…that clears your energetic and lymphatic systems – both of which need an extra boost in winter!
What are moving mindfulness practices? They’re mindfulness practices that are a bit different from the sitting ones in that, instead of sitting to do them, you stand up and move! You can stand, walk, dance, kneel, bend, spin, jump, etc. The whole time, you’re doing your best to stay aware of yourself, just like a sitting practice.
Continue readingI didn’t either when I first started meditating! Sitting still was torture! So, I started a moving practice, which lasted for years! That’s what I’m sharing with you in my weekly Mindful Movement classes.
They are perfect for those of you who want to practice mindfulness and don’t want to sit still! Yay!
Continue readingMove your lymph!
In winter we tend to move less, which means our lymphatic system, which only moves when we do also moves less.
Also, according to my understanding of Ayurvedia, our lymph gets thicker in winter (a Kapha season) making it even slower! Yikes.
This is a great recipe for colds and flus!
Continue readingNor does mindfulness nor Tai Chi nor sitting in a cave.
I’m still crazy after 15 years of meditating. Ask my husband.
Continue reading…of food, emotions, relatives, guests, everything?
I do! And I’m doing a few simple things that you can play with, too…
Continue readingThink it’s boring or too tough to fit in regularly?
Here’s a fun way to play with mindfulness: simply bring all of your senses into really enjoying something you like to do.
Like walking your dog? Next time, play with noticing as much as you can on your walk….
What does your dog’s coat look like? The trees or buildings? What else can you see?
What can you smell? (What is your dog smelling?!)
What’s the temperature? Is there a breeze? Can you feel the sun or the chill in the air?
Is there a scent in the wind of the sea or grass or rain or wet pavment?
How many birds can you hear? Cars? What funny noises does your dog make as she’s sniffing around?
Bring all of your senses into whatever you like doing and let yourself be there more fully… You’ll enjoy it even more.
And how lovely that this is a great way to practice mindfulness!
Enjoy!
Before my first husband and I divorced we were fighting a lot. At some point I decided to bring my mindfulness practice into our fights and that changed everything!
It was slow, to be sure. It took about 6 months before we stopped fighting, and can you imagine how powerful that was to go from daily fights to none?
Honestly, that was one of the things that made me realize just how powerful presence really is!
You can apply this same simple method to any difficult relatives you’re going to be with this holiday season. Hopefully, you don’t fight daily!
Here’s how: when Uncle Joe is saying whatever awful things he says, be really present with him. Instead of focusing on how he’s wrong and what you’re going to say in return, focus on what he’s saying. Really listen to him.
And notice your breathing at the same time.
This will help him feel heard, which is what he really wants anyway, will help you hear and understand him on a deeper level, and most important will help you stay calm. It may take a few sessions like this, and soon you’ll be able to listen and realize that what ever he’s saying says a lot more about him than what ever he’s talking about.
You’ll realize that you don’t need to take his ideas personally. You’ll see that they aren’t yours and you don’t need to be so reactive. Eventually, you might even be able to respond in a calm and rational way, which while may not help him totally, will be a lot better for you both than what you’ve likely been doing which is probably something like fighting with or ignoring him.
Try it out and see what you think and feel.
I just read this great article in Mindful Magazine about defining mindfulness. I think that they make some really great points including that mindfulness is the natural ability to be aware of where we are what we’re doing (and when we aren’t we tend to get anxious), that there many different ways to practice it, no belief system is required (nor negated) and that it brings out the best in everyone.
And like most people when they discuss mindfulness, I think that they miss a really cogent point that causes a ton of confusion: being in the moment does not mean you stop thinking about the past and future.
Oh contraire.
That is a logical mistake and an important one to correct. (Not that they make it directly, they just imply it and don’t address it.)
We keep hearing and saying, “Be in the moment. In the here and now. Don’t get lost in thought, thinking about the past and future, and lose touch with were you are in the moment.” This I agree with totally.
On the other had mindfulness doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t think about the past and future. We need to learn from the past and consciously create our futures. If we never did these things we’d be aimlessly moving though life, never improving our lives or evolving our selves.
Mindfulness isn’t about this. Mindfulness isn’t about giving up your ability to think or grow. It’s about doing these things with awareness. The conscious part is what’s important.
Being mindful means that when you think about the past and future you do it with awareness. You’re aware that you’re in the present, the here and now, thinking about another time. It means that you’re conscious about thinking about what happened and what could happen. Simply, you keep in mind the whole time, “I’m sitting here thinking this.”
This is an amazingly important point. And so many people misunderstand it that I’ve discussing it with practically every single client I’ve ever had.
I find this a weird disconnect. Why would the mis-belief that thinking is a problem be so widespread?
I imagine we don’t question it because most of us have a hard time with our thoughts and emotions. We want our busy minds to stop. We see them as the source of our problems, the obstacle to inner peace.
The issue here is that it’s not your thoughts and emotions that are the problem. The problem is that you get lost in them. You abandon yourself to them. And then you believe them.
