Tonight’s Buddhist class completes the five-week course on ‘Embracing Change’.
Change can happen in so many ways, on so many levels.
In my experience, I have not always known why I have not been able to ‘let go’ and move on at times. I think, now, I have more insight into why, and it’s because of the deep inner healing that I needed to do. It’s understandable to want to do that in a safe way, at a safe time, so that when the wound is exposed, it won’t be subject to any more damage.
Sometimes, however, circumstances force us to push through pain on a survival basis. How amazing then, to be in those circumstances and somehow find that you have got access to the support that you need to heal, from sources that in the past you could not have even imagined existed, yet somehow, they do. That’s where I’m at now.
And, for now, I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing; different things on different days. Today it was painting, white emulsion on walls; tomorrow I’ll go to pottery in the afternoon. Walking Lydia, of course, in the mornings, is such a good thing, I’m pretty sure for both of us. Meditating, practising yoga and Qigong, listening to the teachings of Buddha passed on through the Kadampa lineage. Meeting up with friends, chatting with neighbours. More painting of walls until that job is done, then I’ll move on to do something else. I know this is all leading to further change, and I am becoming more able to embrace the uncertainty of what lies ahead.
When I first started going to Sue’s Qigong classes, over 15 years ago now, and for a long time since, I struggled with concentrating at times. I could feel a sense of distracting emotional pain – deep seated – that I wanted to avoid feeling. I don’t feel that now.
I am much more present for most of the time during the class now, with only occasional distracting thoughts. That’s not bad, I think, considering the ‘stuff’ that’s going on in my life.
I’ve worked through – felt the pain of – a lot my grief and though I can still feel ‘crap’ going through my system, it does feel like it’s on its way out, slowly softening and dissipating. I know I need to continue to focus on the priorities I’ve been focusing on for some time to promote health and wellbeing; that I’m going in the right direction, even though I don’t know where it’s leading. Providing I can continue to deepen my sense of calm – a sense that is growing although interspersed with periods of not being calm – then I feel confident that we will be OK. I’m working at it – hard, very hard – every day and some days are better than others.
Today I got out of bed earlier than I have been doing recently. It was around 8am rather than the 9.30 ‘target time’ I’ve been setting myself. After a shower, and taking a more mindful approach to getting dressed than I usually do, I went downstairs, had a couple of cups of tea, meditated for a while, then Lydia and I headed out for our walk.
We did the woodland walk again. As I pulled up in the car, I saw the man who owns the small-holding next-door walking across the field towards us, with a black dog on a lead. I haven’t seen him with a black dog before; he used to have German Shepherds. After a brief chat, he introduced me to ‘Bomag’, a rescue, he said, his German Shepherds having now, sadly, passed away.
Lydia and I did just one circuit of the wood today, before heading back for her breakfast and – for me – a welcome cup of coffee. I didn’t have breakfast until a bit later – lemon curd on toast did it for me.
Between yoga and Qigong this afternoon I went to the local tip to drop off the result of my recent cupboard clearing exercise. There’s still a lot of rubbish clearing to be done, especially from the garage, and Trev took a load to the tip today as well.
Qigong today included the movement ‘Eagle soaring in the sky’ which we built up to under Sue’s instructions and demonstrations. I really did feel a bit like a soaring Eagle for a few moments. Those were good moments though.
Home now, Lydia has had her tea, ours is in the oven, and I’m going to finish this post, then sit and savour the evening, cool as it is, with the back door open and my dog nearby. These are good moments too.
I wake this morning feeling lighter of heart than I have for a long time.
To celebrate, on the way home from my walk with Lydia, I stop off at the shop and buy the ingredients to make cake.
When I bake, I bake big, and I make lots of lemon and vanilla cake, including one for our new next-door neighbour. So far, I haven’t properly introduced myself, although I did give him a friendly wave when I saw him in his car while I was out doing some work in the front yard last week.
