Posts Tagged ‘Holidays’
Mindfulness for the holiday season: Christmas and the New Year
December is a time of year in which our sensations can be easily bombarded. It’s easy to get stressed about Christmas shopping, overcrowded malls, travel plans, holiday parties, familial obligations, and in some cases, snowstorms. The practice of being mindful is the intentional practice of focusing attention on one thing. Focused attention calms and settles the mind, and circumvents the rat race of disorganized, divided, and unfocused attention. It is a way to come back to the current moment and show up for everything the moment has to offer.
Here are three different ways of being mindful this holiday season:
Five minutes of breathing:
Sit quietly for five minutes and focus on the rise and fall of your breath. Every time you notice your mind wandering or your attention scattered, bring your attention back to the rise and fall of your breath. This may be a useful exercise to do after driving in bad traffic, being in a crowd, or after coming home from work.
Savor sensation: Take a few moments to take in the entire experience of the following:
- The taste of peppermint. Do you really taste peppermint when you eat it?
- Do you ever notice how the air changes as it grows colder? Try figuring out how the air smells or tastes. I’ve noticed the winter air to be crisp, bitter, biting, heavy, cold, damp, salty, and even woody.
- Pay attention to tastes and smells that you enjoy- in other words, don’t pass them up or take them for granted when you notice them.
Show up for the moment…even if the moment brings pain
Sometimes people experience a great deal of sadness during the holidays: Spending holidays alone, spending a “first” holiday after losing a loved one during the year, or being reminded of recent losses or relationships ruptures.
If sadness is part of your holiday, consider:
- Reflecting on what is important and meaningful
- Allowing yourself to grieve deeply and fully, to cry openly, to acknowledge everything you experience with your heart wide open
- Honor what has been lost
- Be gentle and tender with yourself
Singing, carols, generosity of spirit, pageants, and performances can move people deeply. If joy is part of your holiday
- allow yourself to be moved to tears
- fully experience, absorb, take in, and reflect on what you have
- share with others what you appreciate or love
- allow for the positive
- recognize times in your life in which things have been difficult- and how different they are for you now.
Wishing you a holiday in which your experiences are rich and meaningful- I will be back at my blog posting in 2012!
Posted in Mindfulness | 
Tags: Christmas, Emotion, grief, Holidays, Joy, Meaning, Mindfulness, Openness, Sensation | 
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An exercise in mindfulness: Thanksgiving turkeys
In my groups, we spend time at the beginning doing some sort of exercise to slow down, pay attention, come into the room, and notice what is going on. Some of these exercises are specifically directed at paying attention to the breath. When breathing is slowed, paced, and regulated, a person has a better tendency to think clearer and become organized. Using the breath to regulate emotion, attention, and physical arousal is a very critical skill that frequently gets forgotten about in the heat of the moment- especially a very emotional moment.
Breathing exercises can sometimes be difficult. If you were to spend five minutes trying to focus just on your breath, you may notice spacing out, thinking about other things, and generally not paying much attention to the physical aspects of your breath. Therefore, breathing exercises may sometimes be paired with counting, walking, or other more concrete methods to help you get in touch- and stay in touch- with your breath.
Here is an exercise that is a tangible way of following the breath- and can easily be taught to young children as a way to self-regulate. Place your hand on a piece of paper and trace around it. Every time you move up to the tip of a finger, inhale. Every time you move down to the crevice between your fingers, exhale. Try to work on slowing down your breath so that it is even and steady. When you are done, start over. Keep g
oing until you notice feeling calmer, slower, steadier, and perhaps more connected. Be gentle and notice any frustration if it doesn’t “work” right away.
One way to do this exercise is to keep tracing and re-tracing back your hand on one piece of paper. Another way to do this exercise is to not use paper and pen at all, but to trace your fingers with your other hand. This method can be used when you are out and about, in a meeting, or (depending on subtly it’s done) even talking to other people.
However, if you trace a new outline on new paper each time, you can start to accumulate several pieces of paper. If you’d like to add a beak and draw in some feathers on your “hands”, you can start to ask yourself: How many turkeys does it take to get calmed down? If you get really good and regulating your emotions by regulating your breath, you may find that over time the number of turkeys it takes will eventually go down.
Posted in Mindfulness | Tags: anxiety, Breath, Breathing, Holidays, Mindfulness, Openness, Stress, Thanksgiving | No Comments »
Autumn mindfulness
This week for mindfulness I am asking my participants to look at a leaf as if they have never seen it before. The instructions include observing the leaf carefully, looking closely at its color, breathing in its earthy leaf-smell, and paying attention to its texture.
The leaves of autumn come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Some have bright colors and some have unusual patterns. Some have holes, rips, or tears. Some have started to turn brown and some have black spots on them. Some are wet and slimy and others are brittle and crunchy. Some are visually appealing and some are less appealing to look at.
Mindfulness is about being able to observe what is in front of us, without dismissing or evaluating, without throwing away or ignoring, and without inhibiting or suppressing. Sometimes what we observe is not pleasant. Sometimes we do not like what we observe, or we wish for things to be different. Sometimes we see what others are holding, or observing, or turning over in their palm- and we wish that our leaves were as exciting or pretty.
