Dear Friends,
How’s it going with your mindfulness-bell activity? Remember, the goal is not to be perfect. If you’ve remembered that you’ve forgotten, just notice what’s obvious now, say “I’ll keep trying”, and then carry on.
The recommendation for the activity yesterday was something that was relatively quick and occurred often.
The second project Andrea Fella recommended in her talk is to explore having a little bit of continuity of mindfulness for something like a chore that might take you 3 to 5 minutes to do. Suggestions include brushing your teeth, making your bed, preparing a meal, eating a meal. In this longer activity, the encouragement is to maintain mindfulness during the activity. For example, if you choose something like eating, to keep encouraging, “okay, I’m eating, can I be aware while eating?”
During that 3 to 5 minute period, it’s likely that you’ll lose mindfulness a lot, and that’s interesting to see: how many times can we lose mindfulness and come back?
You can play with prompting your mindfulness a little bit in this activity, like we did in the sitting meditation – “relax, what’s obvious?”
Since this longer activity might happen only once or twice a day, it’s useful to have some kind of reminder. For something like washing dishes or loading and unloading the dishwasher, you might put up a sign that says “mindful”, just to help you remember to have a thread of mindfulness for this activity.
I like Buddha Doodles drawings, and I’ve found a few that I’ve printed and put around my house as reminders. For example, by my stove, I have this one:
“Prepare food mindfully”
It doesn’t always help… Just the other day I had to reprint this picture because of a cooking mishap due to heedlessness. Oops! 🙂
Treat this like an experiment in the lab of you. What is happening in your heart and mind in response to the things that are going on around you? How are you reacting or responding? When are you more open and receptive? If there’s a time when it feels like mindfulness is challenging, then check that out too. There are no right or wrong answers – so play, be curious, and have fun with this!
Again, if you’re so inclined, you are welcome to share the chore you’ve chosen with me and/or the group. I can include a little reminder just for you rest of this week’s emails. For me, this week I’ll bring mindfulness to the task of feeding my dogs.
With best wishes,
Andrea
I love how you’re helping us incorporate continuity of mindfulness, Andrea. Thanks for your encouragement and for your work putting these posts together. Your comment about cooking mishaps made me chuckle with you. As for my mindfulness bell, I was doing well with the up and down the stairs until the day got more active and then it took more work to remember that I forgot. Which is the point and so has been a perfect exercise. It also keeps me safe to be more mindful going up and down stairs. I live in condo and go up and down 3 flights often in the course of my day. My 3 – 5 minute mindful chore will be to practice mindfulness while I am driving. Gulp. With every good wish as we practice together!
Thanks Carol!