Trev’s out so Lydia and I have some quiet time together while the cake is cooling down enough to sandwich layers together with lemon curd and vanilla icing. I can tell it’s going to be exceedingly good cake.
I first encountered Qigong when I was exploring anything and everything that I could find that I thought might help to restore my mental health from a point of crisis to some semblance of stability. That was over 25 years ago, and I had a long and arduous journey ahead of me. Along the way I took part occasionally in Qigong classes and workshops. It wasn’t until some years later, however, when I was struggling to push through the challenges of a demanding job – in itself part of my recovery process – that I considered a more regular commitment to the practise of Qigong.
Google searches came up with limited references to Qigong being offered locally. Luckily, one of these few was an evening class at a school just a few miles from where I was living, in Leeds.
An online Medical Dictionary notes:
Qigong (pronounced “chee-gung,” also spelled chi kung) is translated from the Chinese to mean “energy cultivation” or “working with the life energy.” Qigong is an ancient Chinese system of postures, exercises, breathing techniques, and meditations. Its techniques are designed to improve and enhance the body’s qi. According to traditional Chinese philosophy, qi is the fundamental life energy responsible for health and vitality.
The Dictionary goes on to state:
Qigong may be used as a daily routine to increase overall health and well-being, as well as for disease prevention and longevity. It can be used to increase energy and reduce stress. In China, qigong is used in conjunction with other medical therapies for many chronic conditions, including asthma, allergies, AIDS, cancer, headaches, hypertension, depression, mental illness, strokes, heart disease, and obesity.
Qigong is presently being used in Hong Kong to relieve depression and improve the overall psychological and social well-being of elderly people with chronic physical illnesses.
While I can’t claim that I commit to a daily practice – not yet anyway – I have been attending these evening classes – and some day workshops at weekends too – with the same teacher ever since.
When the Covid lockdowns first started, Sue Dunham – the teacher – was quick off the mark with setting up Zoom classes. Just as in the live classes, Sue’s commitment to her own practice and to sharing her knowledge and vast experience has shone through into these Zoom sessions.
Sue doesn’t just demonstrate what to do for us to follow. She talks through and builds up each movement step by step, repeating as necessary; infinitely thorough and always engaging. Her approach is very meditative and mindful, working deep on different themes in each group of three classes. During the height of the pandemic, focusing on the lungs could not have been more appropriate, and we’ve also recently worked on the spine and the digestive system.
Though the movements are slow and steady, I find that I sleep really well after a class session, and wake in the morning with the sense that I’ve had a really good workout, even though it isn’t ‘exercise’ in the conventional sense.
According to Sue:
“Qigong is an extraordinary practice: it can bring you to question fundamental beliefs about mind and your life, bringing you to that in a supported, gentle way. I have found it to be accessible and yet challenging, it’s enigmatic but intriguing!”
One of my favourite Qigong movements is called ‘Healing Form’, and Qigong has certainly become an essential part of my own movement towards health and healing.
When I started to become aware of my body, as a teenager, it was on the basis of how it looked. The negative compulsive obsessions I developed were – I realise now – associated with complex psychological and emotional traumas that have taken me 50 years to unravel.
Fortunately for me, my body was and is healthy and, while I continued well into adulthood to control my life by controlling what I ate, my body served me well. Deep roots hold tight, though, and it was a long time – being ultimately faced with the choice of life or no life – before I was able to find the strength, coping mechanisms, and resolve, to push through and come out the other side.
Qigong has helped me to work at a deeper level with my body – my amazing body.
It hasn’t provided me with a miracle ‘cure’ but it has helped to shift my focus into health and wellbeing, which is where it should be.
I feel a lot ‘lighter’ these days, even though I’m 65 and probably weigh at least 4 stone more than I did when I was 15. At six-and-a-half stone and still feeling the need to lose weight, I was weighed down and locked in as a teenager.
