Mindfulness Exercises: Waiting

This week’s exercise was to practice mindfulness while waiting.

David is late again.  We’re planning to go out together to get some dinner when he gets home, but he’s running late.  I’m waiting for him, and waiting, and waiting, and I begin to get anxious and upset.  Adeline is hungry and she’s getting cranky.  I want to be ready as soon as he gets home, so we’re already in our coats and shoes, but it’s hot in the house and since she’s cranky she’s making me hold her and I’m getting sweaty and gross.  I pace back and forth and look out the back door every few seconds to see if he’s home yet.  But he’s not.  My heart starts beating faster and my chest is tight.  I start to go over and over all of the reasons why I’m anxious and of course that just makes me more anxious.  Soon I’ll start swearing under my breath and Adeline will sense that I’m upset and she’ll get upset and things will just spiral.  Yes, I have a problem with patience.

But then it hits me: this is my mindfulness exercise for the week!  I’m waiting and now is exactly the time to take some mindful breaths and calm down.  And I do.  I take a few mindful breaths and feel my chest loosen up and my heart slow down.  The ache in my stomach that I hadn’t even noticed through my stress starts to dissipate.  I unzip my coat and feel myself cooling down.  OK, so I’m still impatient and I’m still checking the backdoor every so often, but things are definitely better.  

The lesson from the book is to rejoice in time spent waiting because it is extra time to practice mindfulness.  I don’t know that I’m at the point of rejoicing quite yet, but I do see the value.  And that’s the first step.

This week’s exercise is “Loving eyes: endeavor to look at things and people with loving eyes.”

Tinkers (2010)

George Washington Crosby is dying.  His body is stuck in the hospital bed in his living room, surrounded by grieving family members and the accumulated possessions of a lifetime.  But his mind is unfettered, jumping back and forth through time and consciousness, coming to terms with a life lived.  And, just as importantly, coming to terms with the life his father lived.

Tinkers is a meditation on the moments that make us and on the way that fathers and sons make each other.  George’s father, Howard, was a tinker, riding his cart through backwoods and down country roads to sell supplies to worn out farmer’s wives and hermits.  He was also an epileptic and a poet.  George spends his retirement tinkering with antique clocks, getting lost in the precise details and the minute motions needed to make the clocks work again.  We see, from each man’s perspective, the pivotal moments in his life.

Tinkers won the Pulitzer Prize in 2010.  It was well-deserved: this is a beautiful novel about how we live and how we come to die.

Mindfulness Exercises: Loving Touch

This week’s exercise was to use loving hands and a loving touch, even with inanimate objects.  So first off, what does that even mean?  In How to Train a Wild Elephant, Jan describes it this way: “We know how to use loving hands and touch.  We touch babies, faithful dogs, crying children, and lovers with tenderness and care.”  Using loving touch with inanimate objects is the practice of treating all objects with that same love and care.

In my previous mindfulness class we talked about something called “turning the mind.”  When you’re stuck in the emotional chaos of being angry or frustrated or upset, it can feel impossible to get control of your mind and turn it away from the negative emotion.  But in order to deal effectively with the situation, you need to be able to do so.  I found the practice of using loving touch to be an incredibly helpful way to turn my mind.

It’s funny that Jan uses a faithful dog as an example of when we use loving touch.  I love dogs, but I have a somewhat fraught relationship with the dogs we have right now.  They were David’s dogs and they’re little and odd and very poorly behaved.  We have struggles.  Sometimes they get in a mood and they constantly jump up on me and scratch at me and whine and if you don’t get it already, they’re really annoying.  Usually I firmly push them away and try to move on with my life, but the lingering annoyance is a bother to me and probably to them too.  So this week I decided to practice loving touch.  When they got to their most annoying, I took them in my lap and gave them a few minutes of loving pets.  When I was done they went right on being annoying, but I felt so much better about the whole interaction.  And they probably did too.

You can’t practice loving touch without turning your mind in the direction of love and care.  And when you do that, you turn it away from whatever negative emotions are plaguing you at the time.  Wouldn’t you rather live with a mind full of love than a mind full of anger?  I know I would.

This week's exercise is: "Waiting: practice mindfulness any time you're stuck waiting."

Mindfulness Exercises: Every Time the Phone Rings

I haven’t posted in two weeks because we were on vacation last week.  The exercise from two weeks ago was to take three mindful breaths every time the phone rings.

I did this exercise for the first few days and it was good.  But then we went on vacation and I totally forgot about it.  Even when we got back, I couldn’t really get back into it.  So this week’s lesson isn’t about the exercise itself.  It’s about the way that even a practice built up over several months can fall apart with the slightest deviation.

Our habits of mindlessness and living blindly have been built up over a lifetime.  They’re deeply ingrained in our psyches.  The way we think, the way our mind wanders, the way we sleepwalk through a day of errands and chores: all of these things are a part of who we are.  It takes a very big effort to change those patterns.  And you will inevitably have setbacks.  That’s just the way it is.

But that’s the great thing about the commitment I made to post about my experience.  Because here I am, reminded again that I want to be mindful.  So I’ll start over this week and try harder.  And I hope you will too!

This week’s exercise is: “Loving Touch: Use loving hands and a loving touch, even with inanimate objects.”