John Du Cane

Spark Your Day

Pipe Dreams

By

“Between thought and expression lies a lifetime.”—Lou Reed

We smoke our dreams in long, thin pipes and watch through half-closed lids as our plans disperse back into the darkness from which they were born. We sigh and lie back on our couch—and let another day pass unformed, unmade, unrealized…

Such, so often, was the script in the days of our affliction to addiction. So many dreams we dreamed, did we not? So many grandiose plans got hatched in a haze of jibber-jabber. So many slurred promises were made across the table to friends who didn’t care. We were the broken records, scratching out the same woulda-coulda-shouldas over and over and over again. If there was action to be had at all, it was the quest for more of whatever medication would prolong the dream. So we could prolong the dreaded moment where thought might become expression—and we made a difference in the world…

Pipe Dream

Today, let’s slide open the cabinet and flip through the files of our unfulfilled dreams. Let a dream pop out at you. One that you feel ready to juice with a dose of real world action. Pull it out, dust it off and open it up. Nice!

And now for the exercise to trigger your call to action:

Lie down on the floor. Consider the unfulfilled dream. Resolve to make the dream a reality. Get up. Stand up. Lie back down upon the carpet. Consider the unfulfilled dream. Resolve to make the dream a reality.  Get up. Stand up. Lie back down. Rinse and repeat a total of ten times.

You may be surprised at how challenging it is to get up smoothly from lying flat on the floor. In fact, whole books have been written and videos produced, teaching how to get up well from a prone position. Today, we are not offering you any pro tips on this primal movement. Just get up as best you can, perhaps experimenting each time with a tweak to make it more efficient. Notice how each time you complete the get up, your resolve to turn your unfulfilled dream into action has strengthened…

It feels so good to get up with purpose and turn a dream into action.

So Sorry

By

“An apology can be a wonderful thing so long as it is infrequent and from the heart. However, beware of the person who justifies bad behavior with apologies. For them it is a means to an end, and quite often at your expense.”—Gary Hopkins

Saying we’re sorry is a good habit to cultivate, for sure. Because it implies we take responsibility for our behavior and feel remorse or regret. We may also be expressing a genuine feeling of empathy for another’s pain. However, it’s often the case that we say sorry, with no real intention to act differently in the future. Saying sorry becomes a shabby ploy to kick the can down the corridor. We can also say we are sorry about another’s pain, with utter insincerity—like the cashier wishing us a good day with dead eyes and a fake smile.

Caught in the throes of our addiction, saying sorry was at best a device to manipulate others into our own needy agenda. And we were generally way too self-centered to spare one dime of empathy for another’s difficulties. If we did feel sorry, we made sure to stuff that threat of other-centeredness into the deeper recesses of our reluctant hearts.

Sorry

When we moved into recovery we learned to back up our sorries with heart and with action. We made a concerted effort to track down those we had wronged and made amends, as best we could. Such efforts were often mighty tough in the doing of them, but a huge relief after the fact. Which is why it was recommended in the first place. However, many of those we’d wronged were, perhaps rightfully, suspicious that the leopard could really have changed his spots. Could this just be a cunning paint job—to mask the next duplicity? In our resolve to be strong in our recovery, we saw that a change in actual behavior was what was really going to make the difference.

Let’s reflect for a minute now, on an amend that we may not have backed up with a change in behavior. Is there something we can initiate on behalf of this amend that will put some real beef between the buns? We may get no further today than to trigger the first impulse toward corrective action—but hey, that’s already a whole lot more than we had before…

Speaking of leopards, let’s keep it simple today and just exercise our talons. Our hands have a massive—massive—neural connection to our brains, so exercising our hands is always beneficial.

Stand or sit comfortably. Rest your bent elbows on either side of your torso, touching just below the ribs. Hands facing down. Open and close your hands 20 times. Rotate your hands at the wrists 10 times in each direction. Move your hands up and down 20 times. You’ll be bringing healing juices into your wrist and fingers joints, which will help with mobility and pain-relief. Good, you’re done and dusted for the day!

I feel ready to imbue my amends with a healthy dose of action!

Proud To Be Me

By

“One may be humble out of pride.”—Michel de Montaigne

Pride is such a multi-faceted emotion. Is pride a deadly sin or a healthy virtue? Can we be proud and humble at the same time? Is pride a strength or a weakness? Does pride always precede a fall? Are there shades of pride? Is pride a beautiful, noble thing—or something loathsome, this way crawling? Should we strive to be proud—or flee it like the plague? Can we admire pride in others? Can we admire pride in ourselves?

Proud to be me

The peculiar power of pride is that we can answer Yes to every part of every question we just asked about pride. Because the condition of pride runs the gamut from the most benign to the most malignant. Pride can be a magnificent thing. And it can be a nasty, slithering thing… We may lock in on one end of the pride spectrum only to find ourselves torn off and pushed toward the other end. As with so many of our loaded terms, it’s easy to fixate on one of the definitions, at the expense of the full richness of its meanings.

In our using days, we were in quite the pickle when it came to pride. Because really, in those days, our pride was in tatters. Or, more truthfully we had no pride. We would beg, borrow and steal—sometimes even kill—to secure our chemical stash. Pride of any kind was not a factor. At best, we would have a kind of false pride in what bad people we were—but that shallow pride did little to fill the hollow within us.

In early recovery, the spokes of false pride would keep turning for a while—like the wheels on a crashed bike. Some of us felt so worthless, the best we could do was to brag about our addictive excesses. But over time, a new kind of pride grew in us. Pride in our recovery. Pride in the fellowship. Pride in those who had given us a selfless, helping hand. We started to stand tall again—be rightfully proud of the being we had become for today. Proud to be of service. Proud to contribute. Proud to love. Proud to be a friend to others. Proud to be connected.

