With the strife in the world constantly erupting into conditions that cause terrible human suffering, each of us is touched – willingly or unwillingly – by these events. Some of us move into activities that directly engage us in doing what we can to help stop the suffering. Others of us feel a form of helplessness and fear, not knowing what to do or what will happen next. Some of us have responses that elicit mixed feelings – the sense we can do something in the presence of feeling overwhelmed by the enormity of human suffering.

When we find ourselves immersed in an awareness of the suffering of others, or in our own suffering, it helps to have tools at hand that can help us move through these times. For this week’s experiment, I’d like to share some of the tools that have worked for me. We’ve already explored most of them over these years we’ve been working these experiments together. I’d like to revisit some of them this week, as a reminder of what we might do to support ourselves when we may feel helpless or overwhelmed by world events.

The first tool is our capacity to ground ourselves in our bodies in this present moment, no matter what else may be happening. And so, I invite you to discover where in your body you feel grounded enough, settled enough, or neutral – some place that’s not caught up in distress. You may find only an earlobe or the tip of your nose as a place that’s quiet enough to settle into, or a neutral-enough place to just hang out. That’s fine. You may discover that, if you’re sitting, feeling your seat and the support under you allows you to settle even more. The goal is to be present to yourself in a way that’s comfortable enough.

Next, notice what it’s like to honor what you feel, to honor what you see and hear going on around you. This isn’t where we’re going to stop – it’s just step one. Notice, as you acknowledge your feelings and experience, that sometimes the act of slowing down enough to bring awareness to what’s happening inside us is enough to create the spaced needed for breathing room in the midst of it all. We spontaneously begin to breathe and notice that we have more room inside just from the act of being willing to acknowledge the truth of what’s moving through us.

Next, remember the practice of “softening” that we’ve explored in the past – the practice of making room for your experience rather than constricting around it. It’s natural and automatic for us to constrict when we’re distressed and it takes practice to allow the constriction to be a signal to soften in order to make room for the feelings to move through.

Then, if it feels all right to you, recall the Tonglen breathing practice we’ve talked about before – the practice where you breathe in suffering – your own and as well as that in the world – into your heart space, allow the fire in your heart to transform that suffering into compassion, and then breathe out compassion from your heart to yourself and everyone else. As an alternative to the Tonglen breathing, you might take a few moments to sit and breathe love in and breathe love out for a few minutes, making sure to include offering this love to yourself and to all others in the process of breathing out.

There’s no easy or right answer about how to move through the distress of massive suffering, so please find what works for you. For example, if what I’ve written here doesn’t ring true for you, perhaps you can use it as an opening to more deeply embrace what does work for you. The bottom line is that we’re all in this together and whenever any of us suffers it touches each and every one of us, as well. The challenge is how to be present to the fact of that suffering and also stay centered and present to the demands and needs of our everyday lives.