Befriending It All

Is it just me, or does anyone else feel like they’re on a roller coaster lately? I think even on a regular day, back before we were on lockdown, I would experience some variety of emotional highs and lows, but lately I have been feeling whiplash from my constantly shifting emotional world. One moment I’m flooded with anxiety and dread as my husband and I map out how we’d proceed should one (or both!) of us be hospitalized, the next moment I’m reveling in the glorious richness of this time together as my son is belting out a song and spinning himself dizzy with joy. And in the next moment I’m exhausted and overwhelmed at the magnitude of all of the suffering this pandemic has unleashed and revealed.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about equanimity and how beneficial it can be at a time like this. There is a lot to be said for recognizing the non-stop wave machine we’re currently riding in order to pause long enough to check in - feel my feet on the ground and ask myself am I ok right now? These little doses of equanimous perspective seem to be offering me a much needed break, a chance to re-calibrate and catch my breath. But even more is needed these days, and always really, to find ease and peace in my day.

I’ve been remembering lately that AS important as cultivating equanimity is also the practice of meeting myself and my experience with kindness, wherever I’m at in that moment. It’s a sense of tenderness, gentleness and friendliness I’m working to adopt towards each moment. Each day before I get out of bed I’ve been pausing to reflect on an intention for myself for that day. More and more these past couple of weeks, this intention has been one of being gentle with myself, of forgiving myself if I don’t “mom” at 100% 24/7, of being understanding of myself and my family when we’re in the middle of some emotional turbulence, of letting whatever I’m feeling be ok - without needing to push the feeling down or block it out, of trusting that my heart and awareness will hold me no matter what, and of actively working to take care of myself.

Do I succeed in this each day? Not entirely.

But just in the act of setting this intention and turning my awareness onto a course of self-kindness, I end up relating to myself way more kindly and compassionately than I would have otherwise. So I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

Sometimes when I talk to kids about mindfulness I’ll describe some of the different practices like they’re super powers. These days I can’t help but feel like I’m constantly on alert — whipping out my compassion ray and my special tension diffuser breath of love. It feels like I’m taking some sort of final exam in mindfulness — if I can make it through this minefield of anxiety, worry, uncertainty and fear, I’ll surely be able to handle anything else life throws at me.

The thing is though, life right now isn’t actually that different from any other day. The mindfulness super powers I cultivate on my sitting cushion can come into use just as frequently even when not in the middle of a pandemic; it’s just easier to be complacent about them when I’m only dealing with day-to-day inconveniences. That’s why it feels like such a gift to have this opportunity to practice like my life depends on it right now. (Trust me, I did not and would not ask for a gift like this!)

So what does it take to meet myself and all of my experience with this super power of kindness? How can I practice meeting all of this seemingly cruddy situation with friendliness and an open heart? Well, for me, a major part in being able to feel any sense of ease in this situation arises from a willingness to accept what is here and a trust that I can handle it no matter what. Both of those can seem rather daunting on even the best of days, let alone right now. But when I break it down into momentary awareness, breath by breath, I’m more able to ride the wave instead of it swallowing me.

In mindfulness we practice having a receptive, non-judgmental awareness to the present moment. That sounds like a mouthful, but in practice, it’s really just a matter of allowing. Allowing this breath to rise and fall, allowing sounds to enter and leave our hearing, allowing emotions to arise and subside, allowing physical pain to be there, to be there longer, and to change. The more we see the infinitely changing nature of reality, the easier it is to allow this moment and the next into our experience, without fear of being overtaken. This type of allowing is different from just allowing ourselves to be taken advantage of or harmed. Rather, in allowing what is here in the present moment, we release our internal resistance so that we can best respond to the situation. If it is a situation that requires action, we take it. And sometimes, the more we rest in this allowing and receptive awareness, the more we see that we don’t always need to act apart from responding with tenderness and understanding.

I can be aching with sadness and grief over the state of the world, all the while maintaining an open heart to what is here. The situation doesn’t need to be ok for me (at my essential nature) to be ok. When I am able to make friends with my reality, welcoming each new piece of experience with open hearted awareness, the struggle evaporates and I’m left with the gift of this breath, of this moment of being here now. It’s then that I can begin to see the present, no matter how challenging or painful, as a present and my mindfulness super powers shine through the strongest.

I invite you to sit with me in the guided meditation below for an opportunity to open your heart and perspective to one of allowing and receiving this moment fully.

Beginner's Mind

I preface this post with the acknowledgment that these concerns of boredom and how to entertain a toddler without leaving the house pale in comparison to the harsh reality of life in a pandemic for many others - sickness, death, anxiety, hunger, and financial worries. Not to mention those people who were already experiencing so many of these sufferings and now have the pandemic compounding their stresses.

