The mindfulness challenge this week will be admittedly be a horrendous undertaking for most of you if indeed you decide you would like to run with it. The challenge is simply this; when you eat or when you drink anything, just eat and just drink. Do nothing else at the same time.
What do you typically do when you actually eat something? Are you walking or driving or watching TV? Perhaps you are watching a movie or reading, or working on the computer or texting someone. Many people like to eat when they listen to music or play video games. Do you eat when you exercise? What do you do typically when you eat? What do you do in addition to eating besides the simple act of placing food into your body?
For this week the challenge and the invitation is to remove all of those extra activities that you add to the activity of eating and consuming food and liquids. It goes without saying that many of us like to eat in the company of another person. We love to have conversations with those we love. Please do not eliminate that activity. But when you do talk with loved ones, stop eating. In other words, disentangle the two activities.
When you eat, focus your full attention on the food itself –
on the chewing
on the taste
on the sensations in your mouth
on the feeling in your stomach
Treasure each and every bite as if it were your last. Add no other activity as you eat. This may well add considerable time to how long it takes to finish a meal. If you have to eat and run, you will have to set aside this challenge temporarily.
Try it and see how this alters the entire experience of ingesting nutrition into that most precious, sacred body of yours.
Notice when your body likes the food you eat.
Notice when it does not like the food you eat.
When we notice, we become aware in the moment of precisely what our body needs to heal. If a cow can eat mindfully, so can we!
I have my fingers crossed that this challenge will not become too horrendous for you. But be warned, it will be difficult. You will likely be surprised at how often you do much more than simply eat. My favorite “add on” activity to eating is thinking. It is so easy to divert our attention from a place away from the most important activity of the day.
Have you enjoyed the pause that refreshes, the pause of taking three breaths when that phone of yours rings, whether it is a cell phone or a land line? Have you been taking those three slow breaths, pausing and centering yourself first, and then picking up the receiver or opening up your cell phone to respond to whoever is calling?
Has your impatience reduced over the last several days?
How about the anxiety that you consistently feel here and there or continuously?
Are you less irritated?
Chances are all three of these behaviors will be improved if you decide you would like to continue this mindfulness practice from this day henceforth.
First of all, many people actually are not aware and do not realize that they are constantly anxious and stressed. Let me offer an example of what I have noticed about myself.
I have made it a practice in the evening as I am falling asleep to assess the muscular tension in my body. The result of these assessments has been shocking. The muscles in my face are always tensed up around my mouth, around my neck, around my eyes. With my intention, I can release and reduce that tension before I actually fall asleep. I never really knew I held so much tension in my body.
I suspect that many people are actually not aware that they too are constantly and continuously anxious, holding tension in their muscles in the legs, arms, neck, face and even their scalp. If it is always in a continuous state of tension, the physical body is not going to have a great deal of opportunity to come back into balance. Only a body that is in balance can settle down an overactive neurological system.
There is an advantage to the fact that phones tend to ring randomly. This particular mindfulness challenge of pausing when the phone rings offers an opportunity to acknowledge the extent to which you happen to be irritated or anxious or impatient at these entirely random times when your phone rings. Once recognized, it becomes possible to sooth that anxiousness, that impatience and that irritation so that we, you, I and everyone for that matter is more able to be present and in the moment.
There is a second, more profound implication for this mindfulness challenge as well. When there happens to occur an irritating and troubling encounter with another person who you just talked with on the phone, it is normal to carry that irritation into the next encounter or even all of the remaining encounters for the rest of the day.
How many times have you decided you wanted to go talk with someone else, perhaps a boss, perhaps a co-worker, perhaps a family member or spouse and as you approached them they had a sour look on their face? Something is obviously troubling them. Do you have an opportunity to talk about what you wanted to talk with them about? The answer typically is “no way.” They are going to be preoccupied with what has just happened to them whether it was earlier in the day or, in often cases, what happened days and days prior to your encounter with them. It is often a wise decision to walk away and hope for a better time to have a conversation when a person is in a state of turmoil and distress.
We carry these irritating encounters from one encounter to the next as they accumulate in the tissues of our body. Eventually we become a continuously irritated person. We are not able to release that irritation because we can’t seem to unload it. It literally sticks to our backs. .
How magical it is to realize that each encounter of another person can be in fact a new and fresh encounter? When we treat it as such, that new encounter has a much, much greater opportunity for us and for them to be positive and life-giving. If we engage and enter any encounter with a sour attitude because the last person that we actually talked with put us in a very bad mood, every encounter that we have for the remaining day, for tomorrow, for the week, for the month and perhaps even for the rest of our lives is typically going to be pretty sour as well.
The mindfulness exercise then is to pause throughout the day when the phone rings. We pause randomly by simply the signal that the phone is ringing. We pause. We clear out all of that irritation, that anxiety that has accumulated up to that point. Then, we are ready to start fresh with the next encounter.
I must say I have truly relished doing this particular assignment. I am oftentimes deep into doing some type of writing or work on my computer when the phone rings. My response is oftentimes irritation,
“I’m almost done with my task and here somebody wants to talk with me. Give me a break. I only need a couple of more minutes.”
So there the irritation is. If I carry that irritation into how I answer the phone, the person on the other end is going to immediately know,
“Oh my goodness, this is not a good idea to talk with Robert right now. I should only take a couple of seconds of his time.”
What a big difference it can make if I can simply pause between those the two tasks. With breaths, I am able to realize that there will be plenty of time to complete the task that I was working on prior to the call. I can finish my work after the conversation. I can center myself. I can then be ready to engage the conversation with the individual who is calling with a new attitude, an attitude that does not also carry with it the compounding accumulation of impatience, anxiety, irritation and stress.
I hope this particular mindfulness challenge has been and will be useful to you in identifying anxiety that may have been lingering in your physical body throughout your entire life. If your experience is anything like mine, you have likely been unable to acknowledge, recognize and honor the extent of the tension that is held throughout the tissues of your body. May this mindfulness challenge be an opportunity for you to stop, re-group and have marvelous encounters with each and every person that you encounter from this day henceforth. And may it also be a method of reducing the tension that may be lingering throughout all the tissues of your body.
Most people live very busy, active lives. We turn from one task, one self-assignment to the next without any pause whatsoever. Our thoughts circle around from one to another also without any pause whatsoever. We operate on a continuous fast forward speed without any stopping whatsoever, until our heads hit the pillow at the end of the evening.
My mindfulness challenge this week offers you an opportunity to slow the quick pace of your life down. Remember, this quick pace is a primary factor that induces stress in your life. You well know by now at this stage of the Parkinsons Recovery Mindfulness Program that stress is a sure bet to make symptoms much, much worse.
How then do you slow the quick pace of your life down with the mindfulness challenge this week? It is actually easy to do. The challenge is this. Each time the telephone rings –whether it is a land line or a cell phone – instead of immediately rushing to pick up the receiver and say,
“Hello. Robert here, how can I help you?”
Pause. Take three slow mindful breaths after the phone rings the first time. The phone of course will be ringing three, four, five, maybe even six times as you pause from what you were doing to what you are about to engage. Once your three breaths are completed, pause, center yourself, pick up the receiver and then say,
“Hello. Robert here. How may I help you, today?”
Of course please substitute your name for mine when you answer. We do not want to proliferate the world with more Roberts.
There is a huge difference in how we answer the phone when we are rushed. When we are rushing we hurriedly say,
“Hello-Robert here, how-can-I-help-you!”
When we are mindful to each and every moment, when we are living in the present, we say slowly, mindfully and lovingly.
“Hello? This is Robert. How, may I help you, today?”
The difference is huge. It kicks off a conversation from a much better place. The person on the other end of the line does not also feel rushed. Becoming mindful when we answer the phone also nurtures our own sanity. It helps to maintain that critical balance in our body that enables our neurological system to flourish and function precisely the way that intricate system was designed to function in the first place.
Have fun each time the telephone rings. Remember, change the pattern of how you always respond. Do that when the phone rings by:
Taking three, long, slow, mindful breaths.
Pausing at the end of those three breaths.
Centering yourself as you prepare for a new experience.
Be excited about what the person on the other end of a line will want to discuss with you. Have a delightful time as you reduce stress in your life using this very simple but powerful mindfulness exercise. When we slow ourselves down, we begin to treasure each moment rather than rushing off to the next one.
