Forest Bathing

Last month an old friend, who now lives in a retirement community in Concord, told me how he and several friends go Forest Bathing every week and how beneficial it has been to his recovery from cancer. I have read about Forest Bathing before. From the internet, I learned that it became popular in Japan over 40 years ago and involves taking deliberate time in forests to quiet and calm the mind and body and uplift the heart. Scientists studying forest bathing and similar practices of deliberate time in nature have found many benefits from this practice, including lower blood pressure, heart rate, and stress levels; improved mood; better sleep; and increased creativity.

In a recent article, a doctor in Oakland reported this interaction with one of her patients: “Dr. Hass, I can’t thank you enough for that prescription you gave me to ride my bike to the marina and watch the sunset. I have been watching that sunset almost every day. I can’t thank you enough!” The doctor said that she has been giving out old-school paper prescriptions for about two years now, where she prescribes non-pharmaceutical steps that have been proven to make people healthier. She said, "I had heard that nature can make people happier and healthier, but I assumed it would offer just a slight bump in the happiness quotient. That patient showed me that I had underestimated both the impact of getting outside and who could be helped."

Recently many doctors in Canada are writing prescriptions where the instruction can be as general as taking time in nature three times a week to going to a park near your work and standing in the grass for 10 minutes. A program with the British Columbia Parks Foundation has started offering health care professionals nature prescription files and codes, with instructions for how to prescribe and log their nature prescriptions. Over 5,000 physicians in Canada have registered for this program!

During the winter months of early 2021, I was recovering from an almost fatal aortic dissection. I was exhausted and my health was delicate, so my only exercise was walking slowly. For months, I walked almost daily on a one mile stretch of the path along the Ashuelot River which is about 200 yards from my house. The slow walking, coupled with my long-standing mindfulness practice, yielded so many amazing sights, sounds, and smells. My mindfulness practice on these walks consisted of bringing an intention of curiosity and of walking without expectations. I would begin by grounding my attention for the first steps on the path: feeling my feet on the ground and my breathing. Over time, inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer's writing, I also greeted the forest: "Hello old friend, I'm so happy to be with you again."

Every day that winter I saw something that I had never noticed before:
• amazing ice formations encircling the bases of trees
• delicate patterns of snow on two creeks
• at one spot in the river, the water close to the bank flowed upstream for over 70 feet
• a large pine tree, leaning at an alarming angle at the very edge of the bank, knowing that the next thunder storm could end its life; realizing a next dissection could end my life, and somehow taking comfort in that connection to the tree which I named Bobby McGee: "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose"

I also noticed other things I had been aware of before, but now felt moments of quiet and sometimes exultant joy in seeing:
• patterns of light reflecting on the water in the river
• an ironwood tree, its bark almost as hard as a rock
• the tiny eddies and whirlpools on the surface of the river
• so many different bird songs
• so many different kinds of trees

In the summer, I enjoyed the noticeable drop in temperature as I entered the forest and the calming effect on my minds. I found quiet joys:
• the rays of sunlight filtering through the trees as I walked under the canopy of the trees
• the reflections of the trees and undergrowth on both banks of the river
• being mesmerized by the various tiny and large eddies and whirlpools at this spot and all along the river
• seeing the turtles lined up and sunbathing on a tree trunk that had fallen into the river

Like Dr. Hass' patient, I felt that these almost daily walks contributed hugely to my recovery: becoming more attuned to my body than ever before, so many moments of joy in each walk, and the calming and quieting effect on my mind.

Simply walking in the woods is clearly beneficial since so many people do it. When people talk about Forest Bathing, they are simply making the practice more deliberate, more intentional. Some common aspects of various descriptions include:
1. turning off your cell phone;
2. bringing the intention to be curious;
3. moving through the forest slowly and allowing yourself to experience the forest through all your senses: what do you see? smell? hear? feel with your hands and feet?
4. starting with a comfortable amount of time and building up to longer walks, an hour or so;
5. reflecting on how you feel at the end of the walk.

Try it. Who knows what you will notice!

Bringing Mindfulness to Pleasant and Unpleasant Experiences

“When we're not mindful [of our response to what is happening in the moment], pleasant feelings habitually condition desire and clinging, unpleasant feelings condition dislike and aversion, and neutral feelings condition delusion, i.e., not really knowing what is going on. Yet when we are mindful, these very same feelings become the vehicle of our freedom.” In this quote Joseph Goldstein is pointing out an often overlooked Buddhist concept, that in every moment our minds are labeling the information coming into our awareness as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral (not important).

