Good morning...or should I say GREAT morning! I am sitting at my favorite coffee shop - The Mug Shot Cafe in Breckenridge, Colorado. I am also coming off of an almost 36 hour mountain stretch that has my creative thinking process in overdrive. Of the many considerations I would love to discuss, I Am. going to focus on mindfulness and body sensations. I Am. self taught in the area of mindfulness practice. If you are interested in learning more please google anything Jon Kabat Zinn or Mark Williams (or check out my I Am. LLC page on Facebook where I have downloaded some helpful YouTube videos on a variety of ideas that have to do with self development). If you want to be certified/trained in teaching mindfulness practice it is available - look into MBSR or MBCT (mindfulness based stress reduction or cognitive therapy - there are also several school programs; .b and Mind Up to name just a few). If you want to start on your own self first I suggest the book Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman. When I first considered the curriculum for the class Problem Solving Skills that I teach at an alternative school, I was basing the skill set off of cognitive behavior theory - CBT (at this point I consider mindfulness a skill/practice that is taught experientially and lends itself to awareness which complements CBT). It is my experience that CBT is often considered to be an effective approach when working with maladjusted young people - so I thought that I would base my course off of it for credibility purposes - and knowledge of its effectiveness. So here I Am., teaching this idea that thoughts contribute to feelings which fuel behavior and it all leads to the results we are getting in our life....and if we can change our thoughts we can ultimately create a more manageable life experience. BTW, if you work with students in an alternative school setting I suggest staying away from the word 'positive' - they tend to assume you are just another adult that thinks if we just think 'positive' everything will be better - and that the adult has no clue about the pain and dissatisfaction that the young person is truly experiencing. Most likely, a student in the class will say 'yeah! if you think positive then life will be positive' - much better coming from the peer than you (is my opinion). Anyway, the more I was teaching CBT alongside mindfulness practice I started to gain a better idea of how body sensations are a big part of this whole process/cycle to be mindful of in an effort to gain control of self (to empower self) - and that the cycle of thoughts, feelings, behavior is more enmeshed than it is linear (this was new to me). I also came to the present understanding that if we can learn to notice our thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses (much like we are watching it all on television) it contributes to a greater satisfaction in our moment to moment experience. A simple example would be: It's a hot morning and I'm far from home, dog is thirsty and I have to go the bathroom - BADLY. I angrily pull back dog from barking at another dog. I feel guilty for pulling her so hard. I start to get the impulse to cry which creates more negative energy. I no longer feel motivated to do what I had intended to for the day. At this point I just want to go home and be by myself. You can imagine the variety of thoughts that could go through my head as I walk toward home: why didn't I get up earlier when I know it's going to be this hot?...poor Keeley, she's just a sweet dog - I'm awful...I miss walking on trails, why did I move to the city...I spend too much on my place...I have so much debt and will never pay it off...why does life have to be so complicated all the time...why do I have to complicate it all the time?). Now apply mindfulness practice: I'm noticing the body is hot (sensation). I notice the feeling of irritability. I notice the impulse to pull back my dog harder than necessary. At this point I can watch what is going on (and it can be comical as you recognize how silly it all is) and I now can manage my thoughts instead of my thoughts managing me. The mindfulness books all talk about how thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses can all be likened to the weather - just as weather patterns continually change so do our emotions. The sensation of being hot does not have to lead to feelings of worthlessness. A student in a classroom that is aware that their impulse to shut down is just an impulse that will go away is an empowering realization. Fear is a huge trigger to a multitude of thoughts that can take away from our moment to moment experience on a regular basis. A quote from the Williams/Penman book: 'This is what emotions are; they're like a background color that's created when your mind fuses together all of your thoughts, feelings, impulses and bodily sensations to conjure up an overall guiding theme or state of mind'. "I am limited and unsatisfied" is not the theme I want my life unconsciously driven by. I choose to use mindfulness practice (awareness, acceptance and compassion of/toward self) that won me my life back as the tool that will inspire and empower young people to feel important. Lastly, whether you are wanting to measure growth with your own progress, an individual, or that of a classroom, it's really simple to use a 1 - 10 rating scale on each category: self awareness, acceptance of what is, and compassion toward self. Compassion can be defined as no judgement, ridicule or comparison (ie. I notice that I Am. angry... period - no judgement, no ridicule, no comparison). Lastly, a quote from Eckhart Tolle's The Power of Now: "Anything that is done with negative energy will become contaminated by it and in time give rise to more pain, more unhappiness.' -- think of how much life we lose when we do this unconsciously?
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