Some of the grief, sadness and regret linger on, but less so day by day. I’m thankful for a lot of things and hope that I can continue to be so for many years to come. Qigong helps me to nurture my body, with all its intricate mechanisms for feeding and flow.
One of the wonderful things about this practice is that it takes me beyond what I ‘know’, what I can measure or evaluate, into that sense of wonder, about what I don’t know, with all the associated mysteries of those realms.
When I’m practising Qigong, under Sue’s infinitely patient and painstaking instruction, I feel as graceful as a dancer, and that – for me – is something of a miracle.
The Covid pandemic has shown us just how vulnerable any of us can be, at any age, but also how those vulnerability factors can increase as we get older. The more we can do ourselves to mitigate those factors, the more likely we are to be able to lead fulfilling, meaningful lives for longer. That’s my plan, anyway, and I’m sticking to it!
With no Qigong this afternoon, it’s the woodland walk for Lydia and me this morning, then yoga. Lydia often partakes in this remotely, being particularly good at ‘downward facing dog’!
The yoga teacher introduced a new exercise aid to the class: conkers. They formed a focus for our meditation and visualisation and I must say I enjoyed the experience of familiarisation with the seed of the chestnut tree. It was somehow comforting and inspiring at the same time.
As I now complete this latest 28-day cycle of writing, I reflect on how far I’ve come, not just since I started writing this blog in 28-day cycles a few months ago, but since I started my overall journey of recovery over fifty years ago, when I was still very young.
I didn’t know it at the time, but it essentially started in my teens, when I decided that I needed more than physical food in my life.
That may sound ungrateful as I know there are many people in the world who have less food than they need to survive. But my needs for nourishment were psychological, emotional and spiritual. They were very real for me and presented in the forms of social anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia and an eating disorder. That’s a lot for any teen to have to deal with and I hope that in writing about my experiences, it may help others to not have to go through the same.
It’s taken me a long time to work out what I needed to work out, to find pieces that I didn’t have reference points for. How could I know what I’d lost when I had no memory of having it in the first place?
For whatever reason – probably survival – my emotional brain closed down, and it’s taken me a lifetime to find ways of opening it up again. I’m still working on it, with Lydia’s help and a lot of help and support from a lot of other people along the way.
The most significant latest step for me is on the path presented by the Buddhist faith. It helps me to make sense of a lot of things, accept what I can’t change, and do my best to make the most of each day as it comes, recognising the value of what I have when for so long I was focused on what I didn’t have. Grief doesn’t go away, but we can grow to encompass a wider experience of life around it. That’s what I’ve been doing my best to do.
As I now take a couple of weeks break from writing a new daily blog, I’ll continue with republishing previous posts, looking back a bit before again moving on.
The paperback versions of my two latest books – ‘Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Recipe, Random: Glad About Life’ and ‘A Woman, a Dog and a Blog: Writing into Life’ will shortly be available on Amazon, along with the Kindle and Kindle Unlimited editions:
‘Rules, Rhymes, Recovery, Random: Glad About Life’ brings together over 60 blog posts, from March 2020 through to September 2024.
It offers personal insights into the mental health recovery journey, recognising that there are no easy answers or quick fix solutions to complex problems but demonstrating that growth is possible through whatever difficulties life presents.
‘A Woman, a Dog & a Blog: Writing into Life’ presents a summary of my own backstory and that of my dog, Lydia. We had both experienced trauma before we met and, though I effectively rescued and adopted her, in many ways she has also rescued and adopted me.
We continue our journey together, day by day, step by step. Volume I of this book presents the first cycle of me writing a post a day for 28 days, at a time when the depression I had experienced most of my adult life had started to lift, only to reveal an underlying and extreme – at the time – sense of anxiety. Having lost everything that I’d worked for in the past, due to a severe breakdown in my thirties, I was absolutely petrified that history was going to repeat itself and that I would lose everything again, including Lydia. I was determined that wouldn’t happen and I drew on every aspect of resourcefulness and resilience I’d built up, and all the support mechanisms I could muster, to make sure that it didn’t. And it hasn’t.
