It Was Almost Like Normal

Manny and Gregory had returned from the Sunday entertainment and I found them in Gregory's room. This is the first time in a long time that I was unable to attend the 3:00 program.

Gregory and I hugged. Manny and I caught up on some "housekeeping" like my returning newly laundered pillow cases, checking to make sure there were enough snacks in the fridge, getting feedback on how Gregory was doing with his tush rash, helping Manny with a few pointers on using his new iPhone (which was a gift from Gregory and me.)

Then Manny "disappeared into the hall" and Gregory and I had some alone time. I told Gregory I loved him, that he makes me happy, and that I like being with him.

I leaned into his left shoulder and with some effort helped him lift his right arm and placed his hand on my head. I could feel him slightly stroking my hair and my tears and a few sobs arrived without warning.

Even though I had set it up, it was wonderful being caressed and touched by the person I love most in the world. I am not sure how much Gregory was aware of the situation.

We just sat quietly like this and then at Gregory's gesture, we moved away from each other. I again said, "I love you."

He replied, "I love you."

I asked, "How much do you love me?"

He replied, "Very much."

I said, "I love you very much too."

"Yes," was his response.

"Thank you." I said.

He answered, "You are welcome."

It was almost like a normal communication. In fact it was a normal communication. One learns not to look too deeply in understanding, mindfulness, or intent. One just enjoys the moment.

Recognition

Yoga Nidra

You have read previously about my experiences with mindful meditation and Yoga Nidra with Corinne Peterson. Today Gregory and I had another joint session with the focus on Gregory. I was just along for the ride. If the experience could provide Gregory a time and space away from his Alzheimer's, without having to think about it or cope or fight to bring a word or idea up to the surface for air, then the experience was worth while in my opinion. And both Corinne and I feel we were successful.

She led the meditation with great skill, understanding, and compassion. We started with some aroma therapy using a scent called "Joy." She gave Gregory ample time to process the simply stated suggestions like breathing in time to the going up and coming down of a ferris wheel (one of Gregory's favorite rides,) or taking a walk through a forest with the sun shining through the trees and periodic sightings of animals or hearing birds chirp. We looked at feelings of joy and sadness and back to joy so we could experience the full spectrum of emotions but leave on a positive note. She planted suggestions by which she could measure Gregory's involvement in the process and being able to connect language to action, for example: moving ones fingers and toes, opening and closing one's mouth, stretching, smiling. The session ended with gentle music and her gently ringing a bell five times.

Even though the meditation was not as deep or productive as I am usually able to achieve, for me just 30 minutes time out from life was worth participating in the experience. When Corinne was gently bringing us back to the meditation space and calling us back to awareness, I arrived earlier on purpose so I could see how Gregory was doing. The peaceful expression on his eyes-closed face, the relaxation in his body, brought tears to my eyes. Feeling that I had been able to help create and provide that experience for Gregory and the ease and joy with which he experienced the session made me want to weep but I held it to quiet tears.

When Corinne asked us how the session went, Gregory replied "Wonderful!" We will do this again sometime in August.

Mindfulness & Difficult Emotions

"Mindfulness & Difficult Emotions"

Tricycle: The Buddhist Review 

Spring 2013. Page 26 -28

By: Sharon Salzberg

I’ve heard some wonderful explanations of mindfulness. The writer and teacher Sylvia Boorstein calls it “awake attention to what is happening inside and outside so we can respond from a place of wisdom.” The Vietnamese Zen teacher and poet Thich Nhat Hanh says, “I like to define mindfulness as the energy that helps us to be there 100 percent. It is the energy of your true presence.” But my favorite definition comes from a fifth grader at Piedmont Avenue Elementary School in Oakland, California. 

In 2007, the school launched a pilot program that offered kids five weeks of mindfulness training from a coach who visited classrooms twice a week, leading 15-minute sessions on how to have “gentle breaths and still bodies.” The students trained their attention by focusing on their breath and noting the emotions that arose. The coach also asked them to cultivate compassion by reflecting—“taking a moment”—before lashing out at someone on the playground. “I was losing at baseball and I was about to throw a bat,” one boy told his class, according to The New York Times. “The mindfulness really helped.” 

The reporter asked another boy participating in the program to describe mindfulness. It’s “not hitting someone in the mouth,” he said. 

His answer is wise, wide, and deep. It illustrates one of the most important uses of mindfulness: helping us deal with difficult emotions. It suggests the possibility of finding the gap between a trigger event and our usual conditioned response to it, and using that pause to collect ourselves and change our response. And it demonstrates that we can learn to make better choices. 

“He doesn’t know what to do with his energy,” the student’s mother said at a parents’ meeting. He was, she explained, usually quick to strike out when he was confused or frustrated. But mindfulness training was changing that pattern. “One day after school he told me, ‘I’m taking a moment.’” 

This is just what the practice of mindfulness helps us remember. Working with emotions during our meditation sessions sharpens our ability to recognize a feeling just as it begins, not 15 consequential actions later. We can then go on to develop a more balanced relationship with it—neither letting it overwhelm us so we lash out rashly nor ignoring it because we’re afraid or ashamed of it. 

We learn a lot in that middle, mindful place. We begin to discover that, like the Oakland schoolboy, we can always take a moment—to re-center ourselves in our bodies, acknowledge what we’re feeling, spot our habitual reactions (whether that means erupting when we’re frustrated or silently sulking when we feel criticized), and perhaps decide on a different course of action. 

When I first began my meditative practice I was only 18, and although I knew I was deeply unhappy, I wasn’t aware of the separate strands of grief, anger, and fear roiling inside me. All I felt was a single, seemingly solid bank of sadness. Then, through meditation, I began to look within more clearly and detect the various components of my sorrow. What I saw unsettled me so much that I marched up to my teacher, S. N. Goenka, and said accusingly, “I never used to be an angry person before I began meditating!” Of course I was hugely angry: my mother had died; I barely knew my father; I barely knew myself. When I blamed Mr. Goenka, he simply laughed—then reminded me of the tools I now had to deal with the difficult feelings I used to keep hidden. I could begin to forge a different relationship with my emotions—to find the middle place between denying them and giving over to them—because I had acknowledged them. 

Mindfulness practice isn’t meant to eliminate thinking but aims rather to help us know what we’re thinking when we’re thinking it, just as we want to know what we’re feeling when we’re feeling it. 

Mindfulness allows us to watch our thoughts, see how one thought leads to the next, decide if we’re heading toward an unhealthy path, and if so, let go and change directions. It allows us to see that who we are is much more than a fearful or envious or angry thought. We can rest in the awareness of the thought, in the compassion we extend to ourselves if the thought makes us uncomfortable, and in the balance and good sense we summon as we decide whether and how to act on the thought. 

Meditation is like going into an old attic room and turning on the light. In that light we see everything—the beautiful treasures we’re grateful to have unearthed; the dusty, neglected corners that inspire us to say, “I’d better clean that up”; the unfortunate relics of the past that we thought we had gotten rid of years ago. We acknowledge them all, with an open, spacious, and loving awareness. 

It’s never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn’t depend on how long it’s been running; a shift in perspective doesn’t depend on how long you’ve held the old view. When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn’t matter whether it’s been dark for 10 minutes, 10 years, or 10 decades. The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see things you couldn’t see before. It’s never too late to take a moment to look.