Day 42: Look for the good

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On Friday, I presented to a group of students identified as at risk in a district near where I teach. For an hour, we explored what it means to have our reactive, distracted minds in the age of technology, and how mindfulness can support our well-being given the reality of our minds.

When I came in, all fifteen students had their phones out. At my request to put them away, 13/15 did so for the entire presentation. As we talked, I noticed students checking in and out at various points. A student with his head down in the corner piped in at one point with a comment about technology. A girl from the other corner of the room who was occasionally pulled into quiet conversation with her peers would redirect back to the task at hand. A few got up to use the bathroom. Throughout, I watched them tuning in and out.

At the end of the presentation, I checked in with the teachers. “You had them at their best,” one said, clearly dismayed at their behavior. And the other, “I was really moved by how you thanked them for coming back with their attention. Sometimes we get so focused on what they are doing wrong we forget to acknowledge them.”

It can be so hard for us to see and acknowledge the goodness in our students when we become focused on them being “better.” (As I told them, it is easier for me to come to their classroom and see this than in my own. I lose that perspective all the time when it is my students who are in front of me.) I could more easily see all of them listened attentively for some stretch of time, while their teachers noticed when they weren’t. I saw that the majority of them followed a difficult request to keep their phones away, while they saw the two who didn’t. I noticed many of them chimed into the class discussion at one point or another, while they may have felt dismayed by those who stay silent.

This is not blind optimism: I did notice the students who struggled, but I did not take it personally. I noticed when the energy in the room sank, and had us get up and play a quick game. When a student took out his math homework, I observed out loud that it suggested to me that he was getting bored, but I only had a short while left with him, and asked him reengage his attention. He did.

I invite you to set an intention to actively look for the good in your room: the inspiring interactions, the students who are giving their complete attention, the work that exceeds expectations. Name those things out loud for those students.

Then, try responding to the “misbehavior” as information: what needs of that student are not being met right now? Is there a way I can help them reengage? What’s my next, most effective move?

I’ll join you in this effort when I see my students next.

Day 41: Let it RAIN

At the beginning of my faculty session today, staff were coming in fired up. There had been some controversy brewing in their school, and they were concerned both with how it was being handled and how it was being perceived by the outside community. It was the perfect segue into talking about difficult emotions.

It can be really challenging when an unpleasant emotion comes up to accept it wholeheartedly. We often don’t have the time or space to process through in the moment, so reflective practice can serve help us use some of the tools of mindfulness in a more controlled environment.

A number of meditation teachers offer the the framework of RAIN to work through challenging emotions (see below). By slowing down and fully accepting our emotions, as crazy and irrational as they may be, and getting curious about them, we can give them space to move through unencumbered.

Set aside some time to consider a recent experience that brought up a difficult emotion. Walk yourself through the steps of Recognizing, Allowing, Investigating, and Not Identifying. Notice if you can breathe a little easier on the other side.

Day 40: Your Inner Critic

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Some time ago, I started imagining my inner critic as a grumpy old man sitting high up on a porch, yelling out at unsuspecting folks strolling down the road. Being able to visualize an actual being made those thoughts and comments that passed through my mind so much less intense. I could hear them without personalizing them when I called this character to mind as the speaker of said comments.

Today, I did this exercise with my students. They came up with images of Oscar the Grouch-esque characters, their younger selves, a little gremlin, an exhausted dog, and more. When I asked them why it might be helpful to visualize this character, they said,

(1) It helps to create some distance around the critiques and notice them more when they are there.

(2) It helps them not take them so seriously and accept the inner critic.

Often when we practice mindfulness, we are creating space around our thoughts to see them more clearly. We can scaffold this process when it comes to difficult thoughts with this psychological trick:

Try envisioning your inner critic as a being. Notice when it’s voice makes its way into your thoughts. Embrace it.

