Interpreting our way to greater happiness

      Some situations in life aren’t taught to us, and yet when faced with them, we assume we should somehow know how to deal with them.  How do you handle the situations in your life?  How many shoulds, coulds, woulds do you impose on yourself?  And how much of the interpretations of “should have done”, or “would have to do,” influence how you feel about yourself and the situation you are facing?  

The interpretation we ascribe to situations directly contributes to how much or little stress we’ll consequently feel.  We can ask ourselves: “are my interpretations of occurrences in my life beneficial or harmful to me?  Do they ease or burden my life? 

  All of us had to, at some point, learn to walk, drive, interview for a job, cross the street, answer a research question – we weren’t born knowing these.  In the same way, we also have to acquire and practise skills for many other common occurrences.   

For example, do we understand the crucial difference between taking offense versus being harmed?  An incident, from many years ago, made this clear to me, and it also awoke my inner critic “how could you have not known this before?”  One day, a friend said to me: “you take things too personally.”  I immediately defended my position, but later on I pondered her odd remark. Even though, I reacted by righteously defending my interpretation of the situation, I will always be grateful to her for that comment.  Her remark showed me -- another interpretation or response was possible.  I hadn’t known this.

Reactivity by nature doesn’t allow room for any other perspective to emerge – the unconscious instantaneous birth of reactivity automatically swallows up the gap of space to breathe, be present and reflect on what’s occurring.  Reactivity shuts down possibilities. 

So let’s return to the difference between being offended and being harmed. According to Lou Marinoff in his book, “Plato, Not Prozac,” the difference is essentially one of interpretation.  He explains it this way.  If someone slaps you in the face, then this is being harmed.  There’s only one interpretation possible.  If, however, someone said you were lazy and useless, here there is more than one possible interpretation.  You will have to do some self reflection and then determine how close to true the remark is or isn’t.  In this instance, you CHOOSE whether to be offended or to shrug off the remark.  The latter is largely dependent on your interpretation of the accuracy of the remark, whereas the former is determined by the physical pain you experience, which isn’t subject to interpretation.

While this lesson may have been self evident to many of you, it wasn’t for me.  When we approach situations with the attitude we should know how to deal with whatever is going on, then we are setting ourselves up for high stress.  

The disadvantages of applying the “should know” interpretation is that we –

·         fail to appreciate and tap into the essential experience of the moment,

·         expect perfection from ourselves,

·         become combative with and judgmental of ourselves

·         don’t learn from the situation or about our coping ability,

·         don’t allow all possibilities to come to bear in the situation.

My friend’s comment helped me see an option existed to respond in ways that would benefit me and possibly others.  Reactivity is so primal that it functions at a binary level of survive or die.  Because it occurs in an environment where we coexist with others, it can cause us to become competitive rather than cooperative.  And competition doesn’t allow for compassion and consideration of self or others. 

With mindfulness, we use ourselves as the ground to practise kindness to self first; we begin with learning to accept ourselves, as we are.  The training is to remain aware and open and not to react.  Over time, this grows our ability to be more mindful and less reactive in life.  When we are able to acknowledge and accept all aspects of ourselves, we enter the path of compassion. And self-compassion is a stepping stone to being a happy human being in the world.  And happy people make a happy world.

      May you, too, benefit from this reminder. 

If you'd like to learn techniques for being mindful in your work, relationships and life, I have a workshop coming up this weekend (20-21 April) and another one on (18-19 May).  These are weekend intensive workshops on "Mindfulness:Strategies for Daily Living to Reduce Stress".  Please email Casey at acceptancehealing@gmail.com for more info.   Or check out the link (top right) on Upcoming Workshops.

WASHING DISHES MEDITATION

Washing dishes is an activity that most of us engage in every day.  This routine act which we most often engage in mindlessly can also be an opportunity to practise being fully present and mindful. 

Typically our attitude when doing such tasks like dish washing, sweeping, cleaning, cooking is to get it over with as quickly as possible, so that we can get to more important things.  The mindset we have then is that the job at hand is an obstacle or necessary evil in the path of the thing that we really want to do. 

Our evaluation or judgment of the task makes it difficult for us to see the value such mundane tasks possess – the ability to put us back in the moment, to practise contemplation, and to awaken us.  When we are fully available to the moment, no matter what we are doing, then we can’t worry about the future or yearn for the past.  We can only be present in the present. 

The skill to bring our attention to whatever we are doing makes it possible to keep our thoughts from running away with us and we become better able to manage our anxiety.  Paying attention or being mindful of what the body is doing and where the body is in the moment, slows down and calms the mind and body.  And when mind, body and moment unite, we are alive and present. 

This is how you practice dish washing meditation.  The intention is to use one or all the senses to become present in the moment.    

