The Conscious Classroom

COVID-19 Integrative Mindfulness - Whole Person Wellness

May 22, 2020 Amy Edelstein Episode 10
The Conscious Classroom
COVID-19 Integrative Mindfulness - Whole Person Wellness
Show Notes Transcript

How can we integrate all we are thinking and feeling at this time? What is the Body-Mind connection? When we take into account thought patterns, the frameworks we rely on to make meaning, and the quality of our awareness, we start to open up and integrate our entire experience. 

Just paying attention without also examining the context within which we are paying attention is partial. Just exploring our worldviews and interpretive frameworks without paying attention to the qualities of consciousness and to the clarity of our own awareness is also partial. In this episode you'll be led through some body scan for relaxation so you can better manage your own experience.

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Welcome to the conscious classroom podcast, where we're exploring tools and perspectives that support educators and anyone who works with teams to create more conscious, supportive, and enriching learning. I'm your host Amy Edelstein, and I'll be sharing transformative insights and easy-to-implement classroom supports that are all drawn from mindful awareness and systems thinking the themes we'll discuss are designed to improve your joy and fulfilment in your work and increase your impact on the world we share.

Let's get on with this next episode.

I'm gonna talk about the body-mind connection and the importance and usefulness of mindfulness and context-setting tools for ourselves. This is geared towards us. These, tools can and are used for teens. So what you're learning now, you can also apply in the classroom or with your students or with those that you counsel, we're also gonna do some short practices.

In this session, I'd like to do some body scans for stress reduction and relaxation. The couple of things that people are putting in the chat is organizing and prioritizing time. This is a big challenge right now. Our structures are taken away from us and everything's sort of thrown up in the air and it sort of feels like you're grasping at confetti in the air and trying to piece those pieces of confetti into a picture that looks like your professional job.

Which I'm sure you're all very skilled at and which these times make it very hard to do just the background, stress and uncertainty and worry about those we know, or those that we serve and their health and wellness, makes it very hard to have brain space for our jobs. When we talk about and start practising some mindful awareness, this will help.

It'll help both create more. Because in crisis, we narrow down and, our field of vision narrows. And so we don't have enough room to move. It's a little bit like those dancers on Snapchat, they're trying to fit into their narrow ice screen. So they only do like movements that are that narrow, which they're very creative at, but it's interesting.

It's not the free flow movements of the sixties culture as a culture, we're experiencing a lot of free. And expanding into that space. The other comment is I feel like I'm not being, I'm not properly doing my job. I can't see the students that I'm supposed to serve. I share that concern and frustration as well.

I worry, usually, we serve about 1900 students a year. So every semester we're seeing about 800 students a week in different schools. With these tools and, and direct self-care. And I have no idea how they're doing. I don't, they're probably bored and missing their friends and not knowing what to do with their time.

And there's, we don't have any way of reaching them. And I know that you'll be able to connect with them more through Google meets this week and next week and in upcoming weeks. But we've lost a lot of time. So reconnecting with our students when they've been backed. This way is also gonna present a challenge.

So as we're learning how to function with the social distancing, with our virtual, you know, more or less confinement to the home, as much as possible until this passes, we're creating a momentum of distance. And as educators, we're trying to create a momentum of warm and supportive relat. So the fact that we can't do that creates a lot of stress for us because exactly what we're supposed to do and to be good at our jobs and to support the students that we serve means that we want a relationship with them.

And we don't have that now, and we're gonna have to learn how to reestablish that moving forward. So these are, are, are very real, issues. The reason why I wanted to know. And if anyone else has other issues, what your cha, what I asked is to chat in what your challenge is this week, cuz every week is different.

But this week what's the challenge. And I wanna help you all realize the context around those issues, and understand why they feel the way they do. Because when we create awareness, we may, we can't solve these issues right now. But we can understand that this is, this is something culturally and also globally universally.

We're all struggling. So as we lean into the steps, we're going to take, to build new types of relationships with our students, with our colleagues, with our families, creating boundaries, creating structure, creating an order. So. Personal and child and work. Don't all conflate into each other where we feel like we're not doing anything.

Well, we're gonna start learning how to build those positive boundaries. And I hope that through this time, what we keep our sites on is we keep our sites on the changes that we need to make. Anyway. So one of the changes culturally we need to make is that because our economy is structured the way it is.

And most of us have to work quite hard to support our families. We don't have enough time together without work encroaching. I, I can't tell you how many emails I get from guidance counsellors who are emailing me at 1130 at night when they start school at seven 30 in the morning. And I'm sure you know what that's like, that does not sustain.

1130 at night, you should be asleep or with family or reading a book or doing something for your development and not catching up on your nine to five obligations. So I'm hoping that as we move out of this time where families have had time together, even if it's too much time together, that that time informs us too.

Work on ways that we need to change our culture so that it is more supportive of our life as a whole, cuz we have our professional life. We have our work life. We have our personal growth and development. Those things should all create a synergy. They shouldn't be so conflicted in the way that they are now.

So these are ways to start thinking, you know, this time affords us the opportunity. Look at norms that we've become used to and accustomed to in our culture, that don't work. They don't work for anyone long-term. So I'm inviting you all to use this time also to say we don't wanna go back exactly to the way things were.

And we're not gonna be able to, as a culture, they're gonna be big changes that we need to make. Let's make positive changes. Let's make them supportive changes. Let's make the changes that bring out the best of our humanity because otherwise, we're postponing our lives for some time in the future when we're gonna be able to have time.

And we don't really wanna live that. So I thought it would be nice to do a body scan today. A nice long one. What we're gonna do is we're gonna focus on sensation going through our body without any judgment. We're just going to be aware of sensation as we put our attention on our bodies. And if you find that for whatever reason, there are areas of your body that make you feel agitated or.

I'll be at ease. Just stop. This is not the this is not like the Arnold Schwartz nagger push until you drop a system of mindfulness meditation. I have done that. I have done very intensive practice where you sit and you don't move for two hours and you go on silent retreats for three months. 16 hours a day, and I don't recommend it.

I'm glad I had the experience. I've been doing this. I started doing this in high school when I was in 1978 when I was a sophomore high school. And then I continued all through college and then all my adult life I've been working with these tools. So I've had the opportunity to experiment in a lot of different settings.

So what I'm sharing with you is really how I work myself with these tools and really what I think. The most effective way to engage with all of this is so this isn't kind of the water down version for educators. This is, I, believe the best way to work with the tools and you can go quite deeply with them.

Take a comfortable seat where your feet are resting on the floor. So you can feel the floor beneath you. Feel the chair, your weight on the chair. And notice as you get in touch with gravity, pulling you down, that your spine rises and finds a place where your back is tall but without too much effort.

So you're not.

We're not in our computer postures, which might feel more normal. We're standing up tall, we're sitting up tall, but we're also at ease. We're relaxed. We're, we're experiencing a sense of balance.

And then just notice where your hands are resting. You know, