My students at Keene State College just finished a project where they brought mindfulness to something of their choice for 21 days. I developed this project 11 years ago and have used it in several different courses. It has been a powerful practice for many, life-changing in a few cases.
What they chose includes: gratitude, meditation, yoga, walking outside each day, eating, exercising, abstaining from alcohol, writing a poem or song, drawing, meeting someone new every day, loving-kindness toward themselves or toward their pet, to name but a few selections.
Before they began the 21 days I had taught them the basic meditations: breath, body, sounds, open awareness, loving-kindness and compassion. Each week, they were directed to bring mindfulness once each day to: a morning activity (e.g., brushing teeth, showering), one pleasant event, one unpleasant event, one use of technology, a story they tell themselves like "I'm a shy person" or "I'm not good enough." Each week they also read and reflected on passages from these two books: Fully Present: The Science, Art, and Practice of Mindfulness, Smalley and Winston, and Wherever You Go There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Below are some of the more profound insights from students (with their permission) with a little editing by me. In a few cases, I created a composite from several students who focused on the same topic. This blog is much longer than most, so I recommend reading a section or two and savoring it and then reading another section or two later in the day or on another day.
The miracle of walking outside
During my daily walks I could feel the different parts of my body: a tight knot in my stomach, feeling at ease and calm, etc. I also noticed outward things, for example, the foliage changing. Each day seems like the most minute change but in the end it was completely different. This blew my mind because each day I go through life, I realized that I may not be noticing the "little" things that I am missing out on. In today’s society we are all so busy that we tend to forget; we don’t slow down to look at the details. Ultimately we can access this appreciation and gratitude anywhere and anytime: “Take an ordinary experience, give it your present moment attention, and experience it as extra-ordinary.” Smalley & Winston, p. 13
Pets
This semester four different students brought mindfulness to their pets and had quite amazing experiences. In two cases, students wrote about how walking their dogs had become a chore and how mindfulness transformed their relationship. In one case, the dog had begun to act out because of the neglect.
The student wrote: I saw that he was acting out, getting into the trash and chewing my things apart. I would yell at him but I neglected to look at the situation from his perspective. He wasn’t a bad dog, he was simply deprived of things that I take for granted every day. I acknowledged that I was unhappy and tired and then I took him out for a walk. Even though I was miserable when the walk started, that misery started to fade away as soon as I walked to the fields. He was so happy to be outside and seeing someone I love so much be filled with so much happiness made me happy. I realized that I was physically smiling. I then started to laugh and thought nothing in the world can be more important than this right now. Over time I noticed that the walking wasn’t just for him, it was for me as well.
Another student wrote: My cat has been demanding to be seen and related to, and for many months I’ve been mildly annoyed about it. When I actually allowed for that connection to be fully experienced, I felt far less of the irritation and far more gratitude and compassion for her.
"It is our way of seeing which creates and maintains separation" Zinn, p. 215. As I overcame my irritation with the cat, viewing myself as separate from her, I became able to appreciate having her so bonded to me. My interactions with the cat became much more pleasant when I was feeling connected to her than when I was resisting the obligations that come with that connection...I knew her breath smelled like cat food, and I was always mildly repulsed by it. Once I choose to allow the smell to exist for what it was without attaching judgment to it and being curious, I found it didn’t bother me to have her breathing in my face.
Loving-kindness
I had difficulty doing the loving-kindness meditation for myself. So what I began to do was to focus on myself in moments of memories. I would send the phrases to the younger version of myself, then the teenage version, then the present version. This allowed me to work up from the foundation of myself in order to feel myself physically in my room. Over time I became able to get to my present self more quickly and easily.
In practicing the loving-kindness meditation, I found it hard to focus on myself and started to judge myself. I remembered that I needed to simply be aware, and went back to my breath. Accepting myself has always been very difficult, and I began challenging myself with this. I can accept myself and although I’m not perfect with the meditation, I told myself that’s OK. It’s OK to be just in the moment and find small things that I like about myself to begin with.