Once upon a time, we hid ourselves for fear of being seen for who we thought we were. Now, we have the confidence to display ourselves with grace to an appreciative world. The more we display with grace and elegance—like the proud swan—the more we will be naturally appreciated for who we are…

Today then, let’s literally stand tall—in body, mind and spirit:

Stand with your feet at hip width, hips tucked under, feet facing straight ahead. Sink down about three inches. Raise your arms up to mid-chest height, as if hugging a person. Nice, rounded arms, with the palms facing toward your chest. Take care to relax the shoulders. Breathe gently through the nose. Hold this simple (but not easy) position for three to five minutes.

As you continue to hold, some of your muscles may start to complain. The complaint will show up as undue tightening or tension. Visit each complaining muscle in turn, with your attention. While you are visiting with a particular muscle, inhale then exhale into that muscle and imagine it dissolving into liquid. Repeat a couple of times then move on to the next complainer.

Frankly, the longer you hold the better—however it takes quite a while to build up the strength and skill to hold for extended periods. If you feel some tingling, burning or shaking when standing in this position, that is a good thing! An old adage about this method is: “First you shake, then you ache, then you bake.” Fun, right? Enjoy!

I stand tall in myself—and am proud to be me, just as I find myself today.

Disappointment

By

“How disappointment tracks the steps of hope”—Letitia Elizabeth Landon

We step our way through the world with hope, on hope, on hope. As one hope falters and falls, the next hope gathers itself, strides out—then stumbles to its knees. Never mind: the next hope is already born and bracing itself to step over its fallen comrades. Or, so it may certainly have seemed, when we slogged our way through the trials and tribulations of addiction. Our life seemed one long cascade of hopes that were dashed to bits on the reefs of disappointment.

Disappointment

To safeguard our recovery, we can use a simple technique to reframe the disappointments that follow our broken hopes and expectations. We can simply let go of the expectation. That hope has served its purpose. It gave us energy for a while. But now, the shattered hope is mere debris. We need to move on. Let go. And paddle out into the new flow. Let’s float on the swell, rather than fight a rip-tide. We can ride the highpoints and the low points with equal equanimity.

The power of hope is to push us forward, to excite us, to keep us motivated. But by its very nature, hope has a short shelf life. We restock hope as fast as the cans fly off the shelves… The trick for those of us in recovery who wish to retain our sanity, is to modulate the excitement that is hope’s companion. Too much excitement, too fast—with too rapid a fizzle after the fact—is a risky way to conduct ourselves in recovery. Nice to get fired up, but let’s turn down the burners to a simmer, so we can hang in for the long haul…

Today, let’s practice a calming movement that can help us regain our peace of mind after a temporary tumble into disappointment:

Stand with your heels together, feet angled out at 45 degrees, knees slightly bent. Hold the hands at groin level just off the body, palms facing up, in a cup-like position. Inhale as you slowly raise your palms to upper chest level, exhale as you lower your hands back to your starting position.

Further enhance the movement of breath and energy by placing your attention initially at the base of your spine, then running it up to the top of your head on the inhale. On the exhale, run your attention down the front of your body to just below your navel. Do 10 or more repetitions.

I feel calm, energized and relaxed all at the same time—a wonderful combination!

Only The Lonely

By

“Loneliness is and always has been the central and inevitable experience of every man.”—Thomas Wolfe

The popular acronym HALT stands for four important vulnerabilities to guard against: Hunger, Anger, Loneliness, Tiredness. Loneliness is red-flagged in recovery, because it can lead us into fragile territory—despair, depression, a sense of worthlessness and of hopelessness. Today, let’s look at loneliness and how we can be that much better prepared to respond when the iron cage descends upon us…

When we used, our principal relationship was with our chemical of choice. Our white knuckles might be gripping the bars of our cage, but our drugs helped numb the hollow pain within us. However, our drugs finally became fickle in their friendship, did they not?

Perhaps the money ran out—and the apparent support went gurgling down the drain, with not a backward glance. Or the drug of choice grabbed us by the throat and became increasingly abusive in its demands. Our best friend became our best fiend. The protective, numbing, blocking sheath was ripped from our skin—and we cried out as the loneliness ran raw and exposed…

Loneliness

When we entered the fellowship of recovery, we discovered that there was an available salve for that rawness—the salve of like-minded companions who’d suffered in a similar manner and found solace together in sharing their stories. We realized we weren’t, after all, the shipwrecked solitaries we fancied ourselves for… Rather, we had a place in the circle on the beach of friendship. Together, we could watch the flames of the bonfire and celebrate our rescue. And dance around that fire, perhaps, to express the joy of our newfound serenity.

Let’s recognize that we can be alone while still connected in spirit to others. When we feel the pangs of loneliness coming upon us, we have the choice, right now, to reach out, share ourselves, listen and reconnect. And we can tell both ourselves and others that this loneliness is just a passing thing—a reminder not to take for granted the delicate web of friendship that keeps us sane in a sometimes-challenging world.

For our movement today, let’s dance to the beat of our friendships. Over time, that beat has become tribal and somewhat hypnotic, reassuring us with its steady rhythms that we are part of a greater whole…

Alone or with friends, engage in a few minutes of spontaneous movement. Stand still for a few moments, feeling your body. Then start gently moving around as the mood takes you. Let it happen in whatever way it wants to show up. The body knows what it wants to do—all you have to do is get out of its way and let it celebrate…

I dance with ease and grace, as I celebrate the healing power of friendship.