When we look carefully at the details of an autumn leaf, we start to see things that we haven’t bothered to see. Perhaps we are fascinated by the tiny detail of texture. Perhaps we are struck by the brilliance in color. Perhaps a mottled pattern draws us. Perhaps we notice liking, or not liking, or irritation, or impatience. Perhaps we notice jealousy.
When we can see what is in front of us- reality as it is on its own terms- we can give it our full attention. When we can give it our attention, we can start to get our minds around it. We can go through the necessary- even if painful- steps of what it is going to take to move through it instead of around it. We stop avoiding. We may start to see things not seen before. We increase awareness. We have new information- even if it is clarity about our own emotions.
Look carefully this week at things you don’t want to see. See if you can notice, gently, with willingness and awareness, the things that are easier to ignore or avoid. Allow for this to be.
Posted in Mindfulness | Tags: Acceptance, Autumn, Holidays, Joy, Mindfulness, willingness | Comments Closed
Finding joy this holiday season…Yeah, right…
Creating positive life experiences is critical if you are down, depressed, unhappy, and without joy. This generally involves a few steps- a necessary first one includes making the time for pleasant events. This means actively seeking out what is desired, what matters, and what is important. But creating positive life experiences is more than just looking for positive life experiences. It also means being willing to absorb, receive, feel, and benefit from them once they show up.
Here is a list of not-so-un-common factors that can really get in the way of experiencing joy:
*Thinking or believing that if you express joy, contentment, or happiness people will think that you “don’t have anything to be upset about”, thus making your pain invalid; or that people won’t “get it” if you show contentment/ receive comfort.
*Thinking or believing that you don’t deserve happiness, contentment, or joy.
*Minimizing, attacking, or downplaying small moments of happiness, joy, or contentment (“This is trite/boring/dumb”).
*Becoming critical, judging yourself, or constantly comparing yourself to others to who have what you want.
*Thinking or believing that you were born with innate or problematic characteristics (You don’t get to have positive experiences because there is something fundamentally wrong with you).
*Minimizing or downplaying what you like, what you want, or what you experience.
*Avoiding letting people know what you like/want so they won’t “get you”, expect things from you, or have the option of getting close to you
*Hypervigilance for the next “bomb” that’s going to drop
*Avoiding happy people at all costs because it highlights the fact that you are missing out big time.
Looking for joy in the moment is a skill that takes practice, time, commitment, and in some cases, quite a bit of effort. It involves your participation in the fullest way possible. It’s about jumping in, taking risks, expressing curiosity, showing up, and being alive.
Sometimes it means letting go of what gets in the way of joy, and sometimes that involves risk.
Acceptance, pain, and the holidays
It’s interesting to me to hear from persons receiving psychotherapy services how they observe changes in themselves, but when returning to certain contexts, family situations, or holiday “scenes” they experience the same frustrations and interactions that have been happening with family members for years. Returning to old environments can be an extremely potent in evoking old, familiar, and even painfully uncomfortable feelings- more so than what some people realize. Old patterns of interacting start happening despite the best of intentions to step back, not “attack”, or somehow magically not be hurt or pained in the same way that has happened in the past.
Here are a few helpful suggestions:
1) Just because no one else observes painful or ugly interactions doesn’t mean that what you notice has no merit. Sometimes it’s hard to think of your reactions as valid or useful when there is a “stuck” quality in the interactions- even if there really isn’t space for you to say it out loud. You may need to save it and say it out loud in other, more receptive settings.
2) Radical acceptance is one of my favorite skills for a reason. Despite the fact that I certainly can never accept all things at all times, I nonetheless believe it is a skill worth revisiting again and again and again. Allow for whatever is. Notice emotions in the room. Notice your own emotions. Notice urges to control, interrupt, or attack. Notice if there is a constant need to save face or stand up for yourself.
3) Consider: “My (family member) is doing the best they can right now, and that is all they can do.” Instead of thinking: “SERIOUSLY?? That’s ALL they can DO?” try to come up with reasonable, valid, and compassionate reasons for their behavior. Sometimes when we recognize the limits of people around us, sadness creeps in around what has been lost, missed out on, or left unsaid. Sometimes what others can give us just isn’t enough of what we want or need from them. This too is part of wholehearted acceptance of what is, in the very moment it is.
4) Try to think of what you like or appreciate about the person, and make an attempt to comment on it. Simple things such as being picked up from the airport or the effort of preparing a nice meal is fair game (of course, don’t be sarcastic!). Highlighting what is valued can increase positive emotions and set the tone for more pleasant interactions- and may take some willingness on your part to ignore or overlook what is driving you nuts.
5) Structure your time if at all possible. Family stressors can be exacerbated by boredom, poor planning, being taken out of your “regular” schedule, or feeling overburdened/ overwhelmed with cooking and cleaning. Take breaks to catch up with supports outside of family, plan for “down time”, and/or plan to get out of the house (exercise, movies, libraries, museums, church).