Two examples of the power of bringing mindfulness to this process
I was leading a body scan meditation to some Keene State College students. I mentioned that when you notice an unpleasant or even painful sensation, to see if you can simply observe it rather than hating it. Afterwards, a student said that she had gone to the gym the day before after having not gone for months. As a result, she was sore all over and hating it. After I made my comment, her experience of the sensations of soreness on her body went from being miserable and hating it to realizing that it wasn't that bad and that the soreness wasn't forever.

This is a snippet of a dialogue in a course I was taking after we had meditated for about 30 minutes.
Teacher: What did you notice?
Participant: I noticed that I felt sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I noticed that I didn’t want to feel sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I felt even worse.

The point in both examples is that while we can’t control what comes into our awareness, we can bring mindfulness to what we are adding to that experience. In the second case, sadness was the experience and the aversion to this unpleasantness was what was added. Over time we can notice when we are adding and realize that there are other choices.

Jon Kabat-Zinn operationalized this process in the well-known and researched Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. These were his instructions:
For one week, bring mindfulness to one pleasant event each day, e.g., receiving praise or hearing a bird song.
Specifically, bring mindful attention to:
1) your body, e.g., being aware of your shoulders relaxing, a smile...
2) your emotions, e.g., joy, contentedness...
3) your thoughts, e.g., “That was sweet,” “It’s so nice to be outside"...
4) what you noticed as you reflected on the experience, e.g., "It was such a small thing, but I’m glad I noticed it."

For the next week, bring mindful attention to one unpleasant event each day, e.g., waiting in line or worrying about something or a headache. As before, bring mindful attention to what you noticed in your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and what you noticed when reflecting on the experience.

If you are hesitant to do so, you might want to read some of the insights that participants (in the MBSR courses that I taught almost 30 times) noted in our discussions.

Insights from bringing mindfulness to pleasant events
• "Fully experiencing a pleasant event changed my attitude for the whole day!"
• "Those happy moments become elongated and they followed me throughout the day."
• There are actually many pleasant events almost every day.
• “I had an increased openness to so many other pleasant events that often go unnoticed”; we are so often on automatic pilot.
• "Seeing beauty in the ordinary"
• Focusing on the pleasant was helpful to balance the tendency to focus on the negative, which is so common.

Insights from bringing mindfulness to unpleasant events
• When you bring curiosity and non-judgment to something unpleasant, "I realized that it’s not as bad as I first thought."
• When being mindful, the experience went from intolerable to just unpleasant.

This reminds me of a comment my mom made to me when I was adding to an unpleasant experience: she told me I was “making a mountain out of a molehill.” I'm also reminded of a quote from Mark Twain: "most of the worst events of my life never actually happened."

When we bring curiosity and non-judgmental awareness to the unpleasantness, it softens, and our experience can go from highly unpleasant to mildly unpleasant to sometimes just “this is how it is now.” The now is important because we often literally contract in reaction to the unpleasantness because we lose perspective; that is, that this unpleasantness is impermanent.

I acknowledge that it is sometimes almost impossible to bring mindful attention to something that is extremely physically or emotionally painful. In those cases, distraction can be a more useful choice. I was aware of this several times during my stay in the intensive-care unit and during my recovery from the aortic dissection.

I end with the Buddha's actual words: "the uninstructed person does not know of any escape from unpleasant or painful feelings other than seeking something that is pleasant." One of my meditation teachers gave a personal example. She was relaxing at home and suddenly had the desire for a piece of chocolate. Upon reflection, she realized that just before that desire for chocolate, a sudden feeling of sadness had arisen. When she allowed herself to sit with that feeling of sadness for just a few moments, that urge for chocolate dissolved.

If you decide to try out this exercise, other readers and I would love to hear what you noticed.

Pay attention. Pay attention.

This post is about habituated ways of being that we can get into--all kinds. My awareness of how easy it is to fall into habits traces back to when I was exposed to Henry David Thoreau. He wrote that less than a week after he moved to Walden "my feet wore a path from my door to the pondside." More recently Jon Kabat-Zinn popularized the term "automatic pilot" and how much of our life is spent on automatic pilot.

There are many aspects of this phenomenon, from eating the same breakfast every single day, to greeting family and friends with the same, automatic greeting, to telling ourselves the same stories about ourselves, our friends and family, and the world.

