Tag: gratitude

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Choosing the direction we will take

Lunar New Year celebration

Happy Lunar New Year! February 1st marks the beginning of the Year of the Tiger. I have such fond memories of the extraordinary New Year celebrations when I lived in Shanghai: spectacular fireworks rang out at midnight around the city as far as the eye could see; on New Year’s Day there were lion dances and parades, delicious smells wafting from every kitchen I passed. Lunar New Year celebrations last for 15 days, culminating in the Lantern Festival on the first full moon of the New Year. Thinking back to those days makes me smile and brings a lightness to my heart that I’ve not felt in a while.

If there’s one thing I know to be true about myself, it’s that I love to travel and explore. I long to immerse myself in new places and cultures. Exploring somewhere new makes my spirit soar, it makes my soul sing.

Last year presented me with a number of challenges. The last time I shared my musings with you, I wrote about some unexpected health problems, and these remain my constant companion. In the past, I could always rely on travel to boost my spirits, to lift whatever weight I’d been carrying physically, mentally, and emotionally. While I gratefully received rejuvenation from some camping and a cottage sojourn, there remained a heaviness I simply couldn’t shake. I know I’m far from alone in this feeling: throughout the pandemic, a mental health crisis has been growing, and it’s shown us how vitally important it is to take care of ourselves, to prioritise our health and wellbeing if we hope to be of any use to our loved ones, and to the world around us.

Sometimes the way forward is to expand and grow, and sometimes what we really need is to retreat inside our shells to rest and regroup.  My heart told me to choose the latter path. For much of the last year, I’ve focused my attention on my small community of dedicated students, offering nourishing practices and weekly writings that resonated with my own journey and experience. As we welcome this New Year, I thought I’d share some of these musings from the last few months.

On gratitude:

“Taking time throughout the day to pause and reflect on the blessings in your life serves as a powerful reminder that, no matter what trouble might be brewing, we are indeed blessed.  Even on those days when challenges are many and blessings seem few, we can give thanks simply for waking up when so many others around the world did not. That’s not to say that gratitude asks us to forget about our pain and suffering; however, it can help us temper that suffering with goodness, with joy, with kindness and love.”

On the importance of self-care:

“Rest should be a topic of great importance at any time, but I think the stress and uncertainty of the last 2 years has brought it screaming to the forefront as part of the larger discussion of mental health and self-care.  For too long we’ve written off our self-care needs as indulgence and luxury.  We couldn’t be further from the truth. I see the effects of stress and strain in those I love; I see their burnout clear as day. I feel it in myself too and I know that the only way I can provide the support my loved ones need is if I take care of my own health and wellbeing.  It’s as simple as that – simple, yes, but not always easy… just like our journey with yoga and mindfulness.”

On our need to be ‘productive’:

“Productivity is something that’s often on our minds, whether consciously or unconsciously. As human beings, we’ve been conditioned to believe that we must always be doing something, and that our doing must be leading us towards a goal or achievement. For me, an example that comes to mind is the internal chatter that occurs when I’m feeling under the weather: I have to convince myself to rest, I have to talk myself into slowing down and setting aside the to-do list, and I try to catch myself each time that negative little voice inside says, ‘don’t stop now, push through, it’s not that bad, you should get more done.’

Why is rest not seen as productive? Why is sitting on my back step watching the sunrise not productive? Why is answering an email tomorrow so I can go for a walk in the sunshine today not productive? Much as we try to fight it, we are mortal beings who live a finite amount of time. We have no idea when the end will come, but when it does, I suspect most of us will still have a few things left on our to-do lists. So how can we learn to accept that fact and enjoy the time we have while we have it?”

On finding contentment:

“…a teaching I recently enjoyed from Frank Ostaseski [is to] welcome everything, push away nothing.  Welcome everything, push away nothing.  Like many mindfulness teachings, it sounds so simple, yet I think we can all agree that it’s anything but easy. It’s human nature to gravitate towards what feels good and recoil from what doesn’t. We seek out pleasure and avoid pain and suffering at all costs. In asana practice, we can easily settle into a pose that feels good and familiar, but what about the poses that challenge us, that feel uncomfortable, that bring us to our edge physically, mentally, or emotionally? How do we find the same sense of ease and contentment in those poses? Welcome everything, push away nothing.” 

