Rick Lee James shares that he got a Grammy ticket after playing guitar on Antonio Vergara's blues album, then teaches a 5-4-3-2-1 grounding exercise tied to the five senses. He frames each breath as the breath of God and connects the practice to his Advent season and hospital chaplaincy work.
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Welcome back to Voices in My Head. As always, I'm your host Rick Lee James, once again coming to you from my car on the way to work in the morning, and that's just how it goes. I love keeping this podcast going, but time is short with all my hours at the hospital each week. Today's kind of a big day depending on when you're listening. I think today is the day I get my ticket to the Grammys, which is kind of exciting because I played on an album album called The Fury by Antonio Vergara, and it's really an amazing album. Not because of me, I'm just one of many contributors to the project, but he was nominated for a Grammy, and so I get to be on the, uh, not the, uh, list of people who get free tickets, but I'm able to actually be one of the first to purchase. I got an official invite from the Grammys as a family member, so I'm grateful. I'm hoping I'm going to be able to work that out to be able to attend the Grammys in February. February this year. That's probably a once-in-a-lifetime chance to be on an album that is nominated for a Grammy for Contemporary Blues Album. So I'm really proud of Antonio. I'm really proud to have been on that project as an electric guitar player, and just an exciting day. So as we are beginning the Advent season, I wanted to talk briefly about some self-care things, things that I will do just for myself and sometimes with patients. And we've been working to do some staff training in the hospital where I work at. And one thing that I've talked about on this podcast before, I'm gonna talk about it again, but I'm gonna kind of break it down and just talk about one aspect of it this morning, and that is STUFF. Getting to know your STUFF. And we talk about that a lot around here. STUFF being a 4-letter word, not a 5-letter word. Sensations, Thoughts, Urges, and Feelings. And When we talk about the S part, the sensations, that's where I wanna focus on today. One easy way to be able to focus in on sensations, your bodily sensations, is to actually focus in on your senses. One thing that I do every morning, usually I run in the mornings most weekdays, and at the end of my run I will take an extra mile just to walk a mile. And I drink water and I pray and I do this exercise where one part of the exercise is examining my senses. And I will prayerfully do something where I breathe in and breathe out, realizing that scripturally the idea is that God is the breath of life, that God is giving us the breath that we breathe in. God is breathing in and out of us. God is actually giving us the pneuma, the spirit, the breath of God into our lives. So I will breathe it in And then when I will start focusing on sensations, I will use my 5 senses. So I will breathe in and breathe out, and I take a moment and I find 5 things that I can see. I'll look around and find those 5 things. And then I'll take another breath, and I will do 4 things that I can touch, or I also apply this to bodily sensations. So things that I am— can feel with touch or things that I feel within my body. So let me give you a for instance of that. I'm in the car right now, so I can touch my steering wheel. I can feel the texture of that, and I acknowledge what that feels like. But I also might have a bodily sensation, something I feel inside me, like a pain in my leg, or maybe there's a tightness in my chest or in my stomach. So I include both things I can feel externally and things I can feel internally. So for me, I use touch in that way. Now I know that touch— I'm not touching something inside of me, but for me I kind of associate them in the same way. So I will find 4 of those things. So maybe it's a tightness in my stomach today. Maybe it's a nervousness about something, so I'm sensing that bodily. Or maybe I'm just touching 4 different things that I can, that I can feel. Maybe it's the, the feel of the pavement under my feet as I walk. Something like that. Then I'll take another deep breath. So after I have done 5 things I can see, 4 things I can feel or touch, I do 3 things that I can hear. And that's always my favorite one. I don't have earbuds in or anything. I'm just listening. And if I'm outside, if I'm not on the treadmill in the morning, which I like more when the warmer weather is there so I can be outside, I'll listen. Some days I hear birds. Some days I hear crickets. When it gets cold, it's noticeable what I'm not hearing. You know, because I'm not hearing those crickets, I'm not hearing those birds anymore. Things change when the weather changes, and so I'm hearing different things. But focus on 3 things you hear. Then take another deep breath, the breath of God in and the breath of God out. And then I focus on 2 things that I can smell. And depending on where you are, different parts of the world, times of day, you might smell different things. But again, these are centering activities. And then lastly, I'll take a deep breath in, a deep breath out, and once again I focus on one sensation of taste, the last sense. If I'm running in the morning, sometimes I can just lick my lips. I taste the saltiness of sweat. Or if I take a drink of water, I can taste that. Or maybe if you're doing this at home and you're drinking coffee or something, maybe you're just sitting and doing this as a morning meditation. But focus in on the taste. And the reason we do all of those things, the reason we're focusing on those sensations that we're having, they center us to the place, the time, the moment we are in at that place. You're not distracted thinking about what's coming up an hour from now or a place you're gonna be. You're focusing in on where you are right now. You're not missing that moment. So that's what I mean when I talk about focusing on sensations. So S is the first part of your STUFF. So that's one part that I think is very helpful. And as we enter into this Advent season and life gets really busy again, there's all kinds of gatherings. I know it worked for me today. I can think of at least two different things that I have— something in the morning, something in the afternoon— that is in addition to my regular hospital chaplaincy duties. It's not bad or good. Actually, it's probably more good than bad, but they're just extra things that happen in life, and it's all the more important to focus in on those sensations. So that's it for this week, and I think I'm gonna make this a crossover podcast because I think this is actually good practice and would be something very much in honor of Fred Rogers too. So this is also going to be on the, the Welcome to the Neighborhood podcast this week because Fred Rogers was always about silence. Always about stopping and listening. I don't know if mindfulness was as big of a practice back then that maybe he would use those words, but in essence, that was what Fred Rogers would do. So for those who listen to both Voices in My Head, the Rick Lee James podcast, and Welcome to the Neighborhood, Mr. Rogers Tribute podcast, I think this actually fits for both of those podcasts this week. So I hope you enjoy, and maybe next time when we come back, we'll talk about the second part of STUFF, the second letter, which is thoughts. But for this week, we're just going to focus in on sensations. Okay, so thanks so much for listening to both Voices in My Head and to Welcome to the Neighborhood, the Mr. Rogers tribute podcast. And with that, I think we're going to close with the music from Won't You Be My Neighbor, which is me playing electric guitar, and hope you enjoy it. Have a great rest of your week. Thanks for listening to both of my podcasts. I'm Rick Lee James, your host, and I appreciate you. Have a great day, everybody.
