Category Archives: Mindfulness

“We humans have lost the wisdom of genuinely resting and relaxing. We worry too much. We don’t allow our bodies to heal, and we don’t allow our minds and hearts to heal.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

It was during my third breaking point on Monday alone when I realized there would be no end to the breaking points. The idea of getting through one more obstacle in the hope that it would be the last one – I suddenly saw it as the folly it was, and in that instant the lifting began. We go through so many things without letting others know, especially those of us who aren’t accustomed to asking for help or admitting failure. And for those whom the world views as gliding through life so easy and effortlessly – well, those may very well be the ones who are closest to drowning. 

Stress and worry are the constant companions of adulthood, but there are those who have found a way of dealing with them without letting them weigh down or overwhelm their daily existence. These are the wise ones who have embraced the importance of recharging their batteries, of making time for relaxation and rest. They are the ones who have found how to release regret and anger and annoyance – to acknowledge and then genuinely set them free. They have found ways of play, of laughing at the absurdity of life, and how we as humans just pile more nonsense and silliness on top of everything until it’s one big mess. They’re the ones who seem to have it all figured out. 

“It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

As we near the warmer months, and the coming of summer, the seasons will soon turn to those of fun and enjoyment – the traditional time of vacations and relaxation. Summer eases all, with its lazy, hazy days of heat and humidity, when the mere act of walking from one room to another seems to take a Herculean effort. Summer is funny and wonderful that way, and fraught with lessons I’m still trying to master. I can’t wait to keep trying. 

“We will be more successful in all our endeavors if we can let go of the habit of running all the time, and take little pauses to relax and re-center ourselves. And we’ll also have a lot more joy in living.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

For the past 75 days, I’ve been reading and doing my best to try one meditation practice per day, from Matthew Sockolov’s ‘Practicing Mindfulness’, and while I admit that I didn’t fully execute each and every one, I did the majority, and added them to my daily meditation. Unlike some things in life, where excess may lead to harm, the more one meditates, the better one gets. 

Sockolov offers practical and easy meditation practices, and this book is good for anyone new to meditation. While most are designed for ten to fifteen minutes of focused practice, I found that a big-ask for the beginner. When I started out, I was at two minutes a day – for over four decades I’d been trained to occupy every single minute of the day with action or thought. That doesn’t go away the instant you decide to start meditating. I took it a couple of minutes at a time for a couple of weeks before I gradually increased – maybe an extra minute after a few days, then two extra minutes – until I began to be comfortable with the stillness and the silence. 

Many of the meditations that Sockolov describes can be whittled down to a few minutes for those still not quite comfortable with a longer practice. I found these a decent supplement to my daily 20 minutes, and they offer a helpful entry point for anyone looking to start simply, and for those looking to bring the practice into everyday life. 

Arriving to the dinner destination earlier than our time of reservation, I drove past the restaurant and turned off  the main road as the car behind me impatiently passed. Down a road hidden from the main drag by an outcropping of rocks and a thickly-grown forest of pine, I found a little space for the car. After parking there, I crossed over to the stream you see in the photos. I stepped carefully down a small but steep bank where the top points of daylilies were just jutting through a blanket of brown leaves. Ahead of me, the water moved, and I heard a few tiny waterfalls lend their music to the quiet afternoon. 

It was still light out, which was still somewhat of a new sensation at that hour, and I paused beside this stream. For all my superficial trappings, and for all my perceived glamour, I am most at home and at ease in a scene like this, when I am completely alone in some natural space. It brings me back to boyhood, when I would traipse through the forests near our house for hours, back when a kid could do that and no one would worry whether he was still alive. 

On this day, I stood still , watching and listening to the water rushing by me. It was a moment of reverence and honor. Any wooded patch cut through by a stream often carries a sense of hushed solemnity to it. It was also, as brief and fleeting as it may have been, a moment of meditation, and I realized it then and there. Taking in a deep breath and letting it slowly out, I felt a gratitude for being in such a space. Within that singular moment, everything was as it should be, and I understood that I would take that feeling with me – that it would be a gift of the forest, in the way the forest has always given me peace. 

When I began my mindfulness journey, I started with Thich Nhat Hanh’s ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’ and one of the first descriptions of the practice was found in the simple act of washing dishes. Granted, this was not a task in which I had any extensive practice or history, but over the past couple of years I’ve started washing the dishes I use when cooking. It’s all part of the process. ‘The Miracle of Mindfulness’ instructs on how to be present at each step, how to experience the sensation of  warm water and soap, the way the dishes feel, the way the sponge runs across their surface, the way the skin gradually wrinkles and softens. 

One of the main lessons of life is in how to fill the space of a day. Whether we realize it or not (and for many, many years I had no idea how powerful the pull to occupy one’s time could be – so intent was I in merely finding and then wasting free moments) much of a person’s daily goal is to simply fill our day with something of service. For many, myself most definitely included, that is service to self – but I’m not here to judge or condemn one sort of service in comparison to another. Comparison is still the thief of joy. 

Instead, I have begun to understand the human need to fill the mind, and often the body, with tasks and duties and things that merely take up space. Before I realized that such space might be better served in meditating or being mindful, I filled it with the usual stuff of fantasy and dreams, and all the daily bothers that comprise adulthood – worry and doubt and fear. As the decades went by, those stresses and worries became the normal part of a day, always there in the mind, always creeping into moments of joy and release. That meant I had to learn how to push the worry and concerns and stresses to the side, and the best way to make this happen is through mindfulness. Inhabiting the moment and the present space as fully and encompassing as possible. 

Which brings us back to the kitchen sink, where last we left off feeling the wrinkled skin of our fingers against the wet dishes, now piled on a towel and waiting to be dried. In that act, a fresh towel, slightly tattered but all the more soft from it, warms and dries the hands, then the round smooth curve of each plate, then the tricky interior of a coffee mug handle. Each piece is laid gently back in its place, as the breath steadies and slows, and the worries and thoughts that would otherwise occupy the mind drift away, replaced by the appreciation and realization of everything at hand. That clutter of the mind – the hoard of ill-thoughts and worrisome ideas – suddenly feels diminished.

It’s not a permanent fix, and soon those concerns come creeping back. Some of them will be genuine ones in need of addressing – a scheduled meeting, a load of laundry, a phone cal to one’s parents – and some will seem suddenly unnecessary. Mindfulness helps to sort them out. 

Does the week end tonight or tomorrow night? Or, in the words of Dame Maggie Smith’s Downton Dowager, “What is a weekend?” Regardless of when, precisely, it happens, let it happen easily and uneventfully, because in these last weeks of winter my mind and countenance are frazzled and fretful. Enter this hot cup of matcha, which has been my morning go-to these past few days, in an effort to jolt some inspiration, or at the very least the energy required to make it through the damn duration. When work and daily responsibilities heap worry upon wear, the best thing to do is retreat to your quiet place. 

The saving grace throughout this winter has been my meditation practice, which is back up to about 20 minutes per day, and I’ve insisted on doing it on a daily basis since the start of the year. After a couple of months, the differences are more and more profound, which is the whole point of meditating, and why it only gets better the longer one works at it. 

Does this mean the highlight of my Saturday night is a 20 minute meditation session? 

Absolutely. And I am in no way sorry that it should be so. 

Happy Saturday Night, everybody! Go crazy.

“My first big insight came when I realized that my reactions to these experiences were causing me more pain than the experience itself.” – Matthew Sockolov

Let’s begin this work week with a scene from the start of the recent weekend. Thinking back to a hopeful and exciting Friday morning on a Monday has usually been a source of annoyance and agitation. Withdrawal from relaxation and fun during a mundane start of the week has never been a favorite mindset. But lending such negative feelings to what is past and done takes away from the memory of good weekends, while also serving to depress and upset what could otherwise be a perfectly sunny Monday. 

And so it was this past Friday, when I woke to head out to Boston for the weekend, on which I decided to set a new intention. The day was sunny – and windy – and the living room was illuminated by the sun as well as its reflection off the snow, unmitigated by leafy canopies as the branches were bare. It made for the brightest this room gets – a lovely anomaly during what is typically a darker part of the year. As the wind raged outside, I sat down and lit a stick of Palo Santo, watching its flames almost disappear into the light, then studying the curling tendrils of smoke once the flame went out. 

The wind was almost thunderous in its power and might, churning and moaning like a restless ocean. We don’t get such wind, even in the winter, and it was a reminder of nature’s magnificence. Listening to the ebb and flow of its drone, knowing that what I was hearing was already muted and blunted, and the actual force much stronger were I to open the door, there was a strange sense of calm and peace. The sun’s strength undulates as well, with passing clouds moving swiftly across the sky, changing the light in the room in gentle waves. 

