We all face the winter doldrums! Below are some self-care practices that Resiliency Center community members engage in during winter months.
Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our Love. — Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet. This prose from Rilke reminds me about life, what is important — Love. Another practice that helps me to ground, come back to myself is practicing Qigong. A Master teacher with whom I practice and from whom I find inspiration is Lee Holden. — Karen Steinbrecher
I love to hike in the winter when the woods are so peaceful and quiet. I also like to snuggle up by the fire and read a book. — Elizabeth Campbell
I like to visit an indoor greenhouse or butterfly garden to get a taste of tropical in the middle of winter. Seasonal physical activity such as ice skating or skiing helps lift my mood too! — Vanessa Mortillo
I drink a lot of tea and eat a lot of soup and my favorite thing to do is make a fire in my fireplace and sit by it and read! — Therese Daniels
I’m a big fan of bubble baths and reading under a blanket when the weather gets cold! — Andrea McGady
I like to bundle up and go for a walk when the sun is out and skies are blue. I find the crisp, cool air refreshing. I also love to watch the winter birds outside my kitchen window and how they celebrate warmer days by splashing around in the bird bath. On snowy days, I love being outside. I find the quiet blanket of snow incredibly peaceful. — Elizabeth Venart
I like to go on nature walks looking for mushrooms, splay out on the carpet in my sweats (which is all I wear outside of work) with my coffee in the morning and make art, embrace rest a bit more, and pray for Spring to come. I am admittedly more challenged with self-care in the winter and my mood is definitely affected by less sun and colder temperatures. — Lindsay Roznowski
54 to 57° is my perfect place. I love the crispness of winter air, it helps me to feel like I can breathe. The stars in the sky also seem brighter and clearer. I love to look at the trees in the winter and see the nest that I had no idea were there when the trees were in full bloom. It's a reminder to me that they're so many mini miracles happening in the world around me even if I can't always see them. Something's always growing or in bloom somewhere. Best of all the permission that the cold and winter brings to tuck in or cuddle in is a welcomed permission for rest for me. — Brittiney George
I enjoy puzzles, card games Uno flip, and playing board games like Catan! I also enjoy pray and meditation in the morning with a warm cup of coffee. I like to meditate on the steam leaving the surface, focus on what I'm thankful for, and set my intentions for the day. — Olivia Ruffin
Tuesday, January 17, 2023
Intuitive Self-Care — Reflections from the Resiliency Center Practitioner Community
Tuesday, August 17, 2021
Poetry in Motion: Lessons from Ecotherapy
by Heather Hill
I have just recently discovered a new Ecotherapy idea which I am calling "poetry in motion": You select a poem that you love or even a quote or song- anything to focus your mind on something you enjoy or want to know intimately. My favorite is Wild Geese by Mary Oliver. Then you break the learning of the poem down so that each day when you walk, you memorize a line or two. This is best done in nature with limited distractions from cars, people, etc. but if all you have is your own neighborhood, that will work as well. This process, like using a mantra, will focus your mind, reduce the chance for rumination, and allows you to exercise your memory as well as your body.
Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place in the family of things
Additionally, here are two passages from Rilke's beloved Letters to a Young Poet that I regularly share with clients.
Be patient with all that is unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves. Do not seek the answers that cannot be given For you would not be able to live them And the point is to live everything Live the questions now And perhaps without knowing it You will live along some day into the answers. Read More [Insert link to:
To love is good, too: love being difficult. For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love: they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and so loving, for a long while ahead and far on into life, is — solitude, intensified and deepened loneness for him who loves. Love is at first not anything that means merging, giving over, and uniting with another (for what would a union be of something unclarified and unfinished, still subordinate — ?), it is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world for himself for another’s sake, it is a great exacting claim upon him, something that chooses him out and calls him to vast things. Only in this sense, as the task of working at themselves (“to hearken and to hammer day and night”), might young people use the love that is given them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must save and gather for a long, long time still), is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives as yet scarcely suffice.”
Using Poetry in the Journey of Psychotherapy
by Michael R. Bridges, Ph.D.
I’ve been reading, writing and listening to poetry for inspiration, enjoyment, and as a balm for heartbreak and grief since I was a teenager. In fact, it was the discovery of the poetry of the renegade, anti-psychiatrist R. D. Laing in books like “Knots” and “The Politics of Experience” when I was sixteen, that made me start to explore psychology as a way of understanding myself and perhaps, as a both a field of study and profession.
Once I became a psychologist and started to accompany and guide my clients on their own healing journeys, I found myself sharing certain poems again and again that described struggles, traumas, or the inevitable loses and joys that we all face on the journey of life. I’ve collected some of those poems that my clients and have shared have been most helpful in therapy and have included these below with some comments and suggestions.
