Hello and welcome to the Calmcast,
A time to feel calm and think clearly.
I'm Claire Downham,
The Queen of Calm,
A Transformational Life Coach.
I was a burnt out headteacher who finally made the journey to calm after years of trying and I want to prevent you from having to do the same.
The Calmcast is a series of short explorations gently guiding you back to your natural state which is calm and clarity.
Just listen like you would listen to music with an open mind and curiosity.
There's nothing else to do.
Now let's relax into today's episode.
So today's exploration is around calm.
But I'm not going to show you where calm is.
I'm going to tell you first of all where it isn't.
And I know as I share this you will probably be thinking that that's when I feel calm.
So here's some examples of that.
You might notice that you feel calm when the house is finally empty,
Especially after the last couple of years nearly.
I saw a post to that effect on a social media channel a few days ago.
A woman posting that finally her children had all gone back to school and her husband had gone out to work at last.
And she was alone in the house and the calm she felt from that experience of being finally alone having had a house full for the last 18 months.
And maybe you've noticed calm in other situations.
Maybe when you go for a walk you notice how calm you feel.
Maybe there's something around some other physical exercise like running or working out whatever and you've noticed that you feel calm then.
Maybe it's the yoga class or the meditation or the massage or maybe even it's that glass of wine at the end of the day or that bar of chocolate.
We're touching it all the time aren't we?
It's like there's something inside us that is always trying to get us back to that state.
And it can look because it's a really really clever trick of how the human system works that it can look like those things outside of us that practice that exercise that that change in our environment change in our circumstances is what is taking us to that place of calm that it is it's almost like a step outside of us that brings us to calm that it's something in the outside world.
But maybe you've also noticed it in moments of crisis.
I had an interesting experience it's probably a couple of years ago now where I went on a walk on my own and I was on an official path it's called the Calveley Millennium Way and I came into a field where there were a baby there were calves mothers with their young but also a very large bull who was quite defensive of his little group of ladies and their babies.
And as I began to walk down the field they began to quite purposefully walk towards me quite noisily moving away and in that moment I had to everything fell away like there was nothing other than the next thing to do and the next thing to do for me in that moment was to climb over the wall into a field full of sheep.
Now my heart was pounding a bit in that moment and I could feel a bit of adrenaline but I actually felt quite clear in terms of what I needed to do to ensure my safety.
I was very present there wasn't anything else on my mind other than getting out of the way of the cows that were moving towards me.
And maybe you've noticed that you've sometimes touched that place of calm in moments like that when something's been going wrong or something needs addressing really quickly and you've fallen into that place of calm and you've been able to take the next step forward and get yourself out of some kind of situation.
And there'll be lots of other times when you notice yourself if you allow that curiosity to come up if you allow yourself to get a little bit inquisitive about where this calm is there'll be lots of other occasions when you just fall into it when it just appears to be there when you're not doing those things that you sometimes deliberately do to ensure is there.
And that's because it is always there.
It's who you really are it is part of who you really are.
It's like the you know when we have a cloudy day like today as it happens when I look out the window there we know that the blue sky is still up there don't we we know the sun is still there it's still we've still arrived at our side of the planet the sun is still at our side of the planet wherever we are in the world but the clouds are just hiding it for a moment.
Everything that you are seeking outside of you is inside you all the time and when you fall into seeing it and that's all it is like it's not that you need to put it in that there is an empty space in you where calm is missing it isn't there it's somehow been taken away with the ravages of life it isn't that way around it's in you and sometimes you see it and sometimes you don't it it's like it's playing hide and seek behind the clouds like the sun does.
The clouds are your thoughts or the clouds are thought passing through you which sometimes does get in the way of you seeing that which is inside you it doesn't just get in the way of you seeing calm it sometimes gets in the way of you seeing wisdom or other things peace and clarity it gets in the way quite a bit of thought because that's what's creating all our experience that's the trick of thought and consciousness that they bring to us the experience of life.
But when you start to just come from the place of knowing that that calm is always inside you it never ever goes away when you come from looking at life through that lens you start to notice more and more that you are naturally falling into that space many many times a day your self-writing system has that kind of mission in mind to take you back to calm and that's why even when people are really struggling with mental illness and life in general that there's still those moments of calm they're still there if we can just notice them and that is all this is ever about it is about noticing can you notice can you just start to get curious where calm is coming up in your life where you're experiencing it where you're touching it inside you knowing that that self-writing system is just like how your body tries to self-write when you're ill by giving you a temperature or making you sick or whatever that's your body trying to fix itself trying to get back to health your psychological system is the same it is always trying to get you back to health back to calm back to wisdom back to clarity and as you start to notice this more and more what happens is you you notice it more and more and you have more and more experiences of it and you you sit in it more often without needing to do all those things outside you that's not where calm is and sometimes that's exactly what takes us away from it is the busyness of trying to attain it ironically so it's just as usual this is just awareness raising it is just guiding you to see how life works and then you can go out and live your life and notice that as it beautifully unfolds thank you so much for listening there's nothing to do now but bring some awareness to how this is working out in your life listen regularly to experience longer and longer periods of calm this has been the calmcast with claire downer queen of car take care and keep listening
