Tag: Beginner’s Mind

Another Dual Focus Meditation: Engaging the Ears

In my ever-continuing quest to maintain my concentration during meditation, I’m constantly exploring different points of focus. My go-to still remains the breath, but I’ve written about sharing that spotlight with focus on sensations in the hands as part of a dual focus meditation.

More recently, however, I’ve incorporated more of the senses into my meditation practice (I mean, we have five so why not?).

Urban sounds can provide a constant din that can be used with the breath as a dual focus sensory practice.

In between the inhales and exhales, there’s space during which I’m notoriously susceptible to distractions. Lately, I’ve been working with sounds. I live in the city on a busy street and there’s rarely a lack of noise, so in the lulls between my breaths, my ears turn on and absorb the sounds transpiring outside my window.

The trick with sounds, however, is to allow them to simply be interpreted as tones and refrain from being drawn into naming them. A siren runs the risk of eliciting thoughts of “where’s the fire?” or similar scenarios. For this to work, it’s important to engage our “beginner’s mind” — our brains are quick to match familiar sounds with a story — and divorce the sounds from associations that we’ve made over the years.

If simply shuttling between breath and sound provides enough fodder for concentration, this might not be an issue.

In that case, street noise can be an effective anchor for its variability, its high tones and low tones, as the passing of cars may morph into ocean wave-like sounds.

Meditation music and meditative sounds abound on the internet. Hunt around and you will find a plethora of offerings to use as a focal point.

However, if urban noises are either too intermittent or too difficult to resist spinning tales around, there are many other options for ambient sounds that will work for purposes of meditation. It’s no surprise that platforms like YouTube have a gazillion listings under “meditation music” that may fit the bill. In addition, apps like “myNoise” (and website myNoise.net) provide customizable background sounds to help mask outside noise and maximize ability to stay focused longer.

As the body moves with the breath, sound will remain in the background allowing attention to organically cycle between the two. From personal experience, I’ve learned that juggling between feeling into sensations in the body (breath) and being aware of sounds coming through my ears results in really turning down the dial on my Monkey Mind, which seems to fade to the distance. This dual focus can close the gap through which mind chatter might otherwise intrude.

If you feel inspired, give it a try and let me know how it goes!

How Mindfulness Helps with Exercise Motivation

Exercise has been an integral and indispensable part of my cancer recovery and my life as a whole. I’ve maintained a personal trainer certification (ACSM-CPT) for over a decade and even though I don’t train professionally, I keep abreast of new research and love a challenging workout.

Still, there are days that even I find myself dreading the session I have planned. For those times, I engage in mental calisthenics and rely on a mindful attitude. If you’re struggling to find motivation to exercise, this may help you too.

Note, motivation is something you generate yourself. It is inside you, but you have to coax it out. Be gentle. Hiring a personal trainer to beat you with a stick when you’re not up to a workout is not going to make you look forward to exercising more. But the following concepts might help:

Consider that a workout is made up of a series of movements.

Stop looking at a workout as a massive monolithic thing. Doing so can be overwhelming and make it more likely that you’ll talk yourself out of it before you even begin. Instead, consider that it’s made up of distinct parts, steps that you take one at a time.

Stay in the moment and keep each movement fresh.

Stay present and focus on the part of the movement that you’re doing at the moment, truly feeling into it. If you’re on a rowing machine, concentrate on each individual stroke making sure that you’re using proper form as you reach, push with your legs, and pull the handle. If you’re lifting weights, focus on where your body is in space, on contracting the muscle as you lift, on exhaling as you do so, keeping your body properly aligned. If your exercise is a brisk walk, be aware of how you’re stepping, pushing forward, swinging your arms. These movements become a meditation in and of themselves.

What matters is the here and now.

Release thoughts of how much longer you have until you’re done. Focus on the stroke, step or rep that you’re taking at this very moment. And then when you’ve completed it, consider the next movement with the same fresh attitude. Just as you would if you were focusing on each breath during meditation.

If you can’t finish your workout, that okay. You can try again tomorrow.

Practice self-care.

Do not force yourself to finish an entire workout if you *really* don’t have the energy to–but that means truly listening to your body’s limitations, not discouraging voices in your head. You are better off making a concerted effort at doing, say, half your distance or only one set per weight lifting exercise and doing it well, instead of making yourself so miserable that you don’t exercise again for another week and a half.

If you’re thinking, “I’m not up to doing the entire workout”, ask yourself, “Well, how much can I do?” and at least start. Consistency is key.

Let go of expectations.

Release preconceived notions of how your workout will go and how tired, miserable or sore you’ve already decided that you will feel. Look at each movement with fresh eyes. Employ a beginner’s mind. Get curious about how everything feels.

While it’s true that you’re exercising your body, your mind has a lot of influence on what will happen. The kind of exercise session you have is up to you. Decide to use your best form, draw on as much energy as you have in the moment, and exercise as much as you have planned. And if you cannot go as long you anticipated and have to stop earlier, let that be okay. No matter how much exercise you do, you are still better off than having done nothing. No one can take that accomplishment away from you.

And tomorrow, experience it anew again.

Unpacking the Monkey in the Courthouse; and, Mindful Justice

I wrote my last post about my not-so-mindful behavior in the jury lounge of the local Superior Court, waiting to see if I’d be called to serve as a juror on a case.

I wasn’t, but the situation ended up being stressful nonetheless, and it had nothing to do with my forgetting that I had a metal fork in my backpack and being called out by security for it. (Oops!)

No, what did it was the runaway narrative being played out in my head about potential frustration if I were selected, and whether I could manage all the facts of the case (chemo brain) and the sitting (neuropathy and back pain). While not completely inconsequential, neither chemo brain nor physical limitations were an issue for me as I was sitting in the jury lounge, waiting.

That evening, released from jury duty for another year, I came across an article by beading teacher and author Kristal Wick, who settled on beading as meditation to help her deal with her monkey mind, and in it she wrote about her realization that we are making stress up.

In stressful times, it’s not always easy to differentiate between what’s real and what’s not.

I would clarify that by noting that we don’t make up stressful events themselves, but the toll that anticipating what may happen takes on us depends in great part on our reaction to it. And whether or not we want to admit it, ultimately that’s under our control — although if we’ve established a behavior pattern of anxious reactivity (*cough, cough*), it will take practice to rein in those responses.

But the reminder that those “thousand deaths” that I was dying in advance of something that was not real or guaranteed…ahhhh, I needed that.

Next time a calmer, more realistic response, perhaps?

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Mindful media blogger Smilecalm wrote a beautifully thoughful account of his experience as a juror, and I found it so compelling that it became fodder for an evening of discussion with my husband and children.

Do we equally offer everyone the benefit of the doubt?

In his post, Smilecalm describes how mindfulness creates a situation where justice truly prevails. Whereas it would have been easy to make a snap judgment and convict someone who seemed, on the surface, to be guilty, pausing and carefully sorting through the facts provided a different picture.

When I think of the concept of “beginner’s mind”, I think of this kind of patience and open examination of what is before you, instead of moving down well-worn paths to conclusions based on circumstances.

I am sure that the defendant in Smilecalm’s case was grateful for the care with which the jurors considered his testimony. I, for one, am grateful to Smilecalm for bringing to light not only the importance of serving on a jury, but doing so with care and compassion.