Making Peace With My Monkey Mind

    
I have always had a “monkey mind”, hopping from one thought to the next, but I realized this weekend the monkey is becoming my friend. On Saturday I was invited to a meditation workshop that my friend Beth was leading in Rancho Mirage. I felt reluctant as I spoke with Beth about the day. It had been years since I participated in a day of silence, and the last time did not go well. She assured me it would be broken up into short increments and expressed her confidence in me; how could I turn down such a lovely gift? I've been to numerous retreats over the years. Yoga and movement I can do, but silence is often elusive for me, or so I thought. The first silent retreat I went to was over ten years ago and it lasted four days. I suppose in hindsight four days was not the best way for an extrovert like myself to start practicing silence. I love the expression “the way we do one thing is the way we do everything” and I have a tendency to dive into the deep end without much thought to whether I can swim or not. I went on my first retreat with two friends whom, to quote my husband, talk more than I do; not a good formula for success. In the evening there was a designated lights out time and in the sanctuary of our room each night we began whispering about the day's experiences; needless to say we weren't following the rules. It was a long and arduous four days for me as I focused on what I couldn't do rather than seeing it as an opportunity to be still and nurture my spirit. I suspect that I didn't like my own company very much back then and the chatter in my mind kept me from dealing with that reality.

     This weekend's experience was much different then that first retreat. I was pleasantly surprised at how easily I fell into a quiet state of contemplation. We started in a circle for a quick discussion about the concepts of the Mindful Way Stress Reduction program and its founder Joh Kabat-Zinn, then Beth gave us a brief synopsis of how the day was going to proceed. At this point the real work began and there was to be no more talking. If someone felt compelled to say something they were asked to speak only to Beth and to allow the other participants to maintain their silence. I noticed from the moment I arrived that I felt at ease with the idea of not talking and I easily maintained silence for the next five and a half hours. I realized as we sat at the end of the day to take stock of our experience just how far my journey has taken me down the path toward self-realization. When I began this journey meditation was sheer agony for me, yet with much practice and patience, not to mention skillful guidance, I can see what a difference it has made in my life. The day after the retreat I sat outside in our front yard trying to maintain the quiet I had gleaned the day before with our pack of unruly dogs. An older man from the neighborhood came walking by; he is not fond of my dogs, as he walks by our picket fence quite frequently, and they cannot resist lunging and barking at him. I had my squirt bottle of water handy to stop them from lunging at him, but I'm afraid the barking is a lost cause. I proceeded to say hello to him and walk along on my side of the fence trying to keep them down with carefully aimed squirts of water to their snouts. He stopped, as he has done many times before, to complain and tell me how badly my dogs behave. Traditionally I come up with an excuse for them, or apologize, but not today. Today I took a deep breath, paused, and said with a smile on my face, “Why don't you...have a great day!” He was so disarmed by my response that he was speechless for a moment, then he said, “Well you have a great day too” and walked on. Oh how meditation is changing my life! Don't get me wrong, I still have moments where I'm a complete bitch (just ask my husband or daughter), but those moments are fewer and, I like to think, farther between.

Here is a link to the Mindful-Way Stress Reduction website if anyone is interested. I highly recommend this program and Beth, she is insanely good at what she does.

                                        
http://mindful-way.com/ 

Banana Oat Muffins

If you have some overripe bananas sitting around this is a great way to put them to use. I have changed the original recipe to make it a bit more healthy.  Get creative, walnuts, almonds, raisins, apples(cubed), whatever you have around will work.  We all love these, including our teenage daughter!  Makes 12 muffins.

1 cup whole wheat, unbleached flour                          
1/4 cup packed organic brown sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda                                                      
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cinnamon                                                              
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1 cup oat bran (oatmeal blended to a cup will work too)
1 egg white
1 egg                                                                            
2 Tbl coconut oil
1 cup mashed bananas (2 bananas)                              
1/2 cup plain/vanilla yogurt
1 cup nuts, chopped apples, raisins (mix and match to equal one cup)

Prepare muffin pans with liners or cooking spray, preheat oven to 400.  In a large bowl mix flour, brown sugar, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, and oat bran.  Set aside.  In another bowl mix eggs, oil, bananas, applesauce, nuts.  Fold wet ingredients into flour mixture.  Spoon batter equally into muffin tins and bake for 20-25 minutes, until a toothpick inserted in thee center of muffin comes out clean.