"We see that the mind has gotten cluttered over the years, like an attic, with all the bags and accumulated junk." One reason I have so much anxiety is because of all the negative thoughts I carry in my head related to experiences in my life. I hold on to these memories and experiences. Even though I’ve forgiven people who were mean to me and time has passed, they still affect me because they never truly left me. So I noticed the negative thoughts, but instead of ignoring them and pushing them back into the dark places in my brain, I have learned to accept them as old memories and look at them as learning experiences. I can part ways with them because they do not have to define me. By practicing the loving-kindness meditation I have gotten more comfortable in allowing myself to accept the feelings of love instead of always being so hard on myself.
Mindfulness: Curiosity & non-judging
“Meditation is not about feeling a certain way, it's about feeling the way you feel" Zinn, p. 33. At first I was meditating to feel better, to escape, to decrease the bad feelings. I was constantly trying to "let go of the balloons.“ [Like those cartoon captions above the speaker] I was trying to let go of worrying. After a time I noticed that I began to accept the feelings that were coming up. The more I became aware of how my breath felt, the temperature of the air, what I heard, the more I realized it was OK whatever I was feeling. [Most people struggle with concepts like "accepting what is happening" and "letting go." I will unpack and explore these in the next blog.]
Eating
As I was eating the soup I noticed at some point that I wasn't really tasting the soup. So I paused before I resumed eating. To my amazement the soup tasted better after I paused. I realized that if I slowed down I could gain a greater appreciation for the smells and taste of the food. By bringing mindfulness I could truly enjoy and appreciate the flavors. After finishing the soup I realized that I was almost full, even though the rest of the meal was on my plate. This surprised me because I have struggled with over eating in the past: I would eat more than I should but never felt full. During these 21 days, I listened to my body to hear when I was full, and then I stopped eating.
Thoughts and emotions
At the beginning of the 21 days, I was still viewing meditation as a technique to be improved upon. At some point, I came to realize that meditation can be as simple as paying attention to what I'm thinking about. I had an insight about wandering mind during a meditation. I had gotten to the point of treating the wandering mind with kindness and compassion, but was still treating it as something to come back from. So I began to spend more of my meditation time simply observing my mind wander. A lot of things that my mind wandered to were quite negative and made me feel uncomfortable and at first I struggled with trying to avoid them. However it was an attempt to go towards those uncomfortable thoughts rather than to run away from them that led me to a huge insight.
I had been struggling with insomnia. Because I had spent so much time observing my wandering mind, I was able to identify more precisely that these thoughts were keeping me awake. I figured out that trying to avoid these negative thoughts was only making things worse and my methods for avoiding them were keeping me awake. The next night I decided to do my meditation practice as I went to sleep. Rather than trying to avoid my racing negative thoughts, I paid attention and investigated them. This goes back to Zinn's point about "feeling our feelings." All these terrible thoughts I was trying to avoid turned out not to be so terrible after all. I'm happy to say that since then every time I lay in bed to go to sleep, I do my meditation and focus on those negative thoughts and they don't keep me up any more.
“You can’t stop the wavs but you can learn to surf,” Zinn, p. 30
While I understood Zinn's notion of learning to surf instead of stopping the waves, I couldn't quite relate to it at first. Often I don't feel like I'm surfing, rather I am just keeping afloat. Sometimes a larger wave comes along and pulls me under. I have to fight to get back up, but these experiences are markedly better than the near constant drowning I used to face. Zinn describes meditation as a way of understanding and knowing how to work with the causes of the waves.
I began to ask myself “what am I feeling right now?” when I began to feel overwhelmed. Once I labeled the emotion, that conscious effort really helped me to accept how I was feeling in the moment. Because then I could have some space to make a choice and ask myself “is this healthy?” [In class, I had offered that mindfulness gives us more space and choice between stimulus and response.] When dealing with cravings instead of freaking out and trying to push it away, I became curious. I asked myself "what emotion am I feeling now?" I accepted I was having a craving and instead I surfed the wave. Mindfulness helped me to find a greater acceptance when I wanted to [drink, eat, etc.]. I found just enough space to step back, accept the craving, identify the emotions, and keep breathing. Before I would try to push away the craving which would cause me to physically feel more restless. I also noticed an emotion that I was covering up was feeling alone and vulnerable.
