New Meditation Through my Hands & Feet

A Creative’s Meditation

It happens in the form of paper.

In fire. In movement.

In prayer. In community.

In breath.

My once obtuse view of meditation has changed with the seasons. It is no longer static in my mind. It is multi-faceted, predicated on leaning in, emphasized by imperfection that returns through familiar and new movement.

The concept of an ebb and flow kind of practice resonates deeply with me, still. Fluid and immersive, and with many names, meditation is a unique experience that holds my old thought patterns with kind palms. I am comforted by the fact that the mindfulness and intention so necessary in meditations can be expressed in so many ways.

I wrote the first Mediation Through My Hands + Feet at a significant shift in practice in 2019 and I am coming back to it again with both fresh and tired eyes. I have discovered that the body often calls for meditation before the mind even registers the need, and my body, such a sensitive entity, calls for it from the deepest cell.

I want to be more attuned to what she is saying, holding, reliving. And I have felt exhausted in and of my body for it.

I don’t want to judge the un-healed though; I want to change that very expectation of completion. I am always healing, even as I scarily realize that my eczema has not just been stress-induced or a genetic predisposition, it has sometimes been my covert act of self-harm. I scratch to remove cells of me, disgust seeps into the broken landscape of my skin, satisfied by the blood as if it confirms my insufficient self. I am failing and my torn skin proves it. This I volley as I tenderly salve the wound, saddened by the whole experience.

Meditation is a salve, an act of a healing body. Simply by noticing the great discomfort of this pattern, sets in motion possibility for me to change it, because I can now name the motivations without urgency to end it. An urgency that is actually disconnection, dissociation, avoidance, not progress as I’d love to call it. I welcome the extension of energy such needs ask of me. When I slip out of focus, get lost in the thoughts I mistake for identity, meditation grounds me back to myself.

Whatever the starting position, I pause to find the deep anchor that is my breath, to remind me of the growth and the joy awaiting me. Even joy present with me. In this long journey, I want to share (again) some of my favorite practices, their inspirations, and a few things a truly fulfilling time of meditation asks of me.

First,

paper meditation

Over the years, many of my journal entries have held depths of anger, despair, sadness, emptiness, and the like. Repetitive negativity and lack make up my writings. About 3 years after my mom died, I felt a shift in what wanted to be on the page because I knew the full spectrum of my experience wasn’t being captured. That choice felt like an absence to the reality of my healing. Of my actual living. There are so many painful times, and just as true, there are so many beautiful ones. Moments of deep inhalation that make writing, including this piece, possible.

I am not at the mercy of every thought

This creative mind God gave me is still verbose. But where I was singularly damning myself to despair, now I find grace sooner, as my right-hand cups my supple stomach and my left-hand firm against my chest, the familiar homes of my stress. Trusted hands in place, I exhale out bits of negativity.

In the act of meditating through words, the moment where thoughts start streaming through and the closest thing to a quiet mind is white noise of insults, I still love the idea that those thoughts need not be fended off. Rather I regard them and whatever cacophony of sound beating at hoped clarity as welcomed processing. I watch the letters float away from the once fixed words into something imperceptible…just like the lies so many of them were based in.

i can be curious

I have noticed that even the stories I have replayed hundreds of times become less insistent when I decide to observe them with curiosity. In that curious observation, I then ask, what of this hurt needs to be called in? The hurt in me is asking to be nurtured, discovering it is often a younger version of myself saying “I need to be seen”. I thank my therapist for the weekly deep parts work that has prompted thoughtful tending, taking past efforts to suppress, replace, shame, and now invite them into conversation. Again, ask, what do you need from me? My curiosity is a tool of empowerment and the page that is my meditative canvas welcomes an expanded view of the wounded places. I wrote to my Dad with the fullness a phone call would include. A surprise to me is how that expansion includes releasing what actually needs to end.

burn meditation

I burn the words to ashes. I used to think it was enough to place them on the page, but the catharsis does not always fully evolve into healing because when I look back on them, trauma like wet ink staining my skin, is only relived.

A necessary time with fire: I wrote down the timeline of the final dying days of my mom. When she was admitted, ICU transfer, hospice transfer, day of her death. At the time it felt like some critical honoring to note the details down, to remove the risk of forgetting. But my body was then taken back to those seasons, a stuck cycle, every time I looked at that paper.

The cycle continues, now inked. So, I slowly ripped the page into pieces and threw them into my fireplace. I did feel as though I was destroying necessary evidence of my mom’s existence because her death was such a stark highlight of her presence.

Still, there are boundless pieces of evidence that live in forms I can’t touch. For many whom I can’t touch. The fullness of her life, the repentance of his, the love of his, the want of them, the honoring of myself, each live beyond tangible things.

The words then, and the memories associated with them, become remnants too that I no longer need to hold onto so viscerally. It is hard, knowing I can release that need, and still don’t want to.

give space

Flame creates space, and with it, radical self-love that can feel like fire in my veins for how unfamiliar an act it is. It is an uncomfortable and powerful experience, lighting up the sheets of paper where my thoughts lived. In the hope of love for myself, as a daughter, a lover, a friend, my chest has room to breathe rather than house decades-old fears.

I wrote the cruel out of me, committed to remove what churns. I let the creative energy of poem and stream of conscience honor the dark parts and then revel in the growth between the letters from the flame.

What if my relived trauma could turn to ash in the oil of the lavender candle I burn for comfort?

dance meditation

Movement is meditation in motion. I love the idea of meditation as a fluid act of my limbs. It is the physical story-telling for the muscles to remember, the heart to release, and for both to create. My soul cradles my awkward and aging body, as dopamine floods the veins and in rhythm there is a removal of dissonance between my mind and the music; a synergy that soon creates a common language.

listening to the body’s rhythm

The creative endeavor to cradle the stress and trauma in the body is tender noticing with no condemnation. I have had to recently put this into practice. Uncomfortable practice. I hurt my lower back from dancing a little too emphatically (twerking and hyper extending as if I was 18 and physical consequences were still theoretical). I could not put socks on, whenever I bumped my head the surprise would cause a spasm, the typical unmemorable tasks at work weren’t possible. And I could not dance.

I felt deep restriction in what my body could do. This meditative act that grounded me and connected me to my mom felt severed and I was sobered to the reality of decay that made any form of meditation difficult. Sobered to the reality of aging and death (something quite already on my mind). It took me weeks to remember that emotional release can happen in the slightest extension. These limbs that will keep changing, grow stronger, grow weaker, grow creatively through it all. I am still meditating, as I let music seep into my ear drums, and vibrate chakras from two achy vogue hands.

Altar meditation

Meditation is ancestral, too. In tandem with offerings from my therapist, Resmaa Menakem’s My Grandmothers Hands is teaching me this. The emphasis on the body and what it holds, what pain its genes hold from decades of unhealed trauma. The human complex system of nerves, named the vagus nerve by neuroscientists, is termed the soul nerve by Menakem.

“The soul nerve is connected directly to a part of our brain that doesn’t use cognition or reasoning as its primary tool for navigating the world. Our soul nerve also helps mediate between our bodies’ activating energy and resting energy”

The soul nerve resonates. When my nerve feels like a live wire, I now seek to bridge my body’s insecurity with my soul’s peace. I have not known what to do with the activating energy. It is restless in my body as death sits on my mind and trauma weaves throughout, as I look at all but one of my grandparents, my mother, and my father present at my altar. When I created it in 2021, I filled it with relics that reminded me of these people I love. I would pass it and look over fondly at the polaroid of my Grandma Eleanor and the glass angel of my mom’s own relic collection. I realized in my conversation with my therapist, and further from My Grandmothers Hands, that I have not fully engaged with my altar. In essence, I have a yet untapped opportunity to be with my loved ones and ancestors.

I place a small bowl with water, a beautiful conduit for energy. I make myself a cup of tea and pour some into cherished ceramic cups for them to drink with me. I light a candle and write a poem with my dad’s own words. I attempt paper cranes to thank my Grandma Laura. I kneel to pray to my God here, and ask all of them to hold me, every item an extended hand to intertwine my fingers through again. A vibrant energy, my being fully aware of its activation, sways into rest as I meditate in the company of those closer than this body can discern.

Community meditation

I have mostly looked at meditation as an act of solitude and there is something holy in that. And something equally holy is to be in the presence of others who are witnessing you in every form. I meditate to come back to myself and when I spend time with my people, I also come back to myself, and to new versions of Kels, with love.

The tenor of a friend’s voice provides me deep assurance in this uncertain place. By that voice and their resonating energy, I remember I am not an isolated being here. My pain does not have to be siloed. My joy does not have to be stifled. My community in Seattle and in Boston has given me strength, sustenance, and contentment. Distance irrelevant, every minute of time precious, I am well in their company. Sometimes I need the earthly experience of sound, sight, touch to remain open to spirit, faith, and healing. Every person I hold dear does that for me.

the breath

It is the nourishment to these practices above, and the way back from the suffocating places. That way back is hard. I’m starting to think that finding the thinnest thread to exist, coming back to the breath no matter how shallow, is progress. And sometimes progression is simply the shear anticipation for change even when doubt has my hope underfoot.

shallow breath is still breathing

I start deep in my belly and bring in the inhale as far up the rest of me as I can. Sometimes I can barely expand, a weight of apathy pushes it back down. Still, the breath comes. When I remove the judgement, what was once too shallow, broadens, and ease expands with the oxygen of my inhales. My being is then buoyed by new thoughts that are actually as old as the cruel words I’ve written in journals.

Hope is a resilient thing. While I inhale welcome and exhale promise, hope carves space for words that confirm I am writing something new into my mind. Dancing something new into my muscles. Speaking something new to my loved ones.

life-long practice

I am an eager creative. Meditation is my means to help me create and sustain. Now, with the agency I did not always have, I can pray over my skin, gently spread the jojoba oil along my scarred arms, reach the fresh cuts on my back, and caress my own wounding. I can extend my reach to attempt the dream pose and the discomfort that comes with it. I can toast the tea cup I poured for my Grandpa Frank even though he cannot bring it to his lips. All this I can do because while I carve away at old hurt, while I doubt the innumerable, I do know how to love myself. I am learning what it is to care in the creativity of meditation.

.Kels.