A progress note: I’ve seen the requirements needed to sit my Certificate of Proficiency exam in July and I meet them. This means I am on track to quialfy as a counsellor this summer. For people who know, I’ve been on a journey with not knowing whether or not I’ll need to resit and, while I do have a lot of work to do, it’s entirely possible for me to do it. If I miss some weeks or republish some older stuff, forgive me, I’m locking in for the next 3 months or so.

We've been doing workshops in my course. Each of us picks a topic that resonates with us, and we do a workshop on it. I covered shame.

One of my peers did something on being late diagnosed ADHD, and talked about her journey.

As part of this, she shared a small meditation that she finds helpful. It was a mindfulness exercise, a simple body scan, bringing attention to individual parts of the body and noticing them without doing anything about it.

It had been a while since I'd done anything like that, while I found mindfulness incredibly useful a few years ago, I tend to be more aware of myself in general, so have let my practice slide to the side.

One thing I realised is that I was feeling calm. I was relaxed, I'd enjoyed the workshop but wasn't feeling too triggered by it (other workshops gave me food for thought on my own patterns, not this one). I was comfortable.

I spent a few minutes being calm, noticing how calm and comfortable I was. I realised that I don't often do this. I talk about sitting with your feelings all the time, because it's important, but I hadn't sat with calm for ages.

I think we often think of things like meditation, or journaling, or other forms of self care as a way to get to calm, rather than a way to get to being in the moment, regardless of how it feels.

Sometimes our feelings are instinctual, and recognising them is also instinctive. I know what my anxiety feels like pretty well, for example. It took me a while to be able to be in calm or happiness without my anxiety intruding.

Actively being aware of what your feelings feel like can be useful for that in the moment recognition of what you're feeling, and what you need.

I was reminded recently that you get good at what you practice, so that means practising being in calmness and staying there (for a little bit) without worrying about what's next. It's good to remember what that feels like when we're so busy and the world is…how it is. It's also good to have some time with yourself that isn't based on a goal or an outcome and just being instead.

This week, I invite you to linger in calmness, if you can. Spend some time just feeling where you're not holding tension, or what you're grateful for.