“Ultimately the winds of life and of the mind will blow, do what they may" Zinn, p. 30. I realized that when I was pushing away the negative thoughts I was trying to stop the winds because this is what I thought I had to do to be mindful. I learned by the end it was all about accepting the winds and just letting them be.
Physical or psychological pain
For the first time I was curious about how pain felt in my body. I noticed that after a few minutes the pain lessened slightly. The more I breathed slower and focused on sounds around me, the tension around the pain lessened. It wasn't as scary as when it first came. I’ve learned to identify some of these pains as a trauma response instead of being taking over by the feelings. I found myself saying: "We [all of my parts] are OK, it happened a long time ago and I am safe now." [For more on this notion on parts, see the August 12 blog: Complementary Practices Toward Unwanted Parts of Ourselves.]
When I felt my mind wandering in order to avoid the pain, I simply went back to my breath and brought back the curiosity of how my body was feeling. When I would feel pain that felt like it was too much for me to be aware of, I tried moving my attention to a pleasant area of my body as the reading suggested. I took four breaths and then moved back to the painful area. I was amazed at the results. I was aware of my pain but was not judging it. I was simply aware, something I have never done before.
Gratitude
While doing yoga, I am grateful to have woken up, I am grateful to be standing on my own two feet, I am grateful to be able to live here and go to class to get an education. Being mindful of my body made me grateful for my body. When I was bringing loving-kindness to myself and mindful of all the work my body was doing for me, I started to realize that I could bring this same energy when relating to other people. For example, when I saw somebody I don’t get along with, I smiled at them and said to myself "may you be happy may you be safe, may you be peaceful."
I learned gratitude. I learned to appreciate the food I ate even if I didn't like the taste of it. I learned to appreciate my ability to acquire food as I thought about those who have to go without. I began approaching my meals with gratitude, silently thanking the many people and animals from which I was benefiting. This did not achieve anything practical, but I hope that by putting this energy out into the world I was doing some kind of good.
Being with the unwanted
This experience happened after my 21 days was over but I want to talk about it because this is truly what the experience was meant for. I had been having a very stressful week with midterms, papers, and just relationship stuff. My emotions had taken over to the point that my intentions for being grateful begin to vanish out of my mind and I attached to rather than detached from every single emotion. [My note: '“detach” in the Buddhist sense does not mean to disconnect from, but rather to be with what is happening without being attached to the experience. When we are attached, it’s like velcro.] However instead of being mad at myself for allowing this to happen, I was grateful for it. I wasn't trying to cover up feeling bad or angry or lonely but grateful that I could recognize these emotions and feel them so deeply. I was grateful but I still had that pit in my stomach that made me uncomfortable with having these emotions, maybe a bit of anxiety.
I knew I needed to meditate to help calm myself and see what my body was telling me: I wanted to learn how to be OK with the unwanted, and I used the meditation called "Being with the Unwanted" [on Tom's website]. Tears came out of my eyes unexpectedly and I could feel my body pulsing. There was so much energy and aliveness in me. It is somewhat indescribable: words cannot do justice to what I was feeling. After I meditated, I became calmer, and no longer had that pit in my stomach. If I had never done these 21 days I wouldn't have had this discovery or be comfortable with how I was feeling and not go further down into the rabbit hole of emotions. Being able to just feel and not think was so powerful. Before I generally reacted to emotions rather than "let our feelings cook" as Zinn says. I found myself getting away from my narrow view of being right and from allowing my past to impede on the whole present moment (Smalley & Winston, Chapter 5), and man do we love to hold onto the past experiences and just let them escalate and keep playing around our brains. I still don't understand why I kept wanting to hold onto hurtful memories or try to change certain exchanges. By doing all these actions, I kept hurting myself and held myself back from being in the present moment. Through these practices I am allowing myself to let go of the past and accept it for what it is: "This is it" (Zinn, p. 14)
One of the great joys of teaching is when your students teach you. I feel very fortunate.