building the foundation
your own mindfulness practice
A woman sat outside a holy shrine, watching all the men and women walk past the beggars, the sick, the elderly, and the outcast, offering them nothing, hardly even seeing them. Turning toward the sky, the woman cried out, “How can a loving creator see the suffering I see and more, and do nothing to help?” There was silence for a moment, and then a voice responded. “I did do something, my child. I created you!”
A Sufi tale
One of the most common questions I hear from parents and professionals alike is, “What is the best practice for a kid who is in the middle of a meltdown?” There is no magical breathing trick I can offer, no mindful off-switch for a tantrum. The best practice for a kid in meltdown mode is your practice. The nonreactive presence of an adult and the wisdom and compassion we’ve gleaned from our own formal and informal mindfulness practices—these are what a struggling kid needs most. This chapter will explore how to establish and maintain your own mindfulness practice—the most important and powerful way you can share mindfulness.
Mindfulness and compassion start with us, and all the evidence suggests that, unlike outdated economic theories, mindfulness and compassion really do trickle down from us to the young people in our lives. This happens through modeling, which allows kids to see mindfulness, compassion, and their effects in action, and through mirror neurons, the parts of our brain that enable our kids to pick up on our emotions. (See “Facing Emotional Contagions” later in this chapter for more about mirror neurons.) We also demonstrate hard work and humility as we learn for ourselves the challenges and benefits of a regular mindfulness practice. What we learn from our own practice is directly applicable to the most difficult situations that we face as caregivers, including our kids’ stubborn resistance or major meltdowns.
The research is clear: if you are a parent and practice mindfulness, you are likely to have a happier, healthier family with better communication and less conflict.1 If you are a teacher and take care of your stress, the kids in your classroom will learn better and behave better.2 If you are a doctor and work on your compassion, mindfulness, and people skills, your patients will trust your decisions, follow your advice, and heal faster. If you are a therapist, your attention and attunement to clients will increase, and your clients will improve faster—results that have been proven in placebo studies.3
Research has shown that mindfulness practice decreases burnout and compassion fatigue and increases empathy and effective communication. The best way to create stressed-out, unhappy kids is to surround them with stressed-out, unhappy adults. The opposite is also true: calm, compassionate adults are far more likely to lead to calm, compassionate kids and the conditions under which they can thrive. The best predictor of kids’ stress levels is the stress levels of the important adults in their lives. After our son was born, our pediatrician told us, “I’ve seen a lot of anxious kids who don’t have anxious parents, but I’ve almost never seen anxious parents who don’t have anxious kids.”
Starting and Maintaining a Mindfulness Meditation Practice
Many wonderful teachers have shared straightforward, universal advice on starting a mindfulness meditation practice. I strongly recommend that you find your own teacher or meditation center, if you can, to help you get started with your practice. Allow me also to give you some practical tips from my own experience as a meditator and meditation teacher.
The first question to ask is: When during the day do you have a few minutes you can set aside, even just five or ten? Early in the morning, at lunchtime, during your child’s nap, or in the evening before bed? Since consistency is key to building a habit, it helps to find the same few minutes each day. If you can’t identify any spare moments for meditation, don’t worry. There are plenty of ways to incorporate mindfulness into your life by bringing more awareness to what you are already doing. (See chapter 11 for more on working with these little moments.)
Do you have existing habits you can build on already? When I was a teacher, I would get home from work, go jogging for half an hour, and immediately sit down to meditate after that. The habit of physical exercise was a simple foundation for mental exercise and also gave me a cognitive boost that helped me sit in focused quiet. Are there daily routines that practice can be linked into for you? Just as some fitness trainers advise you to just put on your running shoes, walk outside, and see what happens, many meditation teachers suggest, “Just sit on your cushion for a moment and see if you start practicing.”
If you have a busy schedule, write your meditation time into your day planner or set a reminder on your phone. It may sound like overkill, but how many of us say, “If it’s not in my planner, it doesn’t exist”?
Like physical exercise, practicing mindfulness can be easier when done with friends or in a community. Are there friends or colleagues with whom you can sit and meditate on a somewhat regular basis? Is there a regular mindfulness group in your community? Your family may be a great reminder too, and you can inspire one another. Other people can be also helpful in giving you someone to talk to about your practice. Sharing the benefits and challenges of your practice can be inspiring. Do you have even one friend you can connect with regularly—by phone, email, text, or social media—to inspire each other? Research shows that when we tell other people we are going to do something, we are more likely to follow through. If you don’t have someone to talk to about your practice, consider writing about your experiences in a journal.
