Hey, if you’ve ever read anything I send out, you know my intention is to inspire, soothe, support. I’m pointing you to what feels better, not worse.

That’s still true here, and I’m also seeking to meet you in any pain and distress you may already be feeling in the current American socio-political climate. If you’re not there now, you may want to come back to this when you are. Or engage with this now to get a strategy in place for next time you’re walloped by the hard stuff. Below, I offer three simple (one SUPER simple) strategies for BEING WITH what hurts about the state of the USA.

Maybe it comes into your field sometimes or often. Maybe you just don’t want to shut out the pain altogether. So this will give you ways to feel you can contain it when it’s active. You can experience soothing and even offer it out at the same time. There’s the possibility of not being wrecked by it (at least not in an ongoing way), or of feeling it without a sense that it’s unbearable.

Strategy #1: CONSCIOUS BREATHING AS SUPPORT IN THE MOMENT

How immigrants are treated at this time is one of the worst current issues for me. The photo above comes from the short live film A Lien, which clocks under 15 minutes and was one of the five nominees at this year’s Academy Award. The directors (brothers David and Sam Cutler-Kreutz) use a lot of close-up, even claustrophobic, cinematography to bring us right up against the pressing fear felt by immigrants and their families. In this story, we meet a family made up of a white American woman, a brown man originally from a Spanish-speaking country, and their little daughter. We watch the man getting arrested during their scheduled green-card interview, not because he’s done something wrong, but because he’s easy prey. Yes, these people are following the right legal protocols and he’s detained during that process like a guilty fugitive from the law. It’s an actual current practice that the filmmakers depicted with great skill in a few minutes.

Predictably enough, watching this felt devastating to me. Right? No surprise. I already find the whole issue, the whole reality, to be devastating. Remember, I’m offering strategies here for meeting the pain we’re already in, and being able to do that in the moment that pain strikes anew.

The breathing strategy I used is the super-easy one. I simply breathed through the film (the whole time) very, very consciously. I felt the pressure of the fear and was immersed in the wretchedness of what real human beings are subjected to for no good reason, so I breathed into that. I breathed around that. I breathed as fully and gently as I could. I made space for the pain inside my own body using the kind spaciousness of the breath.

Notice that this tactic doesn’t take you out of the reality or even out of the pain. It makes it bearable. It makes it containable. It gives you a way not to tense up against the pain (resistance). Instead, you’re acknowledging what hurts (here it is, this is reality right now), and you’re bringing in the breath to help you contain it.

Never force the breath when you do this. I once heard Marion Gilbert, a somatic Enneagram teacher, talk about how the breath will never force its way in anywhere, so we don’t need to force it into places that aren’t already open. We can gently direct breath that way and it will lap kindly up against any walls or shields we have up in resistance and self-protection. It will gently finds its way in through the cracks, forcing nothing. I don’t even know anymore what’s her language and what’s mine when I talk about this. It’s been with me and in my guided meditations since I heard her discuss this, because it struck me at once as truth and consistently matches what happens in my experience.

I used this tactic all through the film, on my drive home, and later when it grabbed me again, including in the wee hours. Very helpful.

Bonus breathing support
Find my playlist of soothing 3-centers meditations on YouTube.

Strategy #2: THE BUDDHIST MEDITATION PRACTICE OF TONGLEN TO SEND OUT COMPASSION AND EASE SUFFERING
If you click on the photo above, you will get a short video of Pema Chodron describing the practice of Tonglen. In a nutshell, you’re breathing in the pain of the world (or of one population or one sentient being), feeling its claustrophobic density, then breathing out a sense of spaciousness and relief. She lays it out clearly in four simple steps.

The Buddhist approach is typically very heady. And there’s a ton of HEART in Tonglen. It’s really very beautiful. When you can’t do something here and now in the physical world, you can use a meditative approach to offer goodness into the world and intend the release and removal of suffering.

A couple of tweaks
I don’t think Pema uses the word RELIEF. I invite you to feel the out-breath as relief (or even the intention of relief) for you and for those you’re focused on. She talks about exuding that from every pore of your body, and I’d like to invite you to then send it way out to the ethers, to space, so that you tap into infinite spaciousness and possibility. The Universe has room to contain this. The Universe (and time, evolution) can dissolve and dissipate the whole thing.

She also suggests using a word during that relief phase, during the out-breath that invites the release of suffering. Certainly, do use a word if that works for you. I prefer focusing the feeling and leaving language out of it. I like to use images that call me to spaciousness and relief, including a simple image of light-filled empty space radiating out, out, out, though and beyond that exhalation.

