HSPs and Overeating

I have written earlier about learning to honor your own instincts when you are figuring out what kind of exercise would work best for you. For me, it's been yoga because of its scope for gentleness and its emphasis on the mind-body connection.

The other part of this equation is learning to eat correctly. Instead of opting for the standard, one-size fits all solution, as HSPs, we need to look at our eating from a holistic perspective. What works for everyone won't necessarily work for us.

Evelyn Tribole and Elyse Resch's book Intuitive Eating is one book that breaks away from the follow a diet mentality and nudges us to make healthy changes. Instead of putting pressure to do a total diet overhaul, they help us examine and re-define our relationship with food.

One thing that they talk about is the fact that we need to re-discover the pleasures of eating. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, letting ourselves enjoy what we eat ultimately adds up to eating less in the long run. This is because we are satisfied and not craving things and crashing and burning.

Some questions that they urge us to ask ourselves include: "What do I feel like eating?" "What food aroma might appeal to me?" "Do I want something sweet, salty, sour, or even slightly bitter?" "Do I want something crunchy, smooth, creamy, soft, lumpy, fluid, etc?" "Do I want something light, airy, heavy filling, or in-between?"

Asking these questions is important because most of us are so out of touch with our bodies and what would satisfy us. We are also used to using food as a reward or relating to it with guilt or self-inflicted punishment when we break a diet rule. But when we tune in to our bodies to ask ourselves what we need, we can change our relationship to food.

Instead of a reward or a punishment, it becomes a source of nurturing. If we really take into consideration what we want, we might accept that in this cold weather, a warm breakfast would satisfy our basic hunger. We might think about the textures of food and realize that we want something crunchy, something we can really bite into.

Tribole and Resch talk about clients who after learning to tune in, become aware of how only specific foods give them that feeling of satisfaction. Learning their own preferences and including it in their meals makes eating a more pleasurable experience and helps them be satisfied now, so that they can eat less later.

We all know people who eat like this instinctively. They check in with themselves about what they want. They let themselves savor and enjoy their food. While they eat healthily, they don't deprive themselves or eat only health foods.

If they love sweets, they let themselves eat a high-quality rich dessert instead of settling for something that is sub-standard or one that has artificial sweeteners. Research shows that calorie-free, artificial sweeteners offer only partial activation of the food reward pathways in the brain. This means that we are not fully satisfied even after eating, and are motivated to eat more.

Research also indicates that artificially sweetened food may actually encourage sugar cravings. This is because the more often we are exposed to a flavor, the more this becomes a preference for us. So, if we are used to the intense sweetness of artificially sweetened food and beverages, we start favoring them more than naturally sweetened food.

Our perception of these foods as being lower in calories also causes us to overeat.

Instead of falling on the diet bandwagon, if we can honor our hunger and check in about what our bodies need and want, we can start moving towards becoming an intuitive eater. As part of this process, I have become aware that I want food with a creamy texture nowadays. That means that soups and broths are highly satisfying. I also know that I always enjoy a warm breakfast, especially in the winters, but regardless of the weather. I also love the satisfying crunch of sugar snap peas and I love food with specific tastes like ginger.

Including these different preferences in my daily meals makes for a more satisfying experience. It also means that I am nurturing my self by giving importance to what I like and don't like. It helps me look for satisfying and healthy options without making food into something bigger than it is.

This is only one step in learning to eat intuitively, but learning to take pleasure in what we eat is a good place to start when we are re-deciding how we want to eat and live.   

The Charms of Beauty

In Alexandra Stoddard's delightful book, The Decoration of Houses, she talks about the art of making our homes a haven. We can all transform our spaces into a feast for our senses and a well of deep, lasting comfort.

This is how she talks about the fabrics we use in dressing up our spaces: "I have often said, "If your fabrics aren't fading, you should move." I love the way fabrics fade in the light. We should start out with colors as fresh as crayons in a box, and accept the inevitable bleaching over time from the light and warmth of the sun."

And then, she goes on: "No new material is as charming as one that has been loved up by sunshine. The energy from the sun penetrates the textile and, however subtle, is felt. Just as teenagers love faded jeans and even buy them in this condition, so bleached-out fabric, a symbol of hours of sunlight, should be cherished. To live in the dark to protect your textiles is a sad waste of potential vitality."

When she talks about textures, she tells us to look beyond just fabrics, and also think about the textures of natural objects: "Texture exists everywhere in nature; we grasp it through our senses of sight and touch. We see the grain in the wood, and feel its splintered or sanded surface. We see the shiny or dull surface of pebbles, and feel their smooth or rough surface. A seashell, a maple leaf, a wild-flower, grass, a cliff face, moss, soil, bark, sand, sea water - each has a unique texture that deepens our experience of nature."

And then she says something that gleams like a blue pond: "The more authentic the textures in your rooms, the greater your sense of fulfillment and stability."

Bringing the textures that we love inside our houses - the real interplay of rough and soft - help make our homes a sanctuary. There is an emotional comfort in being surrounded by familiar, evocative textures and by those textures that are real. 

Here, in India, I re-encounter textures I haven't experienced for the last two years. There is a different weave to the life lived here - there are hand-woven chattais and dhurries (rugs , clay pottery, block-printed Jaipuri bed-sheets. 

