Mindfulness and Meditation: Try Me!

Musings on Mindfulness and Meditation 

I think a lot.  I analyze why I’m thinking what I’m thinking.  As one friend astutely offered, my thinking process is systemic.  Lucky me!

At times I convinced myself that constant thinking was powerful – a sign of high intellect, a defense mechanism should anyone question me or present an idea that warranted analysis. My thinking was a means for insight, the preferred way to innovate and produce, and the way to get ahead.  Other times, well, most of the time, this thinking was also depleting, restrictive, judgment laden, and suffocating.

Recognizing the burden of my thoughts, I considered meditation.  But I resisted what I understood to be traditional meditation.  Sit, clear the mind, let go of thoughts, release negative feelings, and "be" for a really long time and wait for an epiphany.  Sit for a long time?  Clear the mind?  Release feelings?  Way too hard.  I was bound to fail. 

Gratefully I’ve discovered incredible friends and books and experiences that have revealed for me an easier way.  And it has been transformative.   

Once I got over the resistance and started meditating I've found that I’m a lot easier on myself.  I’m a lot easier on other people.  I’m a lot more comfortable with feeling my feelings, whatever they are and whenever they are.  I’m a lot nicer and calmer as a wife.  I’m a lot nicer and calmer as a mother.  I’m hopeful I’m a better friend.  Sure, I make mistakes, and mistakes will continue to happen, whether I acknowledge them or not.  Mindfulness and meditation have helped free me in so many ways, I'm compelled to share.

Mirror Neurons

Have you heard about mirror neurons?  They are amazing. You know that time after you had a massage and you felt physically so good about yourself and about life, and then you came home and your husband and children were excited to see you, and everybody started feeling super duper?  Or that time when you were frustrated with your husband, but you pretended to suppress those feelings and have an objective conversation about him helping with the dishes, and then he got defensive and the conversation blew up?  Turns out we pick up on each other’s emotions, feelings and intentions.  Neurologically, we mirror each other.  It’s one of those scientific findings that shouldn’t be so surprising but is affirming nonetheless.  In The Whole Brain Child, Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson write: “At the most complex level, mirror neurons help us understand the nature of culture and how our shared behaviors bind us together, child to parent, friend to friend, and eventually spouse to spouse.” They go on to state: “Have you noticed that when you’re nervous or stressed out, your kids will often be that way too?  Scientists call this “emotional contagion.”  The internal states of others – from joy and playfulness to sadness and fear – directly affect our own state of mind.  We soak other people into our own inner world.” 

Takeaways: My brain state is powerful and it can affect others.  I am responsible for myself, and I get to choose how I feel and how I come into contact with others.   Why not choose an optimal state of mind when interacting with those I love?  Moreover, and sometimes even harder, if those I love come to me in a less than optimal state (angry, anxious, sad), I can see it for what it is, and (through mindfulness), I can make a commitment to find a calm and happy place for me, ideally helping to shift their less than optimal state……. simply by finding my inner peace. 

Finding Inner Peace

Okay, finding inner peace is not always easy but it is sometimes easy, and we can build from sometimes.  We live in a world with lots of stimuli and lots of less than optimal stuff coming at us from varied directions.  Mindfulness and meditation can help, and it doesn’t have to be what I initially understood it to be – long periods of stillness, release of all thoughts and feelings, and foreign mantras.  If you are cool with all of that, that’s truly fantastic.  Go for it!  For me, I’ve found peace and insight in minute increments, in paying attention to others and myself more intently, in being present when I walk and talk, and in acknowledging my feelings and thoughts and distractions.  I’m learning to press the pause button and make some decisions, in that pause space, about what I do with all that stimuli.  In Search Inside Yourself, by Google champ Chade-Meng Tan, he draws from emotional intelligence and mindfulness research (Daniel Goleman and Jon Kabat-Zinn), and shares some of the following about self-regulation: “Self-regulation isn’t about denying or repressing true feelings.  Feelings carry valuable information, so if you deny or repress them, you lose that information….self-regulation is not about never having certain emotions.  It is about becoming very skillful with them.”

