Mindfulness: A Tiny Little Vacation

What do a vacation in Ecuador, a stressed-out kid and Dodge have in common?

Well, I just returned from my first ever trip to a developing country.  (If you've never been to a developing country, I suggest you visit as soon as you can.  It is really, really mind-blowing, and humbling, to see how people thrive in places that are not America and I really wish that I had gone many moons ago, but before I digress...just go if you can).  I also have a highly contentious nine-year-old who tends to loose her marbles when she encounters multiplication home work.  And then there is lovely, lovely Dodge Nature Center, where I work every day.

Okay, so while in Ecuador, I noticed that I was living entirely in-the-moment.  I was not thinking about tomorrow (except perhaps to stop and try to coordinate transportation through the next frightening mountain pass), or making dinner, doing laundry or going back to school, or home work.  I was just really soaking it all up minute by minute (it was kind of like being a kid).  As I flew back to home, I began to think about the future, and about how I wanted to try to live more in the moment when I returned to Minnesota.  Now, I know that vacation is vacation, and one cannot go about your daily business without contemplating dinner and laundry, but I got to thinking about how our family can become consumed and preoccupied by the very idea of work, homework, mortgage, tornadoes etc, etc.  Plus, we generally have an embarrassment of riches here in the US, and it is embarrassing how much we manage to stress and worry about things that don't really matter at the end of the day.  Too much worry, and too much stuff, and too much worry about stuff.  Less worry, and less stuff.

Stress Reduction in Ecuador, or, Sleeping-In-the -Moment

So I vowed to take concrete steps to deal with daily stress, improve my coping skills and try to simplify by simply enjoying life a little more.  I finally enrolled myself in that yoga class that I've been putting off forever, I tried to organize my house a bit, I made my kids organize their rooms (or at least look under their beds), I made a list of meals to shop for and cook in the coming weeks (I said, "I made a list," which is not the same as actually cooking said meals) and I also checked some books out of the library.  One publication really struck a cord with me:  Parenting Your Stressed Child:  10 Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Practices to Help Your Child Manage Stress and Build Essential Life Skills by Michelle L. Bailey.  Bailey plots out how to practice mindfulness with your child in order to help you and your child cope.  Think of it as being able to take a mini-vacation every day (maybe we should call it mind-less-ness?).  This concise primer presents very easy and common sense practices that are not too daunting to consider implementing.  And guess what?  One of the best ways to combat stress and practice mindfulness is to go for a walk outside, IN NATURE.  You see where I'm going with this, right?

Well, I have to tell you, I was both thrilled and mortified to realize that I spend most of my life in a job that is really, really good for managing stress.  Thrilled to know I'm in the right place, kind of mortified to realize that I still have trouble managing stress, although I'm in the perfect "therapeutic" setting.  But the take away for all of you is that the benefits of Dodge are available to our entire community.  Yes, our students get a daily dose of mindfulness as they walk and observe the world around them (countless studies show that this alone is a huge factor in reducing stress and promoting health; remember the study that proved invalids recover faster in a room with a window on nature?), but all of our visitors can walk and breath in relative solitude on Dodge trails.  You know,  just about every week, someone walks through the front doors of the Preschool (mistakenly thinking it is the Nature Center headquarters), wondering if we have a map and asking if they can hike.  Yes!  Yes!  "You can do that," we say.  And you know what?  You, really, really should enjoy our trails, with or without a map, whenever you can.

Mindo Community Preschool in the Ecuadorian Cloud Forest

An Easy Mindfulness Walk:

First turn off your cell phone.  Walk on any trail at Dodge.  Notice your breathing.  Try to find the quiet spot between the inhale and the exhale as you walk.  Think about your body.  Notice where it might feel tense and focus on relaxing into that muscle as you walk.  Look around you.  Smell.  Touch grasses or leaves.  Keep walking and let your mind wander (I've read that it's good to think of your thoughts as clouds:  watch them blow by, name their shapes if you like, but try not to judge them, don't feel that you have to act on them, right at that moment,  just let them be clouds).  Try to give yourself at least a half an hour of this unhurried, easy-breathing, strolling.  A tiny little vacation.

Mindfulness Walk for Kids:

Tell your young wanderer that you are going on a Treasure Walk.  First run, and be silly, and loud, if you like.  Then try walking silently, and fairly slowly, for 5 minutes, looking and smelling and touching, but not talking.  Find a place to sit down and close your eyes.  Breath in through your nose and out through your mouth for a couple cycles, then try to remember 3 things you noticed on your walk.  The things that you remember are your treasures.  See if you can find more on your next walk.

Treasure I Found on a Walk in Ecuador

Pound of Flesh

Every morning when I drive to work at Dodge, I pass by the Calvary Baptist Church with it's Highway 110 marquee.  While I wait for the light (no pun initially intended) at Delaware, I get to contemplate the daily platitude, which usually gently admonishes passerby to be a little less egocentric and a little more selfless.  Not too long ago, the message of the day was something like, "When others leave you, do they leave with more or less?"  Well, that's one that sticks with me, because I can be a glass-is-half-empty gal sometimes (witness my recent post, Tornado Alley).  My long ago writing mentor, the late, great, Richard Elman was eulogized in the New York Times Review of Books as a "sad sack."  I found the term very insulting, but the Times had a point which they could have made a bit more elegantly:  Richard had a great capacity for empathy.  When one shares in the deeper mysteries, and miseries, of the world, one tends to wear his heart on his sleeve-- I think of those little amulets of hearts, hands, and legs you see in churches in the southwest or Mexico.  I've always liked those amulets, they seem to be talismans of what it means to be human, a little piece of us.  Well, when I read that church marquee, through the haze of my not-caffeinated-enough, almost-pre-dawn brain, I first thought of literal subtraction-- taking a finger, an arm, a leg, some "pound of flesh" from a friend.  What every good empathizer or sad sack knows, though, is that we often think (wrongly) that everyone "gets" something by sharing an experience with us, by commiserating.  News flash to sad sacks:  they are not always getting something from us, sometimes we are actually exacting a fee from their souls, draining their proverbial cup, exacting our "pound of flesh."

Well, all of this is to say that some really marvelous things happen here at Dodge, and some really marvelous people make them happen.  Later this month, Dodge will honor a Volunteer of the Year, and, No, I won't tell you who it is (even though I know!).  This year's award goes to a really deserving person, but there are a number of people around here who seem to make it their business to to give more than they might get.  Mr. John Burgy seems to be one of those givers.  I don't know John very well yet, but what I do know of him seems to fall in line with those who know him very well.  John has a reputation as a Dodge volunteer of prodigious talent, great generosity and major kindness.

Last summer, I happened upon John in the Community Garden.  My students were very curious to find out what he was doing.  Turns out, John was picking more than a hundred grape leaves to make dolmades (a Greek delicacy of pickled grape leaves wrapped around savory rice) for his family.  Well, we often run into John, in his spiffy workshop, or while he's driving his truck around on one errand or another, and he always takes time to chat with students.  This summer, during one of our serendipitous chats, I asked John if the voracious Japanese beetles (talk about your "pound of flesh") had ruined his chances of making dolmades this year.  "No," he smiled, "I got 'em done early.  I beat 'em to it."  I said I'd like that recipe one of these days and, wouldn't you know, John showed up here at the Preschool bright and early the very next morning with a package of dolmades!  He wouldn't hand over the recipe until he heard the word that they were palatable (they are in fact delicious).  He's just plain nice, a really nice human being.  But you know, we sad sacks (aka Japanese beetles) did exact our "pound of flesh" from another giver anyway:  while John was here delivering the goods, he somehow agreed to build the Preschool a shed!

Please look for John's Dolmades Recipe in the Kitchen Catalyst section of this blog.