Mindfulness: Human. Being.

My Mindfulness Journey

I sorted Halloween candy as a child, and still have an analytical side, but my experiences of healing, mindfulness, and spirituality merge into warm, fuzzy whole. Since these terms themselves are fuzzy, I first offer these definitions:

• Healing is going beyond mere baseline health to thrive in multiple domains of well-being.

• Mindfulness is described very well, and in detail, by Shinzen Young here.

• Spirituality is described (and cites research) in my book as experiences of transcendence, union, and peace.

Despite having Italian, Swiss, Scottish, and German ancestry, I was strangely and drawn to all things eastern as a child. I read Siddhartha at a young age (thanks to my parents well-stocked bookshelf), taught myself to play go, and practiced origami. In university I acquired (and sometimes even read) books like Zen Flesh, Zen Bones, and the Three Pillars of Zen, while deepening my appreciation for the meditative aspects of go. As a young graduate, I enrolled in martial arts for 13 years, where some breathwork and meditation were taught along with a lot of kihon, kata, and kumite. But it wasn't until a work colleague asked me to join her for weekly meditation class in my midlife crisis that I began a snowball-rolling-downhill accumulation of meditation, yoga, breathwork, therapy, healing modalities, and spiritual groups.

When I booked my first therapy session ever I felt like therapy was weird, and so was I. However, after the first session, I wanted more: more caring, more support, more authenticity. I worked with many great therapists and social workers, often in cycles of a season or two with time in-between for personal implementation and growth. However, my most powerful/breakthrough healing events often came during somatic experiences outside therapy, such as cranial sacral therapy, massage/shiatsu, myofascial release, and physiotherapy (thank you Karen Barnes, Jennifer Song, Christine Grant, and Wendy Redfearn). 

As I felt the benefits of various practices, I launched mindfulness-based wellness programs for students and staff in my school district (based on Mindful Schools and Search Inside Yourself training). Meanwhile, I was personally deepening my breath (thank you Ardith Dean, Jennie Akse-Kelly, and Jacqui Tracy), meditation (thank you Mangala Anshumati, Rick Hanson, Kadampa Centre, Unified Mindfulness, and Shinzen Young), sexuality (thank you Sarah Byrden), yoga (thank you Modo and Be), dancing (thank you Ecstatic Dance Burlington) and whole being realization (thank you Trillium Awakening). 

While peak experiences fade, they each left me with some shift or integration that persisted long term. While leading a staff mindfulness session, I experienced for the very first time a quieting of the mind that is now permanently available. After a particularly heart-opening group session, I felt an oceanic gratitude that reframed everyday gratitude practice as obsolete: how can there be a lifting into gratitude if we are already swimming in it? It was in a yoga class that I first experienced an intense, heart-awakening, experience of union and transcendence that left me utterly transformed. For two miraculous weeks I felt a deep flow in which life and love merged. My sense of self diminished to almost nothing, and it became absolutely clear to me at that time that we are (all of us together) alive with love--alove. Alove for me means state of absolute openness, joy and flow: a unity with all life and nature. These benefits of clear mindedness, intuition, alleviating suffering, tilting the spiral of mental activity upward, and deep serenity have been such blessings in my life.