What do you hear when you close your eyes?
Is it a calm and peaceful ocean? Is it the chorus from that bloody earworm Justin Bieber song? Is it the sound of sheep softly thudding over a fence as you slip into sleep?
Or is it the manic chatter an endless list of all the things you should have done today, need to do tomorrow, should have done better, should be?
Yeah. Life is like that sometimes. Parenting is like that sometimes.
Like a billion other people this January, I am using a number in a calendar to give me an excuse to try and calm the hell down and live a more considered life.
I don’t fancy my chances. And I really don’t like those adult colouring books, so I’m looking for some other, more palatable options.
Enter comedic legend Ruby Wax. An actress, a comedian, a talk-show host, the only-ever script editor on Absolutely Fabulous, the loud and outspoken American-Brit has reinvented herself over recent years as a campaigner for mental health and now, an expert in mindfulness.
Listen to my conversation with Ruby:
Listen on Omny here.
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And, typical of a woman who claims it was “sheer drive” that saw her make it into the Royal Shakespeare Company, make a living out of TV comedy, raise three children and stay married for a very long time, she didn’t do it half-arsed.
Ruby Wax enrolled at Oxford University and did a Masters degree in Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Or as she puts it, she went to school to find out how the mind works.
“I don’t know anyone with an inner voice that says, ‘You’re doing a wonderful thing, and may I say how fantastic you look today’,” Ruby told me. “We all have these bad reviews running through our heads and some of us having trouble sleeping. Mindfulness is about accepting the voice is there and get on with this. It’s like instead of the radio blasting, it’s playing in another room.”
She did that because, as someone with a mental illness – Wax has been advocating on behalf of depressives for years – she wanted to find the key, working alongside therapy and medication, to leading a less anxious and stressed life.
And now she’s written a book about it, her second on mental health but her first on Mindfulness.
It’s called Frazzled. Which is the word I should have tattooed on my wrist in that place Lindsay Lohan has Breathe.
The first question I asked Ruby was: What the hell is mindfulness?
She corrected me that it has nothing to do with expensive adult colouring books, and explained that it’s a technique that will help you calm that harassing voice in your head.
It’s mind control, people. “A lot of times you get into a war with your kids. He gets agitated, you get agitated, because you’re so closely connected… That’s not going to help anybody, you need to learn to cool your engines down… You could do things like saying I’ll be coming back in a moment, go in another room, feel your feet on the ground, track your breathing… But if you haven’t practiced, you can’t pull the ripcord in an emergency.”
And practicing? It can be 10 minutes in the morning, says Ruby. Or you can do it on the bus.
No excuses, parents. Calm the hell down.
For some genius 1990s vintage Ruby, watch this:
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