed by all the noise in our day-to-day lives--frequently without even being aware of it. At the same time, we’re so used to it that it’s hard for us to imagine being without it.

As you begin to go within, you’ll want to eliminate as much of the outer commotion as possible so you can hear your inner voice.

There may be some noises you won’t have any control over--such as traffic or the festivities of neighbors. But you can start by creating as much quiet in your own space as possible.

Learn to wake up without an alarm. As you’re about to fall asleep, simply visualize yourself waking up at whatever time you choose.

Try going without the TV or stereo for periods of time. Also, leave your Walkman at home when you’re walking or exercising, and keep your radio and tape player off, especially when you’re driving. Bask in the silence, and use that time to simply be with the moment rather than letting those forms of entertainment distract you from your inner life.

Turn off your phone. Let your answering machine silently pick up messages, which you can listen to at your convenience.

Arrange a formal retreat or a private weekend of solitude at home so you can start tuning in to the joy of silence.

If you haven’t been used to it, silence may seem strange at first, but you’ll gradually come to treasure it. Eventually you’ll find it indispensable for your inner search.

Learn to Enjoy Solitude

There are few things as powerful as solitude to help you get in touch with your inner self--especially when that solitude is accompanied by silence and the elimination of outside stimuli such as television, radio, newspapers, magazines, and other popular forms of escape.

If you haven’t started already, begin to enjoy solitude. Get comfortable with being alone. This is time you can spend on your own thinking, reading elevating stuff, communing with nature, getting in touch with your intuition, smiling, laughing, crying, forgiving, and contemplating the questions of the universe.

This doesn’t mean you need to move to a cave in the wilderness. Far from it. People and relationships are a vital part of both our inner and our outer growth. But we all need time to recharge every now and then, not only to nourish our spirit, but so that we have new energy to give to others.

If solitude feels threatening to you, start in small ways, perhaps with a lunch date with yourself in a quiet setting, such as a pew in an open but vacant chapel. Expand that to a Saturday afternoon alone, possibly in a secluded garden or some other place where you won’t be disturbed. Then plan a private weekend retreat at home, or possibly in an organized retreat situation where everything but the inner search will be taken care of for you.

Be creative in coming up with ways you can spend time in solitude on a regular basis. I have a friend who for years spent his lunchtime in a deserted cemetery. It was the most convenient quiet place near his office he could find. He claims it got him comfortable not only with being alone, but also with the idea of death, a beneficial concept to have under your belt when you’re examining the big issues of your life.

Solitude gives you the opportunity to confront your inner self in ways that few other endeavors can. Out of your times of solitude come serenity, peace of mind, and unparalleled opportunities to connect with your soul.

Take Time to Think

One of the frequent reactions I hear from people who’ve read Simplify Your Life has been “It’s so obvious what I need to do to simplify. I could have figured out how to do it myself if I’d just thought about it.”

They’re absolutely right. The changes we need to make to our lives are the obvious ones. But we’re often too busy to stop and think about what we need to do to bring them about. We’ve been so caught up in the stress and the pressures and the demands of our days that we’ve gotten out of the habit of thinking about our lives.

As you set out and continue along your path of inner simplicity, be sure to set aside time to think on a regular, even daily, basis. Get in the habit of spending a few minutes in the morning before you start your day thinking about how you want to be in your work and in your interactions with the people you come into contact with.

Then, at the end of the day, take a few minutes to think about how you did in relation to how you wanted to do.

Think about the things that may have kept you from enjoying your day, or from living it the way you’d like to. Then think about how you might do things differently tomorrow.

In addition to the daily evaluations, we need to set aside larger blocks of time to think about the big picture. Use some of your regularly scheduled times of solitude to really think about your inner life and your outer life, where you want to go with each, and what kinds of things you can do to get there.

Set aside time for weekend or longer retreats, and use the time to question your long-accepted assumptions or beliefs. There are few things as liberating as coming up with your own solutions to your own issues.

All the information we need to know about our lives and how to live them is available to us. Thinking is one of the tools we can use to tap into that information.

Inner peace rarely comes about automatically. We have to work at it. Thinking is a powerful tool for that work.

Do Nothing

Learning to do nothing is another valuable tool that will help you get in touch with your inner self. I first learned to do nothing in an attempt to cure myself of the habit of moving too fast, and of trying to do too many things at the same time. And it worked. By scheduling time each week to do nothing, I gradually began to get some understanding about where I wanted to go with my professional life.

And as I continued to incorporate this practice into my schedule, I was able to reach a new level of understanding in terms of my inner life as well.

There are plenty of reasons why many of us have been moving at breakneck speed in recent years. Oftentimes, they have nothing to do with trying to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time. Some of us have kept moving, either to prove to ourselves that we’re still alive, or in the unconscious fear that if we stop, we’ll have to take a close look at who we are. That can be terrifying.

But learning to stop completely can be incredibly constructive. Doing nothing is different from meditating and from spending time in solitude, and in some respects, it is much more difficult. In our culture, anyway, it’s usually a learned habit that has to be nurtured. Or sometimes Mother Nature mercifully intervenes by providing us with a convenient ailment that forces us to stop and do nothing.

Accept the fact that it’s OK to do nothing. If you’ve begun to slow down, simplify your life, and go within, doing nothing will be much easier.

You can start by getting in the habit of doing nothing for two to three minutes at various times throughout the day. Simply stop whatever you’re doing, sit quietly with your eyes open, your mind aware but not active, and just be. Doing some deep breathing will help.

Gradually increase the time. As you begin to spend more time doing nothing, be prepared for your body or your mind to balk. You’ll get hungry or sleepy. You’ll think of a dozen things you should be doing or that you think you’d rather be doing. Resist the temptation to give in to those feelings. Think of it as necessary and valuable time, which it is.

When you do this consistently, when you lean into it, when you start to delight in it, you’ll find doing nothing one of the most productive inactivities you engage in.

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Reprinted from “Inner Simplicity: 100 Ways to Regain Peace and Nourish Your Soul” by Elaine St. James. Copyright Copyright 1995 by Elaine St. James. Published by Hyperion.