Tag Archives: compassion practice

mindfulness instructions for daily practice in a landscape of change and uncertainty

windscapes

As a frequent observer of the ever-changing canvas of the sky, I notice the shape of the wind in the clouds and the endless variety and nuance of colors in a sunset as it evolves from beginning to end. All of these naturally occurring and shape-shifting events are a daily reminder of how the ‘arising conditions’ in one’s life, as well as in the external world, always have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This can be its own comfort, especially when what is arising is foreign, fearful, or simply unknown territory.

The four mindfulness instructions listed below have been particularly helpful to me over the past few months and I have found myself incorporating them into my daily yoga practice, as needed or skillful.

“It’s okay to feel this.” from Joseph Goldstein’s teachings. This teaching is a simple, yet gentle reminder that we don’t need to change how or what we are feeling or our response to it. Wanting our emotions to stop or be different is often the impulse when they are experienced as uncomfortable or painful. We may feel aversion or a desire to suppress or have them disappear. As likely, we may engage in something distracting to make them go away or go underground. The practice of allowing one’s emotional experience without making it good or bad, or right or wrong and being present as it moves through can be its own source of relief and liberation.

“Standing in the middle of anything.” is an equanimity practice shared by Devin Berry in an interview with Dan Harris on the previously known as 10% Happier App (now Happier App.) This teaching invites us to find the ground under our feet, the constancy and rhythm of our breath, and return to our center in the midst of whatever is arising within us or around us. We can pause and invite our full awareness to observe the presence or flow of physical sensations, cognitions or thought energy, and/or emotions without judgment or identification.

“Present moment; safe moment.” This phrase arose a number of years ago during my work with individuals healing from complex trauma. Many others have found it an effective teaching and mantra since. Exploring and re-establishing a ‘felt sense of safety’ through gentle therapeutic, somatic practices is an essential part of healing trauma and/or supporting ourselves in periods of high distress . While our bodies and beings may have lived through various traumatic events or through situations in which we lacked control and agency, when we are fully present with our bodies and breath in the present moment, we can reconnect with our inherent capacity to calm and soothe our nervous system. This supports healing and nourishes resiliency.

“Love no matter what.” from Father Greg Boyle, as shared by Joseph Goldstein. Individual, groups, and systems can unconsciously and/or consciously create individual or systemic harm. Father Boyle’s teaching reminds us to lead with humanity and kindness in the midst of oppression and cruelty, and remember that love and compassion are stronger and more resilient than hate and fear. It is also a reminder that the act and choice to love is a daily practice that can be invited and nourished.

facing fear

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“Each of us must confront our own fears, must come face to face with them. How we handle our fears will determine where we go with the rest of our lives. To experience adventure or to be limited by the fear of it.”

~ Judy Blume, Tiger Eyes

“So, how can you live in love rather than in fear? The first step, I’m sorry to say, is to love your fear. There’s a way in which you actually have to bow to the fear and say, ‘I know you. You too are part of this humanity.’” –

~Jack Kornfield

Beauty and Resiliency: no matter what

Same lake, different day.

As I look out my office window, the sun breaks the boundaries of today’s clouds. Immediately, the snowfields glow, almost blinding in their sweep down to the inky blue expanse of Lake Champlain, whose western shoreline is anchored by the Adirondacks. This view never gets old. Beauty never does.

To live in this pandemic, natural beauty has become a necessary balm, a daily tonic for me. As for most of us, with varying iterations, the shape of my life has been reduced, slightly expanded, then reduced again with each new wave of Covid-19. The relative constant has been navigating the small triangle of: home, office, and grocery store. When the triangle breaks for errands, takeout, the rare out-of-state trip when infection rates have dropped, spaciousness seeps in, as does the remembrance of life before Covid-19. The old normal. The time, like all time, that will never return.

As we approach the 2nd anniversary of the pandemic, I am struck by how much stress and grief people have had to navigate in universal and unique ways. These include: social isolation and fear of illness or death, deaths of loved ones and pets, shifts in employment or demands thereof; reduced or no access to healthcare, housing, and food security; confusion related to public health management, and lack of access to regular activities or travel that bring joy and renewal. All of these circumstances are continuing to unfold against a backdrop of global social, political, and environmental challenges that create their own clouds of existential angst.

Throughout it all, what humbles me most is human resiliency. And not the dressed up kind that one reads about in psychological theory or the latest self-help book, but the gritty, necessary meeting-life-another-day kind. No matter what. What humbles me is the way I witness people hanging on, leaning in, being vulnerable, sharing what’s real, and taking care of themselves and those they love. What humbles me is the courage it takes to show up messy, curious, sad or grieving, and still find moments of laughter, joy, and ways to love. This kind of human resiliency lives below or beyond the labels of identity, life circumstances, social structures, political affiliations or lack thereof. It’s messy, heartfelt, courageous, and tender. And I have the privilege of witnessing its emergence and growth all the time.