Day 39: Practicing Not Reacting

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I was talking with a group of faculty today about what makes practicing mindfulness hard. One said, “I am afraid I would spend the whole time thinking about how long it has been, and wondering about time. It wouldn’t be productive.”

The expectation that our sitting practice is “productive” is hard to overcome. Even those of us who are practicing awhile may tend to classify pleasant sits when our minds are relatively settled as productive, and sits where our mind is busy and restless as unproductive. Especially as teachers, we are coached to carefully measure each moment of our class to make sure we are maximizing productivity. It can be hard not to apply this to all of life, even our mindfulness, when time feels so precious.

But what we know about mindfulness is that we are actually setting aside a time where we are intentionally being present for whatever shows up. We are practicing being nonreactive to those thoughts. Okay, time is passing. This is boring. Can I still stay? I have a million things to do. Why am I wasting my time? Can I take a breath and still stay? In the staying, we learn so much. We can see how impulses come and go. We can see how we don’t have to react, in this small way.

So practice your non-reactivity. Practice noticing “needing” to do something different, and breathing through, finding yourself on the other side. Your mindfulness practice need not look a particular way for it to be ”productive.”

Day 38: Space

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Sometimes, there’s nothing to be said.

As teachers, we often feel a drive to respond to everything that happens in our room…to explain, redirect, analyze, add to, reflect, question, probe, draw conclusions, make connections.

How much more powerful might our teaching be if we didn’t need to fill the space?

Day 37: Be Away

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It can be so easy for thoughts of work to seep into every spare moment of the weekend. When i sit in the mornings, I find myself considering something a colleague said. While I watch my daughter wrestle with the crayon box, my mind drifts to a plan for my lesson next week. It can be so hard to turn it off once we have some space. We can work our way right through the weekend, mentally chewing on the demands of the job as we go about our days of rest.

Whenever I catch myself away, I encourage my mind back to the moment. That’s not something you have to figure out right now, darlin’. I might gently chide (my inner narrator is sometimes southern) Leave that be for another time. That other time is a time I have intentionally carved out before the weekend begins, so I know there is dedicated space to do that thinking. This assures me I will come back to it. I love my work, and I love considering how to approach it, but I also love my daughter, my husband, and my world outside of school. It, too, deserves my whole heart. But I find it takes conscious effort to close the door until I am ready to fully engage.

When you are away, be away. If you catch yourself drifting back into school mode, with barely a touch, guide yourself back to your now, with promises of return.

Day 36: Mind Traps

When I get sick, my thinking tends to be fairly catastrophic. When my daughter gets sick, this tendency is amplified by a million. So today, in my head, my daughter’s deep nasty cough meant pneumonia and my sudden onset throbbing headache was a clear indication of brain tumor. I have learned to take these ideas in stride only because I have again and again and again watched myself catastrophize, and I am (almost always) proven wrong. Indeed, the pediatrician informed me, my daughter had post nasal drip, and I came to see how my stuffy nose was creating a run-of-the-mill sinus headache. Everything was, in fact, fine.

Last week, I talked with my classes about Mind Traps, a term I learned from my MBSR course. We as humans have universal habits of distorted thinking that make it difficult to see the world clearly. Some of my personal favorites include:

• Personalization and blame: Personalization occurs when you hold yourself personally responsible for an event that isn’t entirely under your control.

• Magnification: You exaggerate the importance of your problems and shortcomings, or you minimize the importance of your desirable qualities. This is also called the “binocular trick.”

• Discounting the positive: You reject positive experiences by insisting that they “don’t count.” If you do a good job, you may tell yourself that it wasn’t good enough or that anyone could have done as well. Discounting the positive takes the joy out of life and makes you feel inadequate and unrewarded.

