Tingling in the Fingertips: Learning to Trust

by Traci Hodes. Traci will be facilitating an upcoming course titled “ Cultivating Trust and Faith in Ourselves Through Inquiry”.

When I first began mindfulness practice, I couldn’t even start it, I couldn’t stop and “just listen”... Does that make sense or resonate with you? I had the best of intentions. I had read a lot of the research, and yet, fear stopped me in my tracks before I even began. What would it feel like to be alone with my thoughts? One part of me didn’t really want to know, but another part did; another part wanted out of this suffering. 

It was the summer after a school year that had left me feeling depleted. I worked as a school psychologist in a high school, and by June every year, I had nothing left to give. And I was so tired of feeling like that; so tired of feeling like there was something more I could be doing to help my students, but unsure what that was. 

So, that June, I went to Southern Connecticut State University’s Library, and I checked out a pile of books on various approaches to working with depression and anxiety. This is how I happened upon Jon Kabat-Zinn and the world of mindfulness. As a psychologist, there’s a part of me that’s embarrassed I didn’t even know about this before that summer. Over the next several years, I gobbled up whatever research I could find on how mindfulness and meditation could impact people’s mental health. I had binders full of articles.  

Even knowing the research, though, I struggled to start my own practice. I’m a person who is always going, always learning, always on the move -- that’s been a great protective factor throughout my life -- and it has also been a hindrance. Anxiety has been a lifelong “friend” of mine, depression a second-best friend, loneliness part of my identity, not fitting in, that has been the other good buddy. Most people would never know this about me. The joke of it all is that while my insides churn with anxiety and distrust of my own process, I came across to others (except my husband and my kids!) as someone who is always calm. In fact, people at work would repeatedly ask me, “How do you stay so calm?” I would marvel at the fact that they couldn’t see or feel or hear my insides being shredded by the anxiety. 

The idea of stopping and being rather than doing, was so scary to me, that at first, I sat in bed after my husband went to sleep, and I meditated using the sounds of him sleeping-- the stops and starts, the louder and softer, as my anchor. In this way, I wasn’t alone. Being alone is so very different from being lonely. Being alone is something I hadn’t been since I was a young girl. There was a time when I relished in my alone time when I found a safe haven in devouring a book, disappearing into another world with the characters of the book to keep me company. 

Each of us on this journey towards moments of freedom from suffering, we go at the pace that our own system allows. In my practice as a psychologist, I’ve had many clients say, “Just tell me what will work!”, or “Why is this taking so long?” Well, as I look back at my own process of coming to learn to trust what this body, heart, and mind tell me, I can see now how wisdom was guiding me back then; I just didn’t know enough to open my eyes to it. 

You know how “feel your breath” is so prominent in mindfulness instructions? In the beginning of practice, I thought there was something wrong with me because I couldn’t do that. I thought that I was wrong, that I was failing at mindfulness. Every time I tried to focus on my breath, my whole body got tight. Even though teachers would say, “listen to sound instead”, I didn’t trust this for the longest time. This mantra of “feel your breath” seemed to me like the gold standard so I needed to reach it. 

Here I was trying to measure up in the world of mindfulness! About a year into the process, I was at a silent retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, and I requested a private interview with one of the teachers, a man who had probably been practicing for at least 40 years. During the interview, I was in tears because I couldn’t follow my breath. Now, I chuckle whenever I recall this memory because he just couldn’t understand why I was so upset! It was not a big deal to him because, of course, the practice of mindfulness is one of beginning again and again and again.  

This is what I love about Sharon Salzberg’s message: “we can always begin again”. 

I remember when I first began trusting in my own process. I was at another retreat in the quiet backcountry of New York State. About 70 of us were embarking on a year of training with Mindful Schools, and we sat in a big red barn. At night, bats would fly through it as we practiced. I still remember the sounds of their wings, the sound of the wind. Two teachings from that week stay with me to this day. Vinny Ferraro led us in a Metta (Loving Kindness) practice that encouraged us to treat ourselves as we would treat our very best friend. This was a revelation to me, especially coming from a family that encouraged competition and being the best. The second teaching that remains vivid after all this time arrived after I suffered and suffered with not being able to stay with my breath. During those practice sessions in the red barn, I kept having the experience of the tingling in the tips of my fingers. For some reason, this tingling provided me with a sense of safety, of refuge. I didn’t understand it, but something told me this was important. So, I gathered up the courage to ask another of the teachers, Megan Cowan, what I should do about this quandary of not being able to find refuge in the breath. And, she said simply: “Don’t go there”. She went on to tell me to trust in the tingling of the fingertips, to trust in the wisdom of my experience. 

That was the very beginning for me. It’s been a path of continual questioning, and I can honestly say it’s only in the last couple of years I’ve really begun to develop deep trust in how I meet this practice and how it meets me. But as I look back, I can see trust began with the moment that another with more experience than me, told me to trust my own experience rather than what others were telling me to do. 

When I worked in public schools and I brought mindfulness to the staff and students, I would often say, that it doesn’t matter what works for me, what matters is that you make this practice your own. This was a gift given to me, and this is the way I want the teachings to be transmitted through me -- each of us being given the space to trust in our own heart, mind, body, and process.