Reblogged from The Practical Psychosomaticist: James Amos, M.D.:

When would you call sorrow a mental illness? By now nearly everyone has heard of the proposed change to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder 5 (DSM-5) which would allow medical and mental health care providers to treat grief after the death of a loved one the same as major depression, in some cases with antidepressant. I posted about this last summer, pointing out that there is hardly a need for a change in the DSM, in my opinion, because the current diagnostic criteria for Major …

Reblogged from Beyond Meds:

Neuroplasticity is visited in this video. I often post about neuroplasticity and how that concept allows us to understand that we can heal and change our health and wellbeing by changing our brains. Neuroscientist Sara Lazar’s amazing brain scans show meditation can actually change the size of key regions of our brain, improving our memory and making us more empathetic, compassionate, and resilient under stress. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8rRzTtP7Tc _________________________________________ More posts …

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Journey with me and share. . .

I’ve downloaded Mindfuless:  An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams, Danny Penman, and Jon Kabat-Zinn.

I will be going to New Mexico for a retreat on Buddhism and Dying in April.  I have been waiting for this retreat opportunity for a lifetime.  I won’t be blogging in real time but plan to have my posts ready and scheduled ahead of time.

When I get back and I am back to blogging, I am going to to start this 8-week plan and blog about it, starting at the end of April (actual dates TBA).

I’d love for you to do this with me.  We already teach each other so much.  Mindfulness also comes in book form as well if you’d rather read along and practice.

Can you commit for 8-weeks to sitting?

What could be more important for you?

What could be more important for family, your community, and our world?

I am also thinking that maybe setting aside a Blog Talk Radio Show where we could actually “talk” and share our experiences would be great.

I really love the idea of creating a greater sangha, even a cyber-sangha for those of us who are so far away from actual groups.

If you would like to participate, reply here and I will make sure that I add the dates to come.

Join me on the journey of being present, welcoming the breath and whatever else is there, “here and now” as we go through the 8 weeks.

Namaste,

Jennifer

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~~Jon Kabat-Zinn, “At Home in Our Bodies”

Such a radical idea. . . saying, “here I am, come join me.”  Leaning in to that which makes us feel uncomfortable. . .

The fear of losing someone.  the fear of a particular diagnosis.  the fear of  a difficult conversation. . .

The pain of saying goodbye.  The physical pain that comes from illness.  The psychological pain that comes when we are betrayed. . .

When you think about it, some of the things that mindfulness asks us to do go totally against what is innate in us.  Think about a one-celled organism.  If you poke at it, it will try to move away.  There is some threat there, despite not having what you or I would think of as an ego.

But this is the point of mindfulness, isn’t it?  To get ourselves off of automatic pilot, to free ourselves from suffering?  To bring ourselves out of the lull of our average everydayness to be fully present with what is.

But what about when we are our at our most vulnerable times?  Can we remain open-hearted, set that welcome mat out to our suffering and say, “enter if you will”?

One of the key elements of mindfulness that we don’t practice in our average every day life is gentleness.

There is a compassionate gentleness and kindness that is cultivated with mindfulness so that we don’t bully or bulldoze into that pain, suffering, or fear.

We lightly entertain these thoughts, feelings, and sensations as we start to become familiar with them.

We learn not to get hooked into beating ourselves us for what’s there when we sit long enough to be present to our thoughts or feelings.

We allow them to be, but we are no longer ignorant of them.

We have a conscious awareness  of them and with practice, we can offer ourselves lovingkindness and equanimity and welcome those sore spots into the totality of our experience.

Remember back to one of my really early posts… Frank Ostaseski teaches “Welcome everything, push away nothing” in his trainings on being a compassionate companion to the dying.  These are truly wise words to live by and to cultivate in our hectic, chaotic lives.

Related articles

• Mindfulness Meditation Q & A (namasteconsultinginc.com)
• Jon Kabat-Zinn on Mindfulness (mindfulplaying.wordpress.com)
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• Mindfulness Meditation Is Rediscovered – Newsweek (thedailybeast.com)
• Mind Reading: Jon Kabat-Zinn Talks About Bringing Mindfulness Meditation to Medicine (healthland.time.com)
• An Uncomfortable Silence (imperfecthappiness.wordpress.com)
• How my friends and I discovered Mindfulness (meaningfulwesternlife.com)

Reblogged from LifeCraft: creating a more soulful life:

The distance from your pain, your grief, your unattended wounds, is the distance from your partner. And the distance from your partner is your distance from the living truth, your own great nature. Whatever maintains that distance, that separation from ourselves and our beloveds, must be investigated with mercy and awareness. This distance is not overcome by one “giving up their space” to another, but by both partners entering together the unknown between them. The mind creates the abyss but the heart crosses it.

