Following Your Breath While Listening to Music

“Listen to a piece of music.  Breathe long, light, and even breaths.  Follow your breath, be master of it while remaining aware of the movement and sentiments of the music.  Do not get lost in the music, but continue to be master of your breath and your self.” Thick Nhat Hanh

Creating a Soothing Holiday Home

How do you make your home a more soothing, calming, environment this holiday season?  How can you provide opportunities for you and your family to Self soothe?  Ask yourself the following questions:

VISION:  what is pretty and calming to look at around your house?  Are there any decorations that you like to look at that make you feel particularly calm and secure? 

TASTE:  what are soothing tastes and flavors available in the house?  Are there any flavors or tastes that you associate with the holidays, like peppermint, hot chocolate or apple cider? 

TOUCH:  what soothing and calming things are available for to touch in the house?  Are there warm cozy blankets?  A warm fire? Soft clothes? 

HEARING:  what calming, soothing holiday sounds do you have around the house?  How did you provide a calming holiday environment with sound? Do you play holiday music? Focus on conversation? Have a crackling fire?

SMELL:  what smells like the holidays to you, around your house?

Holiday Stress Survival Tips

Top Ten Relaxation Tips to Sooth your Mind and Body during the Holiday Season

During the holidays we are often surrounded with images of people who are happy, in love and enjoying the whirlwind of their lives. However, in reality this time of year can be tiring or bring up painful feelings. Wouldn’t it be nice to get through the season with just a little less stress and a few more moments and calm and peace? The following tips are designed to help you find relaxation during this busy time and also to improve how you are thinking or feeling about the moment and the season.
1. Find Meaning in the Season. Find or reconnect to a purpose, meaning or value during the season. Focus on the positive aspects of the holidays and the season.
2. Muscle relaxation: After a day on your feet, shopping, partying or otherwise extolling holiday cheer sit down and relax your muscles by tensing and relaxing each large muscle group, starting with your hands and arms, going to your head and then working down.
3. Do only One Thing in the moment: Doing just one thing can give you time to settle down in the midst of a frantic or chaotic day. Focus your entire attention on what you are doing now. Let go of the mental list making, worrying, party planning, etc. Put your mind in the present and focus your entire attention on physical sensations, such as walking, washing dishes, or decorating.
4. Give yourself a Vacation: You don’t need to go to Bermuda to take a vacation this time of year. Give yourself a brief break from all the hubbub. Get in bed and pull the covers over your head. Take 15 minutes to immerse yourself in your favorite book, take a long bath, ask your husband to make you dinner, or wrap up in a comfy blanket and watch your favorite movie.
5. Contribute: Contributing can give a sense of meaning and make you feel good about yourself. Give something to someone else, do volunteer work or do a surprising, thoughtful thing.
6. If you’re feeling down, do something Opposite to how you feel. Let’s face it, if your life isn’t picture perfect the holidays can bring up sadness, regrets and other painful emotions. Change your mood and how you’re feeling by engaging activities that are opposite to how you are feeling. Read emotional books,listen to emotional music or go to emotional movies. If you’re down, do something upbeat like call a friend, buy gifts, exercise, flirt with your husband, go out to dinner, take your children someplace special, say “I love you” or think of something you did well.
7. Self Soothe with Taste: Instead of going to a holiday party and grazing on appetizers without really tasting anything, choose one and slow down and really taste it. Or at home have a good meal or favorite soothing drink. Really taste the food or drink.
8. Comfort yourself: Do something nurturing, gentle and kind for yourself. Look outside at nature or at some beautiful decorations, listen to music that you find particularly soothing or sing your favorite songs. Surround yourself with soothing comforting smells, like the smell of pine, cookies baking or cinnamon. Massage your feet, put on a silky blouse or scarf or hug someone.
9. Deep Breathing: Lie on your back, breathing evenly and gently. Focus your attention on your breath, coming in and out and the movement of your stomach. As your breath in, allow your stomach to rise. Exhale fully pushing all the air out of your lungs. Continue for 10 breaths.
10. Clean the house: The holidays often bring extra chores and cleaning. Use them as an opportunity to self soothe, rather than as an additional stress. Divide your work into stages: straightening things and putting them away,then scrubbing and cleaning. Allow a good length of time for each task. Move slowly (3 times more slowly than usual) and focus your attention fully on each task. Maintain awareness of your actions and your thoughts if they wander. Bring them back to full attention on the task at hand.

Positive Thoughts for the Holidays

Within our mind we experience a ceaseless flow of thoughts. Ordinarily our attention wanders a lot, we are lost in our thoughts and only superficially aware of what is taking place within or around us. With mindful observation of our experience, we grow more sensitive to what we are perceiving, feeling, thinking, and doing. Try to practice controlling your attention by bringing your thoughts to a pleasant past experience. Thanksgiving and the holidays often bring a wide variety of emotions. To start the season on a hopeful note, you may choose to focus on a positive Thanksgiving or holiday experience.

Take a moment and remember a time when you felt hopeful, bright, cheerful, content or confident.  You can choose any experience, but focus on one in which you felt a pleasant emotion.  As you are remembering the experience, notice what made you feel these good feelings, remember how your body felt, were you flushed, did you have a warm feeling, were your muscles relaxed or tense, and remember how you expressed your positive feeling.  What did you do with your positive energy.

If you find you are distracted by other thoughts, feelings or memories that come up, simply bring your mind back to your breathing and then refocus on your positive memory.  Trust in this moment and allow it to unfold without  analyzing, judging or doubting it.

Mindfulness to help you sleep

We all have nights when sleep seems elusive, but some of us experience sleep problems and insomnia with regularity.  Recent research has indicated that mindfulness can help improve sleep.  Below are a  few exercises you might try when you’re tossing and turning.

When you notice you’re having trouble sleeping, begin by bringing your attention and awareness to what is going on in your mind and body.  Notice if you are worrying or thinking about something.  Are your thoughts racing?  Are they triggering emotions that are not calm and relaxing?  If you get distracted and wrapped up in your thinking again, just notice that, label the thoughts you were distracted by (you might label them as worries, or simply label them as thoughts of the  ”past”, “future” or “fantasies”).  Bring your mind back, again and again to simply observing your thoughts.

Do the same with your body.  Bring your full attention to your body.  Scan from head to toe.  Are you holding tension?  Do you have discomfort or pain that is interfering with sleep?  In this season of colds and flu, are you congested or feeling sick?

Once you’ve attended to what is interfering with sleep, choose a mindfulness exercise to help you get calm and relaxed.

If you need to focus your thoughts, try breathing exercises. A few breathing exercises that can be useful when trying to get to sleep include: counting with each breath from 1-10, repeating as necessary; saying  ”in” and “out” with each inhalation and exhalation; breathing out until you feel your lungs entirely empty of air and then breathing in feeling them fill from bottom to top- repeat 4 times; or breathing out while imagining your entire body from head to toe emptying of air and breathing in and imagining your entire body filling up.  With each exercise, notice if you become distracted and return your thoughts to your breath.  Repeat as often as necessary.  Mindfulness exercises become easier and distractions lesson over time.

If you have noticed that discomfort and tension in your body is keeping you from sleep, you may want to try a body scan and tension reduction exercise.  You may simply scan your body from head to toe and relax each area of your body as you bring your attention to it.  Or you may tense muscle groups, like the hands, feet and face for several seconds and then relax those muscles.  You can repeat these exercises until your body is feeling more relaxed. As with the breathing exercises, bring your mind back if you become distracted.

Gratitude

As Thanksgiving approaches, I have begun to think about gratitude and what I have to be thankful for this season.  I have to tear myself away from the daily stack of catalogs we get in the mail and my list of stuff that we would like to give and receive this holiday season. But refocusing attention from what we need, want, don’t have, are lacking or missing to all that we do have can change our outlook and how we feel about ourselves and our world.  Finding and focusing on that for which you are grateful can help you survive suffering or simply improve your day.  The following are some quotes on gratitude that might help you get thinking about what you are grateful for this year.

At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.
Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us.  Albert Schweitzer

Gratefulness is the key to a happy life that we hold in our hands, because if we are not grateful, then no matter how much we have we will not be happy — because we will always want to have something else or something more. Brother David Steindl-Rast

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn’t learn a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn’t learn a little, at least we didn’t get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn’t die; so, let us all be thankful. Buddha

Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace and gratitude. Denis Waitley

The Pilgrims made seven times more graves than huts. No Americans have been more impoverished than these who, nevertheless, set aside a day of thanksgiving. H.U. Westermayer

Mindfulness on the person who is driving you crazy

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.” – Pema Chodron

Mindfulness usually focuses on finding peace and experiencing life in the moment with all its turbulence, pain and joy.  But how can you be fully present in the moment when someone is driving you crazy?  How do you let go of the anger and resentment?  The following is a meditation designed to help you gain understanding, compassion and peace with the person you hate or despise the most.

Sit quietly.  Get centered in your breathing.  Imagine the person who has caused you the most suffering.  Think about what you hate or despise the most or find the most repulsive about this person.  Examine what makes them happy and what causes them pain and suffering in their daily life.  Imagine this person’s perceptions of the world.  Try to see their patterns of thought or reason.  Think about what motivates their hopes and actions.  See whether their views are open or closed and whether they are influenced by prejudices, narrow-mindedness, hatred, or anger.  Think of whether the person is ruled by their fears and prejudices.  Continue until you feel compassion towards this person and your anger and resentment fade away.  Practice many times on the same person.

Mindfulness and Music

This exercise will help you  to develop your ability to focus your attention and concentration.  When you have a lot on your mind or your thoughts are racing, learning to focus all your attention on one thing in the moment is a valuable skill.  This exercise may also help you to relax, when you are feeling stressed or overwhelmed.  I’ve been listening to a lot of music lately and I’ve noticed with both myself and my children changes in the tempo of music evoke different behavior.  We do best cleaning up dinner with upbeat music.  The girls will run around and dance and even the baby will start to clap his hands.  As we wind down, I switch to a slower tempo.  I find if I stick to the upbeat music too long everyone begins to get frazzled.  But classical, more fluid music slows and calms us all.

Try listening to a piece of music for several minutes.  Choose any piece of music and listen mindfully, with your full attention.  If possible, listen with headphones, so that you are able to be fully focused on the music without any other distracting sounds. As you listen to the music notice the different musical instruments, the singing if there is any, the tempo, whether the music plays loudly or softly.  Notice whether your energy level changes in any way with the music.  Notice at what points the music influences how you are feeling. If you find you are distracted by other sounds in the environment or judgments about the quality or type of music, just notice the distraction or thought and bring your mind back to the music.

MINDFUL BREATHING: CALMING AND CENTERING YOURSELF

How do you Know you need to use MINDFUL BREATHING?

Mindful breathing is helpful if you are experiencing any of the following:
If your body is feeling jittery, your muscles are tense or you have racing thoughts.

If you have feelings of jumpiness, uneasiness, worry, sadness, rejection, unhappiness, regret, embarrassment, anger, annoyance, bitterness, jealousy, or irritation.

and if you find yourself doing things, such as withdrawing, clenching hands or fists, using a loud voice, complaining, crying, being touchy or grouchy, blaming or criticizing.

How can you BREATH MINDFULLY?
 FIND A QUIET PLACE
 FOCUS ATTENTION ON BREATH AND JUST KNOWING YOU’RE BREATHING
 INHALE, FILLING YOUR LUNGS,
 EXHALE, LETTING ALL THE AIR OUT OF YOUR LUNGS,
 CONTINUE TO FOCUS ON YOUR BREATH UNTIL YOU FEEL CALMER AND MORE CENTERED.

Mindfulness of the Season

This fall focus on the moment. Walk through any area with trees and leaves and make a conscious attempt to really experience the season. What’s not to love about crackling leaves, crisp air, and warm apple cider? Fall is the season of apple picking, pumpkin farms, apple cider donuts, cool fruity wines, crackling fires and beautiful warm, sunny days. But sometimes fall slips by too quickly. Somewhere in the midst of school starting, sports practices, piano lessons, and new homework the season is gone.

Try walking mindfully through any area with trees and leaves and make a conscious attempt to really experience what is around you. Notice the leaves. Notice with your full attention. As you watch try to identify the different ways the leaves move and rustle in a breeze and crackle when you step on them. Notice the smell and the details of the veins and coloring. Be conscious of each step you take. If your attention wanders, gently bring it back to your walking and your surroundings.