Within 12 pages of beginning this book today, I had tears of recognition and gratitude.
It's a beautiful exploration of allowing. ‘We’re not raised to recognise wintering, or to acknowledge its inevitability. Instead, we tend to see it as a humiliation, something that should be hidden from view lest we shock the world too greatly. We put on a brave public face and grieve privately; we pretend not to see other people’s pain. We treat each wintering as an embarrassing anomaly that should be hidden or ignored. This means we’ve made a secret of an entirely ordinary process, and have thereby given those who endure it a pariah status, forcing them to drop out of everyday life in order to conceal their failure. Yet we do this at a great cost. Wintering brings about some of the most profound and insightful moments of our human experience, and wisdom resides in those who have wintered. In our relentlessly busy contemporary world, we are forever trying to defer the onset of winter. We don’t ever dare to feel its full bite, and we don’t dare to show the way that it ravages us. A sharp wintering, sometimes, would do us good. We must stop believing that these times in our life are somehow silly, a failure of nerve, a lack of willpower. We must stop trying to ignore them or dispose of them. They are real, and they are asking something of us. We must learn to invite the winter in. That’s what this book is about: learning to recognise the process, engage with it mindfully, even to cherish it. We may not choose to winter, but we can choose how.’ ~Katherine May, Wintering
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Is mindfulness a relaxation tool? (and why this question matters)
Some reflections…
‘This is what the things can teach us: to fall, patiently to trust our heaviness. Even a bird has to do that before he can fly.’ ~ Rainer Maria Rilke Background: A couple of years ago I got into an email discussion with someone who had joined one of our taster sessions about whether or not mindfulness should be thought of as a relaxation tool. Our taster session slides, which we’d tried to keep pithy, had included an ‘either/or’ type statement asserting that mindfulness is not a relaxation tool, whereas a ‘both/and’ perspective would have been more helpful and representative of our own experiences. It wasn’t a comfortable exchange for me – the tone of the email felt critical – and it led to some painful reflection afterwards about what I thought I understood, how I was conveying my thinking, and the teaching we were seeking to offer. My practice certainly helped in the aftermath as I wobbled, and I learnt a lot from the experience. Since then, this theme of mindfulness and relaxation is one I have had many causes to return to. Sometimes I am asked by workplaces to provide ‘relaxation’ sessions, and this always brings up difficult thoughts and emotions for me, about how to go forward, and whether there is a way to offer what I can authentically offer. My deepfelt passion for the transformational potential of mindfulness comes from my own life experience, and it can be hard to say, “this opportunity, at this time, this is not meant for me”. As my own practice and thinking has evolved, I have felt called many times to write down something about mindfulness and relaxation so here after years of bubbling away are my current reflections. (Photo by Abhinav Goswami from Pexels) This is the time to be slow,
Lie low to the wall Until the bitter weather passes. Try, as best you can, not to let The wire brush of doubt Scrape from your heart All sense of yourself And your hesitant light. If you remain generous, Time will come good; And you will find your feet Again on fresh pastures of promise, Where the air will be kind And blushed with beginning. ~ John O’Donohue |
AuthorI'm Claire - and I (re)learn something every day from practising and teaching mindfulness... Archives
March 2022
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