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Navigating Turbulent Conditions: 1. Finding Your Safe Landing Place

When I was learning to fly a small airplane, you’d think I would have been thrilled. After all, I was pretty fortunate to have this opportunity. But I had trouble holding on to the beauty and thrill; instead I got hijacked by fear.

One day after practicing emergency landings  (by picking a flat spot in the desert and then doing everything short of actually putting the plane down in the cacti) I was headed back to the airport with my flight instructor. I was sweaty but happy, since now all I had to do was one regular landing and then I’d go buy my celebratory latte.

When we were parallel to the runway and I was thinking about my approach, Clio leaned over and just turned off the power. Silence, except for the pounding of my heart.

I froze. No information coming in. All my training was for nothing now; I was paralyzed.

“Your emergency procedures, Pam? Where are you going to land?

“Ummm, I’ll land in that arroyo just ahead.” I was making up a ridiculous answer, since I really had no idea.

“Pam, how ‘bout the runway?”

I could have died. It was right over my left shoulder, if I only could have seen that far. Clio had just given me one more simulated emergency—an easy one. And I had flunked.

Fear can hijack our normal thinking process, which contracts along with our vision, hearing and our bodies. I couldn’t see my safe landing place even when it was right next to me.

This story is the reason why my  Flying Lesson for Life #1 is: Know Where You’re Going to Land.

Clio pointed out to me that the antidote for fear and stress is training. Rehearsing what you’ll do if “the engine fails” is the key to safety.

So how does that apply to problems with food? You might think of it in several ways:

1.      If you’ve used food as a “safe landing place,” something that gives you comfort and security, you know that it doesn’t turn out that way. What feels like it’s going to be safe turns on us and becomes a place of danger instead. So we need to practice “landing” somewhere else—in a place that truly is safe.

2.      A safe landing space in aviation would be a place that is flat, unobstructed and long enough to come to a stop. What place would be like that for you? Are there people in your life who offer you an open, spacious place to “land,” without putting obstacles in the way?

3.     The trouble with family and friends as a safe landing space is that they have their own troubles, failings and emergencies. So it’s great if you can develop a safe landing place that is internal and eternal. If you believe in a higher power, you’re fortunate. Or, maybe it’s nature. Or music. But make it something holy, something that no one can take from you.

4.      Whatever you choose, practice going there. Make it a spiritual practice to give yourself a spacious, solid, unobstructed safe place that you visit even when you’re feeling great. That way, you’ll remember how to get there in more turbulent times. Particularly if fear has you by the throat, that practice will kick in and save the day.

Here’s a suggestion for a Safe Landing Place practice: Sit still and breathe. Breathe deeply and feel how your body responds. Focus on your heart, and imagine that your heart is breathing you. Your heart is your center, the place where you remember that you are all right exactly as you are. See if you can allow that place in your heart to open into a space where you can “land.” A place where you feel solid ground underneath you. A place where all is well.

If you can work on mastering this one Flying Lesson for Life, all the others will come. This is the foundation. It is one we all need in today’s world, so you are not alone. Sink into it. Enjoy it. No one can ever take your safe landing place from you. It is yours forever.

Pamela Hale Trachta (Guest Blogger), Author of Flying Lessons: How to Be the Pilot of Your Own Life

When I was six, I believed I could fly on my own power. I thought it was just a matter of practice.

So, I gave myself my first flying lessons from the ladder of my swing set. I would climb up, turn around and face the yard, gather the image of flying into my body, spread my arms out…and jump!

The fact that I usually made green body prints in the grass didn’t discourage me. And neither did the fact that my family situation wasn’t exactly perfect. Some mysterious force within me believed I could rise above it all and fly, like a goddess in a myth.

Do you remember childhood fantasies of flight? I have clients who report questionable forays from branches of tall trees and other high places. Even though they struck terror into their parents, they remember the certainty that they had that power within them.

Or do you have night dreams of flying? I ask this question to audiences and about half of them raise a hand. If you’re in that half, what do you think your dreams mean? How does it feel to fly on your own power?

Now for your waking dreams and fantasies. What would it mean for you to fly in your life? If you had the power to just take off and rise above your current “landscape,” how would that feel? What’s the predominant energy: Power? Freedom? Joy?

Take a moment to imagine flying and feel the energy in your body. This is important work.

We know that athletes visualize their perfect performances. But these days, good coaches have them do more than picture the outcome in their minds. They encourage them to feel the experience in their bodies. And when they can do that, the body and brain have almost the same experience as if they were executing the perfect high dive or topping their record in breaststroke.

We all have powers within us that we aren’t using. The good news is that we’re learning how to tap into them.

My own offering to you is my metaphor of flight. I’ll be exploring in a series of blogs how you can remember how to soar in your life, without really having to leave the ground. This is material from my book, Flying Lessons: How to Be the Pilot of Your Own Life.

My experience learning how to fly a small plane in my late ‘50’s brought up every fear I knew I had, plus a galaxy of fears I didn’t realize were lurking under the surface of my otherwise fortunate life.

Thanks to my strong female flight instructor, Clio, I earned my private license. But the real point is what happened afterwards. About a year after that victory, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. My flying lessons came in very handy. I found that the lessons I learned in the air were lessons for my life. Here are the 7 of them that I use every day to navigate in turbulent conditions:

1.      Know Where You’re Going to Land

2.      Bring Enough Fuel for the Journey

3.      Take the Pilot’s Seat

4.      Remember Why You Long to Fly

5.      Communicate with the Controllers

6.      Broaden Your Scan

7.      Give Way to the Winds

I’ll bet you get the metaphor just from reading the titles of the lessons. In future blogs I’m going to explore each lesson with you in more detail. Because I believe this metaphor can help you get out of a stuck place, where gravity is holding you down.

You have the power to fly. It’s just a matter of practice!

 ~Pamela Hale, Guest Blogwriter

STAY ATTUNED!

The goal of becoming an attuned eater is to develop a healthy relationship with food. That’s different than deciding to eat only healthy foods! There is so much angst these days over what’s “good” to eat and what’s “bad” to eat, that food often causes more anxiety than enjoyment.

Remember that as you decide what to eat, the goal is to “make a match” that will satisfy your hunger. You may also take other factors into consideration as you decide what will truly nourish you. Perhaps you’re a vegetarian or keep kosher, and these philosophical views affect your choices about how to feed yourself. Perhaps you have some sort of physical illness or condition where eating – or not eating – certain foods supports your health and well-being. If so, deciding to make these adjustments to your food choices as you honor your hunger and fullness is an act of self-care in the service of promoting wellness, rather than an act of deprivation in the service of pursuing weight loss.

Ultimately, the question for you to consider is what feels good and what feels bad as you decide how to listen to your physical hunger. A cheeseburger can feel like a great match on a day that you crave protein, and it can feel like a terrible match on a day that your body needs something lighter in your stomach. Likewise, an apple can feel like a great match when your body craves something sweet and crunchy, or it can feel like a terrible match when you need something more substantial in your body.

By keeping all types of foods available, and tuning into your body’s needs, you’ll find that you can naturally incorporate healthy foods into your life. As diet survivors let go of judgments about what they should eat, we’ve never met anyone who only wants cakes, cookies, ice cream and chips. But we’ve also never met anyone who only wants salads, broccoli and oranges. (In fact, sometimes people find that eating “healthy foods” makes them feel like they’re on a diet – but we’ll save that for another time!) The difference is that rather than deciding to eat these foods because of external rules and restrictions, as an attuned eater you’ll experience the pleasure that comes from nourishing yourself from the inside out!