Having a guided meditation CD, audio file, or app can help in the initial stages of establishing or reestablishing a formal practice. A regular, comfortable place to meditate is also helpful. Buying fancy equipment is not usually helpful or necessary, but just as the right shoes can make a difference to your physical workout, investing in a good meditation cushion, pillow, or bench, as well as finding a physical posture that suits you, will allow you to meditate in greater comfort.
Finding a posture that is upright, comfortable, sustainable, and that keeps you awake is the most important. Tap into your imagination. Some people find it helpful to imagine a string coming out of the top of their head and lifting them up; Jon Kabat-Zinn suggests sitting “nobly,” like a king or queen on a throne. Legs can be folded or not, but making a tripod with your buttocks and feet is most stable. Your hands can rest in your lap or at your sides. Sitting is only one choice of posture; you can stand or lie down, provided the posture is comfortable and sustainable.
Lastly, set reasonable goals for your meditation practice—and maybe no goals around the outcome. If you decide to practice for an hour every day starting tomorrow, you are less likely to be meditating regularly in a year than if you start with five minutes on weekdays and ten on weekends, and build up from there. When you don’t meditate, don’t be too hard on yourself. Just as you redirect the mind during a mindfulness meditation, gently and compassionately bring yourself back to your meditation practice when you miss a regular session.
Meditation retreats are helpful, because they give you not only a place to meditate undisturbed, but, like training for a road race, also something to get in shape for. Going on a retreat also rejuvenates your home meditation practice. Consider finding a retreat, ideally one with people in your geographic or professional community with whom you can stay connected afterward.
When we have kids in our lives and homes, distractions are inevitable, and quiet, undisturbed moments become a scarce commodity. Having a regular, predictable meditation time will help them and you. Communicate to your family and children the importance of their support for your practice time. It helps you feel happier, calmer, and more patient. It quiets your loud mind or settles your thoughts—whatever the reason is for you. I always appreciate the writer Anne Lamott’s line, “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” Asking them to support you may make them curious enough to join you.
The Power of Informal Mindfulness Practices
Can you find a moment to breathe? Is there time in your child’s busy schedule or between your appointments when you can check in with yourself or eat your lunch mindfully? Are you singletasking and aware of what you are doing as you go through your day? Or are you operating on autopilot? Many informal practices remind us of the power (and challenge) of doing one thing at a time, quiet our own self-defeating criticism with self-compassion, reconnect us with the mindfulness we already have, and cultivate wisdom and perspective to keep moving forward in this journey.
SINGLETASKING
A simple way to bring mindfulness into our everyday lives is to let go of our multitasking habits and embrace singletasking. All of us try to multitask, but it can really stress us out. Research shows that multitasking is a myth. What we think of as multitasking is, in fact, paying attention to one thing after another in very rapid succession, and studies show that we end up getting half as much done in twice the time. However, because busyness is stimulating and feels good (and we actually do get a dopamine rush from being busy), multitasking reinforces the illusion of being efficient, making it a hard habit to break.
My friend Peter, himself a therapist and mindfulness practitioner, was in the midst of a crazy day, cooking dinner, fielding a work emergency, and dealing with the stress and logistics of trying to buy a house while his wife was out of town. When his eight-year-old son asked him for help with his homework, Peter snapped.
“I can’t do six different things at once,” he barked. “I can only do one thing at a time!”
His son was first taken aback, then looked up at him curiously and asked, as only a child can, “Well, Dad, then why don’t you?”
Singletasking, doing just one thing at one time, is important to staying balanced. The following simple practice demonstrates the power of singletasking—of slowing down and paying attention to just one thing in the present moment.
With your eyes open or closed, place one finger gently in the center of your forehead.
Just feel your finger against your forehead.
And feel the sensations of your forehead against your finger.
You might notice temperature, texture, moisture, even detect your pulse.
Stay with this awareness a moment longer. If the mind wanders, just gently bring it back to the sensation of your finger on your forehead.
Then open your eyes, take your hand down, and notice how you feel.
If you noticed your experience, then you have experienced mindfulness.
GIVING YOURSELF A BREAK
Many of us feel under tremendous pressure to be the perfect parent, the most inspirational teacher, or the most charismatic helper who can save all the suffering children. Many of us have a critical inner voice telling us we aren’t doing enough. The internal critic may echo voices from our childhood or the voices of oppression and bigotry in our society.