Volume II presents the next 28 days of continuing to work with – and write about – positives in whatever way that I can. Affirmations, exercises, working with clay, working with words, walking, reflecting, resting, meditating – they’re all in there as I find my own way through and I hope it may help others find their way too.
Lydia had a good run around the dog field this morning, chasing trucks and tractors that passed by on the other side of the fence.
It could be argued that I shouldn’t encourage her to use her ‘hunt’ capacity as it goes against the training that I do with her on other days, but on balance I’ve decided that the benefits of cardiovascular exercise she gets outweigh the drawbacks. She just needs to run free sometimes and do what she wants to do, within the safe confines of the dog field.
While she’s doing her thing I do mine, with exercises for my knees and repeats of the Qigong[1] ‘healing form’.
‘Back at the ranch’ I rest for a while, then locate my trusty carpet cleaner to go over the central area of the lounge. I did the whole room a while back but it just needs a freshen up in the middle which gets most of the traffic from paws and feet. I also give the stair carpet a clean and that’s my ‘domestic duties’ done for the day.
Back to binge-watching some more episodes of MAFSAU, not feeling under any pressure to do much else. Resting up and prioritising the way I have been is beginning to influence my burnt-out brain in positive ways, so I’m continuing with slow and steady.
It’ll be a takeaway pizza and a bottle of red wine for me tonight. Red wine was always a favourite of mine on a Friday night when I was working and it still is. Just because you’re retired doesn’t mean you can’t celebrate the end of the ‘working week’. On most days during the week I do something constructive one way or another, and I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend.
I have absolutely nothing planned and don’t feel I need to have either.
Today I woke feel rested at a very deep level; I could feel another shift, slowly but surely in a positive direction. It doesn’t matter how slow; a small shift is a shift nonetheless.
Yesterday, after a short meditation combined with a cup of tea, I had a lovely walk with Lydia, a long lunch with a friend, did a bit – just a bit – of domestic activity in the afternoon, went to the Buddhist class in the evening and then, back at home, watched a couple of episodes of ‘Married at First Sight: Australia’. I also enjoyed, while watching the telly, a glass of red wine and some of the delicious houmous that Trev had made earlier. A bag of cheese puffs rounded off the day nicely.
The themes of MAFSAU and the Buddhist class were the same: happiness. It’s what we all seek, and we look for it in different ways in different places.
The Buddhist teachings tell me that happiness naturally arises from a calm and peaceful mind. I now take this on faith and continue to do my best to put the teachings – including the meditation techniques – into practice. This doesn’t mean that I have to deny myself all worldly pleasures, just recognise that they have their limits and are not a lasting source of happiness. This is what I now believe.
Though a slow process, my ongoing programme of wellbeing activities does seem to be working.
Although I could readily have gone back to bed this morning, after a walk with Lydia through the woods, I felt energised enough to start writing this blog, to check in with Trev, to confirm that I’d make a cottage pie later for tea, and to take my time to let the rest of the day unfold. I’m booked in to a yoga class later. Tomorrow I’m going to the races but I don’t need to rush to do anything much more today.
I used to feel that I was falling short by not being able to build up and maintain a momentum. I now recognise that if slow is the momentum that works for me, then slow is the momentum I’ll work with.
I wake early, around 6am, relieved to know that there is no pressure for me to get up and out of bed for a few hours yet.
I set myself a target of 9.30 but rise before then, go downstairs and make a cup of tea. The important thing comes first though – giving Lydia a tummy and chest rub. Then I open the back door and do a few repeats of ‘Healing Form’ as Lydia welcomes the day in her own way. Sue, the Qigong teacher, reminded us of some of the details of the Healing Form movement in the class last night so I was able to reintroduce these to my practice.