A structural support you might use
If you like Pema’s idea of using a gong at the beginning of the meditation as a way to access some semblance of clear mind, do you already know about Insight Timer? You can set up timed meditations using various sounds of bells, chimes, and gongs. So you might take Pema’s idea of 4 phases of tonglen and consider how long you’d like to spend on each one. Open with a gong and choose some other sounds to ring at specific intervals, calling you to each next phase. It’s not that hard to figure out and it will hold the structure for you while you simply move through the soothing and blessing experience of tonglen.

Here’s a shorter version of Pema describing tonglen. Under 5 minutes!

Strategy #3: REACHING FOR BETTER-FEELING THOUGHTS
Wait, I’m sorry. Did you think I wasn’t going to mention Abraham-Hicks this time? I must, because they teach a very simple process of stringing thoughts together, preferably out loud, reaching for one statement after another to soothe and soften anything that feels bad. Whatever you’re telling yourself that feels awful, however true or real it may be, you can counter with better-feeling thoughts. And later, when you want to give some conscious attention to what hurts, you can come back to it from a solid place.

Side note on staying with thoughts that hurt
Don’t stay in the pain of the world full time. I would even invite you to take whole days and other chunks of time off. No one is equipped for full-time focus on what feels terribly wrong. No one can function well steeping in the worst of it. No one can bring love and beauty and relief into the world from a steady focus on hate, pain, horrors. Please take that seriously.

Thoughts on how to reach for better-feeling thoughts
Better-feeling thoughts often involve what Abraham calls zooming out, or going general. Take yourself past the specificity of what’s problematic and painful. Take eagle view, or even satellite view. Look across the eons from geologic time if you need to.

A better-feeling thought is anything you can tell yourself that’s kinder, gentler, truer. Reach for what stirs hope. Doing this calls in or activates your intentions or greater values for yourself and others, for the entire world. In other words, it bring focus to the wanted, not the unwanted. Reaching for better-feeling thoughts shifts your focus to what feels more relaxed and in flow, or to downstream thoughts (not the upstream thoughts that push against the current).

Please do practice it for yourself and your smaller world, then you’ll have better access to this tactic for the big-ticket items. Honestly, this is probably hardest to do for things in the greater reality, the political realm, the global stuff. (Perhaps because you have less agency there.) And still, reaching for better-feeling thoughts can support you to walk yourself through harsh realities. For now, you may not be able to fix or change something. You can shift your focus and cultivate ways of thinking and talking to yourself that allow you to process the harshness, and perhaps to be part of the change.

An example of stringing together better-feeling thoughts
The day I watched the film, I started reaching for better-feeling thoughts as I got close to home and lingered in the car to find a few more before heading inside. The best I was able to do involved finding some statements of willingness and acceptance, and it actually did help. For me, it was a no-bullshit way to feel better.

I took off from hearing myself think, I don’t want to live in a world where this is happening. Right after that, I heard Barbara Kingsolver say (a character of hers says it to another in Animal Dreams), You do live in that world. So from there, I found my willingness to be in this world, as it is and as I am.

• I love planet Earth.
• I want to be here.
• It’s kind of amazing to live a human life.
• There has always been hard stuff here on this planet.
• There has been hard stuff during my life and in my life.
• There has always been beautiful stuff here on this planet.
• There has been beautiful stuff during my life and in my life.
• I want to be a human being on planet Earth.
• I’m happy to be here now though I don’t feel the joy in this moment. So much has unfolded already, so much is still possible.
• I recognize the evolution.
• I accept that evolution happens with ups and downs, in what feels like going forward and backward again, and not as a direct trajectory of increasing goodness.
• I accept being here in this moment in time.
• I accept being in this country. For all my grudges against it, there are many ways I have it easy and benefit from living here.
• I’m willing to be a human being.
• I’m willing to be an American.
• I’m willing to be white and I believe that there are ways to use that experience for the good of all.
• I’m willing to be where I am as I am and I’m willing to learn how to do this all better.
• I’m willing to hurt. I’m willing to let in the pain of injustice and prejudice and fear-based policies that harm innocent people. I’m willing.
• I’m willing to soothe myself.
• I’m willing to create joy and beauty in my life, which I wish for every other human being.
• I’m willing to bring soothing to myself and to any human being who comes into my field or contacts my work.
• I’m willing to keep showing up.
• I’m willing to be part of the expansion.
• I can believe that love prevails.
• I know I don’t benefit from a focus on hate. Right now, I choose to focus on love.
• …

You can go on and on and on with this. Say whatever comes to you out loud and carrying on until you feel even a little different.

Reach AND tap to take it further
If you want to try this tactic while you tap (using the technique of EFT, or Emotional Freedom Technique), that creates a sort of reaching-for-better-feeling-thoughts-ON-STEROIDS. I have a whole EFT playlist on YouTube geared to support political pain & anxiety. Check it out if drawn.

Reminder of an ongoing resource
Or come to a Monday-night drop-in group-coaching session (info below and on the home page of my website). People sometimes bring the topic of political pain, and we meet it together. Anything is allowed in the space, including the personal that may feel small by comparison. Anything anyone brings is the stuff of human reality, and I make sure we approach it in a way likely to benefit all present.

Love & blessings, Jaya

Scroll down to below the next pic for a few super-helpful resources. Headings are there to guide swift skimming!

Almost everybody I work with or know in any context is deeply dismayed by the latest elections in the US. People are using words like devastated, shattered, and terrified, and are talking about grieving. There’s no problem with any absolutely & automatically valid reaction you’re having. More than anything, I invite you to look for soothing. See if you can stay away from ongoing focus on all that’s WRONG.

AND I also want to invite you back to what is true, what abides, what is real, what we can actually count on, what matters, what will get us through, where we might put our focus to feel fully equipped to carry on with our intentions for our own lives and the greater good and the Earth itself. Scroll down for a number of resources to explore if & when you feel drawn.

First, a story from someone else
My friend & colleague Susan Meyer is a mindfulness meditation teacher and nature photographer. She already has a habit well in place, most every morning, to visit the river she lives next to in upstate New York. Via the practical magic of her kayak, she often gets right in it. Her relationship with this river represents a deep soul connection. Susan didn’t watch election results come in on the evening that was happening, and before she looked in the morning, she went out to meet the river—and to meet herself at the river—first of all.

What happened was that she got a visceral sense of a sort of timeless view of what matters. Even going only as far back as the beginning of the story of the United States, she felt into how this river had seen the Revolutionary War and all that has taken place in the human realms from then to now. The river had flowed through it all; continued to provide water and take part in the water cycle; held and fed any number of beasts and fishes and birds, plants and trees; provided solace & peace & nourishment to any number of humans. This river was full of hope & love & an ongoing vote cast for life to continue in the healthiest possible way for all concerned.

And from that awareness, Susan felt the time was right to check the election results. In that very moment, a two-word text that told all she needed to know popped in from her daughter: “Soooo….. Canada? 😭”

What I’ve been doing & holding to
Most of y’all know that I do EXTRA processes for soothing & clarity when something feels off, and I’ve been processing away to spend as much time as possible in alignment. (Note that you can click on the tag PROCESS on my blog to see specific tools there. There’s also a helpful tools tab on my website.) Prioritizing alignment and cultivating a sense of well-being includes more time in nature and more care with basic things like nutrition and sleep and qigong, in my case—substitute whatever you do that you know keeps your body feeling better and your breathing coming in more fully.

I’m holding fast to all that I care about. All the intentions I had for myself and this country and various populations I care deeply about—these are unchanged and still with me. I’m committed. I’ve been thinking about how many people hold like beliefs and care just as deeply as I do, and we are united. I know the laws of the Universe are unchanged by election results, and I’m still tapping into all that keeps me creating & living into visions of what matters to me and allows me to support others on their journeys.

I’m so clear that I cannot support people if I go into depression or deep freeze, things I did routinely in the past anytime the political landscape felt threatening and like it was just going in the wrong direction (seemingly counter to evolution and not aligned with the good of all concerned!). In fact, I believe the evolution is always underway, and it’s evident to me, looking back over time, that the process never looks linear. And still, we’ve evolved, and we will continue to do just that.

Further resources, including from others, can be found below the next photo. Headings allow for quick skimming to see if anything calls to you.

RESOURCES

A SONG
Here is a song that makes me teary & goosebumpy, written & performed by singer-songwriter Kathleen Hannan of NC. She started writing this right before the election, finishing the recording just before the results started coming in. She wrote me that she wanted to create a song to tap into “what would still be here no matter which way the election went.”

EFT
I have created an EFT (emotional freedom technique, or tapping) playlist on my YouTube channel for political pain and anxiety. Some were drawn from pre-existing EFT sessions (e.g., EFT/tapping on big disappointments) and I keep adding new EFT sessions specific to this list as I support people bringing me the topic of how the political situation affects (and especially pains) them.

