My friend’s children ran past me as I opened the door for them.  It’s February and everyone needs to run around.  Their dad walked in behind them.  After we said our “hellos” he shared with me, “My head is spinning with everything that’s going on in our country. But I can’t look away!  It’s overwhelming.”

“Yes, it is,” I told him.

It’s everywhere.  Right now in the United States, things are shaking up – big time.  No matter your political stance, we all can agree that things are heated.

How do we stay involved and informed and yet not get overwhelmed?  I hear this in Somatic Psychotherapy and Compassion Coaching.  I see it on social media.  I have felt it, too.

7 Sacred Practices for Healing Overwhelm

1. Nourish your senses. Our senses are on overload.  Our minds are decision-fatigued.  Little breaks of tending to our senses through an embodiment practice can be so deeply nourishing and supportive for our overwhelmed and frazzled nervous systems.
2. Go outside.  Walk.  Feel yourself breathing fresh air.  Be in the quiet of nature.

3.  Practice Gentleness. 

4.  Take the “longer view.”  In Sri Lanka, A.T. Ariyaratne, a former schoolteacher and Buddhist elder, is considered the Ghandi of Sri Lanka.  In 2002, after decades of civil war, he proposed a 500-year peace plan.  “It has taken 500 years to create the suffering of our civil war including the painful effects of 400 years of colonialism, 500 years of struggle between Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists, and several centuries of economic disparity. Therefore, it will take us 500 years to change these conditions.” Ariyaratne then proposed his long term plan to heal the country.

The plan begins with several years of cease-fire and ten years of rebuilding roads and schools.  Then it goes on to twenty-five years of programs to learn each others’ languages and cultures and fifty years of specific projects to right economic injustice and bring the islanders back together as a whole. And for five centuries, every hundred years there will be a council of elders to take stock on how the plan is going.”

Or take Archbishop Oscar Romero of El Salvador who stood for the marginalized and was murdered while saying mass.

It helps, now and then, to step back and take a long view.
The kingdom is not only beyond our efforts, it is even beyond our vision.
We accomplish in our lifetime only a tiny fraction of the magnificent
enterprise that is God’s work. Nothing we do is complete, which is a way of
saying that the Kingdom always lies beyond us.
No statement says all that could be said.
No prayer fully expresses our faith.
No confession brings perfection.
No pastoral visit brings wholeness.
No program accomplishes the Church’s mission.
No set of goals and objectives includes everything.
This is what we are about.

We plant the seeds that one day will grow.
We water seeds already planted, knowing that they hold future promise.
We lay foundations that will need further development.
We provide yeast that produces far beyond our capabilities.
We cannot do everything, and there is a sense of liberation in realizing that.
This enables us to do something, and to do it very well.

It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an
opportunity for the Lord’s grace to enter and do the rest.

We may never see the end results, but that is the difference between the master
builder and the worker.

We are workers, not master builders; ministers, not messiahs.
We are prophets of a future not our own.

Bishop Ken Untener of Saginaw, drafted for a homily by Cardinal John Dearden in Nov. 1979. As a reflection on the anniversary of the martyrdom of Bishop Romero, Bishop Untener included in a reflection book a passage titled “The mystery of the Romero Prayer.”

“The Longer View” is not popular in a “quick fix” society, but it is necessary to remember that we do our part and pass on to our children ways of doing their part so they pass the same thinking on to their children…and so forth.

5. Learn to pause – or even learn to meditate!  We need these little Sacred Pauses in our day.  Silence and stillness nourish us.  We learn to let the “ten thousand joys and sorrows” just be — seeing them as waves and part of this human experience — and extending compassionate spaciousness to what arises.  You can find meditations here. 

6.  Notice delight.  Delight softens, strengthens and opens us in a gentle, nourishing way.  There is a profound power to notice the “everyday delights.”  Make it simple.  Look around the room where you are right now.  Notice what delight is right here at your fingertips.  You might also bring to mind one of your dear ones.  Got a picture in your mind and heart?  Notice what is delightful about them.

7.  Start your day with a blessing – and teach your children to do the same.

In my new self-study course, Regarding Our Girls: Feminine Embodiment Practices to Empower, Uplift and Connect with Our Daughters, I share the Embodiment Blessing that can so easily be weaved into your everyday life and that you can teach to your daughter (and son!).  You can find out more about my self-study course, Regarding Our Girls, here.

These 7 Sacred Practices for healing the overwhelm: Nourish the Senses, Go Outside, Practice Gentleness, Take the Long View, Learn to Pause, Notice Delight, Start Your Day with a Blessing — go a long way in nourishing your nervous system and helping  you to restore that sense of inner vibrancy.

And when you teach these to your children?!  You are equipping your children with life-long mindfulness and compassion-based practices to support them in staying grounded, preventing overwhelm, and staying clear on what matters most to them.