My Thoughts On Mother's Day

  It seems like everyone is talking about Mother's Day this week. I went for a walk this morning with a friend who is struggling with her choice to go to the beach with her own family rather than spend the day with her mother and family of origin.   Holidays for them traditionally revolve around the matriarch of the family.  When I got home from my walk I had an apologetic text waiting for me from my daughter telling me she just found out a group project she's working on for school will take her away from home on Sunday.  My reply to this was “since when do we sit around and look at mom all day on Mother's Day...it's fine”.  Throughout the years it has become more and more obvious to me that you need to appreciate each day you have with the people you love, not just on those “special” holidays that Hallmark has exploited for its own profit.  This lesson really took root for me when my younger brother Jack died.  He was thirty-one, and it was paralyzing at first.  I think that death can be a potent wake up call for those left behind.  I like to believe I am honoring his memory through the lessons I have learned from my pain.  Grief has a funny way of transforming some of us, yet, on the flip side, some people get stuck in their grief and become hard and resentful of the world.  I believe the death of my brother sent my mother into this latter category.  I have not spoken with her in many years; that is a long and painful story that I won't go into here, but I did write to her recently.  In the letter I expressed my gratitude for the gifts she gave me as a child and I wished her happiness.  I have not heard back from her, but I can sleep at night knowing I reached out to her with love.

     In the words of the Buddha, "We are what we think. All that we are arises with our thoughts. With our thoughts we make the world." After a long and dark journey through my grief, I made a conscious decision to choose to celebrate each day. To spend my days with people I love and cherish, who will love and cherish me in return.  Ultimately life is too short not to be happy.  So I make special dinners for my family just because, I buy flowers and drop them by my neighbors house, if I'm shopping and I see something that I think a friend will like I buy it, I fall into my husbands lap for a kiss and hug without reason, I surprise my daughter on occasion with a massage appointment, I bring special dog bones home to create a tail wagging frenzy, and in general, I try to spread this joyful feeling I have for life with everyone I meet.  So, as Mother's Day approaches, I'm going to use it as a day to renew my commitment to appreciate each day that I have here on earth, to open my arms to the people in front of me, and to show my love for all beings, including sending out love to my mother; I will just hope she feels it. 

Thursday Juice of The Day

2 green apples, 4 carrots, 1/2 large red beet, 6 chard leaves, 1" ginger root. This is one of Pete and my favorites.  It makes 2 large servings, so be prepared to share. My guess is from researching, juice calories are not easy to find, that this is about 150 calories a serving.

How The Mountain Helped Me With Expectations

     We went hiking in our local mountains this weekend and as we hiked I started reminiscing about the first time Pete took me out into the wilderness. These days hiking is a spiritual experience, getting away from all the responsibility that life brings helps me quiet, it's meditation for me.  As we sat on a fallen incense cedar tree eating our lunch, me quiet for a change, gazing out over the distant mountains I felt still. How different the experience of hiking is for me these days. My first backpacking trip was almost twenty years ago and I was painfully unprepared. We drove from the low-lying valley around the Mississippi River to some of the steepest mountains in Colorado, the Sangre de Cristos. I had next to no experience in the outdoors, in fact, I prided myself on being a “mall girl”, yet I wanted to connect with Pete and hiking and camping were very important to him, so I gave it a try. I packed my make-up bag, bought a curling iron that was powered by propane, and planned a fabulous outdoor wardrobe to impress my husband (keep in mind I was very young). We drove across the rolling hills of Missouri and through the sunflowered fields of Western Kansas, finally arriving at our mountain destination. I strapped on my fifty pound backpack and headed up the trail following behind Pete. I knew I was in trouble from the beginning. I do not like going up hill, but going uphill with a backpack was far worse. That was one of the longest days of our married lives. I was prepared to be left on the trail and eaten by a mountain lion (that is a direct quote), which at the time seemed more inviting than spending any more time with the man I percieved as my tormentor.  We finally arrived at our campsite...actually, Pete arrived first and came back for me and, at this point, the most despised backpack. I have learned much since that first trip about outdoor activities and even more about guarding against my own expectations.

