Tag: Stress Management

Why It’s Important for Children to Learn Mindfulness at a Young Age

Posted on by robbie

Mindfulness, a secular form of meditation based on old Buddhist practices, is gaining popularity in more and more workplaces, but it still isn’t broadly available in most communities. In New Canaan, Conn., residents Nick and Michelle Seaver, Will Heins, and Erika Long banded together to offer group sessions in public institutions like libraries and wellness centers that help locals train their awareness on their physical existence in the present moment.

NationSwell spoke with Long, a former managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase and founder of the Carpere Group, about how she found meaning in mindfulness after quitting her career in finance.

How did you first become interested in mindfulness?
I was on a business trip to Tokyo and couldn’t fall asleep. In the nightstand next to the bed were the teachings of Buddha. I started reading it and thought the lessons were really interesting. Then I began investigating more about Buddhism and learning that meditation was really a core practice for that spiritual tradition. The more I read, the more it resonated with me. I was leading a very, very busy life in investment banking at the time, and soon after, I had two kids. I spent so much time in my head, trying to figure out investments, that mindfulness really helped me to integrate the mind and the body — to check in and make sure I wasn’t missing stuff that was going on outside my head. And I found that meditation allowed a lot of the clutter in my mind to settle, so that when decisions needed to be made, the path forward became more evident.

What advice do you have for someone who’s just starting to dabble in meditation?
We’re not a culture that supports sitting down without distraction. For some reason, you can justify doing a ton of other things, even if it’s just the crossword puzzle on the train on the way in or looking at Facebook. Some people have to overcome that as a hurdle.

Other people find that their mind won’t stop, and they get frustrated. We say that it’s very difficult to enter meditation or mindfulness thinking with the goal to keep thoughts out, to keep the mind quiet. It’s much easier to engage in the practice if you think when thoughts arise — because they will — choosing not to engage in them, not to get carried away with them, letting them arise and carry on their way.

What do you hope to accomplish through the Community Mindfulness Project (CMP)?
Originally four [founders] lived in the same town, and we all felt tremendous benefit from our own personal meditation practices over the years. But we had a hard time finding a community that we could sit with. There’s a real power to sitting in a group in addition to one’s own personal daily practice: you learn from each other, get support and feel a tremendous energy that arises when you sit in stillness with others. We started with one hour on a Monday night, and it grew and grew. We had the class coming in from lots of different places, asking “Could you do it here? Could you work with the kids in this school? With the teachers in this program?”

The more we looked around, we realized that there weren’t other secular, regular meditation or mindfulness sessions that were free and open to the public on an ongoing basis in community hubs. We offer regular weekly sessions in libraries and wellness centers in New Canaan and Stamford, Conn. We’re expanding out, particularly targeting communities with high numbers of stressors: food, housing and job insecurity, as well as people with other special needs like patients going through chemotherapy (as we’re currently doing at New York-Presbyterian Hospital).

Mindfulness is showing up in more places. What uses are you most excited about right now?
Maybe just because I’m a mom of a couple of teenagers, I feel that very little children are very much in the present moment, and as they get older, all of the adults in their lives and the media influences that they see begin to yank them out of the present moment. They’re sitting down every day with this notion that everything they’re doing in that moment is for the future somehow. It makes it really hard for them just to sit in the present. That’s right about the same time they need to be really connected with their bodies, and they need to be building habits and patterns for self-care. I love the extent to which people are thinking how we show kids these practices so that they can bring them into their lives, during those middle and high school years.

What’s on your nightstand?
I’m reading “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War,” by Lynsey Addario. She was a photographer for The New York Times, and that feeds my love of trying to push myself outside my comfort zone by reading about other people’s lives. And I’ve just been given, by someone in our community, “Buddha’s Brain,” by Rick Hanson, which really is the boiled-down neuroscience behind mindfulness. Then there’s a beautiful book called “Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Wisdom We Were Born With,” by Gaylon Ferguson.

