bewilderbrain

The incredible power of harvesting tiny moments of healing from the times that time itself forgot…

Leave the House…Look at Stuff.
Such a powerful piece of mental health advice it should be a universal prescription.
Or at least a t-shirt slogan…

Leaving the house, going out, and walking in particular, are fantastic tools for diverting and channelling those busy torrents coursing through our over-worked and over-stressed brains.

But it’s not just the going out itself.

It’s the way you approach it.

And actually, you don’t even necessarily need to be out.

I might have been known to talk just a spot, here and there, about walking. And quite liking it, and thinking it’s good for you.

But today, something got me to think about the act of going out in a different light.

It’s been a rainy old morning here in the South Wales Valleys, and I had an opticians appointment, and no car, necessitating a short 15 walk through, on face value, unremarkable scenery to get to my destination.

Now, my appointment being close to 11.00, it was near enough to the middle of the day, that as every person with ADHD will know, it was nigh on impossible to make plans on either side of it….

I’ve had a very busy weekend, I’m tired, the weather wasn’t promising for one of my proper walks, and I had this bloody appointment smack bang in the middle of the day.

Suddenly I thought, a walk is still a walk…

When we travel, day to day, leaving the house, walking to the bus stop, to an appointment, even just to where our car is parked….a silent opportunity lurks in the nether space of transit time…

The liminal land between here and there…. the transient incidental thoroughfares to dedicated destinations.

Our lives are busy, we try our best to organise them, and so often, on the busiest days, or those containing appointments, travel, and moving from place to place, we believe that there isn’t time left to carve out for any kind of relaxation, enjoyment, mindfulness.

But that isn’t quite true.

There are micro moments out there that we are ignoring.

We are set on our destination, set on the next step of the day.

But what about this step right now? up onto an ordinary pavement.

Are there autumn leaves underfoot?

Is there greenery? trees? any sort of colour? on the roadside?

You can see where I’m going with this. And the thing is, its breathtakingly simple.

I suppose what I’m talking about is known as active mindfulness, which comes down to, quite simply, the art of noticing.

I left the house today under grey skies, probably allowing ten minutes longer than I needed to get to my appointment. But I decided to put on a Noticing Hat for the short duration of the walk.

(Mine is green with a pointed Elvin shape and jingly bells on the end, but you can make yours as discreet or as ostentatious as you like…)

Liminal time, and transient spaces – are an opportunity and a gateway for moments of calm…

I talk a lot about the importance of both nature and walking for health, and how noticing nature is so incredibly good for us, body, brain and soul.

But you know what?

It doesn’t even have to be nature.

With my fiendishly stylish hat on today, two of the best things I noticed were a jauntily angled washing line that looked like a satellite antennae to the drifting clouds, and a street lamp whose timer had malfunctioned and shone a bright orb into grey sky and autumn leaves.

I just looked at stuff…..as much as I could.

In that short interlude I had between point A and point B. Stopping here and there, taking it in.

I saw beautiful autumn colours, smelt the damp leaf mulch, listened to the splashes of cars through the roadside rivulets. I heard wrens singing in the trees. (see also 5 simple reasons anyone should be bird-watching for mood and mental health)

Was there anything astonishing on my short walk? Well, that would depend on your definition of astonishing.

When you put your Noticing Hat on, you can entirely reframe your senses. Anything can be exciting, anything can be of note, and anything can just…be.

Who says a tilted washing line isn’t interesting?

It is if I say it is….

Q. And what does this noticing achieve?

A. It achieves calming your brain by means of channelling your thoughts. By distracting them. By conscious awareness of incredibly simple everyday sights, sounds and senses in general.

Short walks to and fro somewhere are an excellent opportunity for this, and of course offer the chance to actively spot any nature you possibly can, but you don’t even have to be outside to utilise the power of interim time….

The 10 second brain spa…

I remember once, when my children were very young, sitting in the cafe at Ikea. One of my children didn’t sleep for more than an hour at a time for the best part of two years, and we didn’t have any form of family or childcare anywhere close to us.

It was just the two of us, battling through, and we were, at this point, the walking dead…

Quite what we were doing in Ikea, I have no idea, but as the children were packed by my other half into various vehicles of transport, and our belongings were gathered, a shaft of sunlight fell on me through the high glass roof, out of the corner of my eye I could see hanging displays of trailing plants, (probably artificial) and somewhere a metre or so away, a coffee machine created a gentle liquid gurgle that in that moment my brain took to be reminiscent of a stream or a spa pool.

Extraordinarily sleep deprived, and running on fumes, I remember closing my eyes for the briefest of moments, allowing myself to absorb the combined sensations of sunshine and sound, and imagining for a second that the moment itself was a microscopic spa treatment for my exhausted brain.

Something about this moment has always stayed with me. There is some kind of lesson here, perhaps about the brain trying to find medicine when it needs it, but for that moment, what I interpreted as a mini therapy, an intervention in my tiring day, was the simple act of noticing a few of the things around me.

When we consciously tune in to the physical sights and sensations around us, crucially, we tune out the constant noise in our brains that is moving us toward the next stage of our day.

We carve ourselves precious seconds where our brain is fully engaged with noticing the shape and colour of a leaf or the play of light through a window onto a waiting room table.

This is especially true of ADHD or neurodiverse brains, who of course, don’t really do going quiet at any time, but if we change the flow of our thoughts, distract ourselves away from the everyday – we briefly stop time.
(see also Two Bats and a Squirrel – The birth of an ADHD walking Diary)

There is something too, about actively seeking beauty, in not just its most obvious, but perhaps its more elusive or imaginative forms, that opens a door in the back of our brains, allowing us to see the world with more gratitude and magic, and therefore to experience it in a higher form.

There are tiny moments we can feast on, if we let them in. To Fortify. To Edify. To penetrate the mists of everyday and offer sweet and fleeting haven to our brains.

I kept my magnificent Elvin Noticing Hat while I sat in the waiting area at the opticians today, examining anything I possibly could, the light reflections from the myriad glasses, the busy scratch of the receptionists pen, and as I did so I felt rather smug.

I am just being here, and allowing myself to do so, my normally ninety-mile an hour brain said proudly, waving a small but colourful flag calmly about my head.

And I felt… better.

I had turned a stressor into an opportunity. I was undeniably calmer than usual.

It’s like cheating.

Telling the world, yes, you might well be getting on all busily around me, and I might have a million and one things to do, but right now, in this second, I am looking at a puddle.

And,

I can just look at puddles any time I bloody well want to.

No-one can stop me.

And microscopically, but without doubt magically, my day, and my mind, will be improved.

So for the love of nature, for the love of finding beauty anywhere and everywhere, for the love and nurture of your own precious hard-working brain….

Go and look at a puddle.

Or the streams of steam wafting softly up from your morning coffee.

Or absolutely anything else you bloody well fancy.

And make sure you reward your brain with a magnificent hat.