Remember Mexican jumping beans?

I have a client who’s a Mexican jumping bean. Or a pinball traveling at the speed of light. Or the Tazmanian devil after four shots of espresso.

Getting this successful entrepreneur to focus is like wrestling a rhinoceros. So much so that he often sends meeting agendas that say:

Action Item A

Action Item B

SQUIRREL!!! 🐿

Hey, at least he has a sense of humor about it.

The thing is, I know that what this client (let’s call him Fred) most needs is to calm his frenetic mind. For one thing, it seems hard to run a business with such a chaotic inner environment. But mostly, I worry that a physical breakdown is imminent. Nobody can run at full speed in every direction at once without short-circuiting.

Fred needs to meditate.

And there’s a snowball’s chance in hell of that happening.

Lucky for Fred–and for anyone else out there who is meditation-averse–there are other ways to tame your rambunctious monkey mind. But before we get to some activities you might enjoy more than meditating, a quick pun word about “wordlessness.”

The Argument for Wordlessness

Maybe you couldn’t care less about Fred. Maybe Fred was the name of the bully in high school who waited for you to come out of the locker room so he could walk behind you and call you “ghetto booty.” (I know, weirdly specific, right)?

If that’s the case, you may be thinking, what’s that a-hole Fred’s ADHD got to do with me?

Well, let me tell you.

In order to weather life’s storms, be they heartbreak, losing a job or navigating a complicated relationship, we can come from one of two places. We can use the verbal part of the brain to make decisions (the left hemisphere) or we can use the non-verbal part (the right hemisphere). The verbal side processes 40 bits of information a second. The wordless side? Eleven million.

Which side do YOU think you should choose?

Martha Beck, author of Finding Your Way in a Wild New World, suggests our North Star is found when we move out of the analytical, perceiving mind and into the realm of the whole body. “Far too often,” Beck says, “we cover up the cues of our physical and emotional experience with verbal thinking.” Wordlessness is concerned with the experience of a situation, rather than our thoughts about it, and it is integral for navigating this choose-your-own-adventure we call life.

There’s a reason that intuition, that savvy source of guidance that never steers us wrong, is referred to as “listening to your gut.” The body is deciding, not the mind.

Wordlessness is a state to aspire to any time you’re looking for direction or greater self-trust. And it’s a state that can only be reached when we let the right brain take the wheel. While many people use meditation to get there, the tips I’m about to share will work too if, like Fred, your mind has a penchant for sparkly things.

Reaching Nirvana

I’ve talked about Jill Bolte Taylor before, but I just watched her Ted talk for the second time and, man-oh-man people, it is a must-see. Such great storytelling.

In 1996, Taylor – a brain scientist – suffered a massive stroke and subsequently lost all her verbal functions. Actually, she describes them as coming and going, so that she was able to compare the two states side-by-side. While the other 99.9% of the world would find this fucking terrifying, Taylor had a different reaction.

During the moments when her left brain was “online,” as she called it, she was thrilled to be making such cool discoveries about the inner workings of the brain.

And during the moments her right brain was in charge?

Nirvana. Euphoria. A sense of interconnectedness. Perfect peace.

Listen to her talk about it and try not to cry. I dare you.

One of the things that she discovered during her recovery was that the amount of time it takes our bodies to process the hormonal reactions to emotions like fear or sadness is 90 seconds. Meaning that suffering can disappear in under two minutes if we don’t resist it (ie. allow ourselves to feel it in our bodies) and don’t attach to it (get lost in a story).

Wordlessness allows us to do just that. Imagine if you could turn off the perpetual low-grade anxiety plaguing so many people in the world today.

I’m telling you that you can.

Wordlessness is Why Animals Don’t Get Stress-related Illnesses

Animals can’t ruminate over bills and politics and injustice. And so their bodies react to stress appropriately. As in, when it’s necessary for fight or flight. And then they go back to their baseline, which is peace.

Sign me up.

There are even more reasons to embrace this non-verbal calming of the mind. When we are lost in thought we are unavailable for anything real. Wordlessness allows us to be here now. This state of mind allows us to feel a part of something greater, which encourages universal compassion – a thing we seem in short supply of these days.

So hopefully now you understand the importance of having a more right-brained existence. You don’t have to be the world’s most distracted person to benefit from the clarity that emerges during wordlessness.

Like the Sufi poet, Rumi, says:

Speaking would be such an orchard to walk in, if we could do it without alphabet and sounds.

So without further ado, here are five paths to a wordlessly calm state of mind.

Explore A Cascade of the Senses

This is a fun exercise to do while in line at the post office.

Rather than ruminating over that awkward Twitter thread or worrying about the appropriateness of wine with lunch (what WILL the neighbors think?), replace these thoughts with authentic sensations from your highlight reel.

If you do something beautiful, funny and delicious every day, this will be a breeze.