In an incense store, I buy diffuser oils that comfort my soul. One of them is magnolia and it reminds me of the prayers from my childhood, when incense sticks were lit and the perfume wafted deep into the room, and became inextricably linked with feelings of comfort. 

Another is aniseed, and I love how I can almost taste its sweetness in my mouth, and think that when I go back to America, I need to brew some aniseed tea. 

I see with fresh eyes the motifs of the ambi or the mango that are part of many textile designs. I think of shaking mango trees with sticks in my grandparent's homes to eat the raw, tangy mangoes. An image of my great-grandmother's grape vine springs to mind. 

All these colors, patterns, fragrances awaken and create little ripples. I can reach through and inside them to different parts of me at different times. They have tied up in them times of innocence, a time when the world was fresh and new. 

After two years away from India, I feel like consciously inviting them in - the sounds of prayers that are deeper than the rivers, the fragrances that live in joyous trees, the rich weave of life from which so many beautiful arts spring forth. Adding them to my new life would make it deeper, more textured, more complete. It would be a declaration of all my different loves, and the way they nourish and feed my soul. 

Being Creative

In his small and wonderful book, The Courage to Create, Rollo May illuminates the mysterious, glorious subject of creativity in such a wonderful way. I am in love with his mind and his thoughts. 

Creativity needs encounter, he says, when something inside us meets the outside world, and something new is born into the world. 

And for this meeting, this alchemy to take place, we artistes need tools. 

We need our pens and paintbrushes and musical instruments. These tools make us as much as we make something with them. Without them, we are unformed, undeveloped. With them, we realize the potential that was always inside us, but that had no shape and form.  

With our tools, we mold ourselves. We give ourselves shape and form. 

I believe and understand this now. And if you are someone who is asking, am I an artiste, am I, the answer lies in picking up a camera or a pen or taking a design class. Engaging with different tools will help you encounter your creative spirit. You will find your joys and loves and shape the magical, powerful energy that is swirling inside you. 

And as you give birth to what's inside you, you too will be born. 

How is this creating different from a child's play ? Mature creativity, May says, is about staying with the anxiety of not knowing whether you will be able to bring your visions to completion. 

You may have an idea in your head about a  book, or a series of paintings, or a performance piece. But your struggle with the void to bring something new into being has no guarantees. 

The dance piece, the work of art exists perfectly in your head. But can you bring it to life? 

All artistes, all creative people struggle with this feeling, this sense of going out into the forest where there are no maps. And that takes courage.

Creativity, in its true form, is the process of "bringing something new into being." The something new will take time to sprout wings, and in its hatching stage, it might look ungainly. 

We, as artistes, have to find the courage to stay with this weird and wonderful being, have to believe in our visions, have to feel our frailty as we sense our way through the darkness. We have no guarantees, and that's the challenge of our calling, to move forward in faith, to knock on the door and believe that our knock will be answered.   

We are Always in Transition

Before I'd left for India a week ago, I got a stack of new books from the library. In one of them, Pema Chodron said something that leapt out at me. It went something like this: we are always in transition. 

Such a simple statement, yet so true. We are always in transition. 

Delhi feels different, although it hasn't changed much. There are still the same or similar models and actresses in the magazines. The ads on T.V. are familiar. There is still the overwhelming sea of humanity whenever I have ventured outside. 

It is difficult to just walk to the market for an errand, sidestepping the onset of people and cars and bicycles. It is difficult to not feel slightly uncomfortable as people get into my space. Personal space is an oxymoron in public spaces here. It irks me no end. I can finally see how much I need my personal and metaphorical space as an HSP and empath.

And yet, when I got out of the car today after a shopping trip, there is a scent in the trees around, a fragrance that I can't quite name, but that I can place. It has some part of me wrapped up in it, and inhaling it takes me back to that part. 

There is the India that I love, made up in my memories. I think of people I haven't thought about with any immediacy for these last few years. I fall back into old parts of myself, both good and bad. 

Do you like being in America, someone asks me. I like it, I say. I do. They are expecting me to say that I miss India, which I fail to mention, although I do miss it. They are expecting me to maybe talk about how sanitized and uniform America is, which I think it sometimes is. 

The truth is that you can never say this is better than that. There are things that I love about India. There are things that I hate about it. Both loving and hating it makes it mine. 

Then, there are things I dislike about America and things I still don't understand. But it's the place where I am finding my voice. It's the place that is helping me to question, where I have become a little more of who I am. I already have a storehouse of memories there, even in this short time. 

On my layover here, I looked at an Indian woman and thought about her travelling across the ocean, from one side of the world to another. After two years in America, I can start to see the layers of beliefs super-imposed on someone like her, because she is also someone like me, going back and forth in two different spaces. 

When I am more familiar with Americans, I will be able to see all the beliefs that shape and mold who they are. How much of us is just programs running, a place out of which we'e grown? How much of us is real?  

I had started reading Rollo May's The Courage to Create back home in America. Now, in my parent's home in Delhi, I start reading it again. I love what he writes. He talks about being and becoming. We are different from the rest of nature in how we become ourselves. 

An acorn becomes an oak, a cat becomes a kitten automatically. There is no choice involved. But to be iand become who we are is not automatic. It requires courage. We have to commit to and assert our true self if the self has to have a reality.   

Here in India, I think about and come close to all the old me's, many of whom were automatic. I feel the shell of my ego that's hardened. I hear the beat of my heart that's lost inside.  

I think about the thin layer of guilt that always coated me here. I couldn't quite pull it apart then from among a thousand other motivations. Now, I know that as an empath - as someone who can sense and almost feel other people's feelings - Delhi was completely overwhelming. 

Just going outside was an assault on the senses. Numbing myself and being more like other people - detached - was a coping mechanism. But not feeling or not channeling my feelings into action was harmful. 

Maybe I couldn't or didn't want to help every poor or distressed person I came into contact with. But not responding, not giving when I have the capacity to give, made me passive. It took away my power. 

As empaths and sensitive people who feel too much, maybe this is part of our journey - to look back and see where we might have done wrong, or just had bad habits, or little understanding from those around us, and cut ourselves from a source of our strength.  

Instead of getting mired in feelings and thinking, taking some of that energy and channeling it into doing something straightens me up. I can't do everything, but maybe I am not required to. 

Finding What Works for Us

Sometimes, we need a new way of looking at the same thing for us to be able to adopt it fully. I have been doing yoga for the last couple of months now. This is not the first time I've attempted yoga. 

But this is the first time that it has started to work for me. 

I started it with the intention of adopting a gentle practice to feel better physically. 

I wanted to lose weight but I wanted to get away from trying to lose weight by working out. I wanted to work from the inside-out and change in a real way, even if it took time.

I began because I had a sense that working out in a gym (even though it was a cozy, women's only place) didn't work for me for a couple of reasons. One was that I didn't like being looked at when I was working out. Was that an HSP thing? 

I also didn't like the pain. I know you are supposed to say you like it, or at least submit to it for a larger purpose. But that made it harder to want to do it everyday although I did feel a sense of strength after exercising. That, I liked. 

But the most important thing was that I didn't like being asked questions. I didn't like talking about my weight with people there, in any form or capacity. I know that weight is a socially-acceptable area to talk about, where people feel free to give advice, even when you haven't asked for it. 

But it made it unpleasant to go there. 

There are reasons that I have struggled with my weight for so many years. There are reasons that there are so many people struggling with so much weight. And many of them go beyond a basic dietary explanation. And so, when someone talks about our weight, they are usually talking without any understanding. 

They are touching on something very personal, something they have no insight about. 

For once, I made sense of all this, of all my different reasons. For once, I gave importance to my discomfort with talking about my weight. For once, I decided to comfort myself and to exercise in a more private way.

For once, I thought about what I needed and wanted, about what would fit into my nature.  

I was familiar with the works of the somatic therapist Anodea Judith, so I started with bio-energetic exercises and with her take on yoga postures. This was a very different entry-point from the yoga I had attempted earlier. Most of that had been focused on the physical aspect. 

Most of that had either left me cold or left me intimidated. 

This time, the entry-point was understanding that the body has its own wisdom, that this was a practice that could also help still my mind. The focus was on working with the body, not working beyond the body. 

As I read more and more, I like yoga more and more. The physical postures are not the point of yoga, mindfulness is. Doing a simple posture with full attention is better than doing an advanced posture with no attention to yourself and the present moment.  

What yoga philosophy says aligns with what I have come to believe - that the body is an important part of the whole. It is not something to be trampled upon, or something to be made into an ornament. It is an instrument through which sounds plays, the form that our spirit takes. It is sacred. 

As I read more on yoga philosophy, I understand the reasons why yoga practice didn't appeal to me before. The explanations I had read talked about withdrawing your senses from the outside world. They felt like a giving up of the experience of being human - of touching, of tasting, of seeing. They felt ascetic in a way that didn't appeal to me. 

The explanations that I read now explain it differently. They resonate with the truth I can feel inside. The reason we withdraw our senses or meditate is to get in touch with what's inside. It's to experience that part of us that remains constant. 

It is, in fact, to find the center that we might have lost. That calms us down. It does not make us feel less. We are not giving up anything. In fact, it creates a little bit more space inside us. It gives us a better sense of who we are.   

Disconnecting from our thoughts does not mean we no longer think or that our mind is not important. It means that we realize that the automatic part of our mind can run us over. It hangs on to certainty, makes us scared. 

We don't want to live from here. We want to live from a knowing that runs through our body, that is greater than the fear our thoughts can tumble down into. 

My sense is that the change that practicing the postures will bring - whether it is feeling better physically or feeling calmer mentally - will not be dramatic or painful. It will be instead, a gentle uncovering, a gradual process. It will be a shift that does not topple me over, but helps me give up the patterns and beliefs that distort how I think. 

Like other people, I have been scared of going inside myself. But inside me is also the real me. I think it is just fear that misleads us, that makes us feel that we won't be able to deal with what's inside, or that we will just feel emptiness or negation. Sometimes, we do find that. 

We also find ourselves. We get so buried in our thoughts and feelings and reactions, at least I do, that sweeping them out is helpful. Thoughts are not all I am. Feelings are not all I am. There is something bigger, and that's such a relief.   

HSPs and Finding Meaning

Always feeling can become a bad habit. Swimming in the sea of sensations, caught up in the rip-tide of emotions, it's easy to lose sight of the reality of a shore, a solid ground that can hold us just as well as the never-ending ocean. 

Looking back, there was a time in my life when I was practical, aware of what was happening around me, aware of how the people around affected me. 

Then, there were also the many years when I felt as if I was thrashing around in the water, getting swept up by feelings, out of control, reacting. 

Now, I think that over-identifying with any part of us unbalances us. Emotions are very important, but if we don't think and make sense of them, they can carry us like the wind. 

On the other hand, if we run away into our minds, cutting off from any feeling, we are subject to a never-ending churning of the same thoughts over and over again or we get addicted to fantasies. 

Maybe one way to think of ourselves could be as amphibians. 

Being an HSP doesn't mean that we always have to swim in the sea of emotions. How can we be of any use if all we are doing is always feeling? Shifting to thinking gives us objectivity and the practicality to see what will help us and what won't. 

Lately, I have been thinking about how to stay with polarities, how to explore them both, instead of swinging from one extreme to the other. There are advantages to left-brained planning, just as there are advantages to right-brained creating. 

There are times when I need to think to support myself and move forward. There are times when my thinking is clouded because I don't let myself feel the real feeling underneath. Is it anger that I am feeling, or sadness? What information does that give me? 

And then there is my body, the most neglected of my three parts. 

As HSPs, sometimes, we can pride ourselves on being above the mundane, almost turning our identities towards our minds or our emotions. We neglect the sense of homecoming that our bodies can give us. 

It is in our bodies that our emotions and our minds live and inter-penetrate. 

When I think now about making meaning of my life, I think of summoning up all my resources and accessing all the parts that had gotten submerged in over-feeling. There is a part that can strategize. There is a part that can be logical. There is a part that is self-protective. 

When I can balance all these parts, use all these parts, I can make something cohesive. Otherwise, I am left scattered, pointless. 

Have you confined yourself to a narrow definition of who you are? Have you boxed yourself in one aspect? Maybe, like me, you would like to let that over-simplification go, and start using your thinking, objective, planning side. 

To me, it feels like a life of meaning is on the other side of this divide - of mind and body, of thinking and emotion, of being and doing. And the task for us all is to keep experimenting, to keep correcting our course till little by little that life emerges and we broaden our own capacity for receiving.      

Coming Home to the Body

What is your relationship with your body? Is it a shell that houses your mind? Is it something that you just carry around with you? Or is the relationship sacred? Do you feel as if your entire life is built on its foundation, as if it is the testing ground for your truth?

Lately, I have been exploring my relationship to my body. Part of this has to do with weight, and part of it with how connected I feel with my body.

In relation to the connection, I have been doing yoga and some bio-energetic exercises. Some of these exercises are meant to charge the body and bring more energy into the legs and feet, so that you feel energized and dynamically present in your body.

Others are meant to discharge pent-up energy - the accumulated stress and tensions - and leave the body feeling lighter.

If you wanted to do a common sense energizing exercise, you might try jogging, even just jogging on the spot. If you wanted an exercise to release pent-up tension, you might lie down on your back and kick your legs in the air, just like a baby does.

For me, easing into the yoga stretches, doing these exercises brings my conscious awareness into my body. In the moment of the stretch, the mind falls off. There is something wonderful about joining as one with the body, instead of thinking of it as a secondary thing and identifying with the mind.

I have been reading the works of the wonderful somatic therapist and writer Anodea Judith, and she talks about how "to validate the body is to identify with it. If my chest is hurting, I admit that my emotional heart is hurting."

And what follows naturally is that certain movements bring up feelings and sensations that are part of the body's memories. Our emotions leave imprints, and shaking our bodies, moving them puts us in touch with things we thought had passed, but haven't, and dislodges these feelings and sensations from the space they occupy.  

In one of my favorite writing books, Writing Begins with the Breath, Laraine Herring talks about this. There is something to be said about slow writing, she says, just as there is something to be said about staying with a movement or posture in yoga. In both, there is something we learn by going deeper, by staying with the writing as it emerges, with the yoga pose as it deepens.

Going deeper changes our understanding. The language of the body communicates things to us.

Judith, in her books, also talks about how, sometimes, we don't want to be in touch. Being in touch means that we have to let ourselves experience what's there, and when there is pain stuck in the body, or something else that is negative, many of us don't want to go there. Even if going there could ultimately help us release that thing.

So, we treat our bodies like aliens instead of seeing them as us. If our bodies are cramped or weak or numb, it's quite likely that we are also cramped or weak or numb.

As I have started listening, only little murmurs till now, I can see how my body is me. I can see its rigidity, and sense my own rigidity. When I feel its strength, I gain confidence in my own strength.

I can also see another part of the equation that Judith talks about. She says that "When we have a sense of self that comes from the body, we have less need to affirm ourselves through ego inflation." There is a sense of home - security and safety - that comes from resting in our own selves.

I am beginning my journey to a place where I don't treat my body and soul as separate. My mind also has its place, so does my body, and I can see that aliveness comes through the body. I can start treating my body better.

There is a feeling of rightness about it, and it feels natural as I affirm my body bit by bit.

How has your relationship with  your body changed over time? How do you stay connected to your body?       

Grounding and the Highly Sensitive Person - 2

Are you someone who feels like they can't get off the ground? Your energy is scattered and you can't contain an idea long enough to bring it into fruition. You might live in your head too much. You might give more importance to spirituality than you do to day-to-day practical matters. 