What’s your perfect day?
I have to say the perfect day would involve no technology whatsoever. It would involve time with my kids. I’m at that point where I’m very aware they’re going to be heading off on their own soon, so I’m cherishing every moment that I have with them right now. And it would involve being outside. There’s something about the outdoors that really grounds us in the present moment and gives us the sense of connection as part of something better. And there’s some kind of food involved. If we have those elements, it doesn’t really matter what we’re doing.

What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I worked with amazing people in investment banking. I could not believe how lucky I was to be able to do what I did. I felt like every day the world was my university. I learned so much. But I’m really proud of the fact that I got off that treadmill, even though there were financial ramifications. It wasn’t tapping into a deep need to do something that was more meaningful. I’m proud that I was able to sacrifice the identity that comes with having that job.

One of the CMP cofounders, Michelle Seaver, is from Canada, and she said one of the things she noticed most when she moved to the Northeast is that when people ask, “What do you do?” in Vancouver, the answer is “I waterski. I play tennis.” In the Northeast, it’s all about your job. After having a career for so long, when you go out into public and somebody asks, “What do you do?” you’re no longer able to say, “I manage money, I’m in finance.” There’s that open-ended “I am.” That can be really unsettling, and you have to dig deep inside and figure out where you pull your own identity from. Can you have the courage just to let that be? It’s a beautiful process to go through, and you don’t go through it when you’re on the treadmill of your career. I’m proud of that because my kids watched me do it. Hopefully, that will give them the freedom in their life to pursue what they’re passionate about.

To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE: 37 Easy Strategies for Living in the Moment All Day Long

37 Easy Strategies for Living in the Moment All Day Long

Posted on by robbie

Once found exclusively at New Age gatherings and hippie-dense ashrams, mindfulness is becoming an essential part of American corporate culture. So, just what is mindfulness, and why is it taking office towers by storm?
Forms of meditation have been practiced in Eastern religions for millennia, but their lessons didn’t find a secular home in America until Jon Kabat-Zinn, now an emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, created a formal, eight-week stress-reduction program in 1979. Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness practice — essentially, training oneself to deliberately and non-judgmentally pay attention to now — was soon found to sharpen concentration, improve recall and other cognitive skills, foster ethical decision-making and reduce anxiety.
Just as one bicep curl doesn’t suddenly make a person buff, mindfulness requires continual practice. To fit the techniques into already crammed schedules, NationSwell conferred with experts for tips on integrating mindfulness throughout the day. No Tibetan singing bowls, yoga mats or hour-long meditation sessions are required to follow along: only 15 minutes scattered here and there over a 24 hour time period. As your personal guru, we’re not promising enlightenment, but these tactics — if practiced daily — will reconnect you with the experience of living in the present, despite all the distractions around you.

7:00 a.m.

After the morning alarm goes off, take a moment before you rush headfirst into the day for a mindfulness exercise. Before you check the inbox and calendar on your phone, focus on your breath as it moves in and out of the body for three to five minutes. (You can set a timer on your phone to keep track of time.)

8:30 a.m.

Integrating mindfulness into the workday doesn’t mean you can’t tune out occasionally and let your mind wander into fantasies, possibilities or recollections, as long as those reveries don’t happen when you’re meditating. Mindfulness teaches “to try to notice the natural tendencies of the human mind,” so that we’re aware of how our mind instinctively reacts, says Brenda Fingold, manager of community and corporate program development at UMass Medical School’s Center for Mindfulness who adopted the practice as she received treatment for colon cancer at age 40. Fingold approaches her own thought process “with compassion and humor,” and she encourages others to daydream in the shower or while commuting via train.

8:55 a.m.

As you arrive at your office desk, do two things. First, set two calendar reminders spaced out during the day to remind you when to practice mindfulness, and second, take a breath before you boot up your computer. “As much as I immediately want to start working, I just sit for one minute and breathe,” Fingold suggests. Examine what it feels like to sit in your chair, or for those new to the exercises, notice what’s going on around your desk — the sights and noises in your environment. Doing so insures “the whole body comes to work, not just a busy head,” Fingold explains.

9:30 a.m.