Sensations of dish washing (paying attention to all the senses – sound/sight/feeling)

You can choose to pay attention to the sensations of the weight of the bowl in your hand, the sound of the water running, the feel of the water and soap on your hand, the squishiness of the sponge, the smell of the soap, the sight of the caked on food on the utensils, and your feelings and thoughts about what you’re seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling.  Try to look at a fork, cup, pot as if you’ve never seen one before, and then “see” the fork, cup, pot.   

When your mind wanders, try not to judge yourself.  Keep returning to the object of your attention – the plate, the spoon you are washing. 

Or  there’s my favourite dish washing meditation…

Sounds of dish washing: (paying attention to just one sense – sound)

Listen to the sound of the water pouring onto or slopping over the utensils, the sound of the sink filling.  Hear the sound of the scourer scraping over the plates – notice the difference in tone when the scourer rubs over plastic, metal, glass, rubber.   Pay attention to the change in sound when the scourer has soap on it and when it doesn’t, listen to the cutlery clinking against each other and in the dish rack, against the pots, glass, wooden bowl. 

Washing dishes becomes so enjoyable, when I remember to wash them with this kind of “musical accompaniment.”  Try it and you might find this is true for you too. 

May you be awakened in this moment.  

More Health Tips : Preventing Colds/Flu

Thank you for sharing these great links on preventing colds and flu. 

Here they are:

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2013/02/04/zinc-garlic-vitamin-d.aspx?e_cid=20130204_DNL_art_1&utm_source=dnl&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=20130204

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/cold-flu-prevention-natural-immune-boosters_n_2474430.html

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2009/08/15/Good-Bacteria-Fight-the-Flu.aspx

http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/11-tips-prevent-cold-flu

May you be healthy and strong.

My Home Remedies for Flu and Cold

Drinks/Hot Teas

• Boil ½ cup water with ½ tsp turmeric, stick cinnamon, ½ tsp whole black pepper, crushed ginger and garlic.  Boil and reduce to ¼ cup liquid.  Add some honey to taste, 2 tbs brandy (optional), fresh basil.  Drink while hot.  This drink will raise body temperature.
•  Make a tea with fresh ginger slices, cloves, cinnamon, fennel seeds –strain and drink with honey to soothe the throat.
•  Drink lots of warm water, hot peppermint or thyme tea, room temperature citrus juices.

To calm hard coughs with pain and for a productive cough: 

Use extract of Mullein Leaf – about 30 drops to a glass of warm water – 2 to 3 times a day

To relieve congestion:

·                     Boil water, pour it in a bowl, add a few drops of Eucalyptus Oil to the water.  Bend over the bowl with a towel over your head and breathe in the warm scented steam.

·                     Place a warm towel or compress (add a few drops of eucalyptus) on your chest to relieve congestion

Chicken or Vegetable Soup:  

Make soup with extra fresh chopped garlic and ginger, and fresh herbs like thyme.  You can also add cayenne/chili, coriander and cumin powders.  Cayenne helps raise body temperature to kill infections and cleanse the body.  Cumin is an antiseptic and raises body temperature.  Coriander is calming to the body.  Ginger increases body heat.  Garlic is antibacterial.

These will boost your immune system.  Take 2 times a day.

Zicam Zinc Tablets

400 mg Echinacea

500 mg Vitamin C

EmergenC

Additionally:

Eat lots of citrus fruit

Keep yourself warm

Rest as much as you can

Of course, if your symptoms persist, please see a doctor.

Visit these links for Tips on fighting colds and Flu

http://www.doctoroz.com/blog/donna-cardillo-rn-ma/cold-and-flu-home-remedies

http://www.webmd.com/cold-and-flu/8-tips-to-treat-colds-and-flu-the-natural-way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTL8BGUz23U

May you be healthy and well this season!

Gasping in the New Year

So I ushered in the New Year gasping – not in wonder and awe that we’d survived the world’s ending as predicted by some, but – for lungs full of air!  Some mysterious agent,  all the usual suspects were ruled out,  laid me out for close on two weeks.  The only thing I knew was that for the first time in memory, I had to get help to breathe. 

In the days leading up to the Urgent Care visit, I lay in bed acutely aware of my body’s struggle for oxygen.  The changes - physical, mental and emotional - brought about by this lack of oxygen were astounding.  

My face had shrunken and had become grey. I was weepy. Speaking was almost impossible (a nightmare for someone who started talking before her first birthday).  The times I did try speaking, my voice was weak and filled with huge ‘hollows’.  These hollows were only rivaled by the ever increasing dark circles and sink holes that were appearing around my eyes.  Each morning as I leaned over the sink to wash my face, I would straighten up to notice my eyes growing glassier as if a little light was receding far back into a darkened room.  The windows of my eyes were like foggy black glass at a smoggy dockyard.  Too fatigued and mentally incapable of forming a coherent thought, all I could do was lie in bed and watch what was happening in my body and mind, as it happened. 