Or you might be addicted to the limitlessness of ideas and fantasy, and not be able to sort through them, pare them down. 

Your essential connection to your body might be missing. You might feel a certain sense of rootlessness, a pervading sense of having lost your home. 

Or you might feel as if you live in a constant state of emergency, and are not able to consolidate your life. 

All these are states associated with becoming ungrounded - losing your dynamic contact with the earth and not having roots that go deep enough to help sustain the life above.   

As a person who has struggled with grounding in one form or another throughout life, I have recently been exploring what grounding means in a deeper way. On one level, I have been working with the physical aspect. 

It is said that eating helps us ground. But overeating, looking at food to make ourselves solid and visible, ultimately ungrounds and disconnects us from our bodies. 

I know this in theory, but recently I had an experience that showed me that grounding combined with self-nourishment actually helps curb hunger. I have been exploring scents, and lighting a diffuser before I start writing in the morning. 

After writing, I do a gentle yoga routine with some breathing exercises, and end this routine with stamping the ground, alternating between the two feet. This is, specifically, an exercise for grounding. 

In fact, any exercise like dancing or walking that works on the feet and legs helps us drop deep down into our bodies. 

I've been feeling like the yoga puts me in contact with my body, makes me aware that I am not just a cerebral person, but someone with a body who feels good stretching and coming into contact with its aliveness. 

The scents, one of which is myrrh and the other a blend, have an almost physical effect. They are calming, soothing, and no wonder, because when I read about them, I find that the olfactory bulb is part of the brain's limbic system, an area that is closely associated with emotions. In fact, it's called the emotional brain. 

So, inhaling a scent not only wakes us up to our senses, it also nourishes and fulfills a very basic part of us.

All of these rituals are about falling deeper into the body. They give an almost immediate sense of well-being. They are right at hand, and they are tools to pick up and nourish ourselves. 

Affirming the physical brings people like us - HSPs, creatives - into the here and now. It also increases our feelings of rightness, of being able to give ourselves what we need. That's extremely valuable for us. 

What do you think? What grounds you into your body? 

Moving Gently Forward

Last week, somewhere in the middle of writing my morning pages, starting a yoga routine and consciously taking care of myself, I had a moment of insight that should have been obvious to me before, but wasn't. This really was “artistic recovery.”

I lost sight of this reality, expecting myself to be consistently productive, forgetting that I am still learning to show up as a writer and artiste everyday.

I am still learning how to break the addiction to self-doubt. I am still learning how to let go of the knife of my inner perfectionist that slices through ideas even before they form.

I am still learning to take one step after the other. I can't expect myself to run.

But I forgot this, or didn't acknowledge it, and what this ended up doing was bring me to a screeching halt. Comparing myself to others, and trying to match their steps only added to the pressure I was already feeling.

If you are a recovering writer or painter or photographer, then like me, you are still in the process of forming a relationship with your work. 

You are still learning its nature. You are still learning how to make decisions as an artiste. You are still learning what everyday habits you need to replenish your stock of inspiration.

To give a concrete example, I just finished a quite personal piece that talks about being an HSP. While writing it, I had so many things that I could say that I didn't know where to begin. 

My entire identity, or at least the part that I most identify with, is based on the intersection of being an HSP and an introvert. There is so much that I think and feel about the topic that just beginning was hard. 

The actual process of writing was choosing what I wanted to talk about, and letting go of most of the other ideas. It was essentially a process of paring down, making decisions.

In the background was the emotional charge of the writing, the fact that I was revealing something about myself. And also the fact that I wanted to say it in the right way.

All this is a lot of emotional engagement. It requires a certain attitude and a certain skill-set.

As a recovering writer, I am still learning how to do this, how to take baby steps forward. And yet, I had gotten into a space where I was comparing my hesitant steps with others who seemed to be galloping forward.

The reality is that I was getting ahead of myself. If you are a recovering creative, then you will need to first engage with and break through the patterns that keep you from moving forward. You will also need to learn new habits that support your creativity.

You can't compare your progress with someone else's, someone who might be more comfortable in their emotional relationship with their work.

Last week, I was a little more gentle with myself. Instead of putting off exercising, I started a manageable yoga routine. I let myself draw some baby drawings using a charcoal pencil. I copied drawings of birds, and a squirrel, and made a baby tortoise. I felt happy.

While I did it hesitatingly, the act of moving the pencil across the paper was grounding, clearing. The permission to make mistakes, to be just okay and not great, was freeing.

Later, I watched some youtube videos on how to draw hands. They used delicious words like vine and willow charcoal. They talked about color values, and the different kinds of shading. 

I understood the concept of first seeing and drawing the overall shape of the hand, and then filling in the details. That felt exciting.

What I need to learn, I think, is to correctly identify what's stopping me every day. When the store of my images dries up, I need to change my tools, maybe pick up a pencil or my camera. 

When I feel unease and ambiguity, I need to learn how to stay with the feeling, instead of getting up and giving up for that day.

Learning how to make myself, see myself is a process of listening to myself and encouraging the easily discouraged child within. Learning how to do these things will take some time. And for now, I am happy to just move gently forward.  

On Faith

Have you ever thought: Maybe my over-dependence on other people is because I lack a connection with something bigger? Maybe my fears, in part, have to do with not having a sense of security in the overall goodness of the world?