I encountered the "same old story" aspect a month ago. The teacher, in a memoir class I was taking, had said that if a thought or an experience is not coming out in one form to try another form, for example, switching from prose to poetry. My first and second thought was "I don't write poetry."

Less than a week later, during the course of a morning I had several insights about my relationship to my life and I began writing about the morning. My writing felt fairly pedantic and I remembered what my teacher had said. So I paused for a few minutes, reflected on the experiences of the morning. Then I started writing--phrases, images, bits and pieces.

What came out captured my insights and what I had experienced far better than my prose had. The long title of the poem below is Why I practice mindfulness: A work in progress.

Waking up

Waking up this morning exhausted
Yesterday with my infant grandson all day and this heat is oppressive
Letting go of taking a short bike ride and finishing an essay for a workshop

Space now for meditating
Too tired to sit on my cushion
Sitting in the recliner
Mind racing with the never ending
To Do list before I leave tomorrow
Breathing in, breathing out, in, out...

Feeling a contractedness in my chest
Breathing into that tight energy and I feel it soften
Breathing in, breathing out, in, out...

Suddenly realize I forgot my morning meds
Damn, have to take them lest I forget
Slow down Tom

Decide to include taking my meds as part of the meditation
Getting up slowly, feeling my leg muscles engage as I start to stand up
Feeling my arm muscles engage as I push myself up
Walking slowly, feeling the bottoms of my feet with every step
Picking up the meds, counting them to make sure
Drinking the water slowly

Walking back to my chair
Feeling leg and arm muscles engage again as I sit down
Pausing now as I realize I am typing this fast; in, out, in, out...Back into a quieter, calmer mode. Ahhh.

Later, walking to the Ashuelot River path near my house
Noticing a quaking aspen
Looking closer
Not all the leaves are shaking
Some leaves are rustling with the very light wind,
Some whole sections of the tree are quaking
Standing back and seeing the whole aspen with a softer gaze
Amazing!
How have I not noticed this before?

One take away for me from this experience is the value of bringing mindful attention to behaviors that my heart is calling out to me about. If the attention is mindful, I don't have to deliberate whether I'm OK with this habit--my body and my heart tell me clearly!

Changing Commonly Used Language

The Buddha once said "What we think, we become."
A natural consequence of this is "What we say, we become."

I think most people realize that there is some truth in this statement. For example, many parents encourage their children not to limit themselves by saying "I can't." I also think of the story of The Little Engine That Could.

Neuroscience
From neuroscience research we read that every time a particular neural circuit (emotion, thought or action) happens in the brain, the more likely it is to occur again, for example, I can't vs I can. There is a connected term called neural cowpaths. Think of cow paths in the pasture which, once made, are where the cows walk. I recall Henry David Thoreau lamenting how quickly his feet made a path from his cabin to the pond. One writer encourages us not to pave our neural cow paths! This point is also implicit in the Buddha's articulation of the Five Aggregates.

Below are several examples of changes in thoughts or speech that we might consider reflecting on. Virtually all of these words and phrases have come to me through discussions with other people or I have read somewhere.

Should
Many years ago I began to eliminate the word should from my thinking and speaking vocabulary. If you pay close attention to your body, you can often feel a tightening when you say for example, "I should go to the gym today" or "I shouldn't be so judgmental." It's not that these are not wholesome thoughts; it's that should introduces a sense of forcing and striving. I've noticed a difference when I ask myself "do I want to go the gym today?" If I feel that my body would benefit from the exercise even though I don't want to go, I might stop and reflect on the benefits of going or consider what I need to change (in my mind or my schedule) so that I might go to the gym.

Expectations are related to shoulds because we often expect something to happen that we feel should happen or expect something not to happen that we feel shouldn't happen. While we are aware of some expectations, e.g., I expect that I will get a raise at work, there are many more expectations that we aren't generally conscious of, e.g., I expect that dinner will be ready when I get home, I expect my child to behave when company comes, etc. etc. Many family arguments happen when an unstated expectation is not met.

Words that have a transactional or a military tone
I no longer pay attention. I give or devote attention.
I no longer talk about how I spent the day, but rather how I honored the day or what choices I made that day.
I no longer take a walk. I go for a walk.
I no longer pay it forward. I plant it forward.
I no longer work on my relationship with my wife. I explore and reflect on and devote more attention to my relationship with my wife.
I no longer talk about fighting for change. I talk about committing myself toward various causes. I recall so many people saying they were fighting for peace back in the 60s!