Great blog post. I really enjoyed seeing this today!

Reblogged from Christy Heyob:

Absolutely beautiful – the colors, the light, the bokeh. Mmmm. Sharon Johnstone is a Birmingham, England based fine art nature photographer. She completed her Fine Arts degree at the University of Creative Arts in 1993, specializing in printmaking. Of her dew drop photographs, she writes: ‘With macro photography I escape to another little world. I love exploring the tiny details in nature that often get overlooked. I love finding beautiful colors and abstract compositions within nature. I think I am at …

Enjoy this beauty that was gifted to us by Christy!

Reblogged from A HOPE FOR TODAY:

Author Maya Angelou offers a wonderful hope for not complaining: “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change your attitude. Don’t complain.” What excellent advice Maya gives, but it is often not easy to follow.  Sometimes people are powerless to change things, and sometimes they have strong, unyielding opinions that are difficult to change about those things. The secret is in the last sentence of Maya’s quotation:  “Don’t complain.”  Things may not change, attitudes may not …

Reblogged from Christy Heyob:

I enjoy reading articles that recommend I get a massage… Our bodies hold all of the information we need to function at our best, but too often we ignore their messages and plow ahead with what our minds tell us. Because most of us are taught from an early age to focus on external demands, we frequently ignore what our bodies are saying. More often than not we treat the physical symptoms rather than looking for the internal cause of pain, depression, and weight gain. We take another extra-strength …

Great Advice!

Reblogged from The Zenful Blogger:

This is it. This is my life. It is what I will or won’t make of it. This is it. Think it over. Talk it through. Work it out. This is it. This is my life! This is it.

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I love the idea of short meditation practices.  They are so practical for today’s life.  

Taking time throughout the day 5 minutes here, 10 minutes there, another 5 before after dinner or before bedtime is better than no time at all.

We all have 5 minutes.  What if we all made the time for 5 minutes of meditation instead of standing around the water cooler?

Or 5 minutes to practice mindful walking instead of staying after a meeting to gossip (and that’s a whole other post)…

My day job is stressful and often non-stop.  But I am doing a few things to try to change that.  For one, I bought the Enzo Pearl timer that I described a few posts ago.

Another thing I have recently done is to bring my copy of Awake at Work by Michael Carroll to work.  I have it sitting on my desk.  Not on the book case to look pretty but right next to my water bottles on top of my desk.

When I have time between meetings or between reports, I can close my door and pick up the book.  There are 35 small chapters — easy 4-page reads — that I can use for contemplative practices.  Today I might read about being authentic”.  Maybe Thursday, I read about what “kitchen sink” mentality is…

Other days, when things are really chaotic, I might just set the Enzo timer for 5 minutes.  I take 5 of the 15 minutes I have for a break and just sit and breathe.  Right now, I don’t share an office so I can even do a 5-minute round of walking meditation.  I could, on a good day, even do 5 minutes of downward facing dog or warrior pose.

Sure it’s great to do at sunrise or sunset like we do on retreat. . . but if prisoners in a prison dharma program can do walking meditation in their cells, surely I can create a mindful space to walk around my desk for a few minutes.  It’s all about right attitude.

Taking this time during the day helps me to keep a mental and emotional balance that’s really important right now as I juggle work, my dissertation, and things like my blog.  I can remember when I was younger and was actively caregiving when having someone tell me that it was okay to take 5 minutes for myself. . . that the compassionate practice of being was important for me and the person who I was helping would have been a godsend.

So what are any of us waiting for?  Share some lovingkindness with yourself, with those around you, and with your world.  Plan to take 5 minutes during work… 5 minutes after work… and if you can, 5 minutes when you wake up or before bed to do some sort of practice.

Remember that you can also practice mindful eating — I know I have posted on that at least twice, with some references as well as Thich Nhat Hanh‘s rendition of the 5 Contemplations that you can use while you eat mindfully.

If you have creative ideas for what that might be, drop a note here and let us know how you find time.

Take gentle care, Jennifer

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