     Looking back I can see that my expectations of this trip were quite naive. It was my own delusional expectations that caused much of my suffering, that and elevation sickness, but it was a good lesson.  A Buddhist would say that I discovered what they mean by dukkha that day. Dukkha is a term used to denote suffering or dissatisfaction, it's the first of the Four Noble Truths. In my life I translate dukkha like this: when I have expectations and they are not met I am dissappointed and I suffer. How many people can say they like disappointment?  Most of us feel sad when things don't go our way, or mad and look to blame someone, or we feel frustrated, we try to find reasons why it didn't go our way, we criticize ourselves, or others (my tormentor), instead of just moving on.  I think deeply about my expectations these days, I tell myself that ultimately everything works out as it should. It is hard not to be dissappointed when you don't get a job you thought you really wanted, or when you work for hours in the kitchen on a new recipe and it turns out to be barely edible, or you apply to a college and get a rejection letter, yet, it is what it is. What good will it do to be unhappy about what is already in the past?  I have learned to adjust my attitude about outcomes, to do the best I can and let it go, especially about hiking with my mountain goat of a husband.  I love to hike these days, but I hike with no expectations and, when the going gets rough, I have learned to practice mantra on the trail to keep my mind occupied so I won't be tempted to sacrifice myself to the local carnivorous wildlife again.      

Finding Contentment With Our Everyday Lives

   We spent the first few years of our married life hopping around from city to city, finally landing in St. Louis.  My husband had Rocky Mountain dreams though, so this was not where he intended to stay.  We lived for nine discontent years in St. Louis* thinking, to quote Erma Bombeck, that the grass was greener somewhere else. That somewhere ended up being South Dakota.  Seriously, we lived in Sioux Falls for two years. When we arrived in January it was cold, negative fourty windchill, and bleak.  Ok, time for an attitude change.  I remember the day I told myself (this was pre-yoga), that it was up to me...I could make the best of my situation or I could continue to focus on the negative.  It was at this time the universe dropped yoga into my life.  I had decided to explore yoga just as we made the decision to leave Missouri and head to South Dakota.  I seriously wondered what my chances were of finding yoga in South Dakota in the nineties; back then yoga was still a bit fringy.  I found yoga...in fact, I found the only Registered Yoga Teacher in the state, and she began to mentor me. Yoga spoke to me and became what I believe will continue to be a lifelong passion. I still think fondly of my first yoga teacher; picture a woman who had just finished touring with an eighties hair band, then add a little Jane Fonda circa 1982, some tattoos, and seventeen years of yoga experience. What an anomaly she was out there in the middle of the wheat fields and buffalo herds. I will be forever in her debt for the path that she helped me to find. 

    I have a vision board on my kitchen wall and right in the center are the words “More Fun”.  I forget the lessons I learned in my younger years sometimes, I forget to be happy exactly where I am.  So this board is a daily reminder.   I sometimes ask my college students to do “homework”.  What is yoga homework? Well, this week I asked them to notice what makes them happy, what makes them smile?  Here are some examples from my own week: I heard a song on Sirius Radio's Coffeehouse station, it was a young woman, very quiet and mellow, accompanied by an acoustic guitar.  I kept thinking I knew the song, then it hit me, it was a cover of a Sublime song...smile!  Then yesterday, as I was driving onto campus, I passed a Smart Car.  Behind the wheel was a large man who brought to mind Cam, one of my favorite characters from the television show Modern Family, and as he passed I noticed a huge Hello Kitty sticker covering the driver's side of the car...smile!  To embrace our lives just as they are is to practice the niyama santosha, or contentment.  I realized long ago that my life, just as many of you are thinking, is not always easy, we all have our crosses to bear.  Yet, we can make a concious choice despite these challenges to look for the things that make us smile and to be happy even when things are not “perfect”.

* St. Louis is actually a lovely city, I was just too young to appreciate it.

Easy and Healthy Steel Cut Oatmeal Recipe

 It occurred to me some time ago that “I am not a morning person” had become a kind of mantra for me, a kind of self-fufilling prophecy.  So I set out to change that mantra. I got up at 6am with our daughter and got breakfast ready, tried drinking coffee (don't like it, went back to green tea), started laundry, and in general grumped around as I tried to be productive. After a few weeks I realized, biologically, I am a night owl. So I could force this change on myself, a change that was mostly instigated by what I percieved as outside perceptions that I “should” get up and get moving early or I could embrace the essence of who I am. I went back to my old system.  I get up and make breakfast for Jayne, make her lunch, give her a kiss good-bye, even though she is not leaving just yet, and I go back to bed.  It is such a gift, at least in this situation, to be comfortable in my own skin....

Here is what I made for breakfast this morning, notice that it is actually made the night before, super quick and healthy:

1 ½ cup steel cut oatmeal                                   1 ½ cup vanilla rice milk, regular milk works too

1 Tbsp cinnamon, can cut back to a 1 tsp           ½ cup walnuts

1 package dried blueberries (4 oz)                      1 Tbsp chia seeds

1/3 cup brown sugar, preferably organic

Mix all together and store overnight in fridge. Serve cold, makes enough for 3 servings.