Leaving Home and Learning to Listen to Your Own Voice
Leaving home and starting to separate and individuate from our families is one of the first, most difficult, and exciting of tasks we all face on the road of life. This task is made even more difficult if the families we are trying to separate from give mixed messages, saddle us with guilt, or, worse, involve more abuse, neglect or trauma than love, safety and support. The great poet Mary Oliver, who has been very honest that she had to flee her own family at an early age because of the abuse she was experiencing, offers a beautiful, evocative and ultimately inspiring hymn to the need to take this difficult journey out into the world and in so doing, to discover one’s true self. While this poem speaks strongly to adolescents and young adults that are struggling to leave home and discover who they are, I’ve also found it a very helpful poem to share with clients who have decided that they need to leave an abusive or co-dependent relationship.
The Journey
by Mary Oliver
One day you finally knew
What you had to do, and began,
Though the voices around you
Kept shouting
Their bad advice‚
Though the whole house
Began to tremble
And you felt the old tug
At your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
Each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried
With its stiff fingers
At the very foundations‚
Though their melancholy
Was terrible.
It was already late
Enough, and a wild night,
And the road full of fallen
Branches and stones.
But little by little,
As you left their voices behind,
The stars began to burn
Through the sheets of clouds,
And there was a new voice,
Which you slowly
Recognized as your own,
That kept you company
As you strode deeper and deeper
Into the world,
Determined to do
The only thing you could do‚
Determined to save
The only life you could save.
The Difficult Work of Love
When I first see couples who are struggling in their relationship, I sometimes share this line from the poet Rilke “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” I share this quote from Rilke to both validate their sense of struggle and effort while providing hope that their hard work is ultimately worth it.
A few years ago, I was asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the annual conference of The Pennsylvania Association for Marriage and Family Therapists. In my opening remarks I said, only partially joking, that I had become so frustrated with how useless the DSM (Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association) was in conducting therapy, particularly couples therapy, that I had returned to my first inspiration, poetry, for guidance. I then shared the following poem. The number of couples therapists who emailed me for a copy of this poem afterwards suggested I had hit a nerve, so I decided to share it here.
A Ritual to Read to Each Other
by William Stafford
If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.
For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dike.
And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.
And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider—
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.
For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give — yes or no, or maybe —
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.
Stafford’s poem offers a darker and more somber vision of the repetitious cycles and legacy burdens that can be passed on from childhood, or even previous generations, that can get triggered in our intimate relationships as adults and end up, “sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood storming out to play through the broken dike.” However, I still think his poem harkens to and encourages us to engage in the same “difficult work” that Rilke reminds us is, “…the work for which all other work is but preparation.”
The Difficult Work of Recovering Love for One’s Self After Love Has Ended
One of the more common and heartbreaking reasons that many people decide to enter therapy is due to the end of a marriage or a romantic relationship. This is particularly true when someone starts to realize some version of, “I just lost myself in this relationship. I can’t seem to remember who I was before. I’m not even sure I can find that person again. Maybe I’ve lost them forever.”
Derrek Walcott, who has the distinction of being the only Nobel Prize winner from the Caribbean, in the following poem provides the necessary hope that the pain and heartbreak will eventually recede while also providing the powerful reminder that love does not only come from others. Even if that other person was the one we thought, and perhaps vowed, we would be with for the rest of our life. Indeed, being able to consistently love and support to our “self” is often an important antidote to those of us who have been preoccupied with finding our emotional salvation and redemption through romantic love.
Love After Love
by Derrek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
The Difficult Work of Welcoming Our Painful Emotions
When I was a young man and first starting my own spiritual and therapeutic journey, I imagined that one day, after I had become enlightened and had successfully uncovered and experienced the catharsis and resolution of all my traumas that, well, it was just going to be smooth sailing the rest of my days. These days I can look back with love and appreciation on the determined young man I was, while also shaking my head with a bit of bemusement at his naiveté. While all the work I’ve done on myself has certainly led to a much calmer, compassionate and good-humored inner landscape than when I started my journey, the tribulations and at times, absolute horrors of the external world, and the occasional resurfacing of desperate and howling parts of my own psyche that I thought had been lain to rest, have helped me once again realize the wisdom conveyed in the following poem from the great Sufi mystic and poet Rumi, as channeled through this interpretation by Coleman Barks.
The Guest House
by Rumi
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
The Poem That Has Been My Mantra for Almost 40 Years
I thought I would close these musings on poetry and the journey of life with a poem that I first read when I was nineteen years old and in the very early days of leaving home and trying to find my own inner, guiding voice. When I first came across The Waking, I had no idea what a villanelle was. But I do remember that the repeating rhymes and refrains were both powerful and soothing. And while I was aware from my readings in philosophy and psychology that an awareness of my own mortality was important, exactly why that was important was an abstract concept that eluded me. Still, I was aware even as a young man, that the sleep that Roethke was referring to, was that bigger sleep that waits for all of us at the end of our journey. But without giving too much away, I’ll let you read and experience Roethke’s wonderful work before sharing more about how much The Waking has influenced my life.