A MEDITATION
On the night of the American elections, I sent out a link to this mailing list to offer a 3-centers meditation. I had recorded it at noontime with no clue of how things would turn out. Here it is again, as you may still find it helpful in meeting your dread and soothing yourself in body, heart, and head. Find this election-soothing 3-centers meditation on YouTube.

POWERFUL TEACHINGS FROM ABRAHAM-HICKS
If you ALREADY know & love the work of Abraham-Hicks and want & feel able to invest 50 bucks in a spiritual perspective on the political scene, I strongly recommend purchasing the Abraham Now broadcast that took place a few days after the elections, on November 9. I found all that was said deeply healing, supportive, and full of wisdom, clarity, and encouragement to stay connected to what is always real, whatever may be going on politically for better or worse. If you aren’t already pretty connected to these teachings and to Abraham-speak, you may not vibe with how they talk about this or even get what they’re saying (because of their particular lingo and perhaps because a foundational understanding of what & how they teach would be needed). That said, if you feel drawn, go go go!

DROP-IN GROUP COACHING
Last Monday night, during drop-in group coaching, we did some beautiful work together to soothe election fears & woes. Please join anytime, including tonight. The topics we cover are set by what people bring forth. You’re always welcome to talk or participate in silence, you can insert a question in the chat, and you can be off-cam, if you prefer, even if you choose to offer a coaching topic. This information, along with very occasional cancellations, can always be found on the homepage of my website.

Love & blessings, Jaya

4 Things to remind yourself early & often
(which will connect you to self & to guidance)

1. Bring it to now: Come back from the future (quit predicting what you don't want) and come back from the past (quit accruing towers of one thing stacked on top of another so it's all too much) and don't try to figure it all out. What can you do right now to align with this moment? Notice that you're equipped for this one moment.

2. Come back to the breath: Breathing is a felt, sensory experience, but we typically don't feel it. I love to invite people not to breeaaaaathe or even to take a deep breath, but to simply drop into the breath; follow it; stay with it; feel it. Feel its soothing, its kindness, its calming capacity. Feel how it brings you to the core of your being and brings your whole nervous system down a notch or two. It's powerful to take some moments dropping in with the breath and come back to yourself.

3. You don't have to figure it all out right now: This is a great thing to tell yourself to get out of your head, out of fix-it mode, out of believing you're not okay till you have it all sorted out and see the way forward. Actually, if you don't see it all clearly, then you don't have to figure it out right now. Soothe yourself instead (see Come back to the breath above).

4. You are guided: Life wants to get you where you're going. It wants to feed you, provide for your needs, heal and evolve you, keep bringing you closer to love. When you think you need to know what the future will hold, or insist on a blueprint for getting there (when there isn't one), or--yuck--fault yourself because you must be doing something wrong if you don't see the way forward: STOP. Quit thinking you're all alone and it's all up to you to find your way through the dark. You're guided. Connect to guidance.
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Love & blessings, Jaya

heyyyy. LOOK RIGHT for CORONA SUPPORT label under CATEGORIES. Find posts most likely to support you as you move through the fascinating challenge of a pandemic. You're equipped to meet this, and to meet yourself kindly on this journey!

At the bottom of my EFT playlist on YouTube are some videos made during Covid that can still apply when life throws scary global things at us. This one, for example, was a tapping session on letting go (as we grasped and tried to control what we couldn't).

I so often say these words to clients: Bring it to now.

There are so many brilliant ways to apply this phrase to step into greater ease, to drop torments, to teach yourself your life is manageable—in short, to set yourself free. Some examples follow, but I invite you to come up with your own, and lots of them. Apply this to anything!
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How do I deal with the overwhelm of this huge, horrible challenging project (assignment, creation) I'm up against?
By dealing with the part of it that's before you right now. Don't deal with the whole thing from start to finish. Don't deal with tomorrow's part or next month's part or the part you have no idea about five steps down the line. DON'T EVEN CONSIDER THE OUTCOME. Deal with the one doable part before you here and now.

Sometimes, it's time to look at the whole, get the overview, map it all out on a timeline, define and delegate the parts, and so on. In that case, the one task of the moment is taking that bird's-eye view. Then and only then do you need to get out the whole kit and caboodle and spread it out for your perusal. But notice how often you do this out of turn, checking again to rev up the angst and to make gloomy-doomy predictions for a bad end you don't want! Bring it to now: do what's really up for you to do right now, and bring your best presence and greatest sense of ease to that endeavor.