There are also very real external pressures—the judgments of other parents, high-stakes academic testing, schools or organizations that value numbers over nuance. Feelings of inadequacy and worry are passed on to us unconsciously, and we unconsciously pass them on to our children. Most of us have a basic human desire to be liked, and we all want to be seen as competent by others, but such constant comparisons create still more anxiety. Whatever its source, our internal critic is difficult to ignore, and it manifests in subtle and insidious ways in our lives, compounding the ten thousand joys, sorrows, and stresses that come from spending time with young people.
Parents are under incredible pressure, and even in the “caring professions” there is an incredibly high rate of burnout, substance abuse, turnover, and compassion fatigue. This is what makes mindfulness, compassion, and self-compassion some of the most important practices we can do for ourselves and model for the people around us. They are true self-care. Bringing mindfulness to certain activities—mindfully eating chocolate, for example—can feel like both self-care and self-indulgence.
CONNECT TO SEEDS THAT ARE ALREADY PLANTED IN YOU
I did not learn to meditate when I was a child. My parents were not particularly religious, though they were certainly spiritual; they did not formally teach me mindfulness. Yet when I became interested in mindfulness as a young adult and reflected back on my life, some of my most cherished childhood memories were brimming with both mindfulness and compassion. Watching clouds form and unform in the summer sky with my father, walking with silence and purpose as I listened to the sounds of the forest at nature camp, focusing my breath to create the biggest and roundest soap bubble I could before it popped—these moments included many of the elements of mindfulness.
Take a moment to think back to your own childhood. Are there any memories from childhood or other times in life that capture elements of mindfulness—paying attention to the present moment with acceptance and nonjudgment?
When I ask people from around the world this question, some common themes emerge. Most often, the sounds, scents, tastes, or other sensations are a part of the memory. Our senses are always in the present, even when our minds are racing to the past or future. Often, the memorable mindful scenes take place in or close to nature, with feelings of warmth and safety.
You needn’t even go back to childhood; just consider the everyday moments in which you may experience mindfulness today, or how you could bring mindfulness to gardening, walking, preparing dinner, or other daily activities.
If you are new to mindfulness, consider what familiar experiences may have already allowed you to experience the elements of mindfulness. Perhaps you have practiced yoga or tai chi, enjoyed a guided visualization, or tried progressive muscle relaxation or hypnosis—all close cousins of mindfulness. It is likely that mindfulness has more in common with your values, interests, and activities than you might have initially thought.
FACING EMOTIONAL CONTAGIONS
In spending time with kids, we inevitably come into conflict when our own wishes and needs conflict with theirs. When we find ourselves entrenched with an angry or emotional child, it is hard not to become angry ourselves. Emotions, particularly strong emotions in people we care about, are contagious. But just as so-called negative emotions are contagious, so are calming and compassionate ones.
As described in chapter 1, mirror neurons in the brain are what cause us to feel the experiences and emotions of people around us. In the classic example, if I am watching you eat a banana, the neurons in my brain that are involved in eating bananas begin to fire. Likewise, if I am sitting across from you and feeling sad or angry, you are likely to have those neurons fire in your brain as well; thus you are feeling those emotions yourself, not just detecting them.
We are constantly absorbing emotions from those around us. That’s part of the reason being around kids and teens, with their roller coasters of emotion, can be so exhausting. When our own hearts and minds are clouded by emotion, we are not showing up and responding with our wisest mind and most open heart. Our capacity for calm in the midst of a kid’s emotional storm offers hope, because it signals that calm is possible in the midst of chaos.
Conflict, with our kids and with one another, is inevitable. While we may try to avoid it, research shows that for kids, seeing conflict is not necessarily problematic. What is most important is how we act—what behaviors we model—when we are in conflict and in resolution. This also means that it’s up to us, as adults, to take the lead and demonstrate that it is possible to calm down and reconnect—with our kids, with others involved in the conflict, and with ourselves.
What are some techniques you have used to help your children stay calm? What was your emotional state at those times? What about times when they, or you, became more upset? What was your emotional state at those times? These questions help you build on your own experience.
Of course, maintaining our cool in the midst of a child’s cries or teenager’s tantrum is far easier said than done. There are a few approaches we can take. Telling an angry child to practice mindfulness to calm down is far less likely to succeed than calming ourselves down. The best way to do this is to have a solid foundation in formal and informal mindfulness practice, which rewires our brain to attend and befriend our unhappy child, rather than fight or avoid them. Remember, when we are angry, we see only threats, and not the big picture.
In those moments, it can be hard to remember the breath. Other informal mindfulness practices can help. We can change our minds by changing our bodies. Try bringing your awareness into your feet, unclenching your fists, sitting down or leaning back, and feel the sensations. You can also look around the entire room or glance out the window for a moment to gain perspective, before reengaging.