When you’re stuck in a meeting, the temptation to be mindless is high. Instead of giving your full attention to whomever is speaking, you’re mentally questioning if the speaker approves of your work, for example, or wondering when you can get back to your emails. Be present to listen and communicate your points. If you can, close your laptop and put your phone on airplane mode so the vibrations of texts and emails don’t distract you.

10:00 a.m.

Back at your desk, dive into one task at a time. Complete projects, rather than dividing your attention among email, phone, social media and other distractions.

11:00 a.m.

Your first reminder pops up on your phone. During this meditation of at least one minute, re-focus on that grounding anchor: your breath. Close your eyes, and feel your chest rise and fall. One of the biggest pitfalls early on is that people think their mind needs to be entirely clear during this short exercise. That’s not the case; it’s perfectly normal for thoughts to come and go. “Mindfulness is not to make your thoughts go away. This is not a sophisticated, non-medical form of lobotomy,” says Michael Baime, founder and director of the Penn Program for Mindfulness at the Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia. During this exercise, if any thoughts arise, follow them to their conclusion, then circle back to your breathing — a way of training the brain’s concentration. “You’re not judging them and not getting tangled up in them. They don’t distract you in the same way,” Baime explains. This helps you “to learn how to hold attention in a balanced and open way,” creating the neural changes in your brain.

12:30 p.m.

In some Buddhist monasteries, chopping vegetables is considered a form of meditation if it’s done with extreme care. During the lunch hour, practice mindfulness over your meal. Savor the textures and flavors of the food, and think about the process it underwent to arrive on your plate.

1:15 p.m.

During an afternoon meeting, you discover your coworker constructed a Powerpoint presentation in a completely different way from how one is normally made. You can feel your stomach clench with nervousness that you don’t have time to fix it before tomorrow’s meeting. You notice your heart beat increasing as you get angry, realizing that you might lose a deal that you’ve worked so hard to land. In this moment, drop attention to your feet, recommends Christy Cassisa, director of University of California, San Diego Center for Mindfulness’s WorkLife Integration program. “It takes focus away from this reaction that’s happening and grounds you. It calms the nervous system and allows you to reengage the executive control centers of the brain.”

1:30 p.m.

To inform your boss about the presentation’s problems, you write an email. Before you hit send, take a breath and distance yourself from your immediate emotional reaction. The experts recommend finding one touchpoint that’s common throughout your day — every time you’re about to click send in your inbox, every time you’re about to pick up the phone, every time you touch a door handle when you’re about to walk into a meeting — as a reminder to breathe. Collecting yourself with a breath will give you the wherewithal to communicate intentionally, rather than reacting instinctually.

2:45 p.m.

You’re feeling scattered and keep replaying something your colleague told you in your head. Talk a walk — and do so in a deliberate manner. On your way to the bathroom, to a meeting or to the coffee pot, for instance, slow down — but “not so much that you look like a zombie,” Fingold cautions — and focus your attention on the mechanics of walking and how your body moves through space.

4:00 p.m.

The second calendar alert dings, reminding you to take another mindfulness break for at least a minute. If you’re struggling to figure out what you’re gaining from focusing on your breath, you can try a short guided meditation on a smartphone. Headspace has several short, high-quality lessons; Stop Breathe Think assigns you a specific meditation that’s responsive to a short questionnaire on your emotions. And Insight Timer, Zenify or The Mindfulness App all automatically send text reminders throughout the day to turn on one of their recordings.

6:00 p.m.

Day’s over: time to power down your computer. During the time it takes for all its windows to close and the screen to go dark, reflect on the day.

11:00 p.m.

One last task: While you’re brushing your teeth before bed, do one final mindfulness exercise. For the two minutes you’re scrubbing your pearly whites, be attuned to the sensations involved in the task: the squeezing of the toothpaste out of the tube, the feel of the bristles on your gums, the minty taste, the way swishing, spitting and swallowing moves your lips and jaw. “See if you can stay present for the whole thing,” Fingold advises.

11:05 p.m.

Close your eyes, take a deep breath and know that you successfully lived in every moment of the day.
MORE: Mindfulness at Work: 7 Places Where Employees Benefit from Meditation