Category Archives: Mindfulness

My therapist recently indicated that in the last two years I’ve checked off most of the major boxes for a mid-life crisis, starting with the death of a parent. Since I first started seeing her about five years ago when I went through what may now have to be called my first mid-life crisis, I did balk and complain that I’d already done that. She laughed a bit, then said I was able to handle one better now, and in a moment of humble-bragging, I had to acknowledge that she is correct. 

While the fade-to-black theme of this fall has taken dark root here, I’m actually feeling ok. And, more strikingly, I’d categorize my present state of mind and existence as less a mid-life crisis and more of a mid-life awakening. That’s not something I thought possible five years ago, but it feels genuine and true now.

I’ve been maintaining my daily meditations, working on a stable base of mindfulness and taking each moment and whatever challenge that arises one thing at a time. Breaking life down into manageable minutes rather than a long pre-planned onslaught of months and years ahead. I’ve wasted far too many years pre-planning, overthinking, and preparing for scenarios that may or may not ever come to fruition.

I’ve also learned to speak my mind and let things out, even when they’re difficult to say, and difficult for others to hear. There are boundaries that I’ve set as well, and ways that I’ve started to distance myself from those who have somehow only ended up hurting me no matter how much I have tried to get closer to them. I find sanctuary in my home, with my husband, and the visits of friends, and I forge each day with the intention of being mindful. 

It’s a different sort of life, even from what I could have imagined five years ago, and a better one in many ways. Slowly, I am learning. Slowly, I am making a place for peace. Slowly… 

Credit the impending arrival of the full Hunter’s Moon, or just my own dwindling sanity, I spent a day at the office wherein I forgot my belt, and was without cologne or contacts thanks to some pesky allergies. After almost getting stuck on an elevator on my way out of the building (we bolted and then walked the remaining flights when we couldn’t get down past the fourth floor) I gratefully collapsed on the floor when I got home and began my daily meditation.

A literal grounding is the ideal way to start meditating these days. I lower my body to the floor, stretching out my legs and arms and letting all of me sink into the ground. There’s something very powerful about grounding yourself like that, and letting gravity exert its full effect on your entire body. It levels everything out for a moment. It also reminds me how one day we will all become part of the earth again, no matter how we choose to exit the place. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you know the routine. There’s a peace in that if you allow the thought to fully expand. 

When I look back at day planners and calendars from my younger years (not usually a wise way of passing the time) I marvel at how much I used to do in a single day. Waking early for breakfast before class, finishing a reading due just before the course started, three or four classes in a row, rushing to a commuter rail into Boston to work a retail shift from 5 to 9 PM, scarfing down dinner amid some more reading for school, trying to hammer out homework on the commuter rail back to campus at 10:40 PM, then showering and trying to finish more schoolwork – it makes my head spin. 

The idea that some nights I would skip the 10:40 PM commuter rail and wait for a 12:30 AM train just to have a couple more hours in Boston boggles my mind. If I tried that today I’d be dead.

Contrasted with my days now, that life of busy business feels far away, and largely foolish. What really came of such busyness and all the rushing around? Graduation from Brandeis? Big deal. A retail job I could hold down and do well? Bigger deal. A day in which every hour and minute was filled with being busy for the sake of being busy? Biggest fucking deal of all. 

These days I find more value and worth in simply taking a quiet day and mindfully meandering through it – a walk in the garden, a spell of reading on the couch, a bit of writing while sipping a cup of hot tea. I didn’t realize then how much being busy was simply filling a void that could have better been spent meditating or working on calming the runaway train of thoughts that once barreled through my mind. It still chugs along at varying speeds, but I’m better at enjoying the ride rather than worrying about whether it’s going to fly off the rails. And perhaps that’s just me getting older and a little wiser. 

It’s a lifestyle change that has made me more calm. It feels strange – because all that running around and going non-stop was always in the purpose of finding contentment. That peace was within me the whole time – I simply hadn’t paused to find it, and hear it, and truly listen to it. 