Start with your favorite food. In your mind’s eye, indulge in that first tantalizing bite. Conjure up the dreamy decadence of a gooey chocolate lava cake. Note the tart bright contrast of the raspberry coulis. Don’t stop until your mouth is watering.

Now imagine your favorite aroma. Sweet orange blossom, wafting in the open car windows. Hold this memory in your mind with the chocolate cake.

Do you have a favorite tactile sensation? Because satin pajamas over freshly-shaven legs is my idea of heaven. (I see your judgy side-eye. I also have a least favorite sensation. Corn starch. Not weird). Go ahead and throw that deliciousness onto the pile.

Rinse and repeat with your remaining senses. Holding all of these sensations in your mind at once requires too much effort to also allow for verbal thought. Really try to lean into each experience in equal measure; it’s a trip to be fully alert, eyes open, yet with a silent mind.

Spend Time in Nature

Nature exists in a state of continuous wordlessness. There’s a thrumming current of communication that connects the land and the creatures of the wild in a non-verbal, yet infinitely graceful synchronicity. When we stand in awe at the sheer cliff’s edge gazing out at an endless sea of blue, we have no words.

They wouldn’t do it justice anyway.

You probably already know how good a forest hike or a stroll along the beach can make you feel. The important thing is that you’re not simultaneously listening to podcasts or your Happiness Playlist.

Instead, be fully immersed in the locale. What does it smell like? Nature always has a smell. Brine and seafoam along the coast, the musty earth of a damp forest floor, campfires. Can you see any wildlife? What is it doing? What can you hear? When I solo camped in Lassen Volcanic National Park, there were so many bees, the air was filled with a low-level hum from sun up to sundown. Eerie and magical.

Practice Open Focus

Open Focus is an attention training program designed by Dr. Lester Fehmi, neuroscientist and psychologist from Princeton. Used to calm an anxious mind and enhance well being, Open Focus brings awareness to how you notice sensory experiences – and the space between those experiences.

Dr. Fehmi discovered our natural tendency is to focus narrowly on our problems. This would be fine if we did it once in a while, but unfortunately, it has become our default. As we now know, living in a constant state of fight-or-flight causes disease. And having such a narrow focus creates a model of reality where objects are separate from each other and from ourselves, prompting feelings of alienation and loneliness.

By opening the focus of our attention, we can see the big picture and connect with its elements. Dr. Fehmi found that this creates the more synchronous alpha frequency (our brains are usually in beta), which improves both our mental and physical health. Here’s a simple way to try this for yourself.

Steps

1. Look straight ahead with a relaxed gaze and fix your attention fully on a single object.
2. Without moving your eyes, expand your attention to include everything in your field of vision at once.
3. Again without moving your eyes, bring your object from step 1 into the foreground and send everything else to the background.
4. Now reverse it. Bring the surrounding scenery to the foreground of your attention and send your object to the back, all without ever shifting your gaze.
5. Slowly continue the process of shifting your perspective for five minutes. Then pat yourself on the back for having achieved a meditative state for five WHOLE minutes. #progress 💪🏼🧠

Gibberish and Gobbledigook

49 seconds.

That’s how long before a word like “milk” becomes meaningless nonsense when you repeat it ad nauseum.

Have you done this? I have definitely done this and am sitting here now wondering why. It’s probably a normal kid behavior, but I’m quite certain I’ve done this recently.

In any case, the moment milk ceases to be a drinkable substance and simply becomes noise is the moment your right brain takes the reins. It may even be useful to start with innocuous words and progress to those that are more emotionally charged, like “failure,” “unworthy” or “divorce.”

Puzzle Your Way to a Calm Mind

Pre-pandemic, you would have patted me on the head for this suggestion and moved right along to something…compelling. I managed to convince myself I didn’t have time to write for 40 years, much less puzzle. Then suddenly all of us at once were forced to squeeze joy out of things we previously took for granted as a result of never being able to go anywhere ever again.  And I decided puzzles were the shit.

Our brains looooove solving complicated problems. As we put the pieces together, we create new and stronger neural connections. This study shows evidence that the growth of new connections can combat brain damage in Alzheimer’s patients.

Not only that, but puzzling (used like Netflixing) improves short-term memory – as we recall colors and patterns and visualize where they fit in. And last but not least, we get hits of dopamine each time we match a puzzle piece to its proper home.

So, friends, I invite you to puzzle more.

(And can we just talk about how my puzzle comeback began with the hardest puzzle known to man? See below👇🏼👇🏼👇🏼 . I’m convinced no puzzle will ever challenge me again and that my puzzling days are over when they’d only just begun. Sniff).

But seriously though, what’s it gonna be? How are you gonna chillax the next time you have a news-induced stress fest? These tips are easy and, dare I say, fun. So you have no excuse to marinate in your stew of angst ever again.

You’re welcome.

 

💋~Jennie