"Buddhist Principles : A Working Example" or "How not to lose your s**t when your baby won't sleep at 4 in the morning"

"I wanna Bertie Beetle"

The scenario is nothing unusual.  Mother of a 9 week old little boy who although he is the most beautiful little treasure in the world, isn't always so great at sleeping at night.  Dad has a demanding job and gets up with our other two cherubs in the morning (besides he lacks some of the necessary equipment) so it's Mummy on night duty.

 

Needless to say that after nine weeks of broken sleep.  Mummy's starting to get a little tired, cranky and teary.  We mums are very good at putting on brave faces in the light of day but let's face it when you're staring at a tiny little person in the middle of the night who has decided that rather then go back to sleep they would rather play or cry over nothing in particular for an hour and a half you start to go a little crazy.

 

I have been reading Sarah Napthali's "Buddhism for mothers with lingering questions" and have found her advice to be both logical and helpful (both key tests of advice as far as I'm concerned).  I decided at 4am this morning (man I used to be partying at this hour) as I started to tear up again that it was time to put this advice into practice.

 

The first piece of advice is to be in the present moment.  Rather then starting the dialogue in my head of how it's always me getting up to and having to settle the baby in the middle of the night (the past) and how I'm going to be exhausted tomorrow and as I can't see me catching up on that sleep any time soon I'm going to end up sick and run down (the future.) I chose to stay in the present moment and found that the tears stopped as soon as the back story ended. 

 

The next piece of advice is based on Buddhism's second noble truth "Our suffering is caused by our attachments and aversions."  Napthali (and Buddha) suggest that understanding that it is our attachment to or our aversion toward a thing/person/event that causes our suffering not the thing/person/event itself.  Right got it, my aversion toward the crying and my attachment to  sleep are what is causing me to suffer right now, not the fact that my baby won't go back to sleep.  OK time to let go of the aversion and attachment and just deal with what is in front of me.  I can do that.

The next piece of advice is to ask what the present moment requires of you.  Easy, the present moment simply requires me to get my little man settled and back to sleep.  I've done this before, it's not so bad.  Calmly cuddle, walk, pat and jiggle until he falls back asleep.  So much more effective than crying, swearing, storming, huffing and puffing.  Who'd have thought. What often took 90 minutes took just 10 and I was back to my bed and sleeping before I knew it.

 

I'm not saying that I'll never have another teary, non-sleeping episode again but it's nice to know that I now have some tools in the tool box to help me when I start to feel out of control.  Now if only I could deal with the attachment to a well rested functioning brain and the aversion to being vomited on I'll be sorted.

 

What great advice have you been given recently?

Tap, tap, tap it away

I must admit.  When my sister introduced me to the idea of tapping a little while back I was sceptical.  Very, very sceptical.  The idea that simply tapping on specific areas of your body could magically make your problems disappear to me sounded absolutely ridiculous.  Imagine my surprise then when I found myself signing up for the 2013 Tapping World Summit!! I'm still not sure why I did it but I'm so glad I did.

The ideas behind tapping were originally developed by a psychologist Dr. Roger Callahan to help with some of his clients who were struggling to move through some emotional issues.  He called the process the Callahan technique Thought Field Therapy (TFT.)  He found that a client who had spent a long time with him trying to work through an anxiety issue found themselves much less anxious after only 1 session of TFT.  

The process was then adopted by many more practitioners including Nick Ortner and Jack Canfield and the name was changed to Emotional Freedom Technique or more simply just tapping.  The idea of tapping is that   by tapping specific areas of the body which are based on Traditional Chinese Medicine acupressure or meridian points while talking about the specific issue that is bothering you you are able to reprogram the brain to be less affected by the specific issue.  Proponents of tapping have stated that there is now research that shows that tapping actually affects the brain's amygdala response.  

The amaygdala is the part of the brain that stimulates the fight or flight reaction in response to stressful stimuli.  Normally if there is something in your life that is causing you some grief, thinking about it will light up the amygdala region of the brain putting the body into fight or flight mode.  Apparently researchers found that the process of tapping actually disengages the amygdala while thinking about the stressful stimuli meaning that you are able to effectively reprogram your brain to be less stressed out by the normally stressful situation. To see how tapping is done please watch the below video.

Speakers at the 2013 Tapping World Summit have claimed to have used tapping with clients to help to heal a huge variety of concerns both mental and physical such as guilt, phobias, addictions, fears, physical pain, illness and weight loss.  They believe that all problems have an emotional base and by working through and tapping away that emotion the situation can be improved. 

I have listened to speakers over the last few days talk about using tapping for weight loss, body image issues, self love and ending self sabotaging behaviors and have had my eyes opened to the emotions that hide behind a lot of our issues.  I have tapped away with the speakers and have found that over the last couple of days I have felt calmer and much more centered as I have started to deal with some of the emotions that I had been hiding deep down.