When a series of strong wind gusts rolls over the house, I hear the cracks and clicks of the trees, and the cracks and clicks of our home, all standing in brave defiance of the wind, in defiance of the winter, as if we could hold it off forever, as if we won’t one day be leveled by it all. But that doesn’t scare me, because there is no point in being scared of what may come. The best and surest way to get through life is to do it one moment at a time. On this morning, there is sun shining through the wind, there is the promise of a weekend away, and there is a meditation playing out with slow breaths in and out. 

“Mindfulness is simply being aware of what is happening right now without wishing it were different; enjoying the pleasant without holding on when it changes (which it will); being with the unpleasant without fearing it will always be this way (which it won’t).” – Matthew Sockolov

“I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape—the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn’t show.” ~ Andrew Wyeth

A standard winter scene – bare branches against a subdued blue sky – makes for an ideal pausing point for a Sunday meditation, or a few moments of mindfulness. Rather than clutter this space with words and my own take on mindfulness, I’m leaving it mostly empty and sparse, allowing for your own interpretation of the above quote, for your own story and thoughts to flow and be released. We are too afraid of quiet and an expanse of space. 

One of the things that prevents many people from meditating is their perceived inability to sit still and quiet their mind. It’s completely understandable, given the nature of this fast-paced world and how we have been trained to expect stimulation at all times. It’s not easy to turn off the mind, especially in the middle of the day. If it’s helpful to meditate first thing in the morning or last thing at night, that’s certainly a good plan. The other technique I’ve found when thoughts impede on my meditation is to focus on a series of images or ideas. In this case, a fall of snow. 

An apt idea, as some of us have had more than a brush with winter storms. So take the image of a snowstorm as it nears its end, and the last few snowflakes are falling to the ground. Or better yet, think of a day when there’s a brief snow squall, and then it stops, as if it hadn’t been snowing at all. In those last moments, picture the snow gradually clearing from the sky, the distracting pings of frozen water landing softly on the ground and leaving an airy stillness in their wake, a wide expanse of clarity and clearness. 

If you can, think of your thoughts the same way – they may flurry, they may fluster, they may rage – but eventually they should slow and subside, like the snowflakes. And if it doesn’t happen today, try again tomorrow. Every snowstorm comes to an end, and eventually even winter will limp away. Spring and summer will come again, and the snow will stop; the same can hold true for your worries and concerns. That’s when the beauty of meditation begins. 

We wait here and take in a deep breath – all the way in, expanding the stomach and the lungs and the chest, letting the breath push into every last available space before slowly letting it out again – and in the span of this breath we acknowledge the wonder of winter. Almost halfway through the last full month of the sleepy season, mid-February doesn’t always feel like spring is around the corner, but it’s actually not that far off. 

On this day, I find solace in my daily meditation, to which I’ve incorporated one of the activities in Mathew Sockolov’s somewhat-cumbersomely-titled ‘Practicing Mindfulness: 75 Essential Meditations to Reduce Stress, Improve Mental Health, and Find Peace in the Everyday‘. Currently I’m on #14: ‘Energizing the Mind’ – no comment from the peanut gallery, or any gallery for that matter. I’ve been doing one per day, so by the time I reach #75 we will be well into April, which should be a very happy place to be. 

Even in these socially-isolated times, it’s difficult for some of us to find the quiet in a day. Family obligations and care, work and living-space maintenance, and the mere machinations of an average day make true peace and calm feel like an unattainable state, but it’s not. It simply requires the effort to carve out the space of time for it. Designating ten to fifteen minutes somewhere in a day is not as tough as most of us pretend it is, and it is in this little quarter of an hour in which life can transform.

It didn’t happen on the first day that I meditated – and it didn’t happen on the tenth. I can’t even say it happened on the hundredth day, but on all the days in-between and since, that little sliver of calm grew into a more stable and contented frame of mind that I carried with me throughout the intervening times. That’s the real secret and power of meditation – the way it subtly raises the level and peace and calm that is in all the in-between moments – and those moments form the bulk of our lives. 

During the last hours of a winter storm, the snow slows and falls more delicately. The wind has subsided and the evening has arrived, and at this late hour I began my daily meditation. After going through my usual litany of meditation focuses and intentions, I opened my eyes and watched the snow fall, choosing to make the pretty scene part of the practice. In the same way I once sat outside in the summer and did my daily meditation by the pool, listening to the birds and the insects and gentle rustling of the leaves in a warm breeze, I made the winter snow part of this meditation.

It is a decidedly different feeling when meditating on a winter evening. That one world could look and feel so completely changed in just a few months is a remarkable wonder, yet as far away as summer felt, and as distant and dim were the echoes of its memories, the warm heart of it all still beat beneath the ice and snow. It was there in the candlelight, there in the hints of blue that the sky insisted on bleeding into the night. 

