Week #3: Acceptance.

Welcome to Week #3 my friends!

This week I want you to think about approaching life from a place of acceptance as opposed to resistance. Mindfulness is about accepting the present circumstances without judgment. It does not mean that you need to accept the unacceptable, only the unchangeable. Only a masochist would accept intolerable circumstances if it were within one’s power to change them. However, even the unacceptable cannot be effectively addressed from a place of denial. How can you change what you cannot accept to be true?

Eckhart Tolle, author of “The Power of Now” (1999), offers the example of getting your car stuck in the mud. When you get out of your car, kick the tires and curse, you are approaching the problem from a place of resistance. You are toggling between a past and future orientation. The part of you fixated on the past is screaming, “how stupid of me to have done that.” If you are honest, you are suffering great agony over the fact that the universe is failing to rewind time and undo what you’ve just done. The part of your brain that is fixated on the future is lamenting the time lost to this dilemma, the moments that you are getting ready to miss. The problem is not of the past or the future, nor is the solution. The problem is of the now and it can only be solved in the present. If you think that sounds too obvious to warrant my digital ink, pay attention the next time you get yourself stuck in the proverbial mud. Watch your own mind’s resistance to the present moment. How many times in your life have you uttered the ridiculously futile phrase, “This. IS. NOT. Happening!”

You don’t need me to tell you that this is not the place from which to start problem solving. On the other hand, if you can be fully present in the moment, with acceptance and without judgment, you open your mind to creative possibilities — to solutions. The problem becomes an opportunity to be seized — dare I say, perhaps even a story to be told!

With that, let’s keep the momentum going and jump right in to Week #3.

Exercise #1, Breath and Body Meditation in Conjunction with Mindful Movement Meditation

Perform the 8 minute Mindful Movement meditation followed by 8 minute Breath and Body meditation.

The Mindful Movement meditation that is added in week #3 is again an exercise in mindfulness, anchoring your awareness to the present movement by intently focusing on the movement of your body (as with yoga). The exercises are intended to release stress built up in our bodies and physically realign many of the body’s muscles and joints. If you have any physical challenges, Williams and Penman advise that you consult your doctor or physical therapist before endeavoring on this mediation. Because the exercises are quite specific, you should defer to the link below so that you can follow along, being careful to heed your personal limitations. As you do the stretches, pay attention to your movements and the sensations that arise. You may find that the stretches help release some emotions – positive or negative. Don’t judge these emotions when they occur. Just recognize them, accept them, offer yourself compassion and goodwill for whatever arises.

You are to move seamlessly from this meditation into the Breath and Body meditation that you learned in week one. This time, when you perform B&B, note how you may feel differently performing this after the Mindful Movement meditation as opposed to coming into it “cold.” Also, pay particular attention to how you react to distractions (internal — mental — and external). If you feel frustration, are there corresponding physical reactions — tension or contractions? Williams and Penman (2011) suggest that you “cradle any and all of these sensations in a larger more compassionate awareness.”

“Remind yourself that the deepest stillness and peace does not arise because the world is still or the mind is quiet. Stillness is nourished when we allow the world, the mind, and the body, to be just as they are for now, moment by moment, breath by breath.” (Williams & Penman, 2011).

Meditation link below, track 3 then 4:

http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness

Exercise #2, Three-Minute Breathing Space Meditation

“One of the great ironies of mindful awareness is that if often seems to evaporate just when you need it the most.” (Williams & Penman, 2011).

This meditation is for those times. Williams & Penman (2011) refer to it as “a bridge between your longer, formal meditations and the demands of life.” This is a 3-minute “emergency meditation”  for those times when you are stressed out, fed up, burned out and don’t feel you have the time to even. . .well . . .breathe.

“This meditation allows you to see clearly what is arising from moment to moment when you feel under pressure. It allows you to pause when your thoughts threaten to spiral out of control, by helping you regain a compassionate sense of perspective and to ground yourself in the present moment.”

Link below to track 8 for this meditation:

http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness

Exercise #3, Habit Releaser: “Valuing Television”

This exercise is intended to bring a fresh focus to something we do very mindlessly, so much so that it does not seem to be a very conscious choice. We plop down on the couch at 7pm, fall down a rabbit hole and don’t emerge for hours realizing that the sun has gone down and the evening is over. It wasn’t necessarily our intention, and it wasn’t so much about “tuning in,” it was more about “zoning out.”

This week Williams & Penman (2011) ask that you watch television with intention. Look through the guide and choose a program that you really want to watch and put it on your schedule. The catch is, this can be the only program you watch for that day. If there is another program that is really important for you to watch, do so, but do so with intention, and turn it off when it’s over. Television is a form of entertainment. By all means use it, but use it “consciously,” “mindfully,” with full intention. Then record in a notebook — or share with us — how your experience of watching television changed. Was it more enjoyable? Did you savor the program more (sort of like you did the raisin)? Or did you find it irritating or more boring than you anticipated? Did you become anxious, feeling that this was a waste of time spent or did you embrace it as an intentional opportunity to refresh and recharge?

Well, that’s it for the week!  If you choose, share your progress here on my blog.

In the meantime, enjoy the now!

Jennifer