It's hard to talk about God. It's hard to decide even what to name that something that is bigger than us. Naming it defines our relationship. 


Do we call this force by a name? Do we think of it as simply consciousness? 

And how do we grapple with our hundred different thoughts of what God has meant to us in the past as well as how these ideas have changed. As I have practiced writing in the last few months, I have become more aware of the parts of my life that call out their absence. I don't have any spiritual practice, and I pray very little. If you were to ask me though, I could tell you what I believe.

It's founded in my experience of a few different moments in my life. For brief instants, I touched that thin space between life and death. I knew, with a surety that defies reason, that I was part of something bigger. 

I knew that when we die, only the form disappears. The essence remains intact, it continues. But even though I have touched this place, I have not been able to live this experience in a way that frees me. It has ended up becoming a frozen intellectual thought. 

As I have gone through life, I have picked up other debris. Like you, I have had shocks to my system. When something unfair has happened, I have asked, like many others: Why would God allow this? Is there really a God?

And so, I have developed a deep ambivalence, and my relationship with God is one in which I have stopped talking, and stopped listening. Maybe you are in a similar place. You have a faith that you have carried through your life. You also have doubts that lock you in place.

All we can do when we realize this is start walking again in the direction of our questions. And resolve the faulty beliefs that might have stopped us in our tracks. Maybe we have stopped our search because we don't have the internal permission to pray in our own way. 

Maybe we have turned away from the meaninglessness behind rituals, but haven't actually turned towards something. We have a right to synthesize our own practice. If our creativity helps us encounter ourselves, and encounter sacredness, then that's one form of prayer. 

Service is another. We don't need to necessarily follow conventions, or mindlessly accept that there is a “right” way and that if this way doesn't resonate with us, we are left with nothing.

It is radical for me to think that I could have let such flimsy reasons come in the way of such an important relationship. But the real reason, of course, is the hurt and anger that we all carry. We don't know what will happen when we start relating, start asking again. 

There was a time when we thought that we would crumble if we asked, and did not get an answer. That self that was hurt needs compassion. Maybe today, we are a little bit stronger, and can let ourselves fumble in the dark. 

We can risk asking. We can shake lose our frozen, numb places and start on what really is the ultimate quest that gives meaning to our lives.

Why write?

Writing is nebulous. Sometimes, I think of it as an energy that grows or shrinks as I pay more or less attention to it. Sometimes, it feels like a raw nerve that twitches when I touch it. 

It electrifies my life. And sometimes, it slips out of my hand and falls into the outer world. I find myself losing the connection, trying to join again with it, trying to solidify this relationship.

If you are a writer, you might be constantly looking for answers to questions: Why do I write? Why do I want to write? Who do I write for? Sometimes, like me, you might be using these questions as excuses to stop yourself from writing. You might also think that knowing the answers will help you.

I have been grasping at these questions. They matter to me because they clarify what I am trying to do. And I am learning that like a child, knowing the answer, knowing the reason helps me do the work. I can't will myself to do it. I can't jump into it and do it. 

I have a cautious nature, and maybe the reason I have not been moving forward is because I have been expecting myself to imitate what I think strong, adventurous people do. While the truth is that I need these answers. 

I need to gently pull myself forward, instead of getting into a battle of wills against myself. Yesterday, I opened Natalie Goldberg's Thunder and Lightning, and came happily to an essay called “But who is listening?” I had read it before, but I felt closer to the words. 

Natalie says: “I never wanted to write to my grandmother and grandfather. They were my audience my whole childhood, not a beat off. I spoke in the moment and they listened. No gap. Maybe it's the gap, the feeling that someone isn't listening, doesn't get it, has half heard us, that compels us to write and explain. That's why we turn around and speak to our past, as if others can hear us now, as if we can finally hear ourselves and catch our fleeting lives.”

That is one reason for writing. This need to bridge the gap. This need to be heard and mirrored back, hopefully by someone, somewhere who we don't know, but who knows this precious part of us. There are other reasons. 

Sometimes, when I am writing, I feel like I am shaping clay, and while I am attempting to make something, this something is also changing me, bringing me into relief. There is also this reductive part of me that wants to arrive at a linear conclusion. That's uncomfortable with spontaneous movement, that hangs behind the rock and never wants to come out. It always want to play safe. 

I used to read Natalie's books and feel myself drawing back, trying to protect myself, unseated by the twists and turns of her mind. Now, I am more comfortable with the ride. I am a shade more comfortable with uncertainty. 

I like this feeling, this sense of free-falling and yet, somehow, landing on my feet. I can't get up the nerve to do it often, but doing it, when I can let myself, is freeing. I have always been looking for freedom.

As I work to stretch my relationship with writing, to get out of the little boxes that I cage myself in, I see the ways in which I limit myself. I have no trust. I am always trying to think about the future. 

One part of me – the hack – wants to strategize and do the least amount of work. It's always on the lookout for what will legitimize me as a writer. The other part pulls back from these machinations, it's turned off by them, but doesn't quite have the faith to go it alone, to walk in the darkness. Screaming in their midst is the child who feels the pain of all the unfolding, the pain of the growth. It doesn't want to feel. It just wants to sit there and dream.

It's no wonder that we can lock ourselves in one place.