During the past two years of my meditation journey, I’ve been using an imperfect piece of rose quartz, found at a little gift shop beside the Red Lion Inn in the Berkshires. At first I wasn’t sure of it – it was off-center and assymetrical, and looked weirdly off-balance depending on how one viewed it – yet in my hand it felt at home, and so it was home where I brought it, embracing its imperfection, hoping some of that acceptance would rub off on myself. Through the ensuing two years, I held it in my hands for each of my daily meditations – by the end of each it was warm and seemed to glow with the energy and spirit of the calm that came by the end of every session. 

Last week, while holding this crystal in my hand, I noticed another imperfection in its surface, something I’d glossed over for these two years, which is odd for my critical nature. Also telling. It wasn’t perfection I was after when it came to meditation, and so my practice has always been forgiving and humble, something sorely needed when I first began meditating. By this point, I am open to acceptance. In a book I’m reading now one of the meditation practices involves focusing on what is bothering us, acknowledging it and giving it a moment, then accepting it, and finally letting it go. The practice also speaks to accepting what our body is telling us – whether in the breathing process, or whatever else the body whispers when in a state of meditation. 

Sometimes that arrives in a pain of the ankles, from sitting lotus-style on the floor. Sometimes it’s a knot in the shoulders or back from a day of work stress in an office chair. Sometimes it’s a sense of dizziness that borders on a headache. In each instance, the practice advises breathing into each little pain and then exhaling out and letting it go. If the pain or bother persists, and the focus veers from the breathing, one is supposed to focus again on the pain and what the body is saying, then shift back into deep breathing. 

As I felt the suddenly-slightly-ragged piece of rose quartz in my palm, I breathed in deeply, then slowly breathed out. Next, I listened to the body, and felt the stress-agitation in my shoulders and neck. Feeling the twinge of an ache there, I lowered my shoulders a bit, breathing deeply in and then slowly out, and somehow the pain lessened. Maybe it was the relaxation and the dropped shoulders, or maybe it was something deeper. The body and the mind work together always – perfectly imperfect. 

Over the years, I’ve had many moments of being misunderstood. It’s never bothered me much, as many of those misunderstandings lent an armor of protection to the way I was perceived. As such, I let them accumulate and become part of the person I wanted the world to see. Yet there were times when I was genuinely perceived as mean, either in my delivery, or in what I was actually saying and feeling, and I can’t pretend it was always a misunderstanding. Most of us have times when we let ourselves down, when we allow a bit of meanness and pettiness to creep into the best of intentions, when we wish we’d conveyed a thought or feeling in a kinder or less blunt manner, when we simply could have and should have been better but, whether from hurt or pain or sadness or exasperation, we chose a way that was less. I thought of those moments as I read this passage from ‘The Book of Hygge’ by Louisa Thomsen Brits:

“Like growing up with love, if we are fortunate enough to be exposed to hygge for long enough, it changes life. The spirit of hygge is spread by warm-heartedness and generosity. We can light a thousand candles, but the flame of hygge is easily extinguished by a mean spirit. If the concept of hygge exists outside the realm of our experience, that doesn’t mean it will always be unavailable. It only takes one match or a single kind gesture to illuminate the dark.” ~ Louisa Thomsen Brits

While most books slip in and out of my head these days without making much of an impression, this sentence struck me and has haunted me ever since reading it for the first time: We can light a thousand candles, but the flame of hygge is easily extinguished by a mean spirit.

The idea that I could have ever been that mean spirit, whether intended or unintended, is a deeply disturbing realization, but one that I need to confront, and one that will prove helpful in confronting. It reminds me of the humility and open-mindedness needed to continue on this journey. It reminds me that I’m still just a beginner when it comes to mindfulness and meditation. Mostly, it reminds me to forgive and to be kind – not only to others but to myself. 

And so, last Saturday night, I lit a tray of candles and read a bit more on meditation and mindfulness. I reached out to a few friends and make loose and tentative plans for the future, something we don’t do much anymore in the world of COVID, but something that feels good to do, with the caveat that anything can happen. Things to look forward to, even if some never come to fruition. It is a healthier frame of mind, and an indication that everything we have learned in the last two years has not been for naught. 

“The salient feature of hygge is the atmosphere of warm and relaxed enjoyment of the moment which it allows. While it is nurtured by thoughtfulness and mutual involvement, hygge is informal and unrestrained.” ~ Judith Friedman Hansen