Things are really hard right now.

However, I also imagine that there are millions of other parents in a similar position to my own, and I want to offer what I can to help. I’ll save my posts on sickness and death for another day. For now, here is how I’ve been doing my best to respond to what appears to be our new normal these days.

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My husband has been keeping track of our days in isolation with some tally marks on our kitchen chalkboard. At the end of the day yesterday with ALL the legos scattered around the living room floor, mingling with the marble set and the wooden puzzles that were inching into the toppling pile of clean laundry, it was hard for me to not view his tracker as a jailhouse tally of my time served.

Please don’t get me wrong, our situation is nothing like jail nor are we facing any real hardship beside the struggle to meet our own minds with compassion as our world dips deeper into chaos and suffering. But I bet I’m not alone among those of you for whom things are mostly ok. Sure we’re healthy and have enough to eat, we even have a back yard, but this is a really trying time mentally and emotionally. This time in the world is WEIRD - full of ups and downs, and loads of uncertainty. On top of everything happening in the outside world, in our own household daddy is home everyday now and we don’t go to school or the park anymore! This just feels like a recipe for mental and emotional turmoil - not to mention the anxiety from the fact that we may all be just one eye rub or face itch away from infecting ourselves with a deadly disease. Talk about tricky!

But back to the tally marks… last night it was hard for me to look at my pile of brown rice, frozen veggies and the legos at my feet without questioning how long I’d be able to maintain this. One day after the next, one bowl of rice after the next. Then I remembered where I was five years ago around this time. I had just come off of a monthlong silent retreat. I remember the same trepidation and concern about boredom and monotony after my first sitting practice that month. How would I ever get through four more weeks of meditating all day everyday?!

Thankfully mindfulness practice is just the antidote for that boredom, because a key element of mindfulness is in paying attention to each breath, each moment with the same loving curiosity a toddler has when watching a butterfly emerging from its cocoon. Can we have a toddler’s rapt awareness of even the littlest detail during our day? This is often called beginner’s mind. We approach each moment, each breath as though it is the first time we’ve experienced a breath, like we’re just beginners at this whole game. When we get into our routines things can get a little boring, and a bored mind tends to miss out on the excitement going on all around us.

While on the one hand I’m facing a seemingly unending pile of brown rice in my future, my daily routine has also been turned on its head. This is the perfect time to work on honing my beginner’s mind. What does a grain of brown rice really taste like? How does my son’s hair fall as he concentrates on his legos? What does our apple tree look like today?

Remembering that everything is always changing, there is so much new to discover each moment. If I get caught up in my pity party about having to repeat the same habits, routines and boring meals each day, then I miss out on so much beauty and joy taking place right in front of me.

Maybe instead of seeing our chalk tally marks of isolation as a count of how many days we’ve been holed up under house arrest, I can start to see them as a record of how many times I got to meet myself as someone new.

I hope the following practice gives you a little relief and offers a new take on the same old thing. ;)

Facing Uncertainty

This past couple of weeks as the threat of a global pandemic has become more and more real, I’ve been aware of a tightness and uneasiness in my stomach that only shows up for me during unpleasant life events. I’ve been sitting with this feeling, at times wondering if it was just seasonal allergies coupled with an overactive imagination, but trusting that my body was trying to tell me something that I just wasn’t hearing. Finally over the weekend I got to the bottom of it. I kept hearing the refrain in my mind, “If only I knew how I was supposed to react… If only someone would tell me what to do to make things ok… If only I had some certainty…”

Ding, ding, ding! The bells went off and my stomach immediately eased up a bit. The feeling I was experiencing was one of extreme uncertainty. I felt completely ill at ease with a perceived threat to my status quo, worried that I wouldn’t know how to deal with whatever was to come. While this understanding didn’t offer me any real answers on what to do, oddly enough, it was this little glimmer of clarity into my own uncertainty that has helped me to get more comfortable with feeling uncertain. Once I could identify what was going on in me I could figure out how to compassionately respond to my fears and worries.

For weeks my husband has been suggesting I do a video and blog on equanimity, but it wasn’t until this week that I’ve felt that it’s appropriate. The way I’d been feeling was far from equanimous! Though, practices to foster an ability to find peace amidst the chaos, steadiness within the confusion, and ease within the turmoil were exactly what I was needing to be able to respond to my stomach ache of uncertainty.