What do I need to work out about my past?
Nothing—unless something from your past shows up right now. Then meet it head-on. Meet the pain, meet your thoughts that intensify the pain, ferret out anything you've decided about life, yourself, or other people because of that story you lived. (“Mind the Pain Body, Tend the Mind” is the substantial and super-practical third chapter of my book Scooch! that treats this topic.) I've come to phrase this, The undoing happens in the moment. That moment is now. All you need to process your pain well and untangle the stories it's tied to; all you need to live your life well (and joyfully!); all you need to get your needs met—it's all right here, right now.

How do I stop dreading the future?
Bring it to now. Is there something you don't like right now? Be with that. Be with it well. Be with it kindly, and don't tell yourself any lies. That's enough. When you're energized and excited about your life and all that's possible, all you'd like to create and connect to next—that's a fine now moment to take a little trip into the future, and then come on back to consider how to point yourself that way right now.

I'm so ashamed about … I'm so thrown off by …
When some small embarrassment or warped, oversized shame-thing grabs you (we've all got one, we've all had one activated in the not-so-distant past, maybe earlier today), come back to now. What are you in charge of now? What can you control (that's truly in your realm of control) right now? Can you forgive yourself more deeply right now? Can you soothe yourself like a kind, loving parent practicing unconditional love right now? Can you get out of someone else's head and what they saw and what they thought and what they think of you right now?

Bring it to now, and see how much kindness you can step into in this moment. Quit dragging yourself back to some shameful, painful, confused moment that does not (it absolutely does not) define who you are. I love how Byron Katie says that she loves being slapped, because it's over. The slap happens once and fades quickly, but we replay it again and again mentally, reliving the shame and all that a slap in that moment from that person before those witnesses means to us. She points out that the person who slapped us once turns out being much kinder to us than we are to ourselves, because we slap ourselves a hundred times over. Come back to now and what's actually happening now. Come back to the kindness of the moment.

How do I keep all the turmoil in the world or political process from getting the best of me?
Bring it to now. It's fine and good to have times you witness what's happening in the world, but never forget that the news isn't giving you a balanced view of things, and don't keep hanging out in the dismal spot it last took you to. Remember that the media displays the most provocative and sensational of what's happening out there, always slanted a certain way in the presentation. When you're not consciously seeking to be informed as best you can, get present.

Life is also a sink full of dishes, a walk with the dog, a moment to listen to your kid tell you something you wouldn't even care about for a moment if it weren't this particular human being doing the telling. Life is a good cup of coffee, a dance down the hallway, a moment of hard laughter over the purely absurd. Get present to the mundane beauty and magic that's right here, right now, and truly validate and value it: this is your personal life, the specific one you were given to tend, yours to mind in the moment with as much love and presence as you've got, even as the storms happening out there rage and simmer on.

[Here is my EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) or Tapping playlist on YouTube to support you in soothing political pain.]

Here's a bedtime trick for bringing it to now (and waking up in a good, clear space, and living a more powerful life):
Get out of tomorrow. If you must review what needs to be addressed tomorrow, do it before you even enter your bedroom, never mind climb into bed. Get out of today, but do that after you've spent a bit of time going over triumphs and completions large and small. Notice with appreciation all you did that was good, or brilliant, or even good enough. Take a moment to feel and really take in what you moved through and brought to the next step or even to a close. (Do you, like most people, deprive yourself of acknowledging and celebrating what you've accomplished?) You might also notice all the kindness that came your way. Byron Katie taught me to notice all that supports me. Start counting the supports that came to you today, and it may be hard to stop. Did clean water really just come out of a faucet because you turned a knob with minimum effort?

Once you've been with the day in that way, let it go. Come back to now. Find how the mattress supports you, how the pillow allows you to let go, how the blankets envelop you not just in warmth, but a sense of safety and well-being. Find how the darkness holds you. Imagine you're lying in the arms of love. Let go of every muscle you don't need (all of them) for holding it together right now and let yourself be held. Let go of thoughts, even if they won't let go of you, by not following them sequentially. Get off every thought train you catch yourself in. Come to love the unfinished thought! Use the breath to support you. Drop your awareness into your belly (not once, but again, again, again, now, now, and now) and watch the belly go up and down with the breath. Find what's soothing and kind and life-giving in your breath. There's nothing like connecting to the breath to help you connect to here and now.
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love & blessings, Jaya