Where do I start with Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a hot word right now, with lots of medical and mental health professionals talking about it. Mindfulness is a conscious, non-judgmental focus on the present moment. You’re still probably thinking “BUT WHAT DO I ACTUALLY DO?! “ Mindfulness is a skill, and something to practice, any time anywhere. Focus on the process of doing these things, and not so much on the outcome. You don’t have to start meditating for hours every day. Here are 5 things you can do to experience mindfulness, or develop present moment awareness, starting today.

Perhaps you've seen this cartoon around the internet:

1. Take a few moments every hour to focus on your breathing. Right now, feel the breath as it enters your nose, and as it exits. Expand your lungs from the bottom to the top, even to the sides. Every time you do this, you strengthen your innate ability to calm yourself. When you focus on your breathing, you are activating your parasympathetic nervous system. The parasympathetic nervous system is your body’s internal calming system. Taking a few moments every day to focus on your breathing starts to strength that system.

2. When you are in your car or waiting in line, resist the urge to look at your devices. I love the smart phone and you’re probably reading this on your iToy right now. Next time you are in the car, or a line, do that breathing thing, but add in feeling your feet in your shoes. Notice how your toes come into contact with the innersoles. It’s try to press your weight evenly through your feet. Take a breath. Look at the people around you, they’re probably looking at their phones and missing the life right in front of them.

3. When you eat, do not turn on the TV or look at your devices. Look at your food. Smell it. Feel the textures on your tongue. Start by doing this when you first sit down, start by doing it for at least 3-5 minutes before you start looking at something else.

4. Start or end your day with meditation or prayer. That’s more tricky, but to get the full benefit and to really start working that parasympathetic response, you need to start meditating. Even 3 minutes a day has benefits. Try a guided meditation or visualization. These types of meditations are usually easier to start with. There will be some links at the bottom of this page to direct you to some meditation resources. Prayer is also helpful because it is purposeful time for you to focus on something bigger than yourself, and taking time to connect internally with the spiritual. It’s more active than meditation, but having this spiritual practice is just as important. Again, you are purposefully focusing your attention, which is mindfulness.

5. Experience FLOW states. Have you even been doing something that was so interesting or engrossing, that you lose track of time? For those moments, there is nothing but you and your task. This is called flow and is considered an "optimal experience." It happens when your task is just challenging enough to hold your attention. Your skill level and the challenge meet up perfectly to keep your brain quiet for a little while. Recreation is an important part of a healthy life. It’s easy to put that on the back burner when you’ve got kids, career, or basically modern life. It doesn’t have to be done every day, or even every week, but you need to make fulfilling recreation a part of your life. Once a quarter at the least. Some people run or do craft/hobby projects. Some people fish, golf, paint, hike, mow the grass, do a puzzle, color, or do yoga. There are tons of options. It needs to be challenging enough that you are able to just do the activity. Not so hard that you get frustrated or angry, not too passive so you get distracted. Having these types of experiences are just as important as meditating or other daily mindfulness practices and are an integral part of caring for yourself. Find what that is for you, and then do it. Seriously. Make time for yourself to have these experiences.

All of these are things you can start doing this week. Focus on just doing the tasks, and try to let go of the outcome, the changes you expect, or wondering if you are doing it “right.” Just try and see what starts to happen.

Meditation Resources:
Fragrant Heart Free Guided Meditation Audio
Shannon Ball Meditation Mondays  One of my teachers and all around awesome human, Shannon Ball makes inspiring meditation videos which she posts on her blog from time to time.
UCLA Mindfulness Awareness Center
Mindful Muscle

More Info on Flow States:
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's Theory of Flow

Is it just a crazy dream?

Like two sides of the same coin, every life ends in death and death can bring new life in its wake. Death is always a part of life. Our lives are much more fragile than we would like to admit.  It is easy to forget this fact in our current busy life. There has been a lot of death around me recently.  It’s easy to forget that people can leave us at any moment. There may not be a chance to say hello again, or to start a new story with a person. There comes a time when they are gone and you are left with sorrow and questions. 

There are so many emotions that come up when someone dies. The closer that person is to you, the more intense those feelings can be. You can’t avoid it, you can’t ignore it, you have to ride it out. People turn towards their friends and family to support and process the experience of grief. People turn towards faith and prayer. People take comfort in feeling the presence of something bigger than all of us, faith in God, or the Universe whatever you want to call it. A skill that can be helpful regardless of your religious or spiritual beliefs is the practice of meditation and mindfulness. Mindfulness, when used with prayer and other spiritual frameworks cultivates a deeper understanding of ourselves and our experience on this planet.

Grief is a time when I find the practice of mindfulness most helpful but also challenging. Mindfulness is an opportunity to fully experience feelings, which can be intense. However, by taking in that experience, one can move to place where you can be with your feelings without being overcome by them. Joan Halifax, a Zen Abbot who writes extensively on death and dying recommends repeating the statement,  “May I accept my sadness knowing that I am not my sadness." This goes along with the deep understanding that absolutely everything we are experiencing is temporary. It may feel very intense and long lasting right now, but it will pass. Just like everything before this moment.

There are many articles about grief and it’s various stages (Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance). I like to think of them more as states, and not stages. The word “stages” implies a sequence, a pattern, but for a grieving person there is no pattern. They can experience all of those states in one day, moving back and forth from Anger to Depression, from acceptance to denial, or any other sequence; around and around we go. The word state implies a feeling, or a way of being. Using Meditation and mindfulness assists with all of the states of grief.

For me, one of the more difficult parts of grief is the anger. Buddhist Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh tells us the following in his discussion of "Loosening the Knots of Anger":

Mindfulness does not fight anger or despair. Mindfulness is there in order to recognize. To be mindful of something is to recognize that something is there in the present moment. Mindfulness is the capacity of being aware of what is going on in the present moment. “Breathing in, I know that anger has manifested in me; breathing out, I smile towards my anger.” This is not an act of suppression or of fighting. It is an act of recognizing. Once we recognize our anger, we embrace it with a lot of awareness, a lot of tenderness.

When it is cold in your room, you turn on the heater, and the heater begins to send out waves of hot air. The cold air doesn’t have to leave the room for the room to become warm. The cold air is embraced by the hot air and becomes warm—there’s no fighting at all between them.

We practice taking care of our anger in the same way. Mindfulness recognizes anger, is aware of its presence, accepts and allows it to be there. Mindfulness is like a big brother who does not suppress his younger brother’s suffering. He simply says, “Dear brother, I’m here for you.” You take your younger brother in your arms and you comfort him. This is exactly our practice.

This is exactly my challenge right now. Taking my anger and sadness into my arms, not judging or ignoring. But experiencing those feelings for what they are, and becoming a conscious observer of my thoughts. So that I can ride the waves of grief until one day it will be easier. 

And so it begins!

Hello dear friends! Welcome the blog of Valerie McGuinness at Cedar Creek Wellness. I hope to use this space to post thoughtful articles which may be helpful to those seeking clarity and happiness in their life. Sometimes I will write something, sometimes it will be content from around the internet, and sometimes I hope we can have guest bloggers. Please contact me if you have any questions or suggestions. Thanks for stopping by!