A simple change of preposition
Over 40 years ago I was on a month-long retreat at a Catholic monastery. During my stay I made good friends with a priest. He could see that I was so dedicated to my teaching that I was a good candidate for burning out. He himself had burned out at one point and was now doing well. He offered me a prepositional change when thinking about my work with my students: I am responsible to them, not responsible for them. That simple change made a big difference. I continued to work very hard in my teaching, but being responsible to my students was a totally different ball game than being responsible for them.

From either-or to both-and
Another important change is not to get stuck in an either-or mentality. For example, many parts of my life including my meditation practice are hard and easy, complex and simple, heavy and light. Many of us tend to focus on hardness, complexity, and heaviness at the expense of also recognizing the ease, simplicity, and lightness.

I have realized that I can have several emotions flowing through me at once. In fact, I believe this to be true most of the time. Right now I am tired and I am hopeful and I feel a certain sense of lightness in my being.

There is a powerful story about an artist who had lost a leg at some point. He constructed a perfectly spherical sculpture out of stone, then shattered it with a sledgehammer, then put it back together. He titled the exhibit: Shattered But Still Whole.

Qualifying our statements
Another significant change in language is to qualify some of our statements. I find a huge difference between saying this is who I am vs. this is who I am now. Similarly, saying “I have a low tolerance for frustration” limits you. This pronouncement feels different than "At this point in my life, I have a low tolerance for frustration."

So these are some simple but not necessarily easy changes in our language that can have a big impact on how we are in the world. I suggest giving any of these that spark you a trial run and see if you find it makes a difference.

Two addenda from a new friend:

When comforting a person who is suffering from a serious medical or personal situation, moving from saying “I am here for you” to saying “I am here with you.”

Moving from saying “with gratitude” to “in gratitude.”

Becoming aware of consequences of shoulding

One of the Buddha's more famous sayings is "You are what you think." Another translation is "What you think you become.” Thus, we might want to pay more attention to the words we use. Today I want to focus on should.

I hear many people using should and shouldn't quite often: "I shouldn't have done that," "I should exercise more," "I should be nicer to myself," etc. We often use the word should when we are beating ourselves up because of our imperfections. But have you ever seen a perfect tree? Every tree has many so-called imperfections. However, the imperfections of trees and most natural objects contributes to their beauty. Imagine a forest where all the trees looked almost identical. The impulse in the natural world is not perfection but rather health and adaptation.  

An important part of changing our language comes through reflection and meditation. One of my meditation teachers named this when she said "I used to think I needed to clean up my act. Now I realize I need to get to know my act." In other words, we need to understand our act, to pay attention to our act.

We know that physical pain is a signal to pay attention whether it's a headache, a stomachache, a sprained muscle, a toothache, etc. Your body is saying that something is happening that you need to pay attention to. I have known many cases where a person ignored pain signals and it then became something serious. So too emotional pain, for example, remorse, regret, shame, anger, etc. You mind is telling you that you need to pay attention to what you did or how you responded in that situation.

Below are four practices that people have found useful with shoulding.

A simple practice that uses gentle persistence vs. force.
When you realize that you are beating yourself up and using language like 'should,' first pause, and try these steps:

• Letting the breath and sensations come to you vs. trying to feel them: bringing a gentle attention to what is happening;
• Checking in with body: softening and relaxing on each exhale.
• Holding with kindness and compassion whatever has arisen;
• Befriending those parts of yourself that are beating you up; Rumi's poem The Guest House is a wonderful reminder: "the dark thought, the shame, the malice...treat each guest honorably."

Paying attention to the consequences of your behavior
Another practice this which was very helpful when I was struggling with my explosive anger came from a teacher who suggested that instead of beating myself up, I might look right at the person I had gotten angry at and see the hurt in their face. That was really 'getting to know my act,' understanding more deeply the consequences of my act!

This can work both ways, for example, feeling your body after you have binged on too many snacks, paying attention to the physical discomfort. On the opposite end, feeling your body after you have been exercising regularly: how does your body feel at this time?

Asking questions to your deeper self
Another teacher added this step in getting to know your act: ask a seeding question, for example, "are shoulds working for me?" We find that should and shouldn't can be useful short-term, for example, "I shouldn't punch that person in the face."  However, I’ve found over time that nothing good long-term comes from shoulds. It's like the Whack-a-mole game: those impulses that we try to suppress keep coming back. 

