PANIC (and other mindfulness practices)
for kitchen sink times
A response to panic might look like box breathing, a tea ceremony, a meditation, a walk through the forest. Or it might look like giving a speech at city hall. Or a potluck.
It could be any and more, because the point depends on identifying the feeling in the first place. To feel it, name it, express it. How much agency do you have over your own focus, attention, and presence? To what extent does habit hold your mind hostage?
Mindfulness has always been political. Intentional presence is a reclamation. Below, the four foundations of mindfulness, revisited, and other thoughts on practice as rebellion and reclamation.
Mindfulness of Thoughts
Practice gentle curiosity about your thoughts without clinging.
Mindfulness of thoughts and thinking is, for me, tracking patterns of mental awareness. Not out of judgment, or to “perfect” a mind state, but to just become aware of what arises.
Labeling of thoughts can happen in broad strokes. Consider, for example, the current White House occupant’s sense of entitlement over your attention. How much of your day is spent thinking about this terrorist? “Trump.” “Government.” “National politics.”
Once you’re aware, next, do what you can to get curious. What is the tenor of this thought? Does it grip you, or can you turn it over, investigate it, question its return to the forefront of your consciousness?
Working with thought is hard for me because by the time I’m conscious of thinking, I’m often in a loop of rumination. Taking a walk outside to focus on my shoes hitting pavement, the smell of air, the vastness of sky, is one of my biggest hacks to break a rumination streak. I go without my phone and—I tell you—it’s an experience.
Over time, I’ve found it helpful to become aware of which thoughts are being denied. I often don’t realize what’s missing until it appears again. This is why I find generative play so useful. Storytelling games that rely on real-time presence highlight thoughts that have fallen so far outside usual thinking, they’ve become abject.
This weekend, I was talking about my game to a woman who told me her adult son hates the word “climate.” He believes discussions about climate always end in fear-mongering and will not discuss it with her. Someone nearby agreed, and said this is why so many organizations are rebranding to exclude it.
This could call for mindfulness of thought, but I personally would suggest a mindfulness of feelings.
Mindfulness of Feelings
Emotions are yours, but they are not you.
Sadness is something you experience, not something that defines who you are. You may feel an unwillingness to move when weighed down by the crushing gravity of outside reality, but you are not a sad person. Language matters.
I don’t doubt the son said “climate” leads to “fear-mongering,” but I am curious about what affectively changes from the time I’d say, “I’m here with my game” to when I say “about climate emotions.” The awareness of that shift—when curiosity becomes fear—is the kind of thing mindfulness of feelings references.
To me, “terror” is a sense of being tasked with Sisyphean work but, instead of being given a boulder, it’s coming at you Indiana Jones-style. This is a cassette tape labeled “PANIC!!” and hitting both the fast forward and rewind buttons at the same time, so it’s stuck on pause. The United States once went to war against terrorism; now, our sitting veep says “two can play” the game of economic terrorism against the world.
At the same time, I keep encountering a particular wellness logic: reflecting on emotions like terror and anger is "depleting," so an explicit and relentless orientation toward joy is called for.
But it’s hard to “heal” from something you refuse to name and directly witness. That’s spiritually bypassing a primary point of practice: to stay with what arises. Meanwhile, joy is worthy of its own independent practice, not as a substitute for feeling something you’d rather not.
Just like some thoughts are abject, some feelings are as well. I don’t want to live in a state of terror, but Rumi was onto something when he suggested honoring challenging emotions like a guest. Invite them all in, laughing. There is no hierarchy.
These times seem to be actively calling for hardness, rigidity, protest. For that reason, practice softening, opening to feeling. Naming them, even at the level of pleasant, unpleasant, neutral helps us strategize a response. Listen to your body.
And, likely, your body needs rest.
Mindfulness of Body
Mindfulness of the body turns toward sensory details—understanding the language of your body and giving it the space to speak can lead to greater ease.
Recently, I tried to bail on organizing an event, telling the team I was “beyond capacity.” I was told “we’re all ‘beyond capacity.’” It seems paradoxical: delaying a culture of care in pursuit of a more caring culture.
I have no doubt what they produce will be awesome, memorable, moving. And that confidence does not serve my current embodied needs nor, per self-report, theirs. We came to a temporary compromise: I will take a supportive, rather than lead, role.
This distrust and denial of felt sensation is systemic. One site of alienation is school. We line kids up to move them between rooms. They put their hand over their heart and recite the pledge of allegiance. Then, they sit, facing one direction. This is a training.
Another is based on things like gender. Women are often taught their worth correlates with things like their weight, wardrobe, and attractiveness.
Any meditation or K-12 teacher will tell you how useful it is to sit and stay. But that utility wanes when our bodies have become so alien to us that we can’t do much besides hustle, grind, comply, and burn out.
Some weeks ago, I led a mindfulness of thought meditation. I gave few instructions so folks could track their thoughts without my chattering. People told me they fell asleep instead and one person logged off, apologetically. I said there was no apology necessary: I thanked them for listening to their bodily needs.
Your body is your vessel to feel and breathe and be and it needs no apology.
Mindfulness of Rising Phenomena
“LISTEN UP. IT’S WILD OUT THERE.”
“Polycrisis” as a term refers to multiple, interconnected crises. There’s a yearslong history of me trying to figure out how to discuss it, like when I put it as a footnote to a post. But I’ve recently been trying to talk about it in person.
Someone recently charged: my degree is in “performance.” I teach writing. What could I possibly know about interconnected systems?
“Maybe you’re right.” I would rather be present, embodied, and misinformed. There would be so much more to un/learn and all the time to do it.
The fourth foundation of mindfulness is where the first three meet the world. This is basically the kitchen sink. Classically, it references the five hindrances, the aggregates, the awakening factors. I think it is the real-time practice in the middle of everything.
Ayya Santacitta, cultural anthropologist and spiritual director of the Aloka Earth Room, once gave a talk about our “addiction to complexity.” She spoke of distrust of our bodies, and the confidence the first three foundations give us in understanding impermanence.
Of course, things are naturally complex and interconnected. These are kitchen sink times and thoughts and feelings change. Now you have four strategies for being a bit more present with things as they do.
Ayya Santacitta doesn’t use a bell to mark the end of her meditations. She just starts talking. You have no idea how long I’ve meditated into her dharma talks. This incredibly elegant and frustrating guidance is a reminder that practice has no clear beginning or end. It all counts.
Mindfulness isn’t a method for fixing yourself, for transcending real time politics or science. It offers a practice of staying awake, aware, and tender for the benefit of a much larger sangha.
Thank you for reading. If you liked this (hit the heart!), check out:
