Prayer, Self-Compassion, and Small Steps

Shelly's health prescriptions

Shelly’s Story

Shelly works hard as an elementary school teacher’s assistant. She works with first graders, second, and fourth graders. One of her biggest challenges is finding enough time in the day. She tries to do that by waking up early for two priority activities. First, she prays the rosary each morning. When I asked her why the rosary was an important practice for her, she said, “I think I’ve always been drawn to regular spiritual practice. I just didn’t know it would be saying the rosary every morning! The routine anchors me in something deep and timeless which is comforting and enriching. Prayer is a mystery so I am not sure how mine are being answered. Saying the rosary takes me out of the immediacy of meeting demands of each day and into the mysterious.” After the rosary, she does her stretching exercises. Three years ago, she suffered from severe low back pain. These stretching exercises keep her pain manageable.

Of all the things Shelly does in her daily life, prayer is the one that I’d most like you to consider adding to yours. If you want to pray the rosary, wonderful! However, it definitely doesn’t have to be that. It can be asking ancestors, saints, angels, animals, plants, spirits, or other beings to intercede on your behalf. It can be as simple as, “HELP!” or “Thanks!” or “Wow!” as Anne Lamott (I think) famously put it. Another method of prayer is the ARRR acronym (Acknowledge, Relate, Receive, Respond). This website has a great description.

For people who don’t adhere to a specific religious traditions, I also think breath prayers are a great place to start. In breath prayer, you think or say one short phrase as you breathe in. Then, as you breathe out, you think or say another short phrase. Here are a few that could be used for most people (especially if you replace Holy One or Spirit as needed).

• “Help me rest; give me peace”

• “Make clear my way, O Holy One”

• “Out of darkness, into light”

• “Fill me, Spirit, with your love.”

What I find most helpful about prayer is that it gives me somewhere to put all of the things that I worry about, but can’t control. I pray instead of pretending I can control them. Prayer is notoriously difficult to research in a controlled way. For example, if you have a person in the control group that is not praying, you can’t control whether other people pray for that person. However, there is strong evidence that people who pray experience calm, peace, and encouragement. They feel less isolated, anxious, angry, and afraid. Fascinatingly, people who participated in spiritual meditation were able to tolerate the pain of icy cold water for nearly twice as long as those who engaged in secular meditation.

For Shelly, a “good day” is one where she gets a lot done and writes a poem. If she had more time in the day, she would read, go on more walks, write more, and try to submit her poetry for publication.

Here is a poem from Shelly. It’s a style of poem called a haibun. Shelly told me haibun is a prose poem followed by a haiku.

You’re missing from here, and with you all the longing that blooms. You’re missing from the color and flower seeds brought from across the ocean. You’re missing from the tables, empty from the chairs when we sit down and pass dishes of our bland food. You’re missing from the textbooks, the library books, the monuments, the bits of newspapers that blow in the street when the lights turn off for the night. You’re missing as we rise in the morning and look out the windows to look at the searchlights in the pale sky. You’re missing in the wool blankets to keep warm at night and in the prayers we utter before turning out the light.
 
All we knew of home
When we set off with full sails
Blows away alone

Shelly has struggled with addiction to junk food. She could tell she had junk food addiction because of constant cravings, feelings of happiness and relief after eating chips and chocolate, planning days around eating chips and candy, making sure there are enough chips and candy at home and at work, hiding bags of chips, going to different stores around town to buy junk food, and using food to try to control feelings and deal with problems. She has quit junk food cold turkey, but sometimes has relapses.

Right now, her usual diet involves salads, vegetables, smoothies, and yogurt. She said, “What motivates me is self-knowledge that I can’t fool myself into thinking I can eat junk food in small amounts and just once in a while. I also try to keep in mind that I’ll be able to lose weight if I stick with it. I try to enjoy the feeling of being just full enough rather than over full. Sometimes, at work where junk food is so prevalent, I take photos of the food items and give myself a mental pat on the back for walking away from the food.”

She is mourning the loss of a friendship and the impending death of another friend. She also notes that it often feels hard to relax because she feels like she needs to earn her rest or like there is always something else that needs to be done. “I feel like that about relationships too, I feel like the other person has to be getting some benefit from it.”

Prescriptions

I included a couple of extras in here. I don’t want Shelly to take them all on at once. However, a lot of our conversation seemed like it would be helpful to many people, so I wanted to include them in case they are helpful to you.

As we were talking, I noticed that she was hard on herself. I especially noticed it in the context of making time for creative work and submitting poetry for publication. Her creative work felt like a major axis of her life, so I wanted to issue her a couple of challenges.

Creative “Self-publishing”

Find your own ways to share your poetry (sidewalk chalk?, lipstick on a mirror?, Substack?, leave a card for someone to find?). Publishing can be great, but kind of like losing weight, it’s good to interrogate the reason why that is a goal for us. Sometimes it’s worthwhile, sometimes there are other (perhaps better) ways to achieve that goal.

Self-compassion Practices

My favorite, because you can literally do it anywhere, anytime is placing your hand on your heart. Even 20 seconds has an impact on how you feel and even changes your physiology. I also thought that as a writer, Shelly would appreciate this self-compassion writing exercise from self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff. Her website has some great self-guided and audio self-compassion exercises too. Another great self-compassion resource is The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook by Tim Desmond. You can download it for free (with a free trial) here.

Many of us (myself so much included) sometimes feel that showing ourselves compassion may reduce our motivation or our willingness to take responsibility for mistakes or failures. We also may feel like self-compassion is wallowing in self-pity, self-indulgent, selfish, or weak. However, research indicates the opposite is true. Here’s what the research has to say about how self-compassion plays out in reality.

• Self-compassion is actually more effective for maintaining motivation than self-criticism. When we are compassionate toward ourselves we try our best because we care about ourselves and our goals, not to avoid criticism and judgment. When we approach ourselves in this way we are better able to learn from mistakes and failure. Research shows self-compassionate people perform better.

• People who are self-compassionate are more likely to take responsibility for harm they’ve caused and attempt to fix the situation than those who are harsh toward themselves.

• Because self-compassion looks at struggles, mistakes, and failures as shared human experiences, people who practice self-compassion are actually more able to take the perspective of others and feel connected to others when we struggle.

• Self-compassionate people take better care of themselves–eating well, exercising, and engaging in more healthy behaviors.

• Self-compassionate people are more supportive of the important people in their lives. “Professional and family caregivers are more able to care for others without becoming drained and burned out.”

• “Self-compassionate people are better able to deal with stressful situations like natural disasters, military combat, health challenges, raising special needs children, and divorce.”

Protein-rich Plants

Shelly was hoping to add more protein to her diet, but prefers not to eat meat. Here are some of the most protein-rich wild plants to eat (the links have some of my favorite recipes in them.

• Nettles

• Dandelions

• Clover-I like to use these fresh in smoothies or salads

• Lamb’s quarter-I also prefer these greens fresh in smoothies and salads

Calendula Salve for Lichen Sclerosis

I recommended Calendula salve for a condition called Lichen Sclerosis. Fortunately, Shelly hasn’t had any flare-ups since our talk in May, so I don’t have a follow-up on whether this helped.

Start small

In our conversation, we talked about ways to build habits to cultivate relaxation or brain rest. If you don’t have a walking habit, I highly recommend it for a lot of reasons. Here’s how to build a positive habit from the ground up.

• First week: At the same time, every day, (or as close to same time and everyday as possible), put on your walking shoes

• Second week: At the same time, every day, put on your walking shoes and walk to the end of the driveway

• Third week: At the same time, every day, put on your walking shoes and walk to the end of the block

• Fourth week: At the same time, every day, put on your walking shoes and walk (and gradually build distance as desired)

One habit I am hoping to build is writing five sensory details I notice each day. Maybe I could (will?) break it down by starting with just writing the date in my notebook and adding one sensory detail each week until I reach the five.

Mobility Movement Flow Video

I’m still a novice at making these movement videos, so please let me know if any moves are unclear. I meant to encourage you to pause and take some extra time at any moves that feel extra good too.

Thank you to Shelly for your hard work with students and sharing your prayerful wisdom. If you see yourself in Shelly, please give a couple of these prescriptions a try.