I have a confession to make.  For a number of years I have been taking a mindfulness shortcut that I am now discovering has had negative repercussions.
 
The shortcut has to do with feeling emotions in my body.  I’ll begin by sharing a bit of background knowledge about emotions and sensations. As humans, when we have emotions such as joy or fear or sadness, we also experience corresponding physical sensations in the body.  For example, we might tighten our belly or chest when we are afraid, or our body might become heavy when we feel depressed.  Feeling the physical sensations of emotions in the body can help us to integrate our emotions. There is a mindfulness expression, "Feel it to heal it," that relates to this idea. 

As a mindfulness instructor I am of course aware that the wise thing to do is attend to the physical sensations of emotions in my body. That being said, intense emotions like grief and fear oftentimes have physical sensations in our core (stomach and chest) that I find unpleasant.  Because I am not a big fan of these intense sensations, I have tried to find an easier, softer way to integrate these tricky emotions. 
 
The shortcut I found was to feel the sensations in my feet.  I discovered that if I feel my feet and mentally name difficult emotions, such as fear or sadness, I can integrate the emotions without having to make direct contact with my core where the intense sensations reside. This discovery enabled me to somatically integrate challenging emotions with less vulnerability and discomfort.  The process of moving around my core constituted a sort of shortcut to feeling better with less emotional distress. Woot!  Woot!  Over and over again, I would notice a negative emotion, label it, feel my feet, and then take the next right action.  Over time, my mental circuitry became accustomed to moving around rather than through any discomfort in my core.

Now let’s fast forward to the Summer of 2020 when I started to have some intense lower back pain and weakness.   I tried solving my back-pain problem by doing my regular yoga strengthening exercises, but I seemed to be lacking some inner stability in my core.  No amount of sit-ups or ab work seemed to be able to correct the problem.  This was both an unfamiliar and unpleasant predicament.  I contemplated going to see a physical therapist, but I decided I would wait until the Fall of 2020 when I would start my yoga therapy training.  Perhaps I could solve my lower back problems through yoga therapy.
 
The first weekend of my yoga therapy training, I was directed to spend many hours focused on making small, mindful movements with my hips, shoulders, and pelvic area while I focused my mind on the sensations of my core.  I was forced to put my brain in touch with some of the areas of my body that I had been circumventing with my mindfulness shortcut. After that weekend of training the pain in my low back started to diminish. Small mindful movement coupled with mindful awareness of the core of my body started to heal the pain.
 
That's when I realized there aren't actually any mindfulness shortcuts that don't have a cost.  I had thought that I was able to "get away with" ignoring parts of my body because it wasn't affecting my emotions, but the lack of attention to my core had started to affect me physically.  This is one of many reasons why awareness of our whole selves is both crucial and powerful.  When we try to circumvent awareness, we do this at a price to our own well-being.
 
It is with humility that I write this blog.  The old acronym feel it to heal it really is true.   I'm glad to know that subtle, mindful yoga is a path that I can follow to bring myself back to my whole body.  I invite you to be curious about what practices might help you to increase your sense of embodiment. How can you help yourself to inhabit your whole body with awareness?

A friend of mine recently sent me an article from the New York Times entitled, Is Resilience Overrated?  As I read the article, I reflected on the many ways that people define resilience.  I looked up the word resilience and found this definition: “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” 

Yes, I thought, if that is how one defines resilience, I can see where a person might think that resiliency is overrated.

I agree that the ability to bounce back from adversity is a hallmark of resilience, but the strategies that one uses to bounce back can make the difference between resilience feeling fatiguing and resilience being uplifting.  I consider myself to be a very resilient person, but the word “toughness” is not part of my working definition of the word.

Long-term resilience involves being able to integrate difficult experiences and then respond skillfully.  But just how, you might ask, does one do that?

To begin, I would like to talk about what resilience is not.  Truthfully, when adversity hits, I oftentimes try my “not resilient” strategies first. Here is what “not resilience” looks like for me: Telling myself there is no problem.  Compulsively doing things that distract me from the problem.  Trying to look on the bright side of things to avoid feeling difficult feelings.  Repeat.  When I experience something challenging in my life, I oftentimes practice “not resilience” until I become too anxious or too tired to continue.  Then, I surrender to reality and turn toward my resiliency toolkit. 

My resilience toolkit includes the following:

1. Talking with friends
2. Journaling
3. Getting angry and sad and scared and messy
4. Cloaking myself with kindness and compassion
5. Practicing yoga or exercising to get into my body and out of my head
6. Spending time in nature
7. Gathering resources
8. Continuing to take steps forward, often with the support of friends
9. Beginning to hope, take in the good, and see silver linings
10. Experiencing another setback
11. Repeat

This resilience toolkit creates resilience that is both sustainable and uplifting.  It is something that I can go back to again and again when life gets messy and hard.  Setbacks in life are inevitable, and a supportive resilience toolkit cannot be overrated.

On this Juneteenth, Wholly Mindful would like to share its intention to support safety and equity for all Black people and individuals with colored bodies. As a member of a privileged group, I (Jamie Lynn), am seeking to continue to learn and grow as an individual, listen to the voices of those with diverse experiences, and support the growth of others, including those who can be allies on the road to positive social change.

I have recently been reading a book entitled, Mindful of Race, written by Ruth King.  Ms. King is an individual who has faced double discrimination, both as an African American woman and as a lesbian.  In her book, she offers a framework for creating racial justice that uses a three pronged approach: becoming aware of our racial identities (as individuals and as a collective group), cultivating equanimity in relation to what arises (practicing mindfulness and compassion), and then creating a culture of care through wise action. 

I'm sure that many of you, like me, have been wondering how you can effectively help to create equity, safety and well-being for all people with colored bodies.  A foundational step that Ms. King suggests is creating racial affinity groups that explore their own individual and collective racial narratives and group identities.  I will be organizing a racial affinity group that will begin this July, 2020.  Members of the group will be encouraged to read Ruth King's book, Mindful of Race, and meet once monthly over the course of a year to learn and grow both collectively and as individuals.  If you would like to be a part of this group, you can E-mail me at jamielynn@whollymindful.com.  

I form this group not as an expert, but as a fellow traveler.  Years of anti-racist education at UW-M moved me from color blindness to understanding the many overt and covert ways that race creates barriers for some and privilege for others.  It is only through continued growth and collective action over time that the intention to decrease oppression and increase equity can transform into enduring change.

Know justice.  Know peace.