Still, if we lose it, sometimes we lose it. The best thing to do when this happens is to forgive ourselves (employing self-compassion), reflect on what happened, and talk about our behavior with our kids as soon as we can once we are calm. Taking responsibility for our words and actions is the best way to teach them to take responsibility for theirs.
HOW DO I KNOW?
To paraphrase my friend and fellow therapist Ron Siegel, things generally work best when everyone is present in the room.
One of the simplest practices for staying present and anchored to your present moment experience is to ask yourself throughout your day, “How do I know I’m doing what I’m doing?” Check in with all of your senses, including your thoughts and feelings. How do I know I am listening to my kids? Am I waiting and thinking of a response before they even finish speaking, or am I open to their ideas? How do I know I am teaching? I hear my voice speaking and see that the kids are tuned in—at least somewhat. How do I know I am driving? I can feel the car vibrating, the engine roaring, and see the landscape moving past.
WHAT WENT WELL?
Mindfulness teacher Sharon Salzberg reminds us that to do anything challenging long-term, be it parenting, teaching, or the work of healing, we make a deliberate practice of seeing and connecting with the positive resilience and humanity in others and ourselves. With that in mind, take a moment to connect to the positive. Which children or adults in your life inspired you today with their creativity or resilience? Which of your colleagues or mentors? What and who has sustained you in challenging times in the past? What successes have you had today, this week, or this year that you can hold on to? Quaker educator and author Irene McHenry suggests asking yourself, “What went well?” on a regular basis. You can also ask, “What’s not wrong?” It’s a good practice to do for ourselves, but also with our partners or coworkers when we sit down to review the day together or in a meeting. Likewise, don’t forget to offer your gratitude and appreciation to your kids, partner, and coworkers, in person or electronically.
When you connect with the positive, take time to really feel those experiences and allow them to sink in. Research shows that negative perceptions are encoded and stored instantly in the brain, going into the evidence files in our mind that tell us the world is a negative place. Positive perceptions take longer to encode—twenty to thirty seconds. So take a moment now, about thirty seconds, to contemplate and savor the positive in your day so far—feel those emotions, and allow them to penetrate to your core and reshape your outlook.
Consider also writing down what has gone well to have something to look back on, and consider sharing this appreciation practice with your kids on a regular basis.
GOING WITH YOUR GUT
One of the challenges of working with children is that we often get stuck and have to make a hard decision, but don’t know what to do. Kelly McGonigal is a Stanford psychologist who teaches body awareness through practices like yoga. She suggests a simple practice for making a challenging decision, which I have adapted here. Some people call this practice “listening to your belly brain.”
Take a moment, find a comfortable posture, and close or rest your eyes where they won’t be distracted.
Bring the important decision to mind. Ask yourself, “What do I truly want in this situation?”
Imagine that you’ve made the decision in one direction. Tell yourself, “I have decided to do _______. I’m going to do it. My mind is made up.” Make this decision as vividly as possible in your imagination.
As you do, quickly scan your body, noticing how it feels. Notice the quality of your breath and any tension. Bring special awareness to sensations in your torso and what messages they might be sending you. Note these quietly to yourself.
Take a breath, and release that decision scenario from your mind. Take a few deep breaths, allowing your body and mind to reset.
Now, reverse the scenario. Tell yourself, “No, I’m not going to do that. Instead, I’ve made up my mind to _________. That’s what I’m definitely going with.” Once more, make this scene as vivid as possible in your imagination.
Scan your body. Observe your breath. Notice sensations throughout your torso, particularly in your heart and gut, and what your body is communicating to you. Note these quietly to yourself, along with anything else that might arise.
I do this practice myself before making important decisions and share it often with my patients. A fifteen-year-old girl I saw recently spent most of our therapy session agonizing about whether to break up with her boyfriend. She sat on my couch, eyes closed yet attentive as I guided her through the practice. We finished, and her eyes snapped open. “I have to break up with Jamie!” she announced, without skipping a beat. Another student I see used this practice to make the tough choice between two top colleges she had been accepted to.
The Importance of Your Own Practice
In training to be a therapist, I was reminded that I have no scalpel or hammer; the tool I work with is myself. The same is true for parenting or any other ways we work with kids. If your body, mind, and heart are the tools, you need to train with them, maintain them, sharpen them, know their quirks, recognize that they will change over time, and realize what happens when they’ve been working overtime. Mindfulness practice is a way of doing that.