When I asked them why it might be useful to have a list like this, they very quickly hit on the two benefits that I find for myself:

1. You are not alone in your crazy thinking. It’s a human condition, not a personal defect.

2. You can more easily identify when you’re in a mind trap just by having language to identify it.

So when you have a moment, read through the Mind Traps and consider those that are your personal go-tos. Take heart that we all are a bit crazy, just with our own brand. Perhaps the next time you’re in the midst of a Mind Trap, you can just notice, and perhaps even grin. There I am, being a silly human again.

(credit to MBSR teacher Mary Bitterrauf at MaineHealth for this compilation)

Day 35: Gratitude

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I have so many interesting conversations with my students about gratitude. What might seem like a straightforward invitation to appreciate all the good quickly can become muddled in the expectation that one “should” be grateful. When a few students last semester expressed that they didn’t think they “should have to” feel grateful, I was taken aback. No, my darlings. You don’t have to! You get to. You get to experience the warmth and tingling. You get to feel a sense of connection with the world. You get to receive this gift of wonder and awe at all that graces your life. (These students and I worked together to figure out where this sense of “have to” was coming from, and it was from parents using it against them when they thought they weren’t showing adequate appreciation or were challenging their authority.)

So for me, I get to share what I am grateful for with my community each night. I get to take time to reflect on all the people, places, objects, foods, and events that make my life rich and beautiful. I get to bask in all the good feelies that flood my system and encourage me to stay connected to those things.

Tonight, I am grateful for:

• The opportunity to reflect on and share my learning with this community.

• Collaborating with reflective, humorous, hard-working colleagues at school and within the mindfulness community.

• An amazing in-home daycare down the street that allows me to go and do the work I love

• The opportunity to do work that comes from my heart.

• Honey nut rice cakes (Seriously. They are good).

• You.

May you also wrap yourself up in the cozy sensations of gratitude each day.

Day 34: Empathetic distress

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One of the major causes of burnout amongst teachers is empathetic stress: the taking on of our students’ (colleagues, administrators, parents, etc) emotions and difficulties as our own. Those of us prone to over-empathizing can arrive home feeling quite drained from being with the tumultuous inner lives of our students.

Today, I met with a student who was angry with another student in our class. He had said something to her she found offensive, and on top of that, she was really upset with his lack of participation in general. As she shared, she was rocking from her toes to her heels, her voice tense with emotion.

When I left the meeting, I could feel my whole body reflectively tense and I found myself upset. My first instinct was to go drown it out with snackies or Netflix, but then I asked myself, what would I tell my students to do here? I had just coached this student to own what was hers, the hurt, and let go of the parts that were not hers to take on, his lack of participation. So what did that look like for me?

I acknowledged that it was a hard conversation and that the sensations in my body were tense and uncomfortable. Then I started taking deep breaths, allowing the sensations to slowly dissipate with each exhale. This allowed me to release some of the charge of the interaction so that I could focus on the content and how I could move forward with both students.

For us to sustain ourselves as teachers, we cannot take home all the emotions and pain of our students. We can consciously help resettle the nervous system by acknowledging how we are affected, using deep breathing, and grounding into the body.

The next time you notice you are wrapping yourself up in the emotions of a student, parent, or colleague, pause and take a moment to breathe deeply and relax the body. Remember, it’s not yours to own.

Day 33: Moments of Connection

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I switch rooms between all my classes, so when I get to my third period, my mind is full of how to shift the room quickly, remember what my next lesson is about, and get everyone into practice.

When a student asked me how my break was, I was tempted to just answer briefly about my time with my baby and turn away to keep moving tables and pulling out mats. He responded with an anecdote of his own, sharing that he was looking forward to not having to change his baby sister’s diapers much longer. It helped me pause and remember this was a kid who was used to taking care of others, and here he was reaching out for connection. I took one or two extra minutes to acknowledge and relate before getting back to moving, investing just a moment in that relationship.

It is so difficult to create mental space to get to know each of one’s students. There is so much to hold just in terms of the logistics of a classroom that it can be hard to shift away into an interaction with an individual. We often don’t have time for an in depth conversation. But if we can even just give the fullness of our presence for a moment or two, before excusing ourselves and getting back to preparation or transition, there can be real connection in those moments. Over time, these moments have the potential to become lasting relationships.

