Change is in the air! As you prepare to start a new year at preschool and shift into a new rhythm of life and work, it’s a perfect time to refresh your engagement with mindful being. Sense the shift in nature all around you – the quickening of cool breezes and the first turnings of autumn colors in the leaves of the trees signaling the end of summer daze.
For many of us this is a bittersweet time of year swirling with a rich mix of memories from summer vacations, picnics, visits with friends and families, afternoons at the beach, and sunsets, as well as memories of our own childhood – new lunch boxes, school supplies, and clothes. These experiences are blended with a rich mix of feelings of gratitude, relief, or sadness in sending our kids off to school and adjusting our days to new schedules and routines.
Autumn is naturally a time of harvesting and deep reflection, as well as a season of letting go, clarifying priorities, focusing our attention, and beginning new projects. This is also a season that teaches us about how essential change and impermanence are to learning and growth, and how every ending is also a new beginning.
As mindful parents, we aspire to bring an ever deeper quality of clear presence to embrace the ever changing stream of our experience with greater wisdom and compassion. In this spirit, we’d like to offer a few simple yet profoundly practical and effective methods you might find helpful to weave into the fabric of your life, and renew your own curriculum of practices for staying centered and inspiring your children in the midst of change.
As you experiment with the following strategies we invite you to post your reflections, questions, and insights here on this blog to help inspire others and deepen our collective learning.
The Power of an Inner Smile:
To bring more warmth and heartfulness to your practice of mindfulness, we encourage you to blend your mindful awareness with a warm-hearted inner smile. Bringing an inner smile of tender acceptance to merge with mindful presence and awakeness can help you embrace whatever experiences you may become mindful of with greater compassion, patience, and open-heartedness. This inner smile can also protect you from trying too hard or becoming too self-critical.
It’s important to approach your meditations with a sense of sacred curiosity and playful exploration. For many people, inviting a gentle inner smile, or letting there be a soft half-smile on your lips during meditation, helps antidote the habitual tendency to take ourselves too seriously – which only creates tension in our bodies and minds. Enjoy your practice! Smile! Be playful!
Return to the Land of Ah’s
One simple and effective way to reboot your mindfulness whenever you notice that you have drifted into mindlessness, is to reach up, touch your heart, smile tenderly to yourself as we described above, and softly sigh “Ahhh….” This mindful, gently smiling Ahhh can help you to release and let go of any tension that may have accumulated in your body or mind, along with any stuckness or fixation, and to begin again, blending your mindful clear presence with the flow of your experience in the present moment.
Throughout the day, whenever you notice that your attention has wandered off, simply reboot your mindfulness with an “ahhh” and use the flow of your breathing to help you focus… and flow… as you stream your mindful clear presence with great compassion into whatever activities you are involved with.
photo by moonlight on celluloid
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Your post made me think about a quote I had heard, “It is not about the journey, but the destination.” Sometimes people become so focused on their destination (when we retire, things will be better) that they don’t stop and enjoy the little things in life.
.-= Joe Matthews´s last blog ..Bulldog watching television! =-.
Thanks Joe – great quote you offer here. Can you imagine how different our lives, families, relationships, work, and world would be if we were to focus more on the quality of attention we bring to making the Journey more than our blind rush to reach “the destination” ? Mindfulness + the inner self-referential smile really helps to keep our balance moment by moment and breath by breath as our journey unfolds ) )) )))
Thanks for this powerful reminder to slow down and be present. As a mom, I am very guilty of getting caught up in the ciaos of the beginning of the school year, new volunteer opportunities, work/life balance…just to name a few. Your words have reminded me that it is not just about how to make the calendar balance, but instead it also needs to be about truly embracing and experiencing the beauty of the moment. My oldest started Kindergarten this week and I want to have postitive and distinctive memories of these moments. To do this, I need to say Ahhh. I need to remember what this experience is really about…not what my schedule brings to my plate tomorrow but about experiencing compassionate and meaningful moments for me and my child.