The little air I could draw in to my body fought an uphill battle to get to my lungs.  It ran an audible obstacle course through mucus-filled bronchi; the air would bubble up and then a curious little ‘clicking’ sound would begin.  It would dissipate when I exhaled only to appear again on the inhalation. Because of the sound, I could track the oxygen as it made its arduous journey to my lungs.   

This struggle highlighted how free and easy breathing normally is, and how much I take it for granted.  Other insights came later – body and mind are intricately intertwined in the delicate dance of life.  Getting to know this balance or even just paying attention to it from time to time is well worth the effort.  We don’t have to wait for something to go wrong, or for the systems to begin malfunctioning before we appreciate what a wondrous thing breathing is.  Can we afford not to notice this ‘everyday miracle?’

After all, everything we do in life is by courtesy of breath.  So being mindful, even for a few minutes a day, is beneficial in so many ways.  Scientific Meditation research is showing that even spending 12 minutes a day meditating improves short term memory, increases attention, and decreases distractibility.  In as little as 8 weeks, Mindfulness meditation brings about structural changes to the brain: new neural pathways and connections develop, grey matter increases, and different parts of the brain are activated to respond to life situations.  And as the brain likes repetition, doing this everyday for a few minutes will make a big difference to our brains and how we negotiate life from moment to moment.  If you are interested in the brain changes brought about by mindfulness, check out the links to  "Your Brain on Mindfulness" and "The Neurobiology of Mindfulness" on my website.    

In this New Year, may you do some healthy gasping in awe of life’s wonders! 

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

Friends,

Wishing you all a lovely holiday season.
May your time with family and friends be filled with laughter, joy, and peace, and of course, good eats.
May the New Year bring you peace, love, prosperity and good health.

Thank you for all you do!

Hugs
Casey

Noticing -- is enough!

A friend was telling me about her child who never seems to enjoy any activity, outing or trip they take her on.  No matter if the trip was to the zoo, hiking, beach or the movies, her daughter invariably struggled with enjoying herself or expressing enjoyment.  As her mother, my friend was sad and concerned about this ‘quirk’ in her child.

I asked her if she thought maybe the child’s expectations were too high? Or maybe the child's vision or her idea of how “things should be” causes her to be disappointed?  To ease my friend’s worry, I reminded her that noticing what’s happening for her child is the first important step.  The simplest way to teach our children is to pay attention to our own actions and words. As children learn from modeled behavior, I hoped this gentle hint would also help her (the mother) to begin noticing her own levels of expectation and perfection.   

 In a culture which emphasizes doing above being, the drive to attain perfection causes us to try and ‘fix’ things, and to do so as quickly as possible.  And we -- body, speech, accent, you name it – aren’t spared from this ‘improving’.  With missionary zeal, we set out on the journey to do something to better ourselves, and we don’t give ourselves the time and space to become clear about what is right there, right then.  Jon Kabat Zinn points out "we are tending to ourselves simply by paying kind attention to what is unfolding right in this moment." (Whereever you go)

With the heavy demands we carry, much of our life slips past without our knowing.  The mere act of noticing – focusing our ‘eye’ on the issue, the worry, the fear, the situation – is sufficient to bring about a transformation, a shift, a relaxation, or whatever the moment is asking of us.  In that moment of paying deep attention, we don’t have to do anything.  Rather it becomes our declared intention to be fully available to ourselves just then.

One way we can become available to ourselves – don’t panic!, I’m not suggesting you increase your already overloaded schedule – is to take a couple minutes each day when readying for bed, upon waking, or in the shower to check in with yourself.    

Here’s how you do it:

Move your attention (as if it were warm honey) down your body, emotions and mind. Discover what’s happening there.  Your role is the detached observer. Try not to wish for anything to be different.  For instance, if you notice you are feeling anxious about the day ahead -- then simply look at how anxiety manifests in your body and mind.  Are your thoughts racing?  Are you feeling tense?  Are your palms sweaty?  Observing with kind curiosity is how you become aware of what’s happening in the moment.

After checking in and seeing what’s there, you have options.  You can sit with the feeling and see what else comes up, or you can leave things as they are.  If you feel compelled to challenge your thinking or to do something, then you can figure out what course of action to follow.

The beauty of following this slowing down process is that:

·         it monitors the reactivity and shutting down that automatically occurs when we are  faced with something we don’t like

·         we become responsive and not reactive

·         it helps recalibrate us to what’s happening now. 

And in the present moment, exactly as it is, is the only place we truly exist.  

May this article heal, transform and empower you.

Learning from irritating people...

By now, you know that I draw the theme of these articles from my life experiences, which I subject to intense scrutiny and which you, my long-suffering readers, are subjected to in these articles.  So I’ve been wondering about -- how do we learn?  