The Tapping World Summit is on until the 13th of March and is free to register.  If you're interested in finding out more about this technique and the different ways that it can be used in your life then join up  here and listen to each day's downloads at a time that suits you.  Just ensure that you watch the introductory video first otherwise you will find yourself a bit lost.  I highly recommend having a look at this after all you have nothing to lose and heaps to gain.  I still have no idea what made me sign up for this summit but I can see tapping having a big impact on my life.

You balance buddy

Renae X

Hung up on housework?

Now where's that kit kat?

So here I am at home exhausted but happy after spending a few days cleaning my home with the energy that has returned with the second trimester of my pregnancy.  Happy I said, more like completely chuffed with myself.  The floors were done, the kitchen fully cleaned out and organised, the furniture was polished, the kid's rooms were spotless and the bathrooms were sparkling.  The house looked amazing for the first time in a long while and I was loving it.

Now let's rewind back and have a look at the last few months when I was completely zonked with early pregnancy and the constant nausea taking it's toll on me.  The house was never a bomb site but it was also never amazing and I felt this everyday as disappointment in myself for not being able to stay as on top of things as I would have liked.  

I found myself often in tears and yelling at my darling boy as he had yet again decided to change our carpet from white to psychadelic with whatever tools he had at hand (wax crayon, fruit juice, playdough, whatever he could get his hands on really.)  I took every attempt from my children to mess with the tidiness of my house as a personal insult and when they really trashed it I felt hopeless defeat for a while.

Seriously who buys white carpet?

Now as I stood there feeling chuffed about my amazingly clean looking abode it occurred to me that I had invested a lot of myself and my self esteem in my ability to keep a tidy home.  It might seem like something reasonably harmless and that heaps of people do but when you stop to think about it it's completely crazy.  I was investing my sense of wellbeing and happiness in something that not only has no affect whatsoever on the fate of mankind (my ruling stick for the import of anything,) but was also totally at the mercy of two children, my energy levels and my schedule.  In hindsight really not that clever.

Buddha amongst his many teachings brought us the idea that human suffering was caused by either attachment or aversion.  Attachment to things that we have or desire and aversion to those things we don't want.  Buddha taught his disciples that to achieve true happiness we need to rid ourselves of our attachments and aversions.  He wasn't suggesting that we never want for anything ever again but that we didn't attach ourselves or our current or future happiness to that desire.

Buddha also taught us about impermanence.  The fact that nothing in this universe including ourselves is here forever and that even the giant mountain of today will be a slightly different mountain tomorrow as it is affected by it's environment so that one day it may be worn away to nothing.  

Understanding the implications of impermanence helps us to let go of our attachments and aversions as we understand that those things that we feel we can't be happy without won't last nor will the happiness that comes with attaining them.  Also those things that we waste energy on hating, wishing away or avoiding will also not last and we can accept that with  time the cause of our aversion or our aversion itself will simply cease to be.

What does this have to do with my housework scenario? Everything.  I had attached myself and my happiness to having to have a clean home.  When my home was clean, I was content with this aspect of myself and would allow myself happiness until as is inevitable this condition for happiness goes away and I am back to denying myself happiness until the condition is restored.

So what to do?  While I don't endorse never cleaning your house again as keeping a clean home helps to ensure a safe and healthy environment for us and our families, I am suggesting that my sense of wellbeing is to no longer be impacted by the condition of having a clean home or not.  Now that I have awareness of my actions I can understand that while my home may not be as clean as I would like, this condition will not last and so I needn't waste my energy and happiness on wishing it to be different.

Gimme, gimme, gimme

I've talked about having a clean home but there are many different ways we display attachments and aversions that will be manifesting themselves in my life and yours.  Do you feel ashamed of yourself when unable to stick to your chosen eating plan and totally pumped when you get it right?  Do you think of yourself as a queen or king when you have achieved that longed for figure/muscle tone and a dog when your body looks different to this ideal?  Is your sense of self love affected by the behavior of your children, state of your bank balance, prestige of your occupation, make of your car?  The list goes on.

My challenge for myself over the next week and I hope you'll join me is to look at those things we have attached our sense of wellbeing to, list them down and then get real with ourselves about the impermanence of these things and the craziness of attaching our happiness to them.  I reiterate again that I am not asking you to stop working on a healthier you or stop working but to understand that these things are not you and you are not them.

Good luck and if you like what you read don't forget to follow my blog by subscribing at the top of this page.

Your balance buddy

Renae X

P.S Is there anything you can think of straight away that you have unknowingly attached yourself to?