Today, I think the child in me needs a little bribing. It's sore, and I don't treat it well. I try to push it. It pulls back. 

Where is the fun in all this, it asks? Where are the trees growing upside down? The enchanted forest with streams that run into dragon mouths? Why is everything so plain? Where is the enchantment?

Too much reality is not good for me. Delusion is also not good. It has drowned me in the past, taken me away from myself. But this reality – of clip-clopping along, of thinking that everything worldly is good and grounded – this isn't good either. 

I need my reality tempered with magic. I need it tempered with hope. I need my writing to cook these things up, in a dancing pot. I want a magic potion that will wake me up and make me dance, instead of plodding along like a mule.

All words are not made equal. Maybe right now the words that you need, the words that will nourish you, are words you will form into a story, throw with abandon into the wind. At another time, maybe the words you need are the words that face things head on. Maybe you will write an essay then, or an article.

What are the words that you need today? Are you writing to connect? Or to dissolve? Do you want to play? Or be serious? Which part of you is coming forth? 

Why are you writing today? 

Listen to this post!

Creativity and Risk

I haven't written for what feels like long centuries. It's actually been a few weeks, interspersed with a visit by family from India and going out of town for my anniversary celebration. 

And I have been itching to come back and write again. But when I've sat down to form words, my mind feels clamped shut. Today, my hands are heavy on the keyboard and I want to get away. Writing feels painful.

Writing also brings clarity, it brings all this stuff that we've stuffed down bobbing up to the surface. I want to push it away, make a ball of it and throw it out of the window but it keeps bouncing right back. Writing calls out. Are you willing to feel? Do you want to? Or not?

Many times, I don't. I don't want to deal with this scum rising to the top.

Before I went on my holiday, I'd been reading Seth Godin's The Icarus Deception. I pick it up again, and shuffle through the pages to find my place. What Godin has been saying made sense. 

Among other things, he talks about how it's no longer safe to just play safe in today's world. How clinging to the safety of what we've always known will destroy us because the rules are already changing. 

And since he talks about the shift to a connection economy that rewards risk-takers, he also talks about the supreme risk-taker of all – the artist. And the artist is not just the painter or the musician, but anyone doing anything new and risky and bringing it out into the world.

What he says is true. As we all know, many walls have been falling for the last couple of decades. Today, if you want to be a musician or an entrepreneur or a writer, you don't have to wait for the traditional gatekeepers to give you permission. You can start. 

You can begin where you are and get your work out there in the world. But, as Godin quotes Adrienne Rich, “The door itself makes no promises. It is only a door.” Beyond that door, lies our opportunity to connect, our possibilities. But nothing is guaranteed.

We will have to dig deeper into our work, and come up with something that will be of value to the world. Then, we will offer it. And if we haven't been able to create something worthwhile, we will have to go back and dig deeper and make something better. 

Godin calls this emotional labor. I understand what he means, as I am sure does any artist who is working on bringing forth their ideas into the world. It takes courage to step through a door that has been opened to us. It takes emotional work. 

We don't know the rules because it's a new world. We have to turn inside to negotiate the twists and turns. We've not been taught how to risk, and we learn only by doing it.

When I started this blog last year, I was scared of even sharing it on Facebook. What would people say? What would they think of what I'd written? And yet, I knew that I needed to start sharing it in some way if I didn't want my words to just float in the ether, crumbling because they couldn't reach anyone.

The kind of questions I wrestled with included egoistic ones like: Wasn't blogging a form of bastardized writing? Was it the correct, valid way? 

And then I fortunately thought, holding on to the belief that I needed to present myself in a certain way as a writer was what had held me back from being one all this time. Is my audience not an audience because it is not reading my book ? Is it a lesser audience? 

I don't think so.

This blog has been the beginning of several things for me. It started me on my real writing journey. Because of it, I have sent out other work into the world. And some of that work has started finding a home. I have connected with so many people, and found so many voices saying “Me too.”

And what has happened through this claiming, through this saying “I write” out loud to the world, through sharing my voice is that what I believe is out. It is solidified in my writing. 

It's a little risk my heart took, and it's a little risk that has paid off. Sharing my work instead of keeping it in helped it grow, so other people could see it as well. And that helped solidify my identity as a writer. If you are an artiste of any kind, you have probably asked yourself: Am I really a painter? Am I really an actor? There is no easy answer because who can say that but yourself? There's no way to quantify it. 

And so, we can get lost in these murky questions of identity without ever taking a concrete step. The truth is that I let go of waiting for permission and I started giving myself permission to go out into the world. When I did that and gave form to my ideas, other people saw that and acknowledged it. 

They saw me as a writer, and their seeing me as one, in turn, nourished that identity. If nothing else, that is one practical reason to start sharing what you make.

In his book, Godin says that art is personal, untested and intended to connect. He also says that art is “an interaction with a recipient, a gift given and a gift received.” If it doesn't ship, he says, it's not art. 

That's an interesting point to consider. Why do we make art ? Isn't it to expand who we are, to attempt something that nudges us to become bigger? As artists, we have to keep asking: Do I have the courage to share what I believe? Art is, in the end, a statement. Of who we are, of where we are going. If we keep our work in, we are stopping short of making that statement. 

We are not risking, and so, we are not becoming artistes.