On World Kindness Day:

“When someone shows us kindness, we feel our spirits lift, and we’re much more inclined to share that feeling with others we encounter. Someone returns an item that fell out of your pocket and you’re surprised, grateful, happy; in that moment you become fully present and aware of the kindness another has shown you. That warm feeling inside comes from a little shot of serotonin, oxytocin, and endorphins – the body’s natural mood boosters – and it stays with you as you continue on your way, perhaps opening a door for someone or helping them carry a heavy package to their car. As you pass the kindness on, the warm feeling in you continues because sharing kindness is as good for us as receiving it.  Start today with a little act of kindness towards yourself and see how it makes you feel. Then as you move through the day and encounter others, share a smile, offer a compliment, hold open a door, buy someone a coffee. As Aesop wrote: ‘No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted’.”

On how we choose to move through the world:

“We learn myriad lessons on the mat. New insights appear each time we arrive, each time we pay attention, each time we open our awareness and allow the lessons to penetrate the layers of bias and expectation and resistance we’ve built up over time. As human beings it is our nature to form opinions, to make judgments, to set goals. Yet our practice teaches us over and over again that everything changes, nothing remains as it is, no two breaths or sensations or moments in time are the same. Each time we exhale, we expect that an inhale will follow – but are we guaranteed that next inhale? Are we guaranteed the next moment in time…or only this one?

…a favourite quote, one I’ve shared with you many times over the years: ‘Happiness is not given to us, nor is misery imposed. At every moment we are at a crossroads and must choose the direction we will take.’ ~Matthieu Ricard

