Mindful Awareness – Bridge over Troubled Waters

Mindful Awareness

Today is the 10^th anniversary of the events that happened on 9/11/01. I’m moved to recall my blissful unawareness, simple unminding innocence on September 10, 2001 – did ever I imagine on that day or earlier, that we would be here in a vastly different world. After what some now call “The Lost Decade”.

For the past three years, I’ve been engaged at looking at the future of health, with physicians, scientists, future-thinkers, authors, psychologists and professors. The MOST surprising thing was for me in learning how much we have in common in seeking Health. This got me very puzzled, if we seek health as individuals, why is it we can’t work together to improve our health system? Why are we so out of tune with each other?

I find, it was ever so. William Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much With Us”  1807 reminds us of the waste in being out of tune.

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;

……………For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

I learned about “getting back in tune” in 2009, as a test subject in a research study of how to maintain weight loss which was funded by the National Institute for Health and conducted by scientists at Stanford Medical School.

This video describes my experience, beautifully put together by Aaron at WeGoHealth.TV, a community of and for health activists.

Mindful awareness of what is going on is rare in the work that goes on in the American Economy. “Do Gooders” want to do good and be celebrated for the good they do (we do).  BUT what about being mindful about the people whose lives are affected by our “do good” efforts? When we don’t pay attention, when we are focused on OUR goal and OUR achievement, we can find our efforts derailed when we work in such a multi-faceted area like health and well-being. Mindfulness and paying attention to the quality of life we wanted to have, and learning to eat nutritiously in a way that savors the food – these were all skills we had to learn in this study. And I find myself applying these skills today – in my work on the future of health.

When we work together in ways that affect health, what happens is like the story of the elephant and the blind men. Each blind man touches a different part of the elephant and thinks the elephant is a rope (the elephant’s tail), a tree trunk (the elephant’s leg), a drain pipe (the elephant’s trunk). We see what we experience; we do not see what others experience. This year, my resolution is to increase my Mindful Awareness. I applaud the WholeLifeWellBeing post one month ago on Mindfulness – Right on point, right on the heart, right on the mind. You rock Sonia Keffer!

Each week, I have set aside 1 hour for reflection with colleagues who have agreed to pilot this. For the first 20 minutes, we are in guided silent meditation. For the next half an hour, we speak as we are moved to, by the thoughts that came to us during that earlier reflective silence. Finally, for the last 10 minutes, we write in a shared journal.

Our mindfulness sessions have just begun, and we feel blessed to be guided by Hung Nguyen, who is pursuing his doctorate on Mindfulness in NYC at Columbia Teacher’s College. This past summer he facilitated the first hour in an 8-week course with new Principals who were preparing for their first Principal posting. They found it very grounding for them as they made the transition. For myself, the first session helped me to write this blog post and this poem.

Allow me to wish you the gift of mindful awareness as a bridge over troubled waters – for your peace of mind, for our shared health, for our shared future.

Bridge over Troubled Water

Let me whisper in the gentle silence of reflection

Say “I pass” to pessimism on auto-pilot.

Upheaving the soul-crushing times

By purposeful intent, let me

Mindfully, feel and learn the way back…

To awareness of our shared well being.