The other day my husband and I attended an event that ran longer than anticipated, so by the end of the event I was quite hungry.  In the very crowded car park, cars were feeding into one lane from about four different directions, and pedestrians were crossing in front of and alongside cars to get to their cars.  My polite husband allowed several cars to go ahead of us.   Then he decided to wait and see in which direction a large group was going, before merging into the exit lane.  As we saw they weren’t going to cross in front of us, (from my low blood sugar perspective, or is this just an excuse?), he seemed to be taking an inordinately long time to join the exit queue. That’s when my patience ran out.        

Here’s the thing -- my husband seems to drive perpetually in the slow lane of life.  And while I’m not always rushing, I like to reach my destination while I still have life in me. In all the years we’ve known each other, our temperaments haven’t changed much.  What has this to do with learning, you ask?

This incident or variations of it have occurred many times in our marriage.  So, how do we know whether we are learning or if we are just repeating the same pattern mindlessly?  Later, as we discussed the incident, I acknowledged my responsibility for my reaction and expressed regret for it.  As I was apologizing, I was also wondering why does this scene keep replaying.  

If impatience is the culprit that trips up my equanimity, then reflection on my outburst is my reset button.  This is what I mean: by apologizing for being rude and by analyzing how and why things unfolded as they did -- these actions of acknowledging responsibility and of analyzing consequences -- automatically give rise to awareness.  And awareness is the first step to learning.

The greatest understanding that arose from this situation was that the people who irritate us (and we all play this role to someone) also provide an opportunity for us to learn about ourselves.  My husband’s patience reveals my own impatience.  This showed me that even though I’ve grown much, this is still a growth area for me. 

Both parties have the potential to learn from such incidents.  I wondered what he had learned from it?  He replied that circumstances demand we respond to them as they are unfolding rather than rigidly sticking to just one way of approaching all situations in life.

So how we learn is by: 

• becoming aware and acknowledging our role in an incident,
• examining our feelings and thoughts about it, 
• analyzing the roles of the people involved, 
• recognizing that each situation requires a fresh approach, and
• understanding that sometimes lessons are repeated. 

Even though, these sorts of incidents have occurred many times, the fact is that at each occurrence: the argument duration is shorter, the anger less heated, the words less harsh, the feelings less hurt, the calm less ruffled.  And…we aren’t always the last car in the queue!!

Mindfulness and Technology

In case you think technology only distracts us, think again!  Check out this article on Mindfulness and Technology.  Yes, my friends, there are apps out there that can help you remember to be mindful.

Enjoy

http://www.nicabm.com/nicabmblog/mindfulness-technology-for-the-21st-century-have-you-tried-these-apps/

Losing Ground

Recently life has become a very strict teacher! The lessons seem to be coming more frequently and they seem to be hitting closer to home.  Since our move to another area and home, I am growing acutely aware that all the things in life I take for granted as being safe and sound are, in fact, quite easily invaded.

It started when we were moving. We were informed that a home on the street across from our place had been broken into during the day, even though this was supposed to be a safe neighborhood. Then my computer got a virus despite the antivirus and firewall protections I’d purchased.  Then I called the company I bought the computer protection software from only to realize that I was actually speaking to the very person I was trying to protect my computer from. Then our bed was invaded by bedbugs probably picked up on the discount moving service we’d used during the move. Then when renting a safety deposit box at the bank, the written notice indicated that none of the stored items were covered under FDIC.  This onslaught of ‘reminders’ feels weighty to me.

We like to think of our home, computer, bed and bank as being safe places that are inviolate.  We use these places and things to conduct our most intimate and private business.  The thought that they are subject to invasion is decidedly unsettling. Therefore I have to wonder: what am I meant to be learning?  What is escaping my attention, which is causing the lessons to manifest in so many different ways in such a short time span?

If you think I have the answer, I haven’t!  Naturally I’m drawn to try and understand what I’m not getting or seeing.  All these incidents seem to concentrate around the notion of safe refuges and a sense of security. The frequency of these occurrences and their personal nature screams some significance to me.  I suppose if I weren’t the type of person who chooses to understand or read meaning into life’s occurrences, I wouldn’t be plagued by them.

However, I do believe that life sends us lessons.  Our role is to first recognize that we are being taught something and then to learn it.  If we fail to even comprehend that there’s significance or meaning to what is being experienced, we lose the lesson and consequently the opportunity to learn.  But life is nothing if not tenacious, and we’ll certainly get to experience and learn the lesson in another way.  For me, I’m opting to learn the lesson the first time round.  But clearly I’ve not done so yet, hence the many manifestations of what I am assuming is essentially one lesson. 

  What are your thoughts about such life experiences?  I’d love to hear your feedback and insights in this regard.