Self-care is critical in staying connected long-term and not getting burned out with compassion fatigue. How much time are you taking to care for yourself? Are you singletasking throughout your days? Are you taking moments to connect with your breath and touch the present moment? Are you being compassionate and generous to yourself as well as to others? Are you remembering where you drew strength from in other challenging times?
Writer, teacher, and activist Parker Palmer, in his inspiring book The Courage to Teach, reminds us that we “teach who we are.” The principle applies to all of us. We give care from our best and worst selves, teaching and modeling for those who look up to us, whether we want them to in every moment or not. Many of us are in chaotic environments—our homes, hospitals, camps, or schools. Our work with kids is often undervalued, underpaid, and invisible. Without external or internal support, we can experience compassion fatigue and burnout, no matter how much we love our kids.
Learning to value ourselves and take time for self-care is important to our ability to be fully present for and connected with kids. We must learn to be present for ourselves before we can be present for anyone else. Then we can connect with kids from a place of grounded equilibrium, informed by insights from our own practice. I find that because of my mindfulness practice, I can tune in to the reality of a situation and listen to what is happening underneath the words of my clients and other people in my life.
When I was working in the inner city, I had a caseload of angry young men, one in particular whom I remember well, a Cape Verdean immigrant named Adriao, whose early adolescence was spent in and out of state care and state custody. I struggled to feel a connection with the twelve-year-old who, when he wasn’t suspended or in custody, strutted around middle school, shoving classmates and swearing at teachers, but would sit in my office quietly and play with action figures. For a number of reasons, I left that job and had to break the news to the kids. I didn’t think Adriao would care or even notice.
“Naw, you can’t leave, Dr. Willard. You can’t leave! I’m gonna go down to your new job and drag you back here to the therapy room, with your head banging on the stairs the whole way up. Then I’m gonna get my gun, and write Dr. Willard in bullet holes on the wall! No, you can’t leave!” he protested.
Many people might have heard an angry young man—a threatening or dangerous young man. Maybe he was some of those things at certain points in his life, but what I heard underneath was, “I will miss you.” I reflected that to him, in my language: “I’m gonna miss you too, Adriao.”
Mindfulness allows us to discern what we are truly hearing or seeing, to look and listen deeply, and to hear the truth underneath the suffering of those around us and even our own suffering. When we can do that, kids will notice and open to our ideas.
Mindfulness practices help us to become comfortable with ourselves. When I was starting out in my therapy work, I had a wise old therapist, and I desperately wanted to be the wise old therapist. But that wasn’t who I was. I’m also not the freestyle-rapping, basketball-playing therapist, like some of my coworkers are, and for a time I put myself down for that. At some point, I realized I have my own strengths as a middle-aged dorky therapist and should play to those. Now that I’m a parent, I know what some of my strengths are, and I know to ask for help with what I need to work on. Comfort with ourselves sends a strong message. No matter how nerdy or uncool we think we are, when we show kids that we are okay with ourselves, we tell them that it is okay to be themselves, whoever that might be. Messages of acceptance and self-acceptance, implicit or explicit, are of the utmost importance for young people. Mindfulness can be a big part of that.
Practicing mindfulness also helps us to be more authentic. Authenticity is something that young people crave. They have great bullshit detectors, which is why they can be intimidating. The desire for authenticity is partially hardwired into the adolescent brain. For many kids, being able to detect authentic intentions, hidden agendas, and true motivations is a matter of survival, especially if they’ve been through hard times. The more authentic we can be, the more authentic and trusting our relationship with kids will be.
When we know and accept ourselves, we will be at our best for our kids. We can know what our strengths are and work from them, rather than from our blind spots.
It’s been said that mindfulness meditation strengthens two qualities: wisdom and compassion. Are there any two qualities more worth cultivating for our time with young people?
DRIVING YOURSELF MINDFUL
A meditation teacher once suggested that I drive one leg of my commute once a week without listening to the radio, talking on the phone, or drinking my coffee. I didn’t think much of the idea at first, but when I tried it, I felt the vibrations of the car, the sounds of the engine that reminded me to shift gear. I was much more aware of the thoughts and feelings that arose as I cut even one or two distractions out of this regular activity. I don’t drive my entire commute this way every day, but I do set aside distractions for the first and last few minutes of my drive, starting from the stoplight nearest my house. Bringing mindfulness to these parts of my drive helps ease my transition into the next space and allows me to be truly present when I arrive. Doing the same thing starting from the first or last stop on the subway or bus might work for you, if you don’t commute by car.