INTENTION: My mindfulness practice seemed to grow on me more than me deliberately ‘growing it’. It was hard to find the time to practice (it still is) and I often felt that I wasn’t doing it “properly” (whatever my definition of “properly” was at the time) but what if mindfulness and I actually grew together? What if those very early and tiny dots of practice started to join up into a fuller picture? How did that come about? Can I still make out the tiny dots so I can show them to you? I’m taking this question back to my mindfulness teacher, Richard Yin so we can unpack this together.
Richard reminds me that meditation is about our intention rather than a technique. Traditional practice starts with an aspiration or an intention “I aspire to awaken swiftly for the sake of all sentient beings”….. but I like to ask “what am I doing here?”… This helps me remember that there is a point to the practice. You might focus on different intentions on different days and you might never “achieve” these things. They are directions rather than destinations. Often I aspire to clarity and what I actually meet with is the muddle of my day or I aspire to be embodied but I find my mind is as busy as a troupe of monkeys and I don’t have a sense of my body at all. Nevertheless, I return to the intention, another tiny dot in the picture of what I am trying to cultivate.
Here are some 5, 10 and 20 minute practices for you to explore
I was motivated to write this post after a conversation with a friend, who is a newly graduated doctor. She is loving medicine and the work with the patients. The profession really suits her clever mind and caring manner. She described the way they are being taught (perhaps implicitly more than explicitly) to desensitise in order to cope with the distress inherent to the work. Perhaps it is the sheer volume of work that has necessitated a ‘closing off from” or maybe the culture of resources being constantly stretched in the health sector has influenced this way of trying to protect ourselves. I think there is a lot to be said for taking a step back in order to reflect and see clearly. I also think we owe it to ourselves not to be so saturated in our work that it causes us harm. However a health care professional is by definition someone who “cares”, so how else do we foster and protect this dimension of each human being who wears the hat of doctor, nurse, physio, social worker, counsellor, therapist?
Could we grow an individual and a shared capacity to stay connected, CONTAIN and safely TAKE CARE OF the distress? Could we meet it as it arises, hold it with a kindly awareness, and then let it dissipate and fall away? Could it flow through with the same cycle as the breath; coming in, pausing & turning, going out?
Mindful Cancer Care 