Self-compassion
I devoted a whole blog post to self-compassion on February 4, 2020. One relevant self-compassion practice is to pause and breathe and then ask yourself: Can I learn to be the kind of friend to myself that I am to my friends? Can I extend kindness, care, warmth, and understanding (vs. self-criticism) toward myself when faced with my shortcomings, inadequacies, or failures?

These are not simple fixes, but part of a long-term process. Most of my negative behaviors are ones learned in childhood, for example, getting angry when things don't go my way, saying "I'm not good enough" when I don't excel, avoiding conflict at all cost, etc. These behaviors don't change overnight, but through gentle and persistent attention.

One person who was finding this new meditation process very helpful was very busy and often struggled about whether to come to the Monday night meditation or stay home and do other things. I suggested this process of not forcing and less shoulding. Over time she became a regular participant. Reflecting on the process, she said, "when I gave myself permission not to come every Monday, I found it shifted from 'I should come' to 'I want to come.'"

So try any or all of the practices mentioned above. What do you notice? If you find other practices useful, please respond in the Comments section below.

Waiting

I had been telling myself that this time between getting home from the hospital on November 12 and my surgery on January 14 can be like a retreat—a time to move slowly, to savor my life, to walk every day on the river path near my house, and more. And it has been all that, especially the first couple of weeks at home after nine days in Intensive Care.

In the last few days, I realized that while the daily walks along the river are still amazing, I have been sinking into routines. This morning the combination of several powerful dreams plus my daughter’s Christmas gifts to me provoked one of those BFO’s (Blinding Flash of the Obvious): I have gotten into a mindset of waiting—waiting for the surgery to be over so that I can get on with my life.

I know that this mindset applies to many others too: waiting for the election to be over, waiting for covid to be over, waiting until the vaccine comes. Putting aside this past year, we actually get caught in these mindsets more often than we might realize, e.g., waiting until the kids are grown up, waiting until we retire, waiting until spring comes. These can easily become times of ‘treading water,’ and neither moving forward with our lives nor being fully alive.

Waiting
Christine Feldman, one of my meditation teachers, talked about choosing a New Year’s Intention to explore each year. One year, she realized that she spends a lot of her time waiting, because she teaches courses all over the world. She also realized that waiting is a mindset: it is generally not a time of being in the present moment, but rather either daydreaming, biding one’s time, or expecting and anticipating. She resolved to explore this “waiting” mindset and see what she discovered.

Exploring
Other teachers have talked about waiting. Two points have stuck with me.

First, when we are waiting for something, we are not here. We are generally expecting, anticipating, sometimes hoping, sometimes dreading. During these states, “we are being eaten by time.”

The other big point is to realize the relationship between waiting and me/mine. While waiting, if we observe the content of our thoughts, we realize that most will be about me/mine. And it’s usually wanting—wanting this period to be over, wanting something to happen, or wanting something not to happen. But our focus is generally self-absorbed with my needs, my wants.

When we realize we are in a waiting mindset, we have the opportunity to observe. We can begin with noticing what the body feels like (both sensations and energy), what the heart feels like (perhaps heavy, resentful, or anxious). With some calming, we can observe the qualities of the mind during these periods. Building on the notion that mindfulness can enable us to see things more clearly, we see that this mind state of waiting is not really serving us or the people that live with us and not leading to peace in our hearts.

Emily’s gift of watercolors
One of my daughter’s Christmas gifts to me was materials for exploring watercoloring: some paints, brushes, and paper. She had also found a book that encourages the reader to explore and to have fun.

My first thought was my utter failure in a watercolor class many years ago. My second thought was to wait until after the surgery.

However, her other gift was to learn how to play Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (one of my favorite songs) on the piano. This is now beginning to sound like one of those commercials on TV: but wait, there’s more! Tying the song to watercolors, she had done her own exploring with watercolors—she had painted a beautiful orange-yellow wash on paper and then written, calligraphy style, the words to the song. A subtle hint that I might play with the watercolors myself!

So after the dreams last night, I will take out the watercolors today and begin some playful exploration!

Now

I am reminded of the last line of Mary Oliver’s poem Summer Day: “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

A great question for all of us to explore.

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with this precious moment, this precious day?

A metaphor, a meditation, and a new book

Phew! Election day. At last. So many things might happen. What also might happen is that we take time for what nourishes us. A few thoughts and offerings.

