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Kate’s Blog

Kindness Begins at Home

Note: For December 2022, Kate offered three Thirsty Thursdays, weekly half-hour Mindfulness sessions. In this post, Kate shares a copy of the whiteboards created during the third session and adds reminders/suggestions for continuing practice.


“What blocks kindness for you?”


“When is it easy for you to offer kindness?”


Kind friends,

Thank you for the special time we shared this month! Here are a few thoughts to carry with you:

Kindness begins at home, with ourselves, and then extends out.

It is difficult to be kind when we have not taken care of ourselves.

When kindness is absent, it is often due to the causes and conditions that are present. This is the time and place to practice. Begin with offering yourself care: maybe a hand on your heart, and acknowledging the suffering that is present.

It can be easier to be kind to strangers or clients than to our loved ones and ourselves. (Practice!)

A metta, or loving-kindness, practice is on my website. You can alter the phrases to make them your own.

Peace, joy and love to all in this season and beyond.  

Love,
Kate

P.S. Here is one last gift, in case a laugh would help. 🙂

Questioning Our Perceptions

Note: For December 2022, Kate is offering three Thirsty Thursdays, weekly half-hour Mindfulness sessions. In this post, Kate shares what was discussed in Session 2 and includes reminders/suggestions for continuing practice.

Today, we worked with facing the unwanted in our lives and in our meditation practice.

It is easy to find a challenge—and possible to learn how to be at ease (with practice of course). See the slide (above) to notice that our first opportunity to interrupt the stress cycle when we are faced with difficulty is to question our perception.

We might ask: Is this unwanted experience really dangerous or threatening, or do we just wish it would go away? Remember, it is not personal, and of course things are not perfect, and no worries—it is not permanent.

Say we do not notice that first opportunity, and we go down the familiar autopilot path. Still we can interrupt this at any moment by bringing awareness, pausing, and taking a few breaths, thereby engaging the parasympathetic nervous system (the brakes). New options will likely appear (with practice:)).

We practiced with these phrases:

  • May I accept things as they are
  • May I accept others as they are
  • May I accept myself as I am
  • May I be at ease with ever-changing circumstances

And we closed with this poem:


THIS IS IT!

Always we hope

Someone else has the answer

Some other place will be better,

Some other time it will all turn out.

This is it.

No one else has the answer

No other place will be better,

And it has already turned out.

At the center of your being

You have the answer,

You know who you are

And you know what you want.

There is no need

To run outside

For better seeing.

Nor to peer from a window.

Rather abide at the center of your being;

For the more you leave it, the less you learn.

Search your heart

And see

The way to do

Is to be.

Love,
Kate

Gratitude & Generosity

Note: For December 2022, Kate is offering three Thirsty Thursdays, weekly half-hour Mindfulness sessions. In this post, Kate shares a copy of the whiteboard created during the first session and adds reminders/suggestions for continuing practice.

Participants’ reflections on the gifts of generosity they offer to others, shared during our gathering

Dear friends,

If you made it to our first session, it was great to see you. If you tried and ran into a barrier with the Zoom link, our apologies. (The problem is now fixed!) If you couldn’t make it, we hope to see you soon.

A taste of Session #1—

We practiced noticing the abundance in our lives, which naturally brought up gratitude. From that abundance, generosity followed.

We shared how stress makes us less able to feel abundant and generous. We noticed how our culture feeds us a message of scarcity, that we can’t have or be enough.

Our practice is in looking for goodness when it feels absent. 

Breathing in, take in the goodness of yourself, others, and the world.

Breathing out, offer your care, and sense belonging. 

Song: “Hope Lingers On”

Love,
Kate

The Gift of Inner and Outer Journeys

Dear Friends,

Remember March 2020? When we wrung our hands at the thought that this Covid thing might last for days?  And here we are, almost 2 years later.  

I have missed you all, and somehow seeing you in little squares on Zoom is sweet, but not the same.  

Some things have continued:

  • Yoga Wednesdays and Sundays 
  • Teaching MBSR for Brown University 
  • Silent retreats (Lucia McBee and I are offering one in January — Awakening the Heart)  

Many of you were along for the journey as our son, Ben, and his wife, Liz, welcomed their twins, Max and Charlie.  They were born in November 2020, and just turned one! Their toddling and giggling are a constant joy. Molly is a great big sister. She spent her 3rd birthday with us in Branford.

We bought a house in Denver, and we hope to be helpful grandparents. 🙂  Fortunately, our other son, Spencer, is also living nearby in Denver.

Lizie, our daughter, moved out of our house (where she spent Covid) and is happily thriving in Manhattan. We are all grateful to be alive and well. 

During Covid, I offered free half-hour Mindfulness sessions; I plan to resume that for this winter, on Mondays. Watch the website for details, and please come.

After 2 years of uncertainty, staycations, and our own four walls, my guess is that you, like me, may be ready for adventure. Movement. New sights. New sounds. Art. Mythology. Lifelong learning. Friendship. A sense of belonging to the world, to the human family, and to ourselves.

Join me, with Kathy Daniels and Lucia McBee, for a journey both inward and outward.

Pack your bags. 

Come to Greece!

Glorious Greece, Mindfulness-Based Travel
May 2022

Awakening the Heart Online Retreat
January 2022

Making a Practice of On-line Retreats

This blog post originally appeared on Mindfulness Meditation Live as a guest blog.

In January, 2022, Kate and Lucia are hosting Awakening the Heart, a silent online retreat.

Read more and register for Awakening the Heart

This guest blog is by Kate Mitcheom (Certified MBSR Teacher and MBSR Teacher Trainer) and Lucia McBee (also an experienced MBSR Teacher), who have been colleagues for 25 years, and leading retreats together online since April 2020.

The 2020 COVID pandemic has changed our lives dramatically. We work, learn and interact more virtually than ever and this may continue for a very long time- including the teaching of mindfulness and yoga. The crisis of the pandemic has caused immense suffering, as well as the opportunity to create new solutions. 

————

Heart trampled on the snow with feet in a snowdrift on a hillside with a gorgeous view of the coniferous forest and mountain ranges on a sunny frosty day during a ski vacation. Place for text

Walker there is no path,

the path is made when walking.

– Antonio Machado

The long-standing role of residential retreats

Mindfulness practitioners and teachers have long included silent residential retreats as an important aspect of deepening and sustaining practice. Traditionally these retreats are 5-10 days long or longer, held at residential centers that provide a supportive container for silent, intensive practice. The responsibilities of our lives are put aside, allowing participants to immerse themselves in formal and informal practice. 

The heart of a retreat is the opportunity to see the ways we create difficulties in our lives, and to discover how mindfulness practice can be liberating. Participants are often surprised that habitual difficulties still arise in a contemplative setting. How are we participating in the creation of our own suffering? A residential retreat usually shines a light on this in powerful ways.

Obviously, it is an immense privilege to be able to attend a residential retreat, and carve out this. It requires many conditions to come together, such as funding and the ability to take time off from work and/or caring for loved ones. Nevertheless, as interest in mindfulness and MBSR have expanded in our culture, the demand for retreats has also increased. 

Pandemic lockdown: retreat without retreat?

In March 2020, most residential retreat centers shut down. After a few weeks of lockdown, retreats began to be offered online. 

Clearly, this shift removed the physical container traditionally used to support retreatants. Participants were encouraged to create the time and space needed to practice regularly at home. The online retreat schedules reflected residential retreats, including sustained silence, regular periods of sitting and walking together on Zoom, and evening dharma talks.

It was not clear that online retreats were tenable or effective, especially for those at home with families. 

And yet, given the on-going world-wide crisis, why not? This massive adjustment has offered surprising insights and possibilities. What adjustments might be needed to make this work?

Retreating in the middle of it all, together

Some online retreat participants live alone or are able to stay in seclusion. For many, however, the retreat is in the midst of their home and the “full catastrophe” of modern life. The challenges that annoy, bore, anger and otherwise create disturbance in our lives are physically present. The work of an on-line retreat is to view all of this through a different lens. 

Continuous practice in the home environment may allow us to see clearly the ways we create difficulties in our lives, and to discover a freedom of heart in the midst of all things. As one participant reported:

The fact is I could get triggered at home anytime, but the next hour, I would be sitting on the mat to work through it, therefore, I could gain many breakthroughs in my practice. It helps me to integrate the practice into daily living, I really start to cultivate the moment-to-moment awareness throughout the day.

Despite the silence of retreat, a sense of community typically develops on residential retreats. We develop a connection to the person we sit next to every day; the person who takes their tea near us after lunch. 

How does this translate to the on-line space? Participants are physically separated, and yet this sense of community develops as the same faces show up for sittings and other practice, day after day. The intimacy and familiarity that arise can create a real momentum for the retreat.

Online retreats increase participation from those otherwise might be unable to attend due to mobility and other health issues, and/or unable to afford the time or expense of residential retreats. Online retreats are often more diverse and include participants from around the world.  This adds something to the experience that is rarely felt communally in the residential form of a retreat.

Remembering history, looking to the future

It may be helpful to remember that, while many elements of the Buddha’s teachings remain constant, the way of teaching the practices of mindfulness has been modified over time. Monasteries originally were only for monks and nuns, until centuries later, householders were encouraged to attend 10-day retreats in these monasteries. 

Due to the impact of colonization in Asia, several monastic leaders began teaching meditation to lay people in the 19th and 20th centuries as a form of cultural resistance and as a way of preserving Buddhism in the face of Christian missionizing. These were often forward thinking reformers and visionaries. It was in this context of upheaval that young travelers from the West came to Asia in the 1960s to learn meditation, eventually bringing their learnings back home.

MBSR is part of a larger shift in the way mindfulness has been taught. Kabat-Zinn created the model of an eight-week class with homework to bring the practices of mindfulness and yoga to those unlikely to ever attend a residential retreat, or even go to a yoga class. As he put it:

“It struck me …that it would be a worthy work to simply share the essence of meditation and yoga practices …with those who would never come to a place like IMS [Insight Meditation Society] or a Zen Center.” Jon Kabat-Zinn

Change happens. A core tenet of mindfulness is the contemplation of impermanence. How mindfulness is taught and how retreats are conceived of  will continue to evolve, while the constancy of the dharma remains. 

Poems and Readings ~ March /April/May 2020

This page has been replaced. Please go to Readings for Meditation.

Beginning again

Two common phrases this time of year are “Peace on Earth” and “Happy New Year”.  Like many phrases they can be hollow unless we actually put our energy and intention toward manifesting peace and happiness.

Because of negativity bias and our own habits and patterns, it can challenging to change, even if we want to grow peace and happiness in our garden of life.

We make New Year’s resolutions and often they don’t manifest quickly and easily. We may feel like we have failed and become cynical, thinking we can never improve our outlooks. BUT, it is just like coming back to the breath. We can begin again, nothing lost!

If you are working with anxiety here’s a wonderful link to a short segment from the TODAY show’s recent broadcast about mindfulness and anxiety.

When we get stuck with unwholesome habits and patterns we have an opportunity, not for discouragement, but to see the causes and conditions that brought unhappiness and a lack of peace into our lives. Changing patterns takes repeated efforts.

In the midst of the difficult and painful lie the moment to acknowledge what is present and offer some compassion for the suffering. We change not through demands but through the gentle & enduring presence of love.

I am going to offer Mindfulness to the cast of Slave Play in New York this coming weekend. This play confronts our country’s painful history of slavery.  The mindfulness community is focusing on healing and inclusion.  I am happy to be a part of this effort.

Here are some opportunities I’d like to share with you…

I have added some new yoga videos to the website!Each video requires a password. For the first three, just fill out the form on the page and you will receive the password immediately.

Lying Down Yoga
Standing Yoga
Yoga for Osteoporosis

The MBSR Yoga Tutorial is reserved for teachers or trainees. Please fill out the form. I will review it and then send you the password.

Wishing you mindful moments, sweet memories, and all the happiness a heart can hold.

Kate

Travel and mindfulness

Recently I had a 4 hour delay at Midway airport in Chicago, yikes!  

The trouble with so many trips and too many fights lately is twofold. Flying wreaks havoc on the body and the carbon footprint wreaks havoc on the planet

My good fortune, however, was that amazingly enough the airport had a yoga studio. I was a happy camper!

I found myself in the yoga room on the mat with perhaps a middle-aged business looking type woman on her mat beside me. She did legs up the wall in her striped cotton dress and blonde ponytail while I eased my way through a few rounds of salutation to the sun. I suspect we both appreciated the quiet serene environment.

As she ended, I smiled and said “isn’t it wonderful to be able to stretch between flights?” She replied “yes, I was going to do some OMs but I didn’t want to bother you”.  My response “no worries, go for it”.  At which point she boomed out 3 hearty Oms.

I reflected for a moment and realized, if I had seen her hustling to her gate rather than standing in Tadasana with hands in prayer pose, I might have mistakenly made assumptions about who she was: or who I thought she was. I still don’t know who she was/is except that her beautiful practice touched my heart right there the Chicago airport.

I might have forgotten that just like most of us, quite likely she longed for ease and peace and connection.  Maybe even a deep feeling for something beyond our usual routines and superficial conversations.

I gave gratitude for all those trying to make our world a better place and for those who thought to provide a space in the midst of the noise and bustle of an airport to turn inward and care for our bodies, and for the magical gift of a moment of connection

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