If you are someone who writes or paints or sings, maybe it is time to share what you think with the world. Take that risk, and claim your art.  

On Self-esteem

“Children don't belong to us. They are little strangers who arrive in our lives and give us the pleasure and duty of caring for them – but we don't own them. We help them become who they are.” Gloria Steinem remembers her mother saying this in her wonderful Revolution from Within where she talks about self esteem, its roots and the many champions and detractors who shape how we think about ourselves and this world.

Steinem talks about how amazingly hard it must have been for her mother to break the pattern of her own upbringing and give her children this unconditional acceptance. For her mother, her children weren't “bad girls” if they did something she didn't like, nor were they “good” girls if they obeyed. 

They were loved regardless, and she constantly made an effort to distinguish between the child and her behavior.

Steinem talks about how this kind of unconditional love creates a “core” sense of self – a fundamental self esteem that no one and nothing can shake easily. But without having this experience of intrinsic value, “it's hard for children to survive the process of failing and trying again that precedes any accomplishment.”

Surviving the process of failing and trying again - isn't that what many of us are struggling with? It's not the vision that we lack, but the emotional wherewithal to make mistakes without falling apart. 

Most of us have had experiences in our life where our being was only accepted conditionally. We go on looking for external validation, not realizing that getting it won't solve our problems. What we are looking for is unconditional acceptance, a home that will shelter us when the world gets too much.  

As a woman who spent most of her 20s in a corporate job feeling lost and as if she couldn't breathe, I know what it means to not have the internal permission to risk and make mistakes. I also know that self esteem is something that we can nurture and build brick by brick through our own actions. 

But it doesn't last forever. Every day, it either grows or diminishes because of the risks we take or don't take. It's not something that we can have and be done with. And we all need to find our own champions, who can love us when our own self-love is in short supply, who can encourage us to start our journey of becoming more of who we are.

As I take more small steps in becoming who I am, I think of myself as a plant taking root. I think of the task for this season, and it is to take up space, make room for my own self to expand and grow. And as a woman from a culture where babies are almost expected and who is approaching her mid-30s, I think the real answer is that we all have our own season for doing things. 

I used to think that I am out of step when I didn't check the same major life transitions when others did. But checking things off isn't the point.

I am on my journey. I am a writer. I am an artiste.  

I am someone, with or without a child. I am someone with a creative youngster inside her, who is learning to parent that child and letting her become all that she is capable of being.   

HSPs: Creativity and Anxiety

When it comes to increasing our happiness, there are so many things that we can do. We all know the theories. But how do we choose among all the areas that we can possibly work on? Where do we begin? In my search for a directed way, I pick up The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky and leaf through its pages, guessing which happiness activities would be recommended for me to start with. 

I am pretty sure letting go of over-thinking - what Lyubomirsky calls rumination - will be one of the top ones. My mind seems locked in one place, playing its never-ending loop. 

But the test reveals that this is not an area I should focus on right now. Among other things, the right happiness fit for me is working to increase "flow" experiences. These are the kind of experiences where you would get so absorbed in an activity that hours could pass by without you noticing. 

As I think about this, it occurs to me that what I've been asked to work on is something that would also alleviate my over-thinking. But there's a subtle distinction in emphasis. Over-thinking is a by-product of a vacuum. 

Not being engaged creates dissatisfaction and breeds the damp environment where thoughts fly like mosquitoes.  

So how do we get into this flow, instead of stagnating? Lyubomirsky says that finding such experiences is essentially about finding the right space between boredom and anxiety. If an activity is not challenging enough, we will get bored. 

If it is beyond our level of expertise, it will cause overwhelm and anxiety. But if we have enough skill to practice it, we can engage and learn. The practice itself is the goal. It is intrinsically rewarding. We love doing it.  

One way to get into a flow state is to focus our attention. Lyubomirsky quotes William James who once wrote, "My experience is what I agree to attend to." Lyubomirsky says: "This is a revolutionary thought. What you notice and what you pay attention to is your experience; it is your life. There's only so much attention that you have to go around, so where and how you choose to invest it is critical. To enter the state of flow, attention needs to be directed fully to the task at hand." 

So, when you are intensely absorbed in something, you are basically directing your attention to the task (for example: Painting). You are not thinking about any moment in the future - what you want to have for dinner, the meeting you have next week. You belong to the moment.        


Lyubomirsky asks us to learn for ourselves what brings flow and engagement to our lives. Like many adults, you might think that you would always prefer leisure over work. But Lyubomirsky points out that for many of us, work brings an experience of efficacy and self-mastery while undirected leisure activities, like watching T.V., can cause boredom after a certain point. 

So, when we are thinking about flow, we need to question our level of awareness. It could be true that our work provides us with few opportunities for flow. But it could also be true that the kind of play we are engaging in does not create good feelings. 

Once we have understood what activities help us flow, we can start asking other questions. If you are an HSP who is prone to anxiety and over-thinking, some experimentation might be in order. What is the root cause of your over-thinking? 

Could it be an absence of a creative outlet? Is your empty mind filling up with unneeded thoughts. Could you direct your attention elsewhere? 

For those of us struggling to channel our sensitivity into the world, maybe we've got cause and effect mixed up. Maybe we are not "not creating" because we are anxious. Maybe the truth is that we are anxious because we are not practicing our creativity. 

Listen to this post!