A metaphor for these times
Can we tend to our life like tending to a garden in a drought? Knowing and accepting that the garden will take more care than in normal times We might even have to learn what additional care is needed.

Two questions to explore:
What nourishes your body? Exercise, nutrition, sleep…
What nourishes your psyche/spirit/soul? Contemplative practices, connecting with others, recreation, time in nature…

Expanding the metaphor
In hard times, people whose garden is doing well can share with others or help them with their gardens. How might we support others who are struggling?

A loving-kindness meditation
This meditation appeared to me last night and has resemblance to some other meditations I have learned.

I began by taking time to connect with that universal energy of love, compassion, and good-will.

Then I began visualizing members of my family. And I smiled.

Then I thought of people I love and care about. Because I have friends all over the country and the world, images of a map of the US and the whole world appeared. I saw lights in those places where I have friends and family. And I smiled.

I expanded my focus to all humans, and lights came on all over the world. And I smiled.

I expanded my focus to include all animals. Images of all sorts of animals appeared. And I smiled.

I expanded my focus to include all plants and fungi. An image came of trees and the fungal network underground—a wonderful feeling of cooperation and symbiosis. And I smiled.

I breathed in to this wonderful network of life above and below the ground all over the planet. And I smiled.

And I saw myself as one bit of light in this incredible web of life. And I smiled.

A new resource
I highly recommend Diana Winston’s new book: The Little Book of Being: Practices and Guidance for Uncovering Your Natural Awareness. She is a wonderful writer and a long-time practitioner. The book includes a thorough presentation of classic mindfulness meditation practices, and she explains and offers practices to develop ‘natural awareness,’ a term used by many meditation teachers. The last section addresses Informal Practice. The short chapters include: Hang out with children and Tap into nature.

Wishing for all to develop and sustain the practices that support you, and being kind to yourself when things aren’t going well. I’ve had more than a few times like that in the past few months and am more grateful for all the practices and ways of being I have learned from so many people and animals!

Silence IS golden!

What is it about occasional or regular periods of silence that is so nourishing for so many people? Did it begin with our ancient ancestors having to be quiet during hunts or having to be quiet when a bear or lion was nearby? Or was it those spontaneous moments of silence like witnessing a beautiful sunset?

I remember moments of silence in my childhood, fishing in a lake with my father before dawn, watching a beautiful Arizona sunset with my mother. As I grew older, I felt the nourishment of moments of silence sometimes during church and then during some meditations.

I first introduced silence in my classes at Keene State during the Iraqi war in 1993. I told the students that I didn’t want to engage in conversation or debate but I couldn’t just pretend it wasn’t happening. I began each class with 2 minutes of silence. Students could do what they wanted as long as they were silent. In each class, after a couple of weeks, I asked the students anonymously (on blank sheets of paper) to say yes or no to continuing the silence. In all classes, the response was overwhelmingly yes.

In the following semesters, I introduced silence at the beginning of the semester. Over time, I taught simple mindfulness practices like awareness of breath, and I always made the silence optional. The result was that the overwhelming number of students found silence valuable.

Several years later, I made mindfulness integral in several interdisciplinary courses I was teaching. In those classes I taught awareness of breath, of body, of thoughts and emotions, and the loving-kindness meditation. At the end of each course, on the anonymous course evaluation, I asked students to tell me if they thought I should have more, less, or the same amount of mindfulness meditations in future classes. I did this three times and the overwhelming response was more!

Whenever I teach meditation, I occasionally open my eyes during a longer meditation to check in on how people are doing. I do this especially at the county jail where I teach meditation each week. I am always moved by people’s faces. Even though many say their mind is often busy during meditation, the faces are generally calm.

Last month I reread Silence by Christina Feldman, a book I dearly love. It is amazingly inexpensive ($11 on Amazon) given that it is printed on glossy paper and there are beautiful photographs on almost every page. I share three passages from the book.

“The moments of silence we encounter invite us to be still, to listen deeply, and to be present in this world. The glimpses of silence we meet remind us of a way of being in which we are deeply touched by the mystery and grandeur of life. In the midst of silence we remember what it feels like to be truly alive, receptive, and sensitive. Silence, we come to understand, is the language of the heart.”

“What difference would it make to our lives if we allowed ourselves as much time and attention to the cultivation of calmness and stillness as we give to producing and doing. Learning to live an intentional life.”

