Recently I’ve been noticing how feeling tired or drained doesn’t always relate to how much sleep I’ve had. There can be days where I’ve slept in and gotten at least 9 hours sleep consistently to ensure that I’m paying off my sleep debt, as I like to call it, and I can still feel tired and low energy, as if I’ve had only 6 hours sleep. So what’s going on? Is there more to tiredness than just our physical needs?

Although I know that feeling tired is influenced by more than how well we’ve been taking care of our physical body, I often forget that psychological and emotional factors can completely outweigh the physical. I find it fascinating that feeling stressed about getting everything done and worried that everything won’t get done in time, really can make us feel really tired. It’s like a protest from our bodies about the state of our lives.

The other day I noticed my drained, low energy and decided to sit mindfully for a while to see if that made any difference – I didn’t have time for a nap and I often can’t manage them anyway. So I sat mindfully for 30 minutes and afterwards I noticed a significant increase my energy levels. It’s pretty incredible that sitting mindfully, doing nothing fancy other than paying attention to our self and surrounds in a non-judging way, can really transform how we feel. So next time you notice you’re feeling tired and drained, maybe sitting mindfully somewhere quiet for a while could really help ease this feeling, making your day that much more enjoyable.

Posted by Selina Clare.

Last night I saw the movie Pride at the Dendy in Newtown. After a tiring day's work all I wanted was some light entertainment, which it did deliver, but this movie was so much more than that. Pride is based on a true story from 1984 England, when Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is striking. A group of gay and lesbian activists decide to raise money to support the families of the striking miners. The union, embarassed to receive their support, refuses them. Eventually the activists go directly to a mining village in Wales to make their donation in person. I won't spoil the whole plot, but these two communities form an unlikely partnership.

As much as this was a light laugh fest, the movie also illustrated some significant points about how we heal ourselves individually and collectively - or not. While the title of the movie was pride, a lot of the movie was also about its flipside. Pride's flipside - shame, was displaced and projected on to the gay and lesbian community and working class alike by the mainstream and the elite. Multiple delicate tipping points in the movie showed individuals and groups making a choice to collapse into seperation, disconnection, and shame, or to connect with each other in pride (or in the union's terms, solidarity.) 

A number of the activist characters illustrated the destructive potential of shame. In a moment of frustrated defeat the character Gethin breaks the rules of the group by going out collecting donations by himself, and becomes a victim of hate crime. To the degree that shame is accepted and internalised, it will often be re-expressed in risky or self damaging acts. Another character, the firebrand leader Mark, is powerful in his capacity to throw shame back where it belongs, in this case on to mainstream homophobic society. His later death from AIDS illustrates the fragility of aggressive defences against shame.

While much good therapeutic work gets done individually, or in groups, how much more might be possible if we could recouple personal and social liberation in the way shown in this film?