Why is it that we can’t practise when we’re stressed, even though we know it’s exactly what would help? We’ve read the books, we know breathing exercises would calm us. We know sitting still for ten minutes would shift something. And yet, evening after evening, we end up on the sofa with Netflix on, telling ourselves we’ll start tomorrow.
I’ve been there. There was a time in my life when everything felt overwhelming, and my escape was exactly that – the sofa and Netflix, hours of it. I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t want to be still. I wanted to drown out the noise in my head, all the shoulds, all the pressure I put on myself. There was no space to face any of it. It was too uncomfortable to feel.
The funny thing was, the series I watched did trigger emotions, laughter, sadness, the occasional cry. But because they came from outside of me, they disappeared the moment I switched the TV off. They were borrowed feelings, which gave me the impression of feeling alive without asking anything of me. My own emotions, on the other hand, were a completely different story.
So how do we practise when we can’t practise? How do we turn inward when turning inward is the last thing we want?
What worked for me wasn’t a practice in the usual sense. Stillness was too far away, and any breathing exercise that asked me to turn inward I resisted. What I could do was write. I used my analytical brain to put some order into what was happening in my head. Most emotions are triggered by thoughts, and getting a bit of clarity on the thoughts created space. And once there was space, the simple practices became available again – a yoga nidra, a breathing exercise, nothing fancy. Slowly slowly, calming the body had a calming effect on the thoughts too.
We often hear “calm the mind, then everything follows.” But sometimes the mind is too full to be calmed directly. A breathing exercise might work in the moment, but the calm doesn’t last. And the instruction to “just notice” feels like one more thing we should be doing, and aren’t. In those moments, we don’t need to calm the mind. We need to see it first.
That’s where writing comes in. Or, if writing isn’t the thing, a few reflective questions answered honestly – even when we don’t like the answers:
What am I telling myself right now about myself? What’s fact, and what’s the story my mind is adding to it? What am I assuming is true that I haven’t actually checked?
Reflection creates the space, then the breath, the body, the stillness can gradually happen. It’s a small reorder, but it can get us out of the loop.
This is what the Inner Practice is about – the work of seeing what the mind is doing, recognising the patterns underneath, and stepping out of the story long enough to act from somewhere quieter. If your head has been full and the usual practices have felt out of reach, this is exactly the work I do in 1:1 sessions. You can read more about it here.