While so much in life is beyond our control, we can choose how we respond to what arises. We can choose to be open-minded and curious; we can choose to be angry and sullen; we can choose to accept and learn from challenges; we can choose to resist and shout at the rain. It’s all a matter of perspective and how we choose to navigate the changing world around us.”

~~~

Maybe a few of my words resonate with you, reflecting some of your own experiences of the past year. How are you choosing to move through the world? Is this a time when it feels good to expand and grow, or is your heart asking you to slow down, to rest, to stop some of the doing and allow yourself to simply be?

Last week the world lost one of its shining lights, the wise and beautiful soul of Thich Nhat Hanh. Often called the father of mindfulness, his book Peace is Every Step was my first introduction to this practice, my first step on a lifelong journey exploring his teachings of compassion and love for all beings. With a new year upon us, I leave you with these wise words from Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully each moment, and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.”

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Dream a little dream

Whenever we find ourselves experiencing transition in our life, it feels like a natural time to reflect. We reflect back upon the path that brought us here, we reflect inward and notice how we may have grown, changed, been affected by our path, and we look ahead with anticipation to what might lie on the horizon before us. The present moment may be the only moment we are truly guaranteed, but reflecting on our past brings our awareness to its teachings and enables us to apply those lessons as we embark upon the journey ahead.

Mindfulness practice teaches us to notice our attachments and judgments so we can then release them and observe what arises in an open and receptive way. Reflect upon the last 12 months with this sense of open curiosity; let it be an exploration that allows you to identify highs and lows, joys and sorrows, lessons learned that perhaps changed the way you do things, see things, respond to things. What challenged you this year? What caused you to feel pain or sorrow or anger or loss? Acknowledge the trials and the missteps and the frustrations with compassion. If they imparted some wisdom, opened a window to a new perspective or opportunity, you may wish to give thanks for their lessons. Now, what brought you joy this year? What made your heart sing? What lifted your spirits and made you come alive? Look back with a smile in your heart and be grateful for all of these shining lights that lit the way forward.

When you consider the highs of the past year, do you notice any themes or patterns? Are there certain actions, places, people that have woven a common thread of joy through your experience? There are no guarantees for our path ahead – there is only this moment and the way we respond to it. However, living with mindful presence does not preclude our dreaming and imagining and cultivating joy and light on the path ahead. The more joy we find in everyday occurrences, in simple acts, in our sensory experience of the world around us, the more inclined we are to joy. These actions and places and people that brought us joy this year are the starting point, the realisation that joy is possible even in the midst of our challenge and darkness and sorrow. When we look back and see our joys, they become familiar friends that we will recognise more easily the next time around – we will welcome them in each time they arrive and be grateful for whatever they have to teach us.

Soon we will celebrate the end of one year and usher in the next. Let this be an opportunity to reflect back on the year that was, to gaze inward and acknowledge what may have changed, and to cast your eyes and imagination forward to the year that lies ahead. While there may be sadness or pain in our future, there will always be opportunities to find joy – we need only open our hearts, our minds, our dreams and welcome it in.

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Why are we thankful?

I recently read about something that resonated with me: the idea of conscious gratitude (thank you author Danielle LaPorte).  I often speak of the benefit and power of practicing gratitude, especially in times of challenge and duress.  However, simply giving thanks for everything in a general sense runs the risk of glossing over why (and whether) we are thankful, as well as what lessons we learned and/or benefits we reaped from it.

The term ‘spiritual bypass’ was coined in the 1980s by Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist John Welwood.  Spiritual bypassing occurs when we use spiritual practices to avoid facing unresolved issues, emotions, or situations.  An example of this would be to say that because you like who you are today and where you are on your path, you must be thankful for all that has come before.  At first glance this sounds perfectly okay, and it is in line with what any number of self-help books and articles might recommend, but what happens when we dig below the surface?  What happens when we sit with our experience in mindful meditation and physical or emotional pain from a past event returns?

In our mindfulness practice we seek to rest our awareness in the present moment and experience all that arises with a sense of equanimity.  We cultivate the ability to become comfortable with the uncomfortable; we build our inner strength and resilience to weather storms that arise within, be they physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual.  However, is weathering a storm the same as being grateful for it?  Do we really need to give thanks for the lightning strike that cripples us, or do we instead use the tools of our practice to simply accept the strike and its effects? We learn many lessons from the challenges in our life, and we can certainly be grateful for those lessons, but we must also acknowledge and accept where they came from – glossing over a painful experience with a blanket ‘thank-you’ does not necessarily address the havoc it may have wrought upon us physically or emotionally, and that havoc might resurface again and again in different ways if we do not acknowledge the root cause.

The example of spiritual bypass I offered above – if I am content with where my path has taken me thus far, I must give thanks for all that brought me here – is one I have used myself, and it may be a familiar refrain for you as well.  However, my practice has taught me that I do not need to be grateful for something to accept it as part of my experience.  I do not believe that a loyal employee must give thanks to the employer who lays them off, just as I would never suggest that a shooting victim must give thanks for being shot.  To me, this kind of giving thanks indiscriminately is practicing gratitude on auto-pilot, without any mindful awareness, disconnected from our intuition.  That being said, even in the midst of challenge and suffering, there will always remain things in our life for which we can give thanks, including the teachings we uncovered through our suffering.  This is conscious gratitude.  We pay attention to our experience and use the tools of our practice to discern what we have lost, what we have gained, what we have learned; we acknowledge and accept all of it, the full catastrophe, as part of our experience, and then we decide what we are truly grateful for and we give thanks.

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Lest we forget

Handmade ceramic poppies at the Tower of London, honouring the sacrifice of British soldiers in WWI

On November 11th each year, we remember the fallen, those who made the ultimate sacrifice, who gave their lives so that we might live in freedom.  Over the years, no matter where in the world I was living on November 11th, I always watched the Canadian Remembrance Day ceremony in Ottawa and honoured our many heroes with a moment of silence and reflection.  Hearing that lone bugle play The Last Post never fails to bring tears to my eyes, and I reflect with awe and deep respect on the young men and women who have left their families behind to defend against tyranny and protect our freedom.

2018 marks the 100th anniversary of the Armistice that signalled the end of World War I, as well as Canada’s Hundred Days, a three-month stretch of extraordinary Canadian Corps victories from August 8th to November 11th, 1918.  The last living veteran of WWI died in 2012 – Florence Green, a British woman who served in the Allied armed forces; the last living Canadian veteran of WWI was John Babcock, who died in 2010.  With no remaining voices to share firsthand stories of those harrowing years, it is left to us to honour their memory and remember their sacrifice.

When we speak of mindfulness practice, our focus is usually on connecting to the present moment.  We remind ourselves that the past is gone, the future is not yet here, and the present moment is the only moment we are guaranteed.  While dwelling on past events can cause us suffering, remembering loved ones who are no longer with us can also give us perspective, teaching us lessons that we can apply to our present moment experience.  Bringing mindful awareness to our collective past helps connect us to the wisdom of that history so that we might use that knowledge to guide us on the journey ahead. What better way to honour sacrifice than to learn from the circumstances that led to it and avoid such sacrifice in the future?

It has been 100 years since the ‘war to end all wars’ came to an end.  To look at the world around us now, it might seem that we have learned little at all from our collective history, as we continue to repeat the same mistakes and fight the same battles a century later.  We can see echoes of this in the microcosm of our meditation practice – the same thought patterns, the same judgements, the same self-criticisms coming up time and again.  We could throw up our hands in despair and give up any hope of achieving peace – within ourselves, and in the world around us – or we could continue our mindful practices in earnest, radiating lovingkindness, compassion, acceptance and equanimity.  As Mahatma Gandhi reminded us: “A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle and the life of the candle will not be shortened.”  Our candle is lit from within and the flame grows stronger and brighter as we continually cultivate peace and love and compassion in our hearts.  At first glance, our practice might seem to strengthen only our own flame, and we might think sharing it could diminish its brightness; in fact, that strength empowers us to light a thousand more candles.  By cultivating our practice, by nourishing our own inner flame, we can help spread lovingkindness around the world – and maybe someday we can achieve the peace for which so many have fought and sacrificed.

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Giving thanks

In Canada, today is a day of giving thanks for all of the blessings in our life. We have so much to be grateful for on any given day, even in times of challenge and duress.  I am deeply grateful to all of you for your kindness and support, and as a gift on this day of Thanksgiving, I offer you a new meditation called Find Peace in Gratitude. I hope you enjoy it and it helps to remind you of all that you have to be thankful for.

Here is a favourite quote that I often see shared at this time of year, from author Melody Beattie:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates and vision for tomorrow.

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Gratitude

“He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.” ~Albert Einstein

“Who is rich? Those who are happy with what they have.” ~Jewish scripture

It’s easy to get so caught up in the day-to-day challenges of our life that we forget to open our eyes to the myriad gifts that surround us.  It’s easy to let our attention become so sharply focused on the future and what we want to acquire, achieve, accomplish, that we neglect to look in the periphery of our present and acknowledge what we already have.  At any given time on our path we could be standing triumphantly on a peak, mired in a deep valley, or walking steadily somewhere in between.  No matter where we find ourselves, whether the path seems clear or hazy, it is exactly the right time to practice gratitude.

There is something quite profound in regularly giving thanks for the simple blessings in our life.  The practice of gratitude helps us shift our focus to the unsung heroes that support us on our journey.  We can give thanks for the love of family and friends, for the roof over our heads, for the technology that allows me to share these words with you and enables you to access them from virtually anywhere.  We can give thanks for the gifts of hearing and sight, of taste, touch and smell that allow us to connect to the world around us and marvel at its beauty. Even in the throes of despair or disease, we can give thanks simply for the breath that nourishes us and gives us life in that moment.

Gratitude can offer us a refuge from our inner and outer struggles.  It shifts our gaze away from our challenges and helps us cultivate a sense of contentment, balance and perspective.  We are reminded to appreciate the simple joys of life, the gift of being alive, and we begin to recognise that this too shall pass – whatever ‘this’ may be.  We remember that change is our constant companion and with each moment arrives new possibilities, new opportunities to grow, to learn, to heal, to stand rapt in awe at the simple blessings this moment brings.

Gratitude can be practiced anytime and anywhere, and like any skill, the more often we practice, the more adept we become.  When you awaken each morning, ask yourself: what am I grateful for on this day?  When feelings like frustration, anger, loneliness or pain arise, invite yourself to pause and bring to mind one thing for which you are grateful in that moment.  The more often we pause to wonder and we acknowledge that we are truly rich, the better able we will be to find contentment within ourselves and the world around us.