May you catch that moment or two today and enjoy that individual conversation with a student or colleague.

Day 32: Dealing with Disappointment

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Last week was our winter break, and I had PLANS. I was going to get back to the yoga studio, have a massage, and get tons of work done. And then my day care provider texted and said she was going to be out for the week because of a medical issue.

Waaaaaahhhhh!

It can be so hard to let go of what you want to happen, and even harder to favor the thing that actually is happening. I had to immediately temper my work expectations, be content with a home yoga practice, and forgo the rub down.

Mindfulness asks us to acknowledge fully how we feel, “Yes, self, that is a bummer.” We don’t have to immediately explain to ourselves why it’s fine, or how we should be so grateful we are home this week anyway. We are not very good at arguing ourselves out of feelings anyway.

And then, when we have fully embraced that disappointment, we are freed up to also fully embrace what else is true. I built a sweet fort that my toddler and I hid in. We enjoyed lots of snuggles. We read piles of books. She started working out bits of the ABCs. There were many delightful moments during my time with her.

But it took acknowledging my disappointment and consciously shifting my attention to enjoy them.

The next time you experience disappointment, feel your feels. Acknowledge the truth of the situation. And let yourself be open to what else is true.

Day 31: "Know that it's possible to get what you need."

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When I open discussion circles in my yoga and mindfulness class, we read through the Center for Courage and Renewal’s Touchstones. I ask the students to share out loud the one that feels most important to them. In one of my groups this semester, this came up again and again:

“Know that it’s possible to get what you need.”

There is a certain amount of trust asked of us when we practice mindfulness. Sometimes we can feel immediate effects of practice, but sometimes it takes time to unfold, and we will inevitably be affected in ways we can’t even imagine. We will have sits that feel unproductive and frustrating. We will make the same dumb mistakes again. We will, at times, wonder what all of this practice and commitment is for. We might believe we are “not good” at mindfulness or “can’t do it.”

To continue on, we are asked to trust that there will be fruits of our efforts, and even be open to the fact that they may not be what we seek. We are asked to believe that we can get what we need, even if in the moment it is a tiny invisible seed.

Day 30: Escape from the Internet Vortex

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I have a really hard time with an unstructured day. Here we are on our umpteenth snow day of the year, and I know that I need to create my own structure to spend this day as I would like to spend it, rather than spend it down the internet rabbit hole. One of the biggest challenges to my personal moment-to-moment mindfulness is screen use. In this I am not alone, as it is expertly designed to make us all mindlessly engage. There is no better opportunity to do that than on a snow day when deadlines are at least 24 hours away and I feel like I have oodles of time ahead.

As a way of dividing up my day into manageable chunks, I use a timer when I am on the computer. I set goals for these chunks of time, and then when they end, I check in and see what I want my next move to be. If I catch myself in the internet vortex when the timer goes off, I can consciously decide, Is this what I want to be doing with my time? Sometimes the answer is yes, and sometimes no, but at least I’ve carved out an opportunity to choose. I also schedule in some physical experiences: shovel at 8:00am, yoga at 10:00am, scree-free lunch at 12:00am, to break up the day and come back into my body.

Ultimately, that’s what mindfulness affords us: the opportunity to choose our next move, rather than responding habitually or reflexively. What am I inspired to do at this time? The timer gives us a little jolt back to awareness. Oh yeah, what am I doing right now? How am I feeling? What do I want my next move to be?

Day 29: Take Five

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This morning, after multiple toddler night wakings, I just couldn’t get out of bed. I have one of those sweet alarm clocks that gradually lightens the room (my husband is less keen on this, as it means he has to pull the comforter over his head to keep sleeping), so I was able to cut the audio alarm and just lay there with the light brightening in my face. Instead of wrenching myself out of bed, I decided I would give myself five more minutes. In just five minutes, i went from total obstinance to acceptance. I just needed to wait.