It’s a quiet walk for Lydia and me this morning, with no passing cars, joggers, cyclists or dogs; just a tractor going to and fro’ across a field in the distance.
Back home and she has her breakfast from her breakfast ball as usual; she is an expert now at nudging it around with her nose so that the dried food pellets fall out; it’s a lot better for her than passively eating from a bowl.
I have a restful morning, doing nothing much more than loading and setting off the dishwasher, and putting away some clean laundry. I’m sure if I looked around the house I could – and would – find dust and cobwebs in various corners, but on the whole I’m up to date with what needs doing inside.
As it’s Tuesday I visit my friend who used to live in the village but now lives in a care home, a few miles away. Her personal carer, J is there too, and we have a lovely chat together outside in the sunshine while J does M’s nails, commenting on the wonderful weather we’ve had this summer and how we wish we could have weather like this every summer.
After J leaves, I read M a short story from a magazine I’ve brought with me. She lies on the bed and snoozes as I read. At 85, it’s good to see her relaxed and looking so much brighter than she did a few weeks ago. It’s amazing what a change of environment can do.
Arriving home, I have a supply of dental sticks that I ordered for Lydia, and proof copies of my latest books in paperback form waiting for me. I give Lydia a dental stick for a treat straight away and flick through the proofs. I’ll need to look at them in more detail before I approve them for publication, but am pleased on first sight.
Self-management rule no. 20 is a good one: enjoy the process. I have found in my life that it is enormously difficult to do this, but am working on it, and – I believe – getting better at it by the day, bit by bit, step by step.
Lydia and I did a double circuit of our woodland walk this morning. It was good walking weather, neither too warm nor cold, and she was doing really well with her “heel” work, tugging on the lead only a little but also at times pulling herself into the “heel” position, which I was quick to reinforce with the reward of a treat (or three). She’s not just a “good girl”, she’s the best girl (but then I’m biased).
I’m rewarding myself with the treats of a yoga class followed by a Qigong class this afternoon.
I keep to the routine of my ‘Mental Health Mondays’ most weeks, providing the classes are on. It makes for a great start to the week, working at deep levels which, combined with meditation, help me to push through on positives.
That doesn’t mean that I’m always ‘doing stuff’. It just means that I’m working on training my mind to not revert to the negative thought patterns that I grew up with, so that I can move forward in different ways, taking care of my body at the same time as I need it to carry me through.
I’ve taken a further positive step by applying to do some volunteering at the Buddhist Centre.
My offer is one afternoon a month for now, as I don’t want to over-commit on top of existing commitments, particularly since I’m still working through a phase of burnout. But being at the Centre yesterday helped to remind me how replenishing an atmosphere it is, and I have a lot of skills learned in my working life that could be put to good use.
It isn’t always easy, during retirement, to re-establish ourselves after the rigours of working life have taken their toll. I don’t want or need too many things going on but I do need to feel that there is some meaning and purpose in what I do and why I do it.
I’ve had a focus on clothes management today. This is another way of saying that I’ve been washing and ironing.
Ironing isn’t my strong point. I do very little but have some summer clothes that benefit from a quick once over.
Then I decided to make pizza, for no other reason than that I found some flour in the cupboard that needs using up, and I still have a large supply of dried yeast left over from Covid days. I over-stocked on dried yeast because I hadn’t realised how little it weighed. The bag that I have – which I keep in the fridge – is probably a life-time’s supply.
Lydia was disappointed on her visit to the dog field this morning because she only got to chase one car. At one point it looked like a convoy of farm trucks was heading our way but they went off in the opposite direction. She stood staring at them, longingly.
She enjoyed a few good rolls in the grass though, and I did some repeats of the Qigong ‘Healing Form’ movement as well as my knee exercises.
I’ve set aside a big chunky lamb rib for her tea, and my treat tonight will be a few glasses of red wine, to be enjoyed outside with the pizza.
Glad About 
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