Things have felt especially chaotic and uncertain lately, but the truth is that our tumultuous current events are just a reminder of what is always the case: that which is created has the nature to both arise and pass away. Everything is always changing. Like it or not, uncertainty and mutability are facts of life. Death is certain, but the when or how is a mystery. Our discomfort with the changing nature of things — which judging from my stomach, I’ve been experiencing big-time lately — is often concealed and/or alleviated by a false sense of security, a comfortable autopilot from thinking things will always be as they are. At least, that’s what our subconscious often hopes for, because it can sure be painful, unpleasant, and scary to face this reality when something threatens to upset the status quo. Why else do we stay in jobs and relationships when we’re unhappy — the discomfort of our current, known unhappiness is at least something we can count on, but the great unknown, the ‘what if,’ that can be paralyzingly terrifying!

But when I’m able to get comfortable with the idea that I don’t actually know what’s next, that no matter my efforts I can’t actually control the future, that’s where the liberating power of mindfulness practice blossoms. With this comfort with the unknown I have the freedom to just be in this moment without the unrealistic, added responsibility of controlling my future.

My only responsibility is to show up here in this moment, fully.

So this week I’ve been doing my best to embody this equanimous heart-space that comes with getting comfy with the truth of the changing nature of things. It doesn’t mean I’m indifferent to the fear, suffering and uncertainty around me; rather, I’m fully feeling it, extending my heart’s compassion as far as I can, and letting that be enough. I can unclench my stomach from the knots I’d tied up waiting for an answer that won’t be coming from anyone external anytime soon. Instead, I can rest in my own answer, the remembering that all things change — even this stomach ache.

I hope this practice meets you with balance and ease in your day.

Anxiety

I remember when I was in about fourth grade being really worried before a field trip because I was sure that the bus would leave me behind and no one would ever find me again. This was in a time before cell phones, so the worry while far fetched, was somewhat plausible in my 10-year-old brain. I can remember lying in bed the night before the field trip with a pit in my stomach, unable to sleep. My orange tabby, Oliver, purring on my chest was the only thing that helped me calm down.

Surprise surprise, I wasn’t left behind and the field trip went smoothly. But as I got older, my worries and anxiety shifted from field trip concerns to the common fear of public speaking. Once I was so nervous before a big report about papyrus that I threw up at my carpool driver’s house before school. I got an A, but when I faced future homework assignments and reports, no amount of logic or preparation could ease my worries, and they’d only ever dissipate after the event in question.

Looking back on these memories I wish I’d had some kind of mindfulness practice to help me, and if not the practice, at least some more perspective to let my thoughts just be thoughts and not control me so. I’m sure if I’d shared the depth of my anxiety with my parents they would have helped me to better manage it - in fact, in high school they bought me my first books on meditation, and throughout my life they’ve made sure my brother and I have always had access to a great therapist if we wanted to talk. That being said, I still had so much shame surrounding my anxiety that it was enough to keep most of it bottled up with no one the wiser.

As I’ve gotten older and have cultivated a meditation practice, my worries and anxiety haven’t gone away — in fact, as a mother, they’ve probably multiplied! However, my way of responding to this kind of thinking has shifted. Instead of being embarrassed and almost afraid of my anxiety, now it’s more of an old familiar face that I can greet with an “oh you again!” On my best days I can acknowledge it with kindness and humor and get on with things without too much trouble or added stress. On harder days, I have other tools to respond to it — be it meditation, not taking it personally, or pausing to tap into my other resources and stores of calmness.

Probably the most liberating realization I’ve had from practicing mindfulness is that just because I have worries and anxious thoughts does not mean that I am a worrier or anxious person by nature and therefore always stuck in these debilitating mindstates. Just because I have a thought does not make it true, nor does it say anything about me. Instead of defining myself and judging myself for these thoughts and worries, I can see them fore what they are — unpleasant thoughts born out of fear.

Fear feeds on itself, especially on shame and judgment. So the best way to respond to it is with love. By pushing away my anxiety and judging myself for it, instead of getting rid of it I was just adding more worries to my list, “what if I never stop being worried?” “how can I expect to teach mindfulness with sweaty palms and a dry mouth?” “what if my worries come true?!”

Through my practice I’ve learned that it’s ok to just be anxious sometimes. And during those times, I’m reminded that whatever my anxieties are - even if they’re based in something real like a global pandemic - they’re just thoughts. Just because I think a thought, that doesn’t mean it’s true or will happen.

This has offered me some freedom. I don’t have to be afraid of my anxiety and I don’t have to judge myself for having it. Instead, I can just work to be with it with kindness to myself, taking care as needed and recognizing that it’s just some particularly charged thinking.

I’ve recorded the following guided meditation to provide anyone struggling with anxious thoughts, with some techniques that I’ve found helpful in my own experience. I know this would have helped me back when I was in school, so I hope you find it helpful and that you are able to find peace in your day.

