The Smooth Air of Turbulence: how to find calm in planes and life
In December, I traveled to Hawaii with my wife for our honeymoon (which was beautiful, thanks for asking!). Typically, I’m a good flyer, meaning I don’t get nervous when the plane bumps along the way (based on some evidence up to 25% of people suffer from some fear of flying). To me, turbulence is part of flying. Mid-way through this flight however things were a little “bumpier” than normal. The flight attendants were asked to cease cabin service and buckle up as the flight got yet even more bumpy. Uncharacteristically, I found a part of myself loudly (as loud as internal voices can be) and uncontrollably begging to be back with my feet on solid ground.
For the next two hours (a long time, especially as time becomes especially slow), we bounced through the opening scene of Lost (engines whirring up and down trying to catch their breath), gripping the arms of our chairs as though we were preparing for serious dental-work. I remind myself (and my wife) that planes never fall out of the sky due to turbulence. Planes (even commercial airlines) can handle significantly more stress than we ever put them through — despite what it may sound or feel like. In fact, I recounted, I know there are some researchers that deliberately fly planes through hurricanes just to understand weather a little better — I can imagine the job description for that one, “…must be comfortable flying in a tin can at 700KM hour, 35,000 feet in the air, through house destroying winds.”
As my logical brain comforted with the important “facts” of the situation, I settled back to be perfectly calm for the rest of the flight. But there was a problem. I wasn’t perfectly calm. In fact, my emotions felt as turbulent as the weather outside — viciously inconsolable. And I didn’t like it.
And that’s exactly it. Emotions are uncontrollable and, to a large extent, inconsolable.
If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, and this experience once again confirmed, it’s that you can’t calm your emotions by using your head. Emotions don’t listen to logic, they want to be heard because, whether we like it or not, they provide meaningful information about what we’re thinking, often subconsciously, at any given moment — like a thermometer might tell us about the weather outside. You can’t change the temperature or the reading on the thermometer (without changing the environment), you can only feel it and observe it.
Emotions get our attention by allowing us to feel uncomfortable or comfortable about the situations we’re in or imagining. And while they reflect something true about our experience in the moment, they are certainly not “facts.” In my case, my emotions did not reflect the statistical data on turbulence or air travel. They were telling me to protect myself as my body felt uncomfortable and out of control.
But my head told me I wasn’t really out of control or, truly, unsafe — and I wanted my emotions to catch up. The real challenge I think so many of us have is this: we want to be able to experience and amplify our emotions when they’re pleasant, and to control and suppress them when they’re unpleasant. But in the same way we might want to tell the thermometer that we want beach weather on a cold wintery day in mid-February (I live in Canada, so yes, I mean cold), our emotional thermometer takes no advice from our heads. You can’t tell your emotions to “get with the program” of our heads. So how can you change your experience of negative emotions?
Preamble, this is key. You’ve got to notice that you’re having emotions in the first place. If you fail to notice your emotion then all the following steps are irrelevant. This is tricky sometimes when we’re really caught up with those emotions. But through mindful practice we can learn to be more aware of our everyday emotions.
First, stop trying to change the emotion; instead, change your perception. Allow your emotions to be exactly how they are. As the Daleks in Dr. Who so dispassionately threaten, “resistance is futile.” Give yourself permission to feel emotions without resistance. Remember that your emotions are a measuring tool through which you understand your subconscious interpretations of the world and give you data about your life at this moment. But they are not necessarily “right” (and are almost always partially inaccurate). So don’t let them define your life experience.
Second, observe and note the emotion(s). Identification of an emotion (“I am experiencing fear”, “I am experiencing anxiety”, “I have the sensation of anger”) causes it to lose some of its power over you. Why? Because you step out of the emotion for a moment and see it for what it truly is — a sensation in the body. Ask yourself what does the emotion feel like in your body? Is it warm? Does it bubble up inside of you? Is it a cold feeling in your stomach? Is it itchy on your skin? All emotions will be felt as a physical sensation. As soon as you see it as something as distinct from you, it becomes quieter and more gentle.
Third, resist the urge to justify or explain your emotions. Justifying or explaining (to yourself or others) “why” you feel the way you do often amplifies emotions rather than helps them subside because you continually need to trigger the feeling as you seek to understand it.
While these steps are simple, they are also difficult to do in practice. But the more I remember to practice them the more they serve me well in the most bumpy moments of my life.
As the plane rattled along on the way to Hawaii, I had the strangest experience. I stopped identifying with the fear and found that I could sit calmly and simultaneously see that I had fear sensations. I found myself living in a space where calm and fear coexisted and my consciousness was independent of both of them. It just saw them. I could feel the way fear tightens my chest and sinks in my stomach and let it be a sensation I observed rather than being fearful.
If this is something that you are looking for in your life too, I encourage you to give it a try. This type of practice has been around for centuries. I’d also encourage you to get started with a meditation app, like Headspace, because, while it takes some work, finding an inner calm is the perfect way to weather the storms outside — in planes and in life.
Happy travels. :)