The Waking
by Theodore Roethke
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.
We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.
Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.
This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.
My love for The Waking has only deepened over the years and has actually inspired my own poetic attempt at a morning, spiritual practice for several years now. I take Roethke’s advice to “…take my waking slow” literally. I try to always make sure I wake with at least an hour to continue waking slowly. The most hurry I display after I first wake is to get my first cup of coffee. (I’m very sure that Roethke neglected to mention coffee only because it through off the rigid rhyming requirements of the villanelle.) After I fill my cup, I immediately return to my bed where I sit, sip coffee, and give myself time to notice things like fragments of dreams, the way the light comes through my bedroom window, how the light changes with the seasons and the weather. I also notice the way the just waking, “To Do List” managers of my mind start planning our day. But my internal managers and I have reached an understanding, and I remind them this is still the time for poetry and reflection.
As I continue to sip my coffee and take my waking slow, I reach for one of the books or anthologies of poetry that I keep nearby and sometimes scan the table of contents for inspiration, or occasionally just randomly flip through until a particular title or line calls out. Then I read the poem aloud. I’ve noticed over time that certain poems that move me when I read then silently, will bring tears to my eyes when I read them aloud. Occasionally, I will be inspired to pick up my journal and attempt a poem of my own. And, while I am very aware that I lack both the talent and discipline of the poets I’ve shared thus far, I will close with one of my poems that, I hope, in a small way conveys how much poetry has influenced by experience of the journey of my life.
How Did I Get Here? What Have I Learned?
by Michael R. Bridges
I’m grateful I’m learning
To look back on all my
Bumbling, misguided failures
And see them as difficult,
Steep, rocky, dark, and
Muddy trails that still
Led me to the same
Spacious vista
I was hoping for.
Out of breath,
But each exhale
A silent, ragged
Hallelujah.
Michael R. Bridges, Ph.D. is a licensed psychologist and former professor of clinical psychology at Temple University and UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a self-described “psychotherapy nerd” who has done research and published articles on what constitutes the “corrective emotional experience” in therapy. He provides therapy to adults as individuals and couples. Michael works with his clients to address a variety of issues, including trauma, attachment injuries, depression, anxiety, self-esteem, and repetitious relationship issues. He also specializes in helping clients resolve issues where they feel internally in conflict with themselves. To learn more or schedule an appointment, contact Michael at drmbridges1@gmail.com or 215-868-6393.
Sunday, January 17, 2021
Resiliency through Poetry - by Michael Bridges
One of the things that helped me not just cope, but also make meaning and provide hope during this difficult year is poetry. When I was a very young man, I read Theodore Roethke’s poem “The Waking” and the following lines have provided a mantra and guidance throughout my life: I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow. I learn by going where I have to go.
Well before the difficult days of COVID, I’ve made sure that I wake slowly, say a silent hallelujah to my first cup of coffee, and then settle in to read poets as diverse as Rumi, Roethke, Rilke, Mary Oliver and others. And then I allow myself to wait until the muse moves me to write what I’ve come to call my “Morning Prayers.” While not great works of art, these poetic ramblings have managed to get me through my days with a sense of purpose and humor. I’ve picked three poems from the past year to share that I hope, at the very least, bring a smile and will resonate with your own journey.
Mumbling to Myself Becomes a Prayer by Michael Bridges (5/7/2020)
Oh God,
Oh, Great Spirit,
Oh Anyone?
Perhaps just me.
Once again, I’m lost.
So, help me
Find my way back
To this moment.
To all that is holy
In the everyday
In the commonplace
The sunlight streaming
Through the windows
The sound of someone
Hammering in the distance
Building something
I’ll never see.
Finally,
Help me be quiet enough
To hear the song
My heart is singing.
Most of all,
Help me take
Each breath
With delight.
A Kind of Half Ass Carpe diem by Michael Bridges (8/29/2020)
This is where I am
This is where I be
Giving just enough
Of a damn,
To stay in the moment
Watching my mind
Start to flee.
I remain grateful for
Long dark dreams
Where I meet strangers
That read Flannery O’Conner.
And gray, lush mornings
Portending thunder storms
On the way.
The luxury of the moment
And time to read poetry.
Akin to the need
Not to need
To hurry towards
The end of my days.
Falling in love
With the desire
To seize the moment
While letting go
Of any desire
To grasp it.
Stumbling New Year’s Prayer
by Michael Bridges (1/1/2021)
Let me be small
Let me be kind
Let me let go
Remembering always
This holy moment to find.
Let me be up
Let me be down
Let me be empty
Let me be found.
Let me be high
Let me be low
Let me be less & less
Always, on the go.
Let me finally,
Find my way
From there
To back here
Again & again & again
Amen.