Focusing

"Your brain will do what you ask of it" states David Rakel, Director of the University of Wisconsin Integrative Medicine Programme. Instead of multi-tasking, he suggests taking a few minutes every day to focus on one positive thought, like the word "happy". Doing so, he explains, creates new neurological networks in your brain and helps you feel happy and compassionate more easily. On the contrary, focusing on angry thoughts can create networks that make you feel more negative about life, more often.

Saint Nicholas and the practice of generosity

Today is the feast of Saint Nicolas, which is at the origins of gift-giving to children around this period. In some countries these gifts are left in childrens' shoes. The tradition is based on his generosity as Bishop of Myra, as he was accustomed to leaving gifts for the poor while they were asleep.


One story tells of a poor man with three daughters. In those times a woman's father had to offer prospective husbands something of value, a dowry. The greater the dowry, the better was the chance that a young woman would find a good husband. Without a dowry, a woman was unlikely to marry and was in danger of poverty, prostitution or slavery. But this man was poor, and so his daughters, without dowries, were destined to be sold into slavery. Mysteriously, on three different occasions, a bag of gold appeared in their home - providing the necessary dowries. The bags of gold, tossed by the Bishop through an open window, - as seen in this exquisite painting by Fra Angelico - landed in stockings or shoes left before the fire to dry, while the girls slept unaware in bed.

There is so much in this tale, about generosity, or awareness of what we have been given, or the real meaning of this period, or about caring for those who are in difficulty at this time.

" In the African understanding of ubuntu, our generosity comes from realizing that we could not be alive, nor could we accomplish anything, without the support, love, and generosity of all the people who have helped us to become the people we are today. Certainly it is from experiencing this generosity of God and the generosity of those in our life that we learn gratitude and to be generous to others."

Archbishop Desmond Tutu

"I think that generosity has many levels. We have to think generously, speak generously, and act generously. Thinking well of others and speaking well of others is the basis for generous giving. It means that we relate to others as part of our 'gen' or 'kin' and treat them as family. Generosity has to come from hearts that are fearless and free and are willing to share abundantly all that is given to us."

Henri Nouwen

Tune in

Remembering the positive side of everyday happenings can be a struggle for people suffering from clinical depression. But by developing skills to tune into the positive, depressed people can strengthen their mental health, a new 2009 Ohio State University study shows. By staying mindful of the positive elements of daily events, and even documenting each days happiest moments in a journal, you may lower your stress levels. “Positive emotions build resilience to stress, in addition to having an undoing effect on depression” says Alan Keck, Psychologist at the Centre for Positive Psychology.

On hearing a wren sing

There is always something magical about birdsong. Yesterday I heard a wren sing for the first time in many years. For the briefest moment nothing else was heard and the world stopped.

Birdsong brings relief
to my longing.
I am just as ecstatic as they are,
but with nothing to say!
Please, universal soul, practice
some song, or something, through me!

Rumi

I do not know which to prefer
The beauty of inflections
or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after

Wallace Stevens, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

The arrival of winter

Winter has begun to make its presence felt, muted light, paler days, the bare sky, the bare trees. Grey on grey. Snow on the mountains. Or the frosty white landscape in the morning, tree trunks and bare branches, ghostly in the early mist. Now that it has arrived there is almost a feeling of disbelief. Things come to a halt rapidly, they die, and the ground hardens and tightens.

Winter can seem as a period of bareness, cold and sorrow. A period noted for its absence of colour. A period just to endure, to get back to the colours we long for with the coming of spring. However, to see it this way may miss some of the life lessons hidden in the season. Look at nature, it is winding down or in the case of animals, stocking up. Our cat is eating more, putting on weight, as instinctively he prepares for a time with less hunting. There was a time when the changing of the seasons dramatically affected people’s lifestyles also. In winter when the days were short, people would sleep longer, sit by the fire, tell stories, and wait.

However, these days our lives aren’t much different from season to season, The problem in work life is that there is really no slow season any more. How often do we hear these days "Things are really busy" as year end approaches, as there are exam papers to be corrected and reports to be written, and gifts need to be bought or trips to be planned. Even holidays can become another thing we are obliged to schedule and often even when people do go on a break, their blackberries and laptops go with them.

However, in our inner life we do have a choice. Slow down, simplify. As the animal kingdom testifies, we need rest at this time, and not just our bodies. Nature can teach us this simplicity and contentment, because in its presence we realize we need very little to be happy.

The All Day Retreat

Tomorrow is Saturday in week 6 of the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course and as always we have an All Day Silent Retreat. Despite its formidable title it always turns out a calm, enjoyable, restorative day.

These days we are under continual pressure to do better, to be fitter, to be thinner, to get more education, attend more courses. It is almost as if rest equates with laziness. We so surrounded by hyper-achievers who are constantly overscheduled that we are tempted to consider busyness not only normal but right. Rest for some is a sign of weakness, a lack of ambition. And we can fall into the same approach even in how we approach our inner life. Even attending a MBSR Course or doing meditation can become another way to "fix" ourselves or another, latest, "self-improvement" project.

However, one of the most neglected of all inner pursuits seems to be quiet and rest. One of the most needful things for our sense of meaning is simply rest. A quiet day allows us this, a day without goals, just more time to be with our experience, whatever arises - a day of kindness to ourselves.

Disappointment

Sometimes things really don't work out as well as you think. It's true, no? You can buy the latest must-have gadget, find it marvellous for a few days and then it breaks, leaving you with a sour taste in your mouth.

Life can be even worse. You work hard on your career, or on a relationship or in changes to your lifestyle, but still you are not as happy as you assumed you would be "if only" this or that happened. Or someone who you thought you could be safe with can let you down. Our family stories can be complicated and painful. Or we may have a setback or rejection, and feel our hopes and dreams dashed. We can come to understand that something we always thought possible is never going to happen: a change in some behaviours, making peace with a difficult part of our history, realizing all the dreams and potentialities that we think we have.

One first step toward dealing with disappointment is to understand the forces that drive disappointment in our own view and in that of the culture around us. One is the deep seated belief that life can be free from disappointments and suffering. This is ingrained in today's society which needs us to think we deserve all the toys, thrills, and pleasures we can get, and that our fulfillment is linked to that. However, the teachings that are the basis for mindfulness tell another message, namely that life is challenging, even unsatisfactory, for everyone. Our physical bodies, our health, our plans, our relationships, all the elements in our story are fragile and subject ot change. This is a basic reality. The cause of our disappoinment, our suffering, is not the change in itself, but the mind's struggle in reaction to the change. Mindfulness proposes one way of dealing with suffering - training a non-struggling, peaceful mind.

A second step is to work directly with the sense of disappointment as it arises. We firstly stop being surprised when our internal life is not as smooth as we would like it to be, and simply try some practices gently and kindly. One practice is to say to ourselves, "I feel disappointed. I have made a desire such and such expectation so solid that I have let myself be identified with it. That is now causing me to suffer." Once we recognize this, we have a moment to choose between two possibilities - whether we want to go back to our story and wander around in it, and feed it more, or whether we can rest in the felt sense of disappointment and simply acknowledge it for what it truly is.

If we do the first we often notice that the disappointment can trigger our core beliefs, such as, "I am not good enough", "They always leave", "I'll never be happy". If we choose the second way it can help us gently break through the defensiveness and armour by looking at the distress directly. Maybe seeing that it is not as solid as we first thought. Although difficult, we try to begin by saying "I am disappointed. What does it feel like at this moment? Where is it in my body?" Thus, instead of maybe contracting into our disappointment, we allow some space for a broader picture to be seen.

From a worm's cocoon, silk.
Be patient if you can,
and from sour grapes will come something sweet.

Rumi

Wonder

"May you receive great encouragement
when new frontiers beckon.

May you take time to celebrate
the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

May you experience each day
as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder."

John O'Donoghue,
Benedictus

Meditation in medicine

Conventional medical institutions are increasingly embracing healing methods once dismissed as alternative medicine and combining them with standard treatment. Meditation, is among the most popular techniques now going mainstream. ''It's not invasive, it has no side effects, it has tremendous benefits that are very well documented and it's something patients can do on their own so it doesn't cost anything,'' said Dr. Barrie R. Casselith, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center's Integrative Medicine Service in Manhattan, New York

''It's not a cancer treatment,'' Dr. Casselith quickly added. ''It deals with quality of life and helps with symptoms. It can relieve pain, lower blood pressure and heart rate. It can make people feel calmer, it enhances mood. It does lots of good things.'' Her counterpart at Beth Israel Medical Center, Dr. Woodson Merrell, called meditation ''perhaps the most powerful tool for health.''