mental & why mornings on the fjord are the best

Norway. 6am. July 25. I can hear bees, the quiet whir of an early cyclist, a runner, one or two morning birds, a single bark, but mostly just ambient stillness by the Oslo fjord. I have sat here in this place at this time of day, with a similar cup of tea, perhaps in different pjyamas for many years. The same pale blue skies, the same golden white sun, the same oak saplings and wild raspberries, and the same feeling that this is a magical place on the edge of the world, this little Norwegian island where the weather clouds part so that the sun can shine through (this, according to my grandfather, an eternal optimist), where cares dissipate so that the soul can bathe in light. Blue tits follow me wherever I go (also crows) and I can hear two in the rowan tree on the side of the house. A jackdaw has woken up further down on the deck. All is still. My housemates haven't stirred but soon shall. The sun is beaming into my throat and chest, warming my skin. Everything is the same and everything has changed.

July 22, Mink Island, Tjøme

In a world filled with darkness and conflict, there is always light. And it's this: every day is a new opportunity to start again. Wake up, choose differently. Blink open your eyes and choose to flood your brain with the happy hormones (oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine) that comes from gratitude and love. Energy flows where attention goes.

Stopping the train before it leaves the station is hard task to master. I have found that I can limit irksome thoughts by choosing not to check my email first thing in the morning, instead starting the day with either a short prayer or meditation. It can be something like this "Thank you for a good night's sleep and the sound of the geese flying by and the sun on my back." Or "Thank you for this small fat dog who lays next to me." Something about the feeling of the sun's energy seeping into your pores is very invigorating. Have you ever lain down in the grass under a tree and seen the dappled light play against your closed eyelids, and that sense of aaaaaaah that comes with it, the light? However, on hard days - haven't we all had those days - when you wake to the sense of doom, a different strategy is needed. These are the days when you have to shock your body back to a sense of who it is, to a state of remembering. A few little tricks I have learned (and try hard to remember on those not so good days) include:

• Drink a full big glass of water before doing anything else.
• Jump into the shower and just when you're feeling warm and cozy and coddled turn on the cold tap and allow yourself to experience two minutes of iciness.
• Immediately put on your shoes and your coat (even over your pyjamas if it's a particularly bad day) and walk outside. If it's warm and dry, take off your shoes and let the soles of your feet come into contact with the ground. If not, just walk, with purpose, and focus on breathing long, slow, deep breaths. Listen to the birds, look at the way the flowers have changed from the day before, what is coming up, what is blooming.
• Find a playlist of 528hz music - the love frequency. Or play September by Earth, Wind and Fire at full blast. Alternately, find Krishna Das and listen to Baba Hanuman. Sing along with him.
• Hum or whistle (or sing or chant).
• Hum or whistle (or sing or chant) while walking.
• Do ten minutes (or more) of yoga.
• Listen to a guided meditation from the wonderfuly resource that is Insight Timer, or remember your own sit, your own practise.

Mostly, I have found, the body needs to be jogged back to remembering. Dancing, walking, running, swimming, jumping jacks, sun salutations, shaking, moving it in some way or form does bring relief, and almost immediate relief. The wonderful Prune Harris offers other methods to stem anxiety including crossing your arms across your chest, sticking your hands into your armpits and hugging yourself hard. Self-administered oxytocin.

You are whole and perfect. We all believe we have flaws and bits missing and ugly pieces, but these are things we've been told for so long that we begin to believe them. You are the shape you are because you're like a tiny piece of jigsaw that fits perfectly and exactly as you should into the immense fabric puzzle of the universe. There are no mistakes.

When depleted, it's much easier to focus on these flaws and gaps, and then we create our own flawed and gapped energy which others pick up on and so suddenly the flaws and gaps become us. This is false. I think sometimes I'm like a slightly sad, semi-deflated balloon in the morning and I have to pump myself fill of lovely warm positive energy air so that I can bob around in the jolly way that I'm meant to.

But you get the picture. Back to oxytocin. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone. It's why new born babies and put on their mother's chests skin to skin. It's why we feel better after a hug (don't get me started on those annoying "I'm a hugger" people who hurl themselves at you unasked; I am nothing if not a paradox). It's a central part of Bowlby's attachment theory (Attachment & Loss, John Bowlby, 1969). But if we don't get enough, or haven't historically, it leaves us feeling depleted (see my reference to Prune Harris above). 

Since I've been here, a flock of housemartins flew circles over the dock in front of me, a single kayaker glided across the milkglass bay, and a lone Norwegian yachstman getting his boat ready (ie banging around loudly onboard) yelled "Ow" with a great deal of intensity. I have also made a second cup of tea, and realize that all the Oolong in the world couldn't take away my devoted love of Yorkshire Gold on a sunny morning.

But I'm Ronnie Corbetting.

Stopping the train before it leaves the station. I think this is a little like the pause between the in-breath and the out-breath, the little bit of magic that happens that might be a glimmer of the infinite. As the negative or triggering thought arises, there are a couple of choices: Greet it with open arms. Push it away sharply. Sit with it in Zen-like splendor. Grasp for an image of puppies and kittens playing happily together with frosted edges. Or, perhaps, in the best of all worlds, manage somehow to notice it, recognize it, allow it, and instead of indulging it and getting wrapped up in its innate somewhat perversely delicious drama, coming back to the moment, the quiet, the glimmer of the infinite. THIS IS VERY HARD. We all know how it is to feel so very justified and righteous in our pursuit of these negative thoughts, how the triggering is both horrible and weirdly comforting. But, I suggest humbly (& oh how I struggle with this) it won't bring you anything but more negativity, more shakiness in the body, more dry mouth and jelly hands, more frozen, curled up unsafeness. So here's the trick. The very very very hard trick. I try to take a very big breath at that moment. The biggest breath you've ever taken, really deep and slow, and let it out for the longest time you can manage. Something will shift.

But the biggest and best thing I've learned (and by learned, I think it might have come to me as a divine download on July 5, a crazy day of celestial raves and fireworks, when the whole world seemed to be shifting on its axis) - I said to Charlie in a text which I wrote from the kitchen at 4.47pm and I quote it now:

I have realized that I need to use my time wisely from now on. There is no point wasting it on things that don't matter or that you don't care about.

And this is how I translate this little morsel of insight, which may sound bleeding obvious to every other observer, but I don't care:

Do not give a jot what anyone else thinks about you. It doesn't matter. As long as you are kind and ethical, then let your damn freak flag fly. Be that weird little jigsaw piece in the 500,000,000,000,000 piece puzzle that is the universe and smile. You are loved.

The whole bay is now shimmering in silver light from the sun. It's 7.41am and the dog next door has woken up to wholeheartedly yap in his big boy voice at every jogger, now coming by frequently, the sound of trainers skimming the sandy road. We are on an island protected on all sides by a guard of skerries, stretching out to meet each other, but not quite, with channels of still salt water in between, and rows of fir trees on top of the warm gray granite. If you looked down from above, you'd see the dark forest green star patterns and the silver blue fjord, and as you focus in you would see the branches, and the fat cherries bursting their skins, then the grasses, the purple willow herb and creamy meadowsweet and blue harebells, the wild raspberries and blueberries, the luminous green of the moss forest speckled with ladybirds, the little beige mushrooms, and then underneath the beetles, the ants, the tiny milipedes, and further down the chocolate brown composted earth, the pink worms. I am zooming in like Carl Sagan, thinking about his pale blue dot. I am zooming in like a seagull or an alien who has not visited this place before. I am zooming in and zooming out and soaring and imagining whether it is possible to find anything so beautiful or kind. 

You are the wave but you are also the ocean.