Having meditated daily for several years now, I find myself sinking into the sort of lazy going-through-the-motions rut that any daily activity often ends up eliciting. Right now, my meditations are fifteen minutes long, but it’s not a solid fifteen minutes. I take my time to begin – pausing at the front door and looking outside, sometimes stepping out and sitting on the front step if the weather is nice. Trying to inhale and savor the scent of summer – or spring or fall if that’s where we are – I begin my deeper breathing. (Even in winter, a moment outside in the fresh air can tip the day into something more hopeful than what it might have been in the moment before.) 

From there, I return inside and light the tip of a stick of Palo Santo, ringing the Tibetan singing bowl I found in Maine. Sinking into the deep breathing fully, I close my eyes and begin the meditation in earnest. Sometimes the mind wanders, refusing to be brought into the focus of that sought-after blank space. Sometimes the mind calms itself, pushing thoughts away like a room slowly emptying and simultaneously expanding, the walls and floor becoming whiter and blanker until there is just the breath and the space and the stillness. 

Lately, I’ve been pushing my meditations closer to the end of the day in an effort to ease into slumber, instead of doing them as soon as the work day was done. There are benefits to both, though in the summer it’s best to get all the outside work done during the daylight hours, saving the calmer tasks like meditation for darkness. We strike the summer when it’s hot – and summer is always too short. 

Meditation is sometimes like sleep – either restful and impactful or restless and uninspiring. To make the most of it, I’m going to return to the focused work with which I began this meditation journey. It’s all within grasp, and I’m likely going to need it in the next few weeks as the anniversary of Dad’s final decline and passing arrives. 

The bare reddish branches of our Japanese maple tree crackled and dripped with ice while the snow changed to sleet and freezing rain. A pretty sight, it was also disheartening, coming as it does at the point where we have already, in mind, heart, and calendar days, moved into spring. Not wholly unexpected or undeserved, our mild winters tend to make up for their lack of early zeal with an extended and drawn-out few weeks of wintry nonsense. 

There is no rushing what nature is going to do. Keeping this in mind, and accepting it sooner rather than later, is a key component of one’s daily peace, and a helpful lesson for life in general; there will aways be things and events and people who are beyond our control or influence. These things don’t know or care whether you may be affected or bothered by their actions, and they never will be. Giving oneself over to this bit of powerlessness is part of growing up. It’s also a part of being at peace as a grown-up. 

Some music then, for rumination and contemplation. Sit with me for a moment while it plays. It’s called ‘Spring Snow’ because being literal is usually the easiest course to take.

Even the sturdiest branches, as bare and light of leaf as they are right now, bend and droop beneath the weight of the ice. Looking as forlorn as some slow-moving funeral procession, the branches of dogwoods and grasses gently sway in their mournful stance, waiting for the hug of spring to offer comfort – though none is to be had on this frigid day. The temperature is moving in the wrong direction, and so they shudder, still unable to shirk off the ice on their backs. 

Whenever I want to rush ahead, especially in the first days of spring, the universe has ways of forcing a pause, and rather than finding frustration or antibusiness here, I find a welcome pocket of time in which to slow down, to let the day crawl for a bit. Rushing through life is no way to live; you simply miss too much.

Apparently taking three days off from work means hundreds of e-mails and a catch-up period of a full week, as I’m still in the midst of digging out from the avalanche of last week, but it was all worth it for this. Now that most of us are returning to work and school, and the endless doldrums of winter spread out expansively before us, it’s a good time to reconnect with things that bring us calm and clarity. For me, that’s meditation. 

The great Betty Buckley introduced me to the writings and teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh several years ago, and since then I’ve been an avid disciple, devouring his books and doing my best to incorporate his meditative methods into my own life. It has helped immensely, and on dour Tuesday mornings in the middle of January, I lean gratefully into being more mindful, less consumed by what may or may not happen, and wholly intent on being as present as possible. 

Another way of looking at this is in the words of one of my favorite former retail managers, who often said this to me whenever I started spinning out of control: “Calm the fuck down, shit will get done.”

If ever there was a month ripe and receptive to meditation, it is this one. January arrives and the best way of dealing with the post-holiday blues is to clean house and dive deeply into a meditation practice. Personally, I find it much easier to sit in still and quiet while the outside window reveals the gray and brown dreary landscape of winter as opposed to the vibrant verdant expanse of spring and summer. And so I sit, lotus-style, once a day, for about twenty minutes, slowing my breathing and entering a state of mindfulness. 

