Lent and Mindfulness in relationships

“In a time where no one seems to have enough time, our devices allow us to be many places at once — but at the cost of being unable to fully inhabit the place where we actually want to be.  Mindfulness says we can do better.” 

— Time Magazine cover article on mindfulness, February 3, 2014.

Oh Catholic Lent! Self-denial for 40 days. First begins with Ash Wednesday and ends with Easter Sunday. This year that is February 10th until March 24th. Then we can commence back to the sinning!!! ( Just a little humor)

I am not Catholic. I have though, participated in Lent for a few years now. It's mindfulness. Give up harm, replace with good. Mediate for the 40 days and send peace to the world. Give up Facebook on your phone, or all social media and spend time with your children or outdoors enjoying what really matters. Think about what you can give up, to improve your world and the planet we live on.

Write, create, garden, visit loved ones. Take your time. Be thankful. Be grateful. Pray for the world. We are one world and one people.

Blessings to you all and a productive Lent to all who participate.

(You don't have to be Catholic to participate in Lent. It's 40 days of mindfulness and giving up what you REALLY don't need in your life).



Danielle's note:

Because this is month is about relationships, I want to share something I learned about phone and other device usage: When we are interrupted while the middle of something (reading, writing, listening, etc.) the natural human response is irritability.

Let that sink in for a moment.

That means when you are on your phone, texting, responding to an email, or even reading an article in your newsfeed, and your children or significant other interrupt, your natural human reaction is to get irritable.

Once my husband and I went out for Valentine's Day dinner.  We were at a moderately expensive restaurant, and I was stunned that we were the only couple in the room without their phones on the table.  Truly.  And I thought, how can two people be so connected to the digital world that they can't enjoy one special dinner together without the internet.

Whether for lent, as a Valentine's Day gift to your loved one, or just because… Take some time to "turn off" during these last few weeks of winter.  Settle in to the long evenings with "device-free" or "internet-free" times.  Vow to keep the phones out of sight and turned off during dinner.  Plan a family game night and toss the phones in a basket.

Be mindful of your relationship.

Making Space: Your weight loss plateau

I was in a yoga class not that long ago… and I heard the instructor say something I hear over and over again in yoga classes… "Breathe space into your body, in between the bones and joints."

Breathe… a key element to yoga and to life… but it was the "making space" that hit me this time.

My weight is something I've struggled with since having children.  Those few extra pounds reveal themselves in places I'd rather they not.  Skimming Louise L. Hay's book, "You Can Heal Your Life," shows us where aches, pains, and even weight will settle when we mentally allow it.  I won't tell you where my weight settles, because that will be too telling of my own personal demons… but I will say, the woman is almost always right.

That said, why?  Why, despite eating, and exercising, and meditating, and all the rest, do I continue to hold weight in these places?  Why when I try to address the mental invitations (as Ms. Hay suggests) do I still struggle with the issue of weight?

Because the body is making space.  Making space for me to hold the anger, the self-doubt, the fear, things I've cultivated and held onto more tightly since becoming a mom and realizing my mental state, and my life, had instantly become far more pivotal.  Because we need some place to hold these emotions, so we hold them in our body—energetically of course—but the body is incredibly sensitive to energies… particularly our own.

And as emotions are not purely energy—they are also guided by tangible things like hormones, chemicals, and other physical impulses—when we store them in our body they do tangible things.  Sometimes this results in stress, illness and chronic pain.  Other times we store them away differently, and they attach to our cells, encouraging them to duplicate, to remain, to make more space for them to live.

There is a great deal of scientific evidence that shows how much we hold in our fat cells.  Nutrients, toxins, everything we don't or can't flush out of our bodies, or that our bodies think we may need, is stored in fat.

So as you are reaching your diet or fitness plateau this year, don't give up on your resolution—instead, consider resolving to dig deeper, to make more space for the things you are holding onto.  To find a pretty place—albeit mentally or energetically—to hold all those things you've been holding onto, and perhaps hiding away because they're scary to face.  Recognize that our bodies need to grow larger to hold all the things we hold onto, and that by letting go, we can let go of those storage spaces as well.

Only then will we feel lighter, and healthier.  Only once we stop carrying our baggage, can our body let go and allow us to be the us we know we are underneath it all.



Mindfulness

Mindfulness.

Merriam Webster’s dictionary defines mindfulness as:

1:  the quality or state of being mindful

2:  the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment-to-moment basis; also:  such a state of awareness

When I think of mindfulness now, I think of yoga, meditation, hot tea and incense.  And calm.

Calm is a difficult concept for me.  With all of the roles I play in my life and the hecticness of my calendar, I don’t make enough time for myself.  

As an aside:  Notice I said make instead of find time.  There’s enough time.  As much as I joke that I could use more hours in the day (couldn’t we all?) if it’s important to you, you’ll find the time.  We tell our kids that if the end result were important to them, they’d get their chores done in a more timely fashion.  If that TV show is important, we’ll make time to watch it preferably uninterrupted.  If you make yourself a priority, you can find the time.

Back to calm.  <Deep breath with the whole slow arm flapping movement>

Believe it or not, there was a time that I didn’t even know the word mindfulness, let alone the definition.  There was a time when I ran from place to place like a chicken with my head cut off, smoking frantically on the fringes of the activity, always music or TV on for “background noise”.  Now I do all the same things without the smoking AND I know the word and definition of mindfulness.  Impressive, right?

Actually, I’ve always tried to practice the non-judgmental part of the mindfulness concept.  I’m very good at seeing other points of view and can play a mean devil’s advocate.  I am usually defending someone telling those around me, “Be kind!  You don’t know what they’re going through!”  You don’t know if that pushy jackass on the highway is in the middle of a medical emergency for his child or if that rude woman in line at the grocery store just lost her mother and is having a really hard day or if that politician got bad information from someone he trusted and was doing what he thought was right, however misguided.”  I’m really good at making excuses for and being kind to other people.  There’s very little I can’t forgive.  Not so much for myself.

I’ve got a lot going on in my life and I’ve been a bit stressed recently.  But, like the feeling while most people are watching that jackass on the highway, I have been having trouble being kind to myself.  I have very high expectations for myself.  I expect to be calm, patient, pleasant, efficient, logical, active, helpful, committed, loyal, attentive, passionate, accommodating, organized and giving to name just a few.

I’m taking steps toward better mental health for myself.  Over the last few months I’ve resumed my acupuncture appointments for internal physical balance, started taking Chinese herbs for increased relaxation and mood stability and am working on a daily meditation streak on my calm.com app.  I need to make frequent blogging part of my mental health as well.

Be kind to one another.  But even more importantly, be kind to yourself.  You’re the only you you get.  

 What act of kindness have you done for yourself recently?