“Instead of fleeing from or avoiding the chaos of our psychological, emotional landscape, we learn to bring a gentle, clear attentiveness to it. The most direct way of doing this is to turn toward those inner places that are most wounded and chaotic…We begin to understand that the inner turmoil is a result of the many moments of incomplete attention we brought to the encounters of our day, the inner agitation that has compelled us to haste, and the times we have become simply lost in our expectations, wants, plans, and thoughts. All of this can be transformed as we come to understand that the life of engagement, activity, and creativity does not preordain a sentence of agitation and anxiety.”

I encourage readers to experiment with inviting moments of silence into your days.
Try this for a week or two—it might become a habit!
• When waking up
• Before beginning a meal
• In nature: listening to the wind, to the birds…
• In the city: the noises around you. This is your life now.
• At occasional moments during the day.

Resting while you work

Eleven years ago, our Monday night book group was reading Sabbath by Wayne Muller. I came across some notes from that group recently.

One night a member of the group said that at the end of a meditation retreat, she complimented the cooks for such great food. The reply: “the food was good partly because we rested while we worked.”

Another person then recalled a story from a guide on how to climb a mountain: take a slight pause (rest) between each step. In doing so, and others found they found that they were less tired than they normally were after a long hike.

That led to a discussion about the possibility of resting while we work. So we decided to explore this idea.

Following are some of the gems from that exploration!
Relishing snacks of rest
When cleaning the house, one member found herself dancing through the house while dusting, and then dancing from one chore to another.

Being restful in work
“I used to do a lot of thinking while washing dishes but I felt tired afterwards. Then I tried paying attention to sensations while washing dishes. Now I don’t feel tired afterwards.”

Work as rest
“I used to hate to do the dishes. Then I tried paying attention to what I noticed while doing the dishes. Now I love to do them and I feel rested afterwards.”

The dance of restful work
This person explored the notion of resting while raking the leaves. Her initial thought: “This is a big job. I’ll rest when I get to a certain spot.” Then she decided to taking to time to rest whenever she felt it. She found a feeling of so much joy in looking around at the beauty in the scenery. She was surprised to find herself finished before it was time to pick up her daughter.

Putting work to rest
“I put all my ‘to dos’ in one room. This enabled me to do only what I could do. Such a relief! I went back to the other room and found that many of the 'to dos' didn’t need to get done after all.”

Advice from meditation teachers and a music teacher
I recall several of my meditation teachers talking about ‘resting in the breath.’ Another teacher advised me to "rest in the not knowing."

Work and rest are like notes and the silence between notes in music. The silence (rest) between the notes is essential for the song to form. Otherwise it’s just noise.

Several quotes about busyness and rest
"A successful life has become a violent enterprise.
We make war on our own bodies, pushing them beyond their limits;
war on our children, because we cannot find enough time to be with them when they are hurt and afraid, and need our company;
war on our spirit, because we are too preoccupied to listen to the quiet voices that seek to nourish and refresh us;
war on our communities, because we are fearfully protecting what we have, and do not feel safe enough to be kind and generous;
war on the earth, because we cannot take the time to place our feet on the ground and allow it to feed us, to taste its blessings and give us thanks." Wayne Muller, Sabbath

"To commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything, is to succumb to the violence of modern time." Thomas Merton

"We have developed an inner psychology of speed, of saving time and maximizing efficiency, which is getting stronger by the day. " Guy Claxton, British psychologist, 2002

"We are called human beings, but we have become human doings." Anonymous

Some gems from Sabbath by Wayne Muller
Muller makes the point that we often don’t realize how tired we are. When you meditate, listen to your body, mind, and spirit. After the meditation, explore relevant thoughts that come up. For example, do you push away the signs of fatigue for fear that if you really pay attention, you will realize how tired you are?

Reflect on the word ‘rest.’
• What does that word mean to you, really?
• What rests (refreshes) you?
• What intentional activities or rituals do you have in your life that give you rest?
• What keeps you from resting more?

Make a choice to find rest and quiet each day, using the metaphor of putting a fence around the flowers to protect them.

For at least 5 minutes each day, focus on paying attention to the breath, including the rhythm of the breath. Ask these two questions and listen for what comes up:
What do you notice about the rhythm of rest in your breathing?
What do you notice about the rhythm of breath in your body?

