Worried or Overwhelmed? Compassionate ways to connect with yourself and life

What does it mean to feel connected? Connection, with both the physical and nonphysical world, is what keeps us well. I liken it to thirst, that which must be quenched. When we are seen or understood, when we open to love and loving, or offer compassion to someone, something, or ourselves, we experience a sense of connection with ourselves and life itself. Life feels full, cohesive, satisfying, and comfortable.   

In a recent attempt to curb my worries I’ve been practicing open palm meditation. I don’t know what else to call it other than that. It’s been a deliberate act of self compassion, to feel more aligned and connected in contrast to scrambled and isolated. I literally have my hands clenched and slowly open them. In the process I quietly say a prayer, to be grounded, rooted, and fully expanded. 

I keep the hands as soft and relaxed as possible. The final resting place is as if I’m ready to hold the space in front of me or feel the drops of rain should they fall. They’re facing the sky, open to receive, open to transmit, open to allow grace to flow. I harvest presence.

Beauty is the harvest of presence, the evanescent moment of seeing or hearing on the outside what already lives far inside us – David Whyte

I find this to be a practice of abundance as well as a gesture of connection. How can I welcome another's hand, literally, or a heart, figuratively, while my hands remain bound. 

It may seem counterintuitive at first, that in order to connect or bring together there must be space. But even down to the most microscopic level space exists. It’s essential. Without it, there would be no movement or magnetism. Remember that between each nerve fiber there is a synaptic space. The energy in our body, which is a frequency, has the impulse and will to jump. The lungs, for just a moment, are an empty space prior to inhalation. 

Yet space is not a void. It’s more like a river current or what is experienced while swimming in the ocean. Beautiful. Available. Suspended. Held. Aware. Inconceivably vast and profoundly intimate. 

Laughing and talking with friends, being in the playful presence of a child, or the lucidity of an elder keeps connections alive and intact. When not in the proximity of people, nature, ritual, and silence have the strength to fill the spaces in between us. These delicate acts of humanity invite beauty into each moment. They guide how to connect to the unseen sensed presence of the world.

I thrive with somatic practices like this because it gets me out of my brain and into my body. I can think about things to a fault. However it’s in the simple practice of moving my body that the spaces in which I inhabit resonate with a kind of luminous hum. 

I know that for many keeping the hands busy allows the mind to be free. Be deliberate with your actions and tasks. Each practice, like the open palm meditation, holds the potential to restore connection, delight, and contentment. In other words, the in-person encounters, the tangible activities, the full immersion into nature can assist in removing obstacles that inhibit flow while restoring that which ignites union.

May you begin to cultivate the spaces in which to experience connection. Calling a friend, organizing a room in your home, breathing deeply, taking a long long walk, cleaning out the fridge, lighting candles, arranging flowers, or perhaps, like me, simply opening your palms gently. All of it helps.