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Photographs and Memories

Mindfulness is present-time awareness. It takes place in the here and now. It is the observance of what is happening right now, in the present moment. It stays forever in the present, perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.

If you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is memory. When you then become aware that you are remembering your second-grade teacher, that is mindfulness. If you then conceptualize that process and say to yourself, "Oh, I am remembering," that is thinking. --Henepola Gunaratana, from Mindfulness in Plain English

When I remember Bette, I think about her blue Thunderbird with opera glass windows and her soft, cool hands. I remember thinking that she was a very tall lady and that she was free to go wherever she wanted to go because she wasn't married. She took me with her, wherever she wanted to go because she wasn't married. She went home to Minnesota after that summer teaching job in Hawaii and got married, had a son and is now retired. But we've always been together, on paper and in memory: I am five and she is tall with soft, cool hands. I am grateful for memories, whenever I think about them and mindfully pamper this old photograph.

"Photographs and Memories" by Jim Croce (You Tube 2:16)

The Broken Note

To be a hero or a heroine, one must give an order to oneself.
-Simone Weil

In observance of Memorial Day...the Broken Note:

Listen to taps being played (after the firing of three volleys) at John F. Kennedy's funeral. Sergeant Keith Clark was the principal bugler of the U.S. Army Band and had sounded taps a few weeks earlier on Veteran's Day at Arlington with President Kennedy at his side. But on November 25, 1963 at Kennedy's burial "... the notes resounded over all assembled, though in Clark's mind the call was sounded only for the widow, Jacqueline Kennedy." He cracked a note, like a stifled sob.

Some say it was the cold that caused it, Clark said he missed the note because he was under pressure and in the weeks that followed, it is said that the same note was missed by other buglers at Arlington. Whatever the cause, the effect is what we're left to observe.

Read the story: the Broken Note.

Photo:Akuman1

The Coherent Thread

When man is serene, the pulse of the heart flows and connects, just as pearls are joined together or like a string of red jade, then one can talk about a healthy heart.
from The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, 2500 B.C.

I've been using my emWave device from HeartMath now for over a year and find that it gives me objective signs of happiness. When I inhale with a sense of joy, I actually have a set of physical, mental and emotional "cues" that will elicit coherent heart rhythms. Cool! Good for me, and according to the folks at HeartMath, good for the people around me.

Heart coherence is not for meditators only, Golf Digest featured it as a successful way to control emotions and improve focus. Imagine learning how to better your game and improve your health with one smart move. HeartMath has also been used successfully in educational settings but most exciting to me are the implications for global coherence: a world in-sync with itself.

In partnership with internationally renowned astrophysicist and nuclear scientist Elizabeth Rauscher, HeartMath is exploring the measurement of fluctuations and resonances in the magnetic fields generated by the earth and ionosphere. Do they affect human heart rhythms and brain activity? Can humans resonate in return?

I think we intuitively know the answer but would rather spend thousands of years and millions of dollars to prove what the ancients, such as the Yellow Emperor, communicated. I intend to be around to see it happen!

If you're interested in finding out more about Global Coherence, please read the brochure (link listed below). If you are curious about the emWave, feel free to contact me. I even know a little about golf!

Brochure (pdf): The Global Coherence Project

Photo: Chema Madoz

Creatures of New Habits

Play reaches the habits most needed for intellectual growth.
-Bruno Bettelheim

Can you become a creature of new habits? That's the title of an article that describes the principles and successful methods of two executive change consultants. They believe that by consciously developing new habits we become more inherently creative. What I like about their theory is the possibility of non-productive habits being lapped by the new. Once again, we're focused on what we want, not on what we don't want.

After a discussion on habits during Saturday's yoga class, a group of us decided to embark on a 21 Day habit-forming "test". Three people want to form a more regular yoga and/or meditation practice (I hope my presence didn't skew those decisions), one wants a daily morning walk with her new dog, and I want to write weekly and daily scripts for my life.

Some behavior experts believe it only takes 14 days to rewire your brain, others hold to a more conservative 21. We'll see what our own "research team" concludes. I've been discovering that my good intentions work like a bright moon and they draw forth waves of other like actions. I can't wait to see what develops for my friends. One new habit could cause a tidal wave of change.

Photo:jeridaking

Read "Can You Become a Creature of New Habits"...

Writing My Own Script

If it's a good script I'll do it. And if it's a bad script, and they pay me enough, I'll do it. -George Burns

It's May 5th, Boy's Day, Cinco de Mayo and time for yet another Groundhog Day Resolutions check-in. It's been an absolutely fluid month with the days going by quickly but fitting together quite well.

I wrote about a stunning video of a woman describing her stroke and it prompted me to read her book, "My Stroke of Insight". The author, Jill Bolte Taylor, begins chapter eighteen by saying, "My good friend Dr. Jerry Jesseph lives his life by the philosophy 'Peacefulness should be the place we begin rather than the place we try to achieve.' "

That was also the consistent message in last weekend's workshop with Jehangir Palkhivala. When anyone found a pose to be too much of a challenge, he offered: Modify your poses. Always do it with joy and peace rather than with weakness and incapacity. Get better with peace and joy and get better without aggression. When you finally get it, you will do it gracefully.

Do you know what has to happen before you can even comprehend those instructions? You have to stop grunting and groaning with effort in order to even hear his words. Then you have to trust that your body will respond, eventually, without being forced.

I now find myself at another fork in the road. One sign says, "This Way to Contentment" and the other says, "Come This Way with Contentment". Easy pick, you say? I think I got a glimpse of the trail map though. The first path meanders endlessly with no other choices to be made. I just lower my head and go. The second path however, presents a daily (sometimes hourly) choice: "This Way to Contentment" or "This Way with Contentment".

There's no right or wrong passage and I am free to change course at any time. My joyful wait has allowed me the time to recognize and choose my connecting passage. So this month, I want to write my own script, chart my course and move with peace and joy. I want to enjoy the trip as much as the arrival.

Photo:Stephen B. Franco