Some other explorations to try on your own
• Try resting for moments during the day.
• Rest in an activity. For example, eat a snack mindfully.
• Give yourself rest from interruptions. For example, don’t answer the phone during dinner.
• Do something in a leisurely manner: make a meal slowly, take a walk with someone, eat an ice cream cone and savor each sensation!
• When you get to work, rest for a couple minutes before getting out of the car. Do the same when getting home from work.

Begin to habituate rest as your personal sanctuary. Enjoy each moment!

Lake and mountain as metaphors

Nature has been a common metaphor for many meditation teachers: mountains, lakes, rivers, clouds, sky, butterflies, trees, and monkeys, to name just a few. When Jon Kabat-Zinn developed the classic 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction course, he included two meditations which make use of the metaphors of a lake and a mountain.

The lake metaphor
Much of the power of the lake metaphor comes from the many qualities of water.
• The quality of receptivity: it absorbs whatever enters; think of rocks and earth falling into streams and rivers.
• The quality of not forcing: when water flows down a hill and encounters resistance, it goes around.
• The quality of persistence: think of the Grand Canyon!

Imagine a lake when it is calm, its surface like a mirror, reflecting everything around. Imagine the lake when it is windy and sunny, the surface sparkling like shimmering diamonds! So many different moods.

As a meditation you might focus on the receptiveness of water, inviting your mind and heart to be open and receptive, to reflect whatever enters into your awareness. Include it all: the surface during the moments of complete stillness and during moments where it is choppy and agitated; and the bottom of the lake which is undisturbed by the winds and storms at the surface.

“[I]n your meditation practice and in your daily life, can you identify not only with the content of your thoughts and feelings but also with the vast unwavering resource of awareness itself residing below the surface of the mind? In the lake meditation, we sit with the intention to hold in awareness and acceptance all qualities of mind and body” just as the lake sits with whatever is happening.

Two additional meditations
Imagine sitting at the edge of a pond which is completely still, the surface a mirror. Now imagine throwing a large stone into the pond. Observe the effect of the stone, the ripples moving outward from the place where it entered and the ripples bouncing off the shore. Wait a few minutes. The pond become still again. When we bring a curious and non-contentious awareness to whatever is happening, we can notice those moments of stillness. We’re not doing as much as observing, witnessing the causes and effects.

Imagine being on a large boat in a large lake during a raging storm. The waves whipping across the lake, pounding against the boat. Now imagine dropping a rock from the boat. It settles at the bottom of the lake, hundreds of feet below the surface. The storm is still raging above, but here it is calm. So too it is possible to be aware of a part of us that is calm, even during a storm.

The mountain metaphor
In virtually all cultures, from time immemorial, mountains have been sacred places where people go for spiritual guidance and renewal. We can draw on the many qualities of mountains: strength, endurance, majesty, unwavering presence…

There are many ways to play with mountain as a meditation focus.

Imagine a mountain, a particular mountain that you are drawn to or an imaginary mountain. Take a few moments to become familiar with the mountain, to inhabit the mountain. Feel its massiveness, its beauty both far away and up close. Its peak, ridges, and slopes. The plants and animals that live there.

Embody the mountain. Your head becomes the peak, your shoulders and arms become the sides and ridges of the mountain, your torso and legs become the base of the mountain, rooted to the earth. Become the mountain. Feel this energy in and on your body.

You might like to imagine your mountain through the four seasons:
spring: the returning sun, pastel colors, new life bursting…
summer: full sun, deeper colors, longer days, abundant life…
fall: the slowing down, shorter, cooler days, trees shedding their leaves to prepare for winter…
winter: colder, when most life slows down, yet still vibrantly alive…

You might like to imagine spending a whole day at your mountain:
dawn: soft light, the sunrise, so many bird songs...
morning: life becomes busier…
mid afternoon; full sun…
late afternoon: the light changing again, slowing down..
night: the quietness only occasionally disturbed…

During all of these daily and seasonal changes the mountain abides it all. Storms are natural, but the mountain doesn’t take them personally.

The mountain is constantly changing through the seasons and through the years: rainfall carving new paths down the mountain, trees falling, new life emerging, plants and animals decaying, making conditions for new life to emerge.

The mountain endures all kinds of weather: storms, drought, lightning and thunder, hail, snow, blizzards, and more.

As we continually change--every day and through the seasons of our own lives--we can link with the qualities of mountains: strength, stability, and endurance… Our own moods like the weather: sometimes subtle, sometimes violent.

You might choose to play with any of these possibilities during a meditation period or to recall qualities of water, lakes, and mountains during the day.