March 5th, 2016
My husband gave me a gift card for Indigo books on Valentine's Day. I really want to be a more focused, grounded, mindful person so when I visited the Indigo store in Barrhaven, I was searching for a book on mindfulness. Some of you may be thinking, you don't need a book about mindfulness, just sit down, be quiet and listen to your breath. This is true but my brain is more receptive to information presented in books. I absorb the information and then I am able to apply it. So, I got a book.
Happiness the Mindful Way is a very thorough book. I chose it because, when I looked at the Table of Contents, I knew I would learn something new.
The book teaches the basics of mindfulness. You learn to switch from doing (which we do most of the time in our race to get everything crossed off our "to-do" lists) to being (as in present in this moment). Ken Verni talks about the importance of acknowledging our thoughts then learning to sweep them away with an imaginary broom. For children, he suggests imagining that they are cats watching a mouse hole, each thought that pops up is a mouse and must be swatted. I like that metaphor.
Next, he turns to emotions and explains that we can notice the emotion and allow it to pass through us without identifying with it. We accept it with compassion. He provides a variety of ways to deal with stress, recognizing triggers and patterns. He also examines our concept of happiness and warns us that we often define our happiness as achieving some fantasy that we project into the future. This prevents us from recognizing happiness in our current life.
Then we learned a variety of mindfulness meditation techniques from focusing on the breath, concentrating on an object, noticing sensations with our five senses, scanning our body, walking meditation, becoming a sturdy mountain and, my new favorite, loving kindness meditation.
I just had a very busy week, preparing for a workshop with 25 teenagers while translation a newsletter for the Canadian Art Therapy Association. I was having issues with technology. You may notice typos as I have been unable to switch my computer back to English. I was very stressed. I tried getting five minutes of mindful breathing into the start of my day and focusing on gratitude through my Gratitude Jar which I started in January. However, the most helpful thing I did was try Loving Kindness meditation.
You start by sitting comfortably and focusing on your breath then you think to yourself: "May I experience loving kindness for myself. May I enjoy happiness, health and peace". That's it, you just sit with these two sentences in your mind and breathe. I felt so much more positive and at peace. The goal is to then entend this wish to others starting with people you love the most, then acquaintances and finally, people you do not like. I used it when my husband was behaving in a way I did not understand. I sent him love and my feelings eased up. Can you imagine how much better our world would be (or, on a smaller scale, our community) if everyone practised this meditation on a daily basis?
Here are the most helpful tips I learned from this book:
You can be mindful anywhere (sitting in a chair, taking your shower, driving somewhere)
Intruding thoughts and strong emotions should not be repressed, embrace them and let them go
Send love to yourself as often as you can, it makes you a better person, more compassionate
Send love to others, including people you don't like, it releases you from the energy that bonds you to them.
Anne Walsh
www.artnsoul@ripnet.com
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