Especially during the holiday season, many of us like to make lists and choose items from those lists. We like class. we don’t like chaos. All the demands of the holidays—shopping, cooking, deciding how to get together and with whom—will pile on top of a to-do list that may already be overflowing. We know that the price we will pay will inevitably be fatigue, exhaustion, perhaps scratching old scabs and regurgitating old wounds.
Unfortunately, life is messy and sometimes chaotic.
In order to help all of us not only survive, but maybe even enjoy the holidays, I’m offering you a mini-lesson on a practice known to help everyone from cancer patients to Fortune 500 executives. It’s even known to improve our sexual life, so we highly recommend it mindfulness practice both in our resources and on our website.
Mindfulness is a simple concept. It is the development of the ability to pay attention to the moment – not to detach, but to develop an ease of focused attention, without judgment or emotion, in the present. Mindfulness began as a Buddhist concept, but in 1979 Jon Kabat-Zinn, a psychiatrist at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, adapted it and developed it into a formal eight-week program for patients “who weren’t being helped” by traditional medicine. His program includes meditation, mindfulness exercises and yoga.
The results were impressive. Patients experienced less pain and healed faster. The practice relieved stress and improved the immune response. The concept of mindfulness meditation quickly entered the wider zeitgeist.
It’s one thing to read about a spiritual practice, however useful it may be, and quite another to incorporate it into everyday life, especially in the midst of the holiday frenzy. The essence of mindfulness, however, is simple and almost intuitive. Best of all, it takes almost no time. You can practice mindfulness while rolling out pie crust or brushing your teeth. It calms our “monkey-mind” and brings us back to the moment, which is ultimately the only moment we really have.
“Life is available here and now and is our true home” writes Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk and world-renowned exponent of mindfulness meditation.
Practicing mindfulness takes no effort and takes no time. It just requires a focus of thought and awareness. The basic meditation is to focus on your breathing: Just pay attention to the inhalation and exhalation. Your breath doesn’t have to be long or short. You just have to follow your inhalation and exhalation.
You may think, “Breathing, I am aware of my body. exhaling, I release the tension in my body.” You mentally pay attention to any parts of your body that are tense – your lips, your neck, your back – and consciously relax that part. When you’re waiting in line or stopped at a light, you have some time to practice this focus and release. And then smile, says Thich Nhat Hanh.
This principle can be applied to anything you do: cooking, cleaning, showering, walking. Bring your attention slightly but completely to the activity at hand. You’re not thinking about the next thing you have to do or the fight you had with your partner this morning. These thoughts are like clouds crossing a bright, blue sky. You notice them without emotion or judgment and let them go, returning to your focus on your breath or your walk or the pie crust.
As you practice mindfulness, you may become aware of the moment before you react to something. When you are aware of this moment – the moment before you react – then you have a choice of how to react, whether with anger or kindness, fear or trust, passion or tolerance. If you know, then you have a choice.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space, in this space lies our power to choose our response, in our response lies our growth and our freedom,” writes Victor Frankl, Holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning.
I’m thinking if there was ever a good tool for avoiding those awkward confrontations during the holidays, this might be it. If you know the moment of the trigger, when your partner makes a snide remark about your son’s tattoos, for example, then you are given a moment of choice about how to respond. And a moment to breathe in, breathe out without tension or judgment.
Although effortless, developing this practice is not easy. I guess that’s why it’s called “practice”. I know that improvement, however incremental, helps me live with gratitude and grace.
And on vacation, I just can’t get enough of either.
As Thich Nhat Hanh writes: “The real miracle is not flying or walking on fire. The real miracle is walking on Earth and you can do this miracle at any time. Just bring your mind home to your body, come alive and perform the miracle of walking the Earth.”
Amen to that!
Dr. Barb DePree, MD, has been a gynecologist and women’s health provider for nearly 30 years and a menopause specialist for the past ten.
