Subject to Flash Floods

I learned a word a few weeks ago while researching how mindfulness cultivates our compassion: Impellance. It’s the effects of situational or stable factors that increase the likelihood that (or the intensity with which) [an] individual experiences a proclivity to enact [a] behavior when encountering that target object in that context (read more from Northwestern University) — or, the learned impulses we follow out of familiarity in challenging situations. Practicing mindfulness reduces our impellance to cause harm (to ourselves or others) even as we experience big emotions. 

And what it means to the layperson (or at least to me) is that defaulting to mindful awareness gives us a bigger, broader mental landscape over which to wash the flashes of anger, resentment, frustration — any intense emotion — that can cloud our perspective or judgment in daily life. I think of this shifted impellance as a widening of the neural grooves through which we channel negative emotions, like canyons on a river. Same emotions. Same triggers (in my case, a former spouse). Different pressure. Wider water exerts its power more calmly, and there’s more room – more choice – in how I navigate it. 

At least that’s what I tell myself, and it seems to be working. I came to mindfulness as an adult with the baggage of any modern woman who loves career, kids, and community fiercely, and still sometimes fails at putting her best self forward, over old injuries and new ones that remind me a little too much of the old. Those narrow chasms of trauma. 

I also struggled in the beginning with the seeming simplicity of mindfulness practice (e.g., “Breathe in. Feel the air fill your grateful lungs.” ?!#$!), which sounded to me like what Montessori preschool teachers might intone to their charges at naptime. (And I mean no offense: my kid happily attended such a school!) I had to learn. I had to impel myself to let go and try another way through. 

Today, I am the one intoning the reminders to “notice the breath.” To scan the body for tension. To just make note of when things feel bad, and to rejoice in the things that feel good to the body and mind. I am not always sure I’m doing it right, but just practicing gives me confidence that big emotions have the space they need to be with me, then move on. 

And when they go, I will see and feel their effects rippling (not rushing!) downriver and be grateful.