One of the things I have learned personally and professionally is that the worst things in life are not poverty, illness, trauma, hunger, or even the death of loved ones, as devastating as any or all of these experiences are or can be. It’s being alone with our suffering, whatever its origins. It’s living in a cage of chronic silence and isolation. Feeling and believing that if people only knew how you felt, or what happened to you, or some mistake that you made, you would be exiled off the planet and everyone would know your individual brand of unworthiness and shame.

While the hiding, the silence, and related isolation create the worst suffering, connection heals. Authentic connection to ourselves, others, and nature make life not only bearable, but meaningful. In these ways, resilience is born and nurtured. Every day. No matter what.

Reflections on suffering and perspective-taking

While perspective-taking is an important life skill, I observe repeatedly that many individuals have been taught to use it as a tool to minimize their own suffering and grief. Paradoxically, this simply creates another obstacle to integrating one’s authentic life experiences and the potential healing benefits for self and others. It also often creates another layer of suffering, as the comparative subtext is: Who am I to claim I’ve suffered?

In The Faraway Nearby, Rebecca Solnit, speaks to this with great clarity and eloquence:

Other’s woes can be used as reproaches and sometimes are: how dare you think about your own private suffering when wars are raging and children are being bombed? There is always someone whose suffering is greater than yours. The reproaches are often framed as though there is an economy of suffering, and of compassion, and you should measure yourself, price yourself, with the same sense of scarcity and finite resources that govern monetary economies, but there is no measure of either. In high does suffering is boundless and incomparable and overwhelming.

Furthermore, whenever we connect to our own authentic life experiences, it expands our capacities to relate to and care about the suffering we observe in ever-widening circles of relationships: family, friends, community, state, nation, and the world.

Today, through the Parliament of World Religions’ 2021 Conference online, I had the privilege of speaking with two bright, emotionally intelligent, compassionate individuals engaged in youth work in India. While we could all imagine the differences between our respective worlds and work, the connecting threads were that youth in India and the States (and everywhere) meeting the obstacles: of poverty, family distress/dissolution, educational access challenges, employment demands or access to employment, etc. and need community support, mentorship, and compassionate, skillful programming to help them create a life beyond survival mode. We made space for the fullness across landscapes and time, and hope to connect again to explore more how therapeutic yoga and mindfulness practices can support resiliency and healing for youth and those who provide services to them.

Stephen Cope’s Riding The wave technique: BRFWA

let the spaciousness of the sky be a gentle reminder of the spaciousness of breath

This is a mindful, self-regulation practice that can support our capacities to meet the present moment with skillfulness and compassion, and in the process cultivate equanimity.

Stephen Cope
(Excerpts and technique* from Yoga and The Quest for True Self)
Riding the Wave Technique:
Breathe:
Soften the belly and bring your awareness to the breath. The body responds immediately. The wave of breath begins to flow into all parts of the body.
Relax:
Full breathing automatically initiates relaxation. In order to deepen this effect, it can be useful to coach yourself. “Relax.” You can consciously relax the muscles: The face. The brow. The belly.
Feel:
Actively begin to investigate the wave of feeling generated by this relaxation. Where in your body do you feel sensation, energy, movement? Investigate. Move toward the sensations and feelings, rather than away from them. If intensity is present, meet it with breath and attention toward the grounding energy or points in the body.
Watch:
As you begin to settle, you may be able to notice the capacity to witness your experience, to be the observer. Allow yourself to identify with the observing self. The Witness stands at the center of experience, and is able to be with the experience, the sensation, the feeling, and not be overwhelmed by it or practice this capacity.
Allow:
Coach yourself to allow the wave of feeling to wash through you. No need to block anything. It’s all safe. It will not destroy or annihilate you. It will not hurt others. Practicing staying with your true experience just as it is. Watching it begin, shift, and end.

Note: If a lot of intensity is present, you can modify this instruction to allow and invite calming, soothing breath awareness and the gentle reminder: present moment, safe moment.

“When we are judging or criticizing our experience, we cannot be fully in it. In order to witness we have to be able to interact with what is, without needing to fight against it. Nothing has to get rejected or closed down. No part of me is any more right than any other part. I am not more invested in one than in the other. I am curious. Accepting. Allowing. Interested. Watching…There is an essential corollary to the first law of the witness, however. It goes like this: Eventually, we will react, we will judge, we will censor. But this is not a problem either! When we do react, judge, or censor, we can simply take that reaction as the object of the witness’s attention.” Stephen Cope

Consider ending practice with this gift of a poem by Wendell Berry:

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes.
Abandon, as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.