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Equanimity during the holidays

~Evenness of mind especially under stress~

Hello lovely friends,

At this time of year when we gather with family whom we treasure deeply (and who may present opportunities to practice evenness of mind and ease with ever-changing circumstances), the Equanimity Practice can be most valuable.

The practice, found on the Meditations page of my website, includes phrases to tuck in your back pocket in case Auntie Edna asks you questions you’d rather not answer. 🙂

Listen as often as you wish, and download to your device for easy access as you move with grace through the holidays.

xoxo,
Kate

Listen to Equanimity Practice – 8 minute guided meditation

Use Button to Download Download

The Equanimity Practice includes four 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

Remember – acceptance does not mean to agree with or condone. It just means “I see it is here and I will not suffer more by denying and constricting around what already is.”

If you only have time for one phrase over the holidays, pick the 4th. It reminds us that all things change. What is won’t last. Can we ride the wave until the storm is over? Or at least calms down?

Equanimity in the holiday season – or any time – is possible with practice.

Mindfulness-Based Travel

Notes from Southeast Asia ~ October 7, 2023

Like a good movie that needed no editing,
there was not a day I would have wanted to miss.

We are having an amazing adventure, first in Bali, then Vietnam and now Cambodia.

Some highlights:

Bali as a spiritual pilgrimage, doing water purification rituals, visiting night temples on Hindu holy days
Balinese Women’s Center, in the mountains, providing a healing place for women and children.
Motorcycle ride around the city of Saigon with sweet Vietnamese women
Visit to the War Memorial in Vietnam, seeing photos and hearing stories of that time
Visit to Killing Fields in Cambodia
Cruise along the Mekong, noticing the juxtaposition of the old and the new, with daily meditation and yoga

Because we are practicing Mindfulness, in addition to morning yoga and meditation, we have used our practice as we have experienced the War Memorial in Vietnam and the Killing Fields in Cambodia.

This is what strikes me…

Whether you think about it in terms of humanity, nations, communities or individuals…

There is no time for anything less

Than truly appreciating the brief

Interaction we have with one another.

And

We’re not going to survive unless we walk

Gently on this earth together,

Until we touch something in others that

Feels just like the shards of our own pain,

The fluttering warmth of our own joy,

Until we sew their wounds into our hearts

And seal it with our own skin

These experiences are what, for me, links mindfulness with travel.

We are opening our hearts to what is and has been, the hurt and the healing, and have met so many beautiful people, making the world better, one breath at a time.

~~~~~~

Kate is leading the Southeast Asia Immersion Retreat and Tour.

More photos are available on Instagram/

Why Travel?

Notes from Southeast Asia September 17, 2023

Why travel? Such a lot of work and effort to plan and then make it happen. But of course, once we leave home (and all the “things” we think we have to get done before we depart) we remember: the newness of everything, the not-knowing of where to go or how our experience will be. The discovery, really calls us to live in the present, exercise our muscle of flexibility, and remember to pivot as gracefully as possible each moment a new challenge arises.

Two new “wake ups” I’ve realized thus far:

Nineteen hours on a plane is a long time
Singapore is a beautiful place, clean, safe and expensive (also cheap in some ways)

Public Housing Singapore

Public housing isn’t a scourge here. Eighty percent of people live in public housing and there are no homeless on the streets. Our bicycle guide (who is 34 and lives with his mom in public housing) told us there are three differences in public and private housing:

Public housing has (1) no pool,(2) no gym and (3) no fence around it. Interesting huh?

Singapore has to plant a tree for every tree that is cut down. It is green here everywhere. Plants grow on buildings and on walls and the air if full of O2. The beauty of life is thriving.

Street food now has been moved from street stalls (which were unsanitary) into food centers where now you can go and have 157 choices of what to eat. There are 17 Hawker centers around the city and the variety of clientele is matched by the variety of delicacies.

Our farewell last night was at the Garden on the Bay with Supertrees and a Cloud forest and a light show playing “Blue Moon, Marvelous Night for a Moon Dance, Clare de Lune, Moon River, and more. (image at top of page)

On to Bali today!!!

~~~~~~

Kate is leading the Southeast Asia Immersion Retreat and Tour.

More photos are available on Instagram/

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.

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.