My meditations most often occur after work, when I’m home, and the day begins to cross into the night. I like being in a meditative state when such darkness descends – it makes it easier to bear. There’s also something calming about it, the way the sky slowly and then quickly drains of its light and any color it might have conjured during the day. As the room dims, the candle becomes the central focus point, flickering its light and enveloping the surroundings with a gentle sense of warmth. It all conspires to further the meditative mode. 

All such atmospheric conditions aside, it is not the setting or the scene that matters, as my eyes remain gently closed for most of my meditation. It is, first and foremost, the breathing that counts. Then it is the state of releasing my thoughts and making contact with the mindfulness that clues me into the present moment in heightened form. At the same time, I feel as though I have been taken out of the trappings of the daily grind, transported to a plane of peace and stillness, blessedly relieved of the worldly concerns of a day. It is here where the magic of meditation happens for me. 

Accessing this space of blankness, where the mind has allowed all its worrisome thoughts – good and bad and everything in-between – to be recognized and then released, is the key to how meditation helps me beyond that particular moment. Inhabiting that mindful and yet beautifully empty place allows my mind and body to feel a sense of peace that it never gets to feel. It’s like the most exquisite, and healthy, drug trip, without any of the negative effects. Once I began to feel such release, I understood it was possible to access it at almost any time through being mindful. And so my practice extends beyond the twenty minutes, into the days and nights of a January where everything else feels dismal and depressing. 

It’s a method of making it through the winter.

When the calendar turns to the most dour days of November, when the leaves have just been ripped from the trees, and that first gray barren visage reveals itself, stark and brutal and bare, the only place I’ve found to properly work as an escape is not some far-away tropical land, but the dim living room where I sit down for a daily meditation. 

Lit by a candle, which in turn illuminates the curling smoke from a Palo Santo stick, the darkness of November, and all of its absent, fallen leaves, pulls back from this little circle of respite. At the dourest hours of the year, when the sudden onslaught of the winter to come is standing just ahead of us – immovable, majestic, daunting, and mad – I breathe slowly in, and even more slowly out, and the breathing that has sustained me through the day now works to calm and still me. It is the magical movement of meditation, when the worries of the mind shift, with practice and patience into a realm of blank peace. Thoughts that once raced now walk slowly by, pausing to genuflect with acknowledgement, then going on their way, until the line of thoughts has dwindled to barely a trickle, and at last, to none at all – simple, sublime, and entirely full emptiness. 

Yesterday was a day in which the only thing to which I looked forward was my daily meditation. Maybe it was the barrage of non-stop office antics and interruptions, and the fact that I didn’t get out for lunch. (Whenever I fail to take a break at lunch, the day feels especially weighty.) Maybe it was seeing my Uncle for the first time in decades, and the way he so incredibly brought my Dad back to life in physical form, with the very same gestures and inflections and laughter. Maybe it was my Dad’s name being read at the mass for All Souls Day. Maybe it was just the heaviness of fall, and the chill that lingered in the air despite the sun. 

Whatever the reason or reasons, I eagerly anticipated my twenty-minute meditation. Gently striking the edge of a Tibetan singing bowl, and lighting a candle in this beautiful candle-holder made by our dear friend Eileen, I sat down on the floor and felt grounded in a way that only meditation provides these days. As the outside world burned, and oak leaves spun in gentle spirals down to the earth, I began the long and deep inhalations and exhalations that constituted the physical aspect of my meditation. My eyes closed, and in that darkness I felt the gradual clearing of thoughts. They traveled across my mind at first like they always do, but soon they dissipated. Practice helps that happen faster and faster, and within a few minutes I can usually find the plane of peace that is the basic goal of any meditation. 

On this day it was linked with a general feeling of sadness that’s been plaguing me as the days turn darker. I’ve been trying to embrace that sadness, to feel it as a proper and ultimately healthy way of grieving. I miss my Dad still. And always. I understand it won’t go away, and for the most part I don’t want it to; I am learning to be ok with that. 

