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The Healing Power of AND

by | Apr 10, 2020 | Growing the Good, Resilience | 0 comments

If you are like me, you are on a roller coaster of feelings during this coronavirus time at home.  Sometimes, I momentarily forget about the virus while walking in nature or laughing with my kids, and then suddenly I remember once again. Hope, grief, sadness, joy and despair flicker in and out of my awareness.  I experience moments of awe at the way we are working together in community.  Other times I feel loneliness and worry about the physical and social isolation—both for myself and for others. 

During these challenging times, I remind myself again and again to create space for AND.  AND what? you might ask.  By AND, I mean allowing for both sadness and joy.  Loneliness and connection.  Despair and hope.  If we don’t create space for all of it, we run the risk of either anxiously clinging to positivity, or conversely, wallowing in despair.

Creating space for AND involves: A = Allowing the full range of emotions and becoming Aware of the present moment.  N = Nurturing—nurturing ourselves as we struggle, and nurturing a healthy mind that is also able to see what is good.  D = Discovering.  We can cultivate curiosity to move beyond our typical ways of responding and discover new and beautiful possibilities.  Allow, Nurture, and Discover (AND).

It’s not easy to open to all of our emotions.  Yoga, mindfulness, self-compassion and growing the good all help.  It also helps to journal and pick up the phone to call a friend to remember that we are not alone.  There are a lot of things that we cannot control in this situation, but practicing AND paves the way for a healthier emotional life and a more peaceful mind.

Creating Space for Grief

by | Mar 22, 2020 | Self-Compassion | 0 comments

When I learned that school had been canceled due to the coronavirus, I was more than a little shocked.  My default coping mode was to get busy and stay positive.  I also knew that I had to move my body and spend time in nature each day. 

Simultaneously, I became less diligent about my daily meditation practice.  Unconsciously, I think that I knew that if I sat still for long, grief and despair would catch up with me.  Anxiety mounted as I tried to stay busy, positive, and focused on service to others.

This past Saturday morning, I awoke at 5am, unable to fall back asleep.  I decided to spend the next couple of hours journaling, meditating, and doing mindful yoga.  The discomfort was immense.  I had a strong urge to get on my computer and start DOING SOMETHING.  But I disciplined myself to stay present until 7am.

An hour later while I was making breakfast for my children, I suddenly broke down sobbing.  I was crying because I felt so much empathy for all of the people struggling.  This situation is somewhat challenging for me, and I offered myself compassion for that.  Additionally, I am aware that there are many, many others who are suffering in big and small ways: people who are living alone and completely isolated from human touch, people who don’t have enough savings to cover their bills, people that might not have enough money to buy food, and people who are dying from this virus. 

My children came into the kitchen to check on me, and I told them that I was crying because this situation is sad.  It is really, really sad.  The three of us hugged one another and mourned together in the kitchen for a period of time.   I cried for a bit more, and then I went back to making pancakes.  I noticed that I felt markedly less anxious after my tears. 

During this pandemic, I am reminded that in addition to practicing gratitude, noticing what is good and being of service to others, we also need to create space to acknowledge and hold ourselves while we grieve.  This situation is incredibly sad, and it is healthy and natural to mourn during these times of collective pain and social distancing.  We can remember that we are not alone in our distress.  We can both grieve and rise together.

While I Lie Awake at Night

by | Feb 18, 2020 | Mindfulness, Self-Compassion | 0 comments

The other night I lay in bed, unable to fall asleep.  I was feeling sadness about something that had happened earlier in the day, and I offered myself a little compassion for the difficulty.  I then went through my usual repertoire of things I do when I lay in bed: I thought about three good things that had happened that day, and then I did the 61 points meditation that so often lulls me to sleep.

I was still awake.  So, I repeated the sequence: three more “good things” and another round of 61 points.

Still awake.  Hmmm….  What now?  I wondered to myself.  Should I get up and do some mindful yoga?  Or stay in bed?  Then it flashed into my mind that I could offer myself kind wishes.  I felt compassion for my little sleepless self, and I began to offer myself kind phrases:  May I be safe.  May I be happy.  May I be healthy.  May I live with ease.  I repeated these phrases slowly and kindly in my mind, and it felt good.  Like an extra warm blanket covering me while I lay awake in bed.

At some point my mind dazed off, and eventually I fell asleep.  I feel so grateful for my self-compassion tools (and mindfulness and gratitude practices) that offer me comfort when I encounter the inevitable challenges of daily (and nightly) life.

Note: I have guided audios of 61 points and loving kindness/ kind wishes meditations available if you’re curious to try (maybe next time you can’t sleep). 

Mindfulness Is Not About Being Calm

by | Mar 14, 2018 | Mindfulness | 0 comments

I recently began teaching a mindfulness curriculum to a group of middle school students in a Milwaukee Public School.  Before I even began teaching, one of the middle school teachers said to me, “Mindfulness doesn’t work.”

Hmmm…..I thought.  Mindfulness is about intentionally being present in the present moment in a non-judgmental way.  To say that mindfulness doesn’t work is like saying, “The present moment doesn’t work.”  The statement, “The present moment doesn’t work,” doesn’t make any sense because the present moment isn’t supposed to “do” anything.  The present moment is simply the present moment.

I shared this with my students and inquired about what it is that they thought that mindfulness was supposed to “do.”  They shared with me that they had been told that mindfulness was supposed to make them calm, and they thought that using mindfulness was not going to “work” to make them calm. 

“Mindfulness is not about being calm,” I shared with my students. “Mindfulness is about being present.”  I then shared with my students a story about how I had practiced mindfulness just before teaching.  I had felt nervous that morning because I had never taught this particular group of students, and instead  of trying to make my anxiety “go away” (which would likely have compounded my anxiety), I turned toward it.  I said to myself, “I’m feeling anxious,” and I reminded myself that it is common to feel anxious before teaching a new group of students.  I brought my attention inside my body and noticed how it felt hot and tight in my neck and shoulders, and there was a buzzy sort of feeling  that radiated through my entire body.  I intentionally brought my attention into the soles of my feet to help myself feel grounded, and I noticed my breathing.  Because I noticed that my body and my breath were indicative of a “fight or flight” response, I also chose to intentionally slow down my breathing.  Regulating the breath is not a mindfulness strategy, but my mindfulness practice of observing the anxiety response in my body helped me to make the skillful choice of intentionally slowing down my breath.

The idea that mindfulness is about being calm is one that I often hear propagated by well-meaning parents, teachers in schools, and even by mindfulness instructors themselves.  I think that the reason that people market mindfulness as a “strategy” to stay calm is because calm is often a by-product of practicing mindfulness.  Research is clear that the long-term effects of practicing mindfulness include the ability to regulate and maintain a sense of evenness or calm in the face of stressful circumstances and emotions.  However, if we practice mindfulness as a strategy to make a difficult emotion or thought go away, we may end up feeling more anxious because resisting an experience often causes a secondary wave of anxiety.  If we instead embrace difficult emotions with a compassionate and mindful awareness, even if the difficult feelings temporarily increase, our long-term trajectory is toward equanimity–a sense of evenness amidst the ups and downs of life.

Even though practicing mindfulness is not about producing a state of calm in the moment, practicing mindfulness over time can help us to stay present and grounded amidst the continual ups and downs of this human experience.  This evenness in the face of difficult experiences in turn sets the stage for us to make skillful choices that can help us to more fully enjoy this journey of life.

How Self-Compassion Saved My Daughter…and Me

by | Oct 10, 2017 | Jamie Lynn's Journey, Parenting, Self-Compassion, Sensitive Children | 3 comments

My older daughter Maya was born sensitive, curious, and creative.   As Maya grew, I learned that all of her five senses were extra sensitive.  For her sounds were louder, smells and tastes more acute, she had a strong draw to everything tactile, and she saw  “light shows” that made artificial lighting both intriguing and exhausting.  Maya’s overstimulated nervous system made it difficult for her to regulate her emotions, and full out meltdowns were a common occurrence.  When Maya was given free time, her curiosity and creativity allowed her to engage herself in a task for hours.  At the same time, transitions and rote tasks were incredibly challenging for her because they pulled her away from the mesmerizing present moment. 

When Maya became preschool age, I felt challenged as to how to both support her curiosity and creativity as well as facilitate her acquisition of simple life skills and lead her to accept redirection.  Maya’s intense wonder and curiosity made walking from her preschool to the car parked in front of the building a half-hour endeavor (with periodic meltdowns), and brushing her teeth a task that required many, many redirections.  

I practiced mindfulness to stay calm.  I tried making tasks and transitions playful.  And I tried “love and logic” to see if consequences would help her to acquire a bit of self-discipline.  As much as I tried to be neutral or compassionate when Maya failed to complete a “simple” task, Maya picked up on my subtle signs of frustration.  Over time she began to develop the low self-esteem that comes from knowing that you are not living up to the standards of the adult who you so desperately want to please.  She began to push herself to try to complete a task (like hanging up her jacket) with intense effort and self-criticism.  She began to be ashamed of her curious, creative, sensitive, beautiful self.

To have my daughter begin to lose her sense of self-worth was my worst nightmare, and  I began to see a helping professional in the hopes that I could learn to be more patient and less reactive to Maya’s distractibility and frequent tantrums.  The professional who I worked with suggested that I needed more self-compassion.  She suggested that I was “too hard on myself.”  Hmmmm……

I read a little bit about self-compassion, and then I signed up for a Mindful Self-Compassion training course.  I learned how to truly “be there” for myself in my difficult moments.  I learned how to let go of shame about my imperfections because I began to  understand deeply that we all have imperfections.  I began to ask myself how I could be more kind to myself.  I had always been good at “self-care,” but I began to practice self-kindness.  And a remarkable thing began to happen, as I began to apply self-compassion to myself, I naturally began to help Maya to acquire  self-compassion as well.

As I learned how to walk myself through the voice of shame into the sunlight of compassion, I was increasingly able to walk Maya through the voice of shame into the sunlight of compassion.  As I learned how to embrace my own imperfections, I became able to help Maya to embrace her imperfections.  As I grew in self-love and self-appreciation, I helped Maya to grow self-love and self-appreciation.  And my daughter and I both began to thrive.

Self-compassion proved to be the missing ingredient to helping Maya learn to apply self-discipline with kindness.  She can now acknowledge that because of her intense curiosity and creativity, performing a rote task can be incredibly challenging for her.  And she has been increasingly able to use her strengths to make a game out of routine tasks.  Self-compassion is not so much a technique as it is a way of being.  A way of being with ourselves that naturally transfers to those we love.  Learning to practice self-compassion on myself was the best gift I could ever have given my daughter.  It saved her from a voice of shame and self-criticism, and it gifted her with an appreciation for her unique and beautiful self.