Feeling Tone

Yesterday at naptime I started out the process with my “enjoy the moment” glasses on. Meaning, when my little guy started attempting to do head stands as I read his naptime story I was able to smile and soak in his sheer enthusiasm for life. He eventually laid down next to me and whispered an “I love you,” that made it so worth it. :)

I kept those full enjoyment glasses on until about 20 minutes later, when well into our calm down songs and after his being perfectly still to the point I thought he may have dozed off, he turned to me and expressed his wish that we had a rooster for a wake up alarm. Admittedly, I found this kind of cute. But what followed was an all out wiggle session with a seemingly inexhaustible source of energy. Instead of being tickled by his humor and innocence I started to unconsciously resent each new repositioning and adjustment. When he stopped long enough to ask, “Are you not mad at me?” I got my jolt of reality. I had been unable to recognize how my impatience and worry that he’d never nap had slowly shifted my happy-go-lucky lenses to my more stressed out “Foot-tapping” glasses. I apologized for being short with him and explained I needed to take a few breaths to help ease me through my feelings of stress. I reminded him he could help by getting still and quiet. And sure enough, after another song, he was peacefully snoozing in my lap and I was able to put on my “ahh, sweet cuddles” glasses to soak in these last moments of him being small enough to fit in my arms.

I share this snapshot because my experience is not unique to me, but rather a universal part of the human condition — not the naptime per-say, but rather the subtle shifts in perception that change a moment of pleasure into one of frustration. Every single thing we experience will be affected by our past, present, and future — whatever stories and associations we have in our mind about the present experience will directly impact our interpretation of said experience. Had I had more office work to do yesterday, chances are I’d have perceived his early head stands as an obnoxious stalling tactic. Or had I not been a little worried about him taking a late nap, I might not have gotten so frustrated at his sweet wish for a rooster wake up call.

The head stands and the rooster wish were neither pleasant, unpleasant or neutral experiences; but the lenses of perception I wear can cause me to perceive them differently depending on my unique circumstances.

When we first taste an experience, in the first milliseconds of it happening, we categorize it - almost unconsciously - into being either a pleasant, unpleasant or neutral occurrence based partly on the experience itself, but mostly on our own history and stories surrounding it. The same experience I view as pleasant may be unpleasant to you; or even to me on another day. I hear avocado is universally incredible - but my allergy to it impacts my perception and so eating a bite of avocado is typically an unpleasant experience for me.

On its face, there’s nothing really problematic about these subtle categorizations. It’s helpful for me to recall the unpleasant throat tightening and stomach ache that I get from avocado so I can choose not to eat it! Just like it’s a good call to note the unpleasant sensation of touching a hot stove so we can move our hand quickly!

But because most of the time these categorizations happen without us noticing, things can get a little sticky and cause us extra suffering before we recognize what’s even happened. Had my son not asked me about my mood, I could have easily fallen into a grumpy, annoyed afternoon, fully missing the yummy cuddles I got at the end.

Our reactivity to these categorizations are at the root of our pain and suffering.

If something is unpleasant we’ll typically tense up against it, bracing ourselves to push it away. If it’s physical pain this type of reactivity can really exacerbate things! If something is pleasant though, we tend to want to hoard it, save it all for ourselves forever. That’s fine until we face the disappointing fact that everything is always changing, and that which we’re grasping onto will eventually slip away. And if something is neutral, do we even notice it? The tendency with neutral experiences is to ignore or doze off. Ever notice yourself falling asleep during a “boring” meditation?

This isn’t to suggest we should attempt to do away with this automatic process of categorization. Rather, it’s about bringing awareness to what we’re doing with it. When I recognize that I’m seeing through the lens of unpleasantness, I can respond differently than if I just take it as inherently unpleasant and then react with aversion and fear. Maybe this awareness is enough to help me ride out the discomfort instead of immediately pushing it away. (This is a matter of wise discernment, as I would not suggest you “ride out the discomfort” of burning your hand on a stovetop!) In the midst of a pleasant experience, perhaps I can have a bit more spaciousness to enjoy it for what it is, without needing it to stay forever. And what happens when we start paying attention to those millions of neutral experiences we have each day? For me, the attention often leads to an internal shift that moves the experience from neutral to mildly pleasant.

In mindfulness practice, these three lenses - pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral - are called feeling tone. When we are aware of the feeling tone of an experience for us, we then have the power to choose our response. The following guided practice offers a couple of different exercises to help you begin to recognize the feeling tone of your experience. But if you don’t have time to do the guided meditation, you can try noticing feeling tone in your day-to-day experiences by giving a gentle mental note about your experience - is it pleasant? unpleasant? neutral? And after noting this, take a second to notice how you are reacting or responding to the experience. Am I tensing, grasping, ignoring?

What lenses are you wearing in this moment?