The good news, my friend, is that they are not your problem. You don’t need to stop them, or calm them, or even make them go away. You just need to be aware of them. You need to be sufficiently conscious of them that you start to see/remember that you are not them.
This comes with mindfulness practice. As you practice being aware of yourself, of your thoughts and feelings and sensations, you realize little by little and giant leap by giant leap, that you are much bigger than they are.
This isn’t an esoteric idea or some kind of state or place that you have to achieve. This is who you already are. You’re already bigger than they are. You experience this naturally every time you become aware of yourself (example: notice that you’re sitting/standing there reading this and voila, you’re bigger than your body-mind). Simple, huh? Not rocket science.
The only difference between experiencing that as unimportant and experiencing that as evidence that you’re bigger than your thoughts is that you haven’t done it enough. The more you do it, especially being aware of yourself while you’re thinking, the more obvious this becomes.
And most importantly, you need to do it for yourself. You need to find out for yourself whether this is true or not. Definitely don’t believe me. Be the arbiter of your own reality.
Meditation is my power tool for self transformation. It’s the thing that I do that makes all of the other self transformation tools actually work!
Before it, I couldn’t see myself as clearly, which made changing things difficult. With meditation, I can see my patterns, when and why I’m doing them, and that’s invaluable for evolving them.
Meditation isn’t self-transformation in itself. It is self-observation. Self-realization. Self-knowing. That’s invaluable.
If I can see myself, I can change myself. If I cannot see myself, it’s much harder to even know that there’s anything that needs changing!
I’ve practice meditation since 2004 and the changes that it’s helped me make are so compelling that I continue to practice to this day.
Thinking about something else during your practice? Maybe you were lost in thought the whole time until your timer went off and reminded you you were supposed to be practicing? That totally happens to me sometimes! Like this whole week! Yikes!
One way to deal with this is to give your mind something else to focus on. That will help keep it interested in the practice you’re doing.
A big problem that most of us have is that our breath is totally boring! After a few seconds our mind goes, “Man! Where are problems to solve? The videos and movies to watch? What fun is this? I want something to do! I know! I’ll think about this…” and you’re off, lost in thought, totally oblivious to your breath.
Most of the time, I just tell myself (and you) to return to your breath. To come back to noticing your breath whenever you notice that you’re lost in thought. For many of us that’s when we complete the thought, solve the problem or finish the story. At that moment you can rejoice that suddenly you’re aware of yourself (the point of practicing mindfulness! Yay!).
And what happens if you’re so lost in thought that you spend the entire practice thinking about something else?! This whole week, I’ve been coming to at the end of my practice and realizing that I’ve been lost the entire time! Yikes!
What’s a meditator to do? After a whole week of this, I realized that I needed to change something! So I remembered a trick I used to use when I first started meditating. This worked really well for me then and it’s working well now, too.
Here’s what I do: I slightly shift my focus to give my mind something slightly new to do. It’s like having a new problem to solve. It works especially well if there’s something to count or quantify. Here are some examples.
If you’re focusing on your breath, change from say noticing the qualities of your breath (depth, speed, sensation, etc) to counting your breath. My mind goes, “Oh! You want me to count! Ok! This is something to do! Great!” You can go the other way too. If counting is boring you, change to noticing the qualities. Notice things like how deep or shallow you’re breathing. Or how fast or slow. Or what sensations you can feel. Or the sounds of breathing. Here’s a free guided breathing practice for noticing general qualities (vs counting).
Another example would be if you’re working with your eyes open, you can go from a specific focus, say on the candle in front of you, to soft eyes or noticing your whole field of vision (soften your gaze so that you’re not looking at anything in particular and notice everything in your peripheral vision). Or the other way round, going from soft to specific. You can follow a free guided meditation for having your eyes open here.
In the video I talk about changing up a sound practice if you’d like to try that (also free).
Of course, you can also plow through, don’t change your practice at all and know that at some point you will be able to focus again. Someday your mind will settle down and you will be able to focus on your breath during your practice.
In general that’s good advice, especially since the object is to learn to focus and tricking yourself into focusing will only work for so long or so well…
Ultimately you can’t use your mind to meditate. You want to use that larger part of yourself, that part that you naturally access when you’re noticing yourself. This part, when you’re observing, witnessing or noticing yourself, is “larger” than your mind, and that’s really what you want to access. Changing up your practice to help your mind focus is really just a way to get your mind to calm down a bit so that you can notice yourself.
If it helps you be less frustrated when you practice, then play with slightly changing your focus. Keep in mind that when you change your focus, you want to be aware of yourself focusing, à la, “I’m here counting my breath.” or “I’m here looking at this candle.” and you’ll be accessing that larger part of you. You’ll be observing or noticing yourself. Awesome. You’re mindful.
I hope that helps you! Now I just have to follow my own advice! It worked earlier this week, and then I just got excited about the problems I was solving and left my practice in the dust… Ah, the life of a meditator! Sometimes it’s easy and other times it’s fun to see what crazy things we get up to, hey?
Enjoy!
