Dear First name / friend

 

Driving home from an A&E shift on Sunday night, I caught part of Olafur Arnalds' ‘Ultimate Calm’ show on BBC Radio 3 (my technical ineptitude means I've only got one station, but it's always on at home so it feels like a familiar refuge). It was wonderful and I highly recommend it for genuinely ultimate calm. He had Arlo Parks on there as guest contributor and she had this wonderful way of describing her choice of calming track as “brain toothpaste”.

 

I love this phrase and it's stuck with me. What does it mean? 

 

We clean our teeth to wash things away, right? In the morning or before going out, and at the close of day. Toothpaste has a freshness; a spiciness. There's a foaming and rinsing and ritual.  

 

So, brain toothpaste. It feels somewhere caught on the border between pleasurable and deeply squeamish-making to imagine taking a toothbrush to the gyri of the brain (the many contours of the cortex that give it that distinctive walnut-like appearance). Imagine a thorough flossing into the very depths and crevices of your mental body; a satisfying foam bubbling up as you bristle your way through thought and memory; through creativity and connection. And then, in a very deliberate spurt - something akin to Jonah and the Whale - you eject the debris into the receiving basin and let the water wash it all away. 

 

I don't know if I've gone a bit Ian McEwan on this idea, embracing the more disturbing edges of descriptive narrative (!), but I hope I've made my point about brain toothpaste: where can we find this equivalent cleansing in our daily lives? 

 

You may, like Arlo Parks, find it through music. I love this idea of creating a helpful connotation. Have you ever had that, where you hear a track that takes you back to a particular time and place? (For me, every time I hear Jump Around by House of Pain, I'm right back on the poolside on our year 13 holiday to Kavos - ha! And S Club 7 tracks take me back to dancing in my eldest sister's bedroom as a child. Or perhaps, you're more attuned to scent: there is a particular deodorant that consistently reminds me of camping during a Duke of Edinburgh trip in year 10. 

 

Mindful moment: We can use this connotation and connection to help us. Maybe play around with choosing one track or one scent (an essential oil or candle) or even the same mug and the same herbal tea to create a deliberate connotation between this and a sort of mental-dental procedure (couldn't help myself). Our brains enjoy this sort of repetition and consistency; we are creatures of habit and we can all reap the benefits of a daily mental cleansing.

 

My lovely friend Maddie gave me a little book called Mindful Thoughts for Runners which sits on a little stand in the bathroom for, well, you know. Suffice to say it makes a wonderful toilet book. I opened it up on a random page and I wanted to share with you the page I landed on:

 

 

With the London Marathon just days away, this feels like a welcome antidote to fear and anxiety and a reminder to be grateful for the freedom to run - and to be able to run in safety. I'm reminded of an incredible film at the Banff Film Festival which highlighted the work of a woman called Stephanie Case who founded a charity in Afghanistan called ‘Free to Run’ (freetorun.org). It's 30 minutes long and you can watch it here on YouTube if you're interested. 

 

Mindful movement: The women in the film use running to experience freedom in a country where freedom is not a given, and to experience joy amidst great difficulty. As a I run on Sunday, I'll be reminding myself what a privilege it is to be able to run free - and to run at all! How do you exercise your right to be free?