Meditation has proven to be a saving grace in my life, and I somehow manage to do it every day, but it’s not always easy. Lately I’ve had my own struggles in keeping focused, and not allowing troublesome thoughts and worries to surface during my twenty-minute sessions. It’s been a couple of months of agitation and annoyance with the world, and that has seeped into my meditation – a combination of grief and healing and the rushed passing of time that has resulted in general prickliness, and a vague, troubling sense that I’m no longer the best company. My heart hurts a bit too much to really care, which is another sort of sadness altogether, and so I turn back inward, back to the simplicity of the practice. 

As evening descends, sooner and earlier than it ever did in the summer, I find myself sitting lotus-style in the dim living room, the glow of a solitary candle the only light as the sky deepens from blue to a darker shade of the deepest ocean. I go through my usual focal points of meditation, mostly about family, and then, where I would usually start letting my mind wander a bit, I returned to the way I began meditating about four years ago, with a basic counting of numbers that went along with the breathing.

Inhaling slowly, I would focus on the breath, thinking to myself ‘Breathing in one,’ then on a slower exhalation thinking ‘Breathing out one’. On the next inhalation, I would think ‘Breathing in two’, then ‘Breathing out two’. At this point in my practice, my inhalations are about twelve seconds long, and the exhalations are about twenty seconds. That’s about two full breathes per minute, which is why a twenty-minute meditation seems to move along pretty quickly, and I don’t have to count that high before it’s done. That’s a good length to completely calm the brain, and on this day it works. The worries about my niece and nephew not returning my texts, the concern about getting my Mom to schedule her next doctor’s exam, the stress and sadness of finding my own way through grief – they all somehow fall away as the minutes tick by, and the breathing steadies.

The mind is clear by the time I’m on the tenth inhalation or so, a reminder that it’s still possible to achieve that calm and stillness. A reminder that I can still find that quiet. 

“If we let the suffering come up and take over our mind, we can quickly be overwhelmed by it. So, we invite another energy to come up at the same time, the energy of mindfulness. 

With the energy of mindfulness, we can recognize our pain and embrace it tenderly like e another whose baby is crying. When a baby cries, the mother stops everything she is doing and holds the baby tenderly in her arms. The energy of the mother will penetrate into the baby and the baby will feel relief. 

The function of mindfulness is, first, to recognize the suffering that is there and then to take care of the suffering by identifying and embracing it. It is important that we are able to name what we are feeling, to identify what is making us suffer so that transformation, peace, and joy can be possible. 

We can embrace our sorrow and pain, our anger and fear, with the energy of mindfulness, we’ll be able to recognize the roots of our suffering. And we’ll be able to recognize the suffering in the people we love as well.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

My meditation has, well, had, as one of its main components, a list of my family members and their various health issues and aspects on which I would focus for each session. When Dad died, I no longer had a need to go through his health, his vital organs, his mental fortitude, and all the other topics on which I spent one lengthy inhale and its lengthier exhale for each. And so I shifted. ‘Breathing in, I feel that I am alive. Breathing out, I feel that my Dad is alive within me.‘ About ten of these breaths took the place of all his health issues I used to focus on, and my meditation continued daily, providing a space and refuge in which I still felt the presence of my Dad near me. 

These daily meditations helped ground my grief, forming a continuation of something I did when Dad was alive, proof that his transition out of his physical shell was merely that – a transition rather than an end. He stays with me through my meditations now, a comforting presence that eases the sadness of not having him be here in person. It’s ok to feel that sadness – it’s all still rather raw – and I notice it when I lash out at silly insignificant problems and set-backs. At those times, I have to remind myself to breathe again, to slow down and accept the sadness and loss, and then to keep breathing. 

It doesn’t always work, but the periods of frustration and anger grow smaller, the flashes of rage more subdued and manageable, and slowly a longer arc of healing reveals itself. 

“Mindfulness can heal us and transform our grief and sorrow. It is the energy that helps us know what is happening in the present moment, within us and around us. It is possible to change our life with the practice of mindful breathing, sitting, and walking. If we can mange to be mindful while doing these basic things, then we’ll more easily be able to handle our painful feelings and emotions when they arise.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh