I don’t want to calm you down
THE PULSE · NO. 5
Tuesday 13 October. Open Sky, Mullumbimby.
Humid, heavy air, a storm building behind the hills.
Two days after the new moon, a thin crescent in Scorpio. Sun in Libra.
Community clinic, Open Sky, Mullumbimby
People lie down on my table and apologise for the state they’re in. Wired. Not sleeping. Something big moving through their life and showing up in the body. And then they say some version of ‘can you just calm me down?’
I can, usually. There are well worn ways to deeply settle a system in an hour, and help someone to shift gears - sometimes that’s exactly what’s needed.
But quite often, I don’t want to.
Here’s why. There’s a difference between distress that comes from a system that’s lost its footing and distress that comes with real change. Grief, a decision that won’t make itself, an identity quietly coming apart, something surfacing that you’ve spent years not looking at. These are uncomfortable because they’re significant. The intensity is part of the information. If what you’re feeling is a response to something real, the feeling’s doing a job. Turning the volume down doesn’t finish the job. It puts it off, and you carry it back out the door with you. The creative that does the best work in the small hours might not benefit from sedation. It might be appropriate for the person with insomnia experiencing massive changes to be up late contemplating their life.
Chinese medicine has another option, and it’s the one I reach for more and more. Don’t press down on what’s rising. Strengthen what’s underneath it.
The old texts talk about root and branch. The branch is what’s showing: the agitation, the 3am ceiling-staring, the mind that won’t stop. The root is the deeper condition it grows from. When someone’s overwhelmed, the obvious move is to trim the branch. The more useful move is often to feed the root, so the system has enough weight at the bottom to stay upright while the weather passes through.
In this medicine that’s mostly a conversation between the Kidneys and the Heart. The Kidneys hold the deep reserves, the will, the part of you that keeps going. The Heart houses the Shen, the awareness that’s actually present to what’s happening. When those two are talking to each other, you can be in the middle of something enormous and still be here for it. The feeling continues. Your capacity to hold it grows.
A quick word on what that looks like in practice, because people ask. An acupuncture point is a small spot where a fine needle gets a response from the whole system, not just the skin around it. Some points settle. Others build. This week I mostly used the building ones, down near the ankle and the lower leg, chosen to support that deeper relationship.
A boat with a deep keel still moves in a swell. It just doesn’t tip over.
The picture I use is a boat. You can try to flatten the waves, which is a lot of work and doesn’t last. Or you can add keel. A boat with a deep keel still moves in a swell. It just doesn’t tip over. And it keeps its heading.
We tend to imagine maturity as being undisturbed. I think the deeper version is being more available to what’s happening, including the parts that are uncertain or contradictory, without losing yourself in it. Regulation in service of awareness, not instead of it.
From the outside it looks like nothing much. A handful of needles below the knee, then half an hour of quiet. People get up still carrying the grief, the decision, the uncertainty. Nothing’s been taken away. But something in how they’re holding it has shifted. They don’t feel calmer exactly. They feel more able to be where they are. I’ll take that over merely sedated any day.
If you’re really not coping, or sleep’s been gone for weeks, you might benefit from additional care or therapeutic relationship beyond what I can offer in a community clinic setting. I’ll say the same thing in the room. And staying present should never become one more thing you’re failing at while you’re already underwater.
But if you’ve spent your whole life being told to settle down, it can be a relief to hear the other thing. The question might not be how to feel less. It might be how to get rooted enough to stay open to what you feel.
The ocean may stay rough. You can still sail it with a deeper keel.
· · ·
Related reading: Rooms Have Weather · I Couldn’t Climb Stairs · The Cosmic IP Address · Get Your Feet Off the Cold Floor
Community clinic, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Open Sky, Mullumbimby.
Days and times vary from week to week. Check this week and book at Open Sky, or contact Steven. Bookings recommended.