Practicing

Because I keep gabbing to my friends about my mindfulness and meditation, some have asked me how to do it.  Many of them carry the same notion I did initially -- that being at peace has to be intense, hard work, prescribed in some certain way.  It doesn’t.  It takes practice, but it doesn’t have to be hard.  I don’t believe there is a wrong way to be mindful or meditate if you are coming to it with good intention and an open heart.  What’s great about 2016 is that there are a lot of people and places playing with mindfulness and meditation.  It’s no longer relegated to an alternative crowd meeting atop a mountain.  Schools and corporations are adopting mindfulness practices too. 

You can follow the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute on Facebook or Linked In for resources, conferences, and tips.  Oprah and the Chopra Center offer a lot of guided meditation online. 

If you’re in this area of New Jersey, Mary Lea Crawley offers classes on mindfulness for teachers, parents, and children (See https://mindfulkidsnj.com/ ) and my friend Jennifer Church offers varied meditation opportunities too (See www.attunein.com ).  If you want to go deeper to learn even more about energy and the mind and begin to play with and transmute emotions and thoughts in ways that will empower you and support those around you, check out Suzy Meszoly at https://www.energyhealingschoolny.com/.

Hearing from you and building a community

I’m interested to hear how you might be practicing mindfulness and meditation, so please comment here, via Google +, or email me offline. 

I've seen mindfulness benefit our daughter, and I've seen it assist children with special needs stay more in the present moment than in the past, and I've seen it help many different kinds of kids worry less about the future.  Have you seen it positively impact your children?

For me, before I could get to a stronger place of practice, I needed help from others to address some of my personal hang-ups.  Janelle Hoyland http://www.janellehoyland.com/ and Jennifer Louziotis (Spiritual Happy Hour Radio on Facebook) were instrumental in this process, and I’m eternally grateful to them both. Don't hesitate to find your people on your quest for inner peace~

Attachment Parenting.  Free Range Parenting.  Ferber Method.  No Cry Sleep Solution. Happiest Baby On the Block.  Dr. Sears.  Vaccination wars.  Pediatrician approved versus parent approved versus grandparent approved methods for feeding, sleeping, disciplining, bonding, and separation.  Lactation specialists and nursing clubs.  Formula feeding dos and dont's.  Cow’s milk or goat’s milk or almond milk or no milk when babies become toddlers.  Approved sippy cups and preschool mandates about how your kid should suck liquids and when and how your kid should poop and pee.

At a time of excitement and uncertainty, we seek community.  We want insight, advice, and support.  Breast or bottle?  Attached or removed?  If I intervene too much, I’ll become a “helicopter” parent.  If I try “free-range,” will I get arrested?

For many of us who eagerly greet parenthood, we are slapped in the face with well intended and sometimes not so well intended people, advice, judgments, and labels.  Others judge us as mothers and fathers, and they judge our kids too.  And most of us are even harder on ourselves.

And it all changes so fast.  What was once the way to introduce peanuts to your child isn’t the way to do it five years later.  What once seemed reasonable science is retracted.  What once seemed sound parent-to-parent advice is publicly damned.

And just when your children are becoming more independent and you're feeling more comfortable, there are daycares and preschools to choose.  Your choices are scrutinized not only by you but by a surprisingly high number of people you didn’t think would ever care so much about where your child attends school or receives care while you’re at work.

As your child enters elementary school, there are new variables, new families, new teachers, new rules and standards, and new ways to engage or disengage with different parent groups, systems, and institutions.  

With regard to our daughter’s educational and extra curricular choices, I often find it hard to determine when she would best be served by me and her dad getting out of the way versus us advocating or strategizing on her behalf.  And our daughter is only in second grade!  I don’t pretend to understand the world of uncertainty that awaits us as she enters adolescence and her teenage years.

Parenting is awesome, and it’s hard too. We all know this. We all get this.  As a fairly privileged white woman in a predominantly affluent community, I know I have it pretty good.  

The labels and systemic stuff that I confront as a parent are a small drop in the bucket compared to what many people of color face, or those whose first language isn’t English, or those who struggle economically, or those with children with diagnosed medical, behavioral, developmental, and psychological conditions.

With this Blog, I hope to share with you some of the lessons I've learned (and many more I am still trying to learn) about acknowledging and also releasing fears related to being a parent and person in this wonderful and sometimes terrifying world. And I hope you will share with me too~