 This is it!Yippie! Yay!! Yahoo!!!
School is out for us this week and summer break is (finally) here! This is my favorite time of the year. Warmer temps. More time in nature. Visitng with friends and family. Summer recipes. What more could a girl ask for? But if I'm not mindful, if I don't pay attention, I could miss it all! Here’s the deal.... I have spent many summers of my adult life chasing after all the things I love about this time of year. Chasing after some lasting sense of summer happiness, only to feel exhausted and unfulfilled at the end of it. If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last several years as I spend more and more time practicing mindfulness, it's that the small things matter. They are the stuff that make up the really important moments in a lifetime, and create a sustained sense of wellbeing. Not the big, dramatic ones. I know...it sounds so cliché, and there are a million and one quotes out there to remind us of this. But I’ve been putting it into practice. And you know what? It’s true. So here's my one little nugget of mindful summer wisdom I'd love to share with you as I kick off my favorite season: When something really great is happening, when you are having one of those bucket list moments you’ve been waiting for all year, here's how you can practice,
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Welcome to my new blog series Meditation is not what you think.
When I meet new people and mention that I serve folks challenged by homelessness, I'm usually met with a lot of enthusiasm. Most respond with something like, "Wow, that's amazing! How can I get involved?" But when I mention that I'm also a yoga and mindfulness meditation teacher, the reaction is quite different. I usually hear comments like, "I can't meditate. I can't make my mind go blank." or "I can't do yoga. I can't even touch my toes." Meditation and yoga often have these common misconceptions surrounding them. And as someone who has personally experienced the profound benefits of these practices and witnessed how they've transformed the lives of my students, I’d really like to change that! So in the months ahead, I'll be sharing insights into what meditation (and yoga) is and what it isn’t. I’m going to start with the lowest hanging fruit: Meditation is not making your mind "go blank".
 These short meditations are a great way to ground yourself throughout the course of your day. You start by bringing your attention to your body, wherever you may be seated or lying down, simply noticing with curiosity whatever is present. Next you can shift your attention to your breath, not controlling it in any way, again just resting your attention on the sensations, with curiosity and kindness. If you practice with your eyese open, you can rest your gaze in one spot on the video, or you may wish to allow sounds to be your primary point of focus. Whatever we choose, we pay attention without adding on. We rest in the bare experience of the sensations, the breath, sights, sounds, even our thoughts.
I went skiing over the holidays for the second time in my adult life!
As you might imagine, I’m pretty comfortable when it comes to trying new sports, and I’ve been working for years on improving my balance through my yoga practice. But one wrong turn on the slopes sent me and hubby Vince down an intermediate hill that I had absolutely no business being on. This, coupled with the fact that it was really icy that day (read even more slippery than usual), meant that I was not in a comfortable or easeful position to say the least. In fact, I was literally gripped with fear. I could see to the bottom of the hill from where I was standing. Knew in my mind that it wasn’t very far away. But in my terror, miles and miles of descending ice seem to stretch out between me and the flat safety below. What the heck was I going to do? |
CheriSharing mindfulness, yoga, and generosity practices |
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