How are you doing with all that?
Sometimes in sessions with my therapist I learn as much from what I hear myself saying as from the guidance that she provides. (This is really saying something because my therapist provides excellent guidance). The last time I met with her, after bringing her up to speed on what’s been happening in my life, she asked me, “And how are you doing with all that?”
I replied, “You know, I’m surprisingly fine when I am doing the things that I need to do. I’m fully there and even enjoying things that you wouldn’t think would be enjoyable – like sitting with someone I love in a waiting room or driving them to and from appointments. It’s in the in-between times when I’m waiting for the next thing that I get upset.”
The distractions I create for myself are not very fun
Even as I was saying what I was saying, a light bulb went off in my yoga-teacher mind. During the in-between times, say a Wednesday in a week where we have appointments on Tuesday and Thursday, I am less engaged with the moment, which means my mind has the space for lovely “extras” such as worrying, fruitless re-planning, and baseless catastrophizing.
Which is all to say, this season of caregiving is giving me repeated exposure to what my mind feels like when it’s distracted versus when it’s homed in on what is happening right now. Sure, noticing how yucky it is to feel unsettled and upset during “in-between” times makes me want to minimize this going forward. In the carrot and stick paradigm, these times would be the “stick.”
But sticks have never been great long-term motivators for me. However, I’m always game to chase a carrot. And the carrot that I’m recognizing here is a very tasty one. I would love to feel more of the peace and contentedness that I feel when I’m right where I’m supposed to be, doing what needs to be done with a person I love – even if what I’m doing is absolutely nothing more than keeping them company.
Presence takes intention and practice
Allow me to digress for a moment. For the last several years, I’ve celebrated the new year by writing a prayer that I will pray each morning. This year, my prayer opens:
Loving God, help me to remember that I am infinitely more meaningful than anything I could ever do. Therefore, this year, I pray to focus my energy on the quality of my being.
This quality of being is the “capital-P” Presence that I am feeling as I accompany my loved ones. It is also the presence that a mindfulness practice such as yoga is designed to create foster. On a yoga mat, we are given a series of challenges that increase in nuance and difficulty that keep us fully engaged with each moment.
We start by learning techniques to find comfort in uncomfortable positions such as a forward fold or a backbend. For a while, this is complicated enough to keep our attention on exactly what we are doing. Eventually, though, as our skill improves the yoga positions become less challenging (i.e. engaging), we might notice ourselves making a grocery list or worrying about something that is happening later while in a yoga posture.
The next challenge is maintaining a steady rhythmic breath and coordinating our movements with our breathing which powerfully holds our mind in the moment. Again, over time this begins to feel quite natural and we’re able to breathe in this mindful and deliberate way while our minds wander hither and yon.
At that point, we can add the drishti to our practice. When practicing with drishti, we are holding our gaze on a prescribed spot or direction. For example, when we reach our arms overhead, our gaze slides up to the tips of our thumbs. Or when we’re in Warrior 2 (Virabhadrasana B) our gaze is out over the middle fingertip of our front hand. This added challenge holds us even more firmly in the moment.
The distractions we create for ourselves are more tempting than anything around us
The practice of maintaining our alignment, steady breath and drishti gives us daily experience of a fully engaged mind. Patanjali calls this peaceful and contented experience nirodha, which is often translated as stillness, but I think that can be misleading. What is still, in my experience, is not my mind – which is laser focused on and deeply rooted in what is happening. What is still is the “extra” stuff my mind habitually does when it is not 100% engaged in the moment at hand – the worrying, planning and catastrophizing I mentioned earlier.
I left therapy that day wondering how I can give myself the gift of presence in “in-between” moments the way I give my presence to my loved ones. As always, it starts with awareness. Noticing there is something I’d like to change is often the hardest and biggest step toward change, after all. The good news for me is that I have noticed how cruddy I feel when my mind is busily distracting me, and how grounded and good I feel when I’m present. Deep within me, I want to be as present for myself as I am for others.
With my intention firmly in place, all that’s left is to practice. I practice in little ways that can feel quite incidental to “real life.” I set my phone aside to be fully present in a conversation. I weed and prune without worrying about how much is left to do. I allow myself to be fully absorbed in the game I’m playing. I return my dog’s loving gaze until he gets distracted and breaks away to chase a bird or jump on the cat.
Give yourself the present of presence. You won’t regret it
Focusing on the quality of our being is a gift we give ourselves as well as others. Presence is not easy. This world will always be filled with a million wonderful and ridiculous distractions. But we can minimize the distractions we create for ourselves. Doing so, even for a moment, makes us feel centered and serene. It makes us feel “all in” – with nowhere else we’d rather be and nothing else we’d rather be doing.
May it be so.
Yogas citta vritti nirodha. Yoga Sutra 1.2
Yoga is the experience when we have when the “extra” or “distracting” activity of the mind is stilled.