As the number of posts in this blog rises, I have more and more trouble remembering what I have already written. The "search this blog" window at the top of the blog page (recently modified, by the way, into a new color and layout) is quite handy at helping me decide if I have already stated something or not.
Reading The Mindful Way to Self-Compassion by Christopher Germer, I just read his principle that "when the going gets tough, the soft get going". He is referring to the importance of softening into pain, confusion, doubt and fear, allowing oneself to see clearly what nasty one is feeling without getting lost back into the negative stuff itself. That statement reminded me of the observation I made in the hospital, recovering from a prostectomy, that being strongly soothed and cooed over, much as an infant is, was helping me. I actually began to want that sort of soothing and care while mentally holding myself to be too old and too tough and too male to need or want or benefit from it. I wrote about this in the post "Soothing, velvety love" last August. I mentioned my first yoga teacher, Jenifer Ebel, and my hypnosis teacher, Mary Elizabeth Raines, as examples of people who are accomplished at using words and voice tone to transmit the feeling that everything is ok, that the student or client is loved and protected, that life is good.
This business of effective soothing and loving care is a new subject for me and I haven't explored it much. One clue that I am following is that the best soothers seem to be women. I just watched "Goodnight, Mr. Tom" about an elderly man (played by the actor John Thaw, "Inspector Morse") adopting and caring for a London boy relocated from to a small village during the bombing of that city. The screenplay was a collaboration between the original novel author, a woman, and a man. A movie of a somewhat grouchy old man, still grieving the loss of his wife and child, caring for and giving love to a mis-treated boy whose only caretaker had been an unstable, mentally ill mother is a good one to watch descriptions of male care taking for a young male.
I wonder if older women will be employed someday to sit on the bench with the NFL football professionals and coo over those who get injured and stroke their faces. Younger women would probably not be good since the players and they might fall in love. But older women could probably give a kind of care and solace that healed injuries and psyches better and faster with undesired side effects. It might even been that some sort of measure could be taken of body temperature, blood pressure and brain function. Then, copying the pattern used with infants, when the injured advanced in a few minutes to the right level, a male with the appropriate deep voice would take over, instructing and encouraging, once the women had the player on the mend.
