In the book Unshakeable by trauma therapist Jo Ann Rosen, there’s a discussion of anchors, those simple practices that return us to awareness. Rosen speaks about anchors because trauma responses bypass all our good skills. We forget what we know and react instinctively. Instinctive reaction may be the perfect response when a rattlesnake is rattling, but it’s not so great when you’re involved in a difficult discussion. Anchors remind us that we are here, now. They allow us to choose our response rather than inhabit our reaction.
After I read Rosen, I got anchor-enchanted. I learned that anchor comes from the same Greek root as ankle and angle; essentially a bent thing. I learned that, in addition to traditional trident anchors, which tether a boat to a certain area when they wedge into the sea floor, there are also sea anchors. These never touch bottom but spread like a parachute to slow or stabilize a boat in heavy weather. Both kinds of anchors are necessary for serious sailing.
Likewise, there are different kinds of anchoring practices. Some—like breath awareness, or body scans, or feeling my feet on the ground—root me in the here and now. They make clear that I am here, in this world. These are like the archetypal anchor dragging lake bottom until it digs in: they attach me to material reality. This breath, this body, these feet, this patch of ground: it’s here, now, and so am I.
Other anchoring practices root me differently. Reciting a mantra, saying the 99 names of Allah, repeating the Jesus prayer—these situate me in a wider reality. Invoking the Love Pulsing at the Centre of the Universe, the saints and angels and bodhisattvas—this means the wide unseen world becomes my stability. When the material world feels fractured, it’s a godsend.
Which brings me to my favourite anchoring practice these days, a simple set of movements and phrases based on an exercise I learned from Heather Ruce. “Here I am,” I say, as I raise my right hand, palm up, in front of me. “As I am,” and my left hand comes up. “In this world,” I intone as my right arm goes straight out to the side; “As it is,” my left arm comes out in mirror image.
Right there, you’ve got a highly powerful anchor. It’s a clear acknowledgement of existence, of what is. This anchor holds us firmly in material reality.
But then I interlace my fingers in front of my chest. “Ever-entangled,” I say, and sweeping my arms overhead and down at my sides, I speak this truth: “in this luminous web of life.” Then hands interlaced again, I declare, “Ever-abiding,” and conclude by gently folding my hands in front of my heart, chanting, “In the heart of Love.”
These last two moves are as true as the first two. They anchor me in the bigger reality, the bigger vision, where I am inescapably intertwined with all of life and irreversibly held by Love. With these two anchors, I’m good. I’m ready to do some serious sailing.