I am often tempted to force my way through resistance, mine or others. If I had pushed really hard, berated myself a little, then I might have begrudgingly gotten up five minutes earlier. But by relaxing for just a moment, I was able to let myself come around to the idea instead of twisting my arm into submission.

So the next time you notice you are about to bully yourself into submission, see if you can back off for a moment. Is there a way to get where you need to go without force? Can you Take Five and gently re-invite yourself back to the task at hand?

(Also, I can’t recommend enough a light therapy alarm clock. And no, no one is sponsoring me to say so.)

Day 28: Work When you Work, Rest When you Rest

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““What do you do to be so happy and peaceful?”

“I walk, I work, I read, I eat, I play, and I rest.”

“I walk, I work, I read, I eat, I play, and I rest, too, but I am not so happy,” said Monkey.

“That seems true,” said Happy Panda as he looked at Monkey. “So, Monkey, what do you think about when you do those things?” ”

— Lauren Alderfer, Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda

How often throughout our day is our mind truly, fully immersed in what is in front of us? How often is it somewhere else, dreaming about rest while we work, thinking about work while we eat, wishing we could play while we read?

I worked with a family a few nights ago, and we read Mindful Monkey, Happy Panda. Then, we practiced anchoring our attention to our different senses to help us train our monkey minds to be steady.

We listened for a minute to the sounds around us.

We felt the softness of different stuffed animals, and noted areas where there were different textures or different shapes.

We looked for each of the colors of the rainbow in the house around us.

We talked about tasting each bite of our breakfast the next morning and smelling the sweet scents.

Just for today, use your senses to fully engage in each moment and anchor to the present. Notice how fully immersing yourself gives you greater access to contentment, no matter what you’re doing.

Day 27: Don't Believe Everything You Think

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One of my favorite topics to explore with students and educators alike is that of our thoughts. The more we practice mindfulness, the more clued in we become to the running narrative in our heads. Being able to see our thoughts as nothing more, nor less, than thoughts is an incredibly powerful outcome of consistent mindfulness practice. The more steady our attention, the more we are able to see clearly what our minds are up to.

Unnoticed, these thoughts run the show, governing our emotions, reactions, and behaviors.

But labeling thoughts creates space around them. We are no longer stuck inside of them, beholden to them, but we can see them for what they are: secretions of the brain made up our past experiences and habit patterns that may or may not be true and may or may not serve us. Labeling is scaffolding to pure witnessing by using our thoughts intentionally to see what is there.

For example, if I think I hate Mondays and I don’t want to go to school today I may label this as thinking, thinking and perhaps even feel a little freedom from that thought, which otherwise would create a pall over my morning. I don’t have to agree nor argue with it. It’s just the brain doing its thing, and I am fully seeing it in order to move on.

There are a few practices to develop familiarity with the thinking mind and create that space:

Basic Noting: Each time a thought arises, make a note by silently repeating, “thinking, thinking”

Space Noting: Consciously make note of moments between thoughts.

Past/Present/Future: Each time a thought arises, note it as, “past, present, or future”

Pleasant/unpleasant/neutral: Each time a thought arises, note it as, “pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral”

It is most helpful to practice these in a formal sitting practice first, and then delight when you are able to observe this happening in the moment! You can try watching the breath and making note of when a thought arises, then returning to the breath after each label. Don’t get too caught up in if you are labeling correctly, just set your intention to be curious and compassionate with what you see.

Day 26: Be Curious, Not Critical

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One of the most helpful pieces of advice I have been given came from a training for Chewonki Girls Camp canoe trip. We had set up camp one misty late afternoon, and our trainer sat us all down. She invited us, when considering camper behavior, to be curious, not critical.

Today, when I found myself getting annoyed with a student, She’s complaining she didn’t have enough time to work and yet she’s STILL not using the time she has, I reframed, I wonder why she’s not using this time even though she’s clearly stressed about it being done. While the criticism and blame was narrowing, leading me towards exasperation, the question opened my mind up to possibilities. Perhaps she was overwhelmed with frustration and gave up. Perhaps she didn’t think she could get enough done during the time left to make it worth it. Considering these different angles both gave me access to some empathy (It IS really frustrating when you can’t get your work done and want to), and helped me think about how I could most effectively prompt her to get back on track. I also was later able to ask her advisor for more context, and it helped me better understand her reaction.

The next time you find yourself getting frustrated with a student, what happens if you reframe your concern as a question? Be really curious about why they might be acting cray cray. You might even start by asking them what’s up. Their answer may surprise you.

Day 25: Dropping the Defenses

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I was teaching my wellness class about infographics today, and we were talking about image searches. I was trying to explain what my graphically-inclined husband had explained to me about using pngs instead of jpegs to avoid importing the background. One student said, “You still have to search transparent with the search. pngs don’t necessarily have a transparent background.” Oh…..

It is not surprising that my STEM school students have a better grasp on how to do anything related to computers than I do, but as I thanked him, I felt the slightest hint of defensiveness. As a recovering perfectionist, it can be hard for me to hear critique of any kind.

This is one of the areas where my mindfulness has become most helpful. It doesn’t necessarily take that defensiveness away, but I notice it when it’s subtle and I am able to move on without investing anything into it. I don’t argue with it. I don’t agree with it. I don’t grow it by obsessing over it. I just notice and move on.

See if you can notice when your hackles go up over the next few days, whether it’s with students, colleagues, or parents. It may be over something as small as this instance, or something much larger. What happens if you don’t try to argue it away, but just invite it in for a moment and fully acknowledge that you feel defensive? Is there any softening? Even the slightest amount of space?

Day 24: Forest Bathing

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Recently, much has been written about Shinrin yoku as Westerners pick up this Japanese idea of turning to the forest for therapeutic benefits. As the temperatures climbed into the 40s today, my Wellness class and I wove our way through icy puddles to Deering Oaks Park to do our own mini bath experience.

I had the group stand facing outwards in a circle and pick a tree nearby to examine. I asked them to notice the texture of the tree, look up to the top, and observe the shapes of the branches. I had them close their eyes and listen to the sound of the wind rush around us (and the traffic… the park is right beside an interstate). I asked them to notice the sensation of the wind on their skin. For just a few minutes, you could feel the group settle into silence. The relaxation was palpable.

Even if you can’t get away to the forest, find yourself a tree. Take a few minutes to completely take it in, from top to bottom. Then, use all of your senses to take in your surroundings… the sunshine or light drizzle against your skin, the rustle of a scampering squirrel nearby. Feel your cortisol levels even out as the natural world washes over you.

Day 23: It's Like This Right Now.

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The yoga and mindfulness elective I teach is held in a common space, so by the time I get there for third period, the floors are covered in salt that hitched a ride in from the streets, the tables are out and cluttered with food remnants, and my students are scattered across the huge open expanse. When I walked in this morning, I felt my heart quicken a little and I silently cursed this less-than-ideal situation. I was about to start the spiral of self-pity— why can’t I just teach in one space? why can’t they clean up after themselves? why…— when I remembered.

“It’s like this right now.”

I have come back to this phrase, gifted to me by Megan Cowan of Mindful Schools, so many times.

There’s nothing I can do about the circumstances that surround this class. It is what it is. The only way to free myself from feeling tortured by it is to just acknowledge it in all its full annoyingness, acknowledge my annoyance, and then move on.

My favorite part of the phrase is the , “right now.”

It serves as a reminder that it will not always be this way, it is this way for the moment, and we are free to receive the next moment anew.

“It’s like this right now.”