When it comes to meditating, I often do 30 and 45 minute meditations when I had only expected to do but 15 minutes: Once I am in this space, I am unaware of the passing of time. However, finding time for this during a busy day with dogs and other responsibilities is not always possible.
I start every day on the rebounder. Until recently, it seemed to be forever before the time was up. But this all changed once I turned to mindful rebounding. Some time ago, during a very stressful time, Br. ChiSing of Awakening Heart here in Dallas suggested that I do mindful walking and pointed me to some books by Thich Nhat Hanh. I started practicing mindful walking, and that led to turning otherwise ordinary moments, minutes, and hours into what Br. ChiSing calls “the art of mindful living.”
Recently, while reading Anat Baniel, Move Into Life: The Nine Essentials for Lifelong Vitality (Harmony books, 2009), I was fascinated by her discussion of physical movement and the power of attention. In Chapter 1, she wrote: “Each time we combine attention with movement, millions and millions of brain cells are activated. . . . clusters of brain cells begin communicating with one another . . . The more we combine attention with movement, the greater the number of brain cells [are involved] . . . creating new possibilities for our lives. . . when a person continues to follow the path of movement with attention, every area of his life begins to change. . . The one overriding benefit . . . is increased vitality . . .”
In short, mindful movement sparks a chain reaction for our good.
I liked this idea, and I decided to use it for mindful rebounding. For me, this means that I am acutely aware of the movement of different parts of my body in response to the rebounding. Up and down, up and down, I feel the movement in the top of my feet, the sides of my lower legs, the periphery of my knees, all the way up through my body to my head and down my arms from my shoulders. Mindful of how each part of my body feels as it moves with the rebounding, the time flies and I am spending more time on the rebounder bringing all kinds of positive benefits to my day.
The time on the rebounder flies, and I finish feeling more awake, more aware, and more comfortable all over. This practice of mindfulness on the rebounder first thing in the morning has helped me be more mindful throughout the day.
Today, I was sitting at a table putting supplements for our three dogs into individual packets to be given with their meals, one packet for each of the three dogs for each day of a week. I fell into mindfulness, seeing, feeling, the body moving, the powders and capsules dropping into each of the little packets, aware of each movement that I made, the colors of the supplements, and soon I was unaware of anything beyond what I was doing. It seemed a very short time before the seven packets were filled for each dog, a total of 21 little packets of powders and capsules. When I started, the three dogs crowded around me, eager to get in on the action (or what smelled like food). I stayed mindful of what I was doing. I didn’t notice when but all three dogs laid down, each in their own place, circling my work table, totally relaxed, in a deep sleep by the time I finished.
Once again, the dogs reminded me of the peace of being totally within each moment.
Baniel says that we can maintain a routine activity for years, but "unless we also remind ourselves, again and again, to bring our attention to the movements -- intellectual, emotional, and physical-- that are involved in that activity, we begin stagnating. . . . We become less and less aware of the world around us . . . producing exactly the opposite of what we are seeking--vitality. . . . vitality comes about by bringing attention to our movements."
In short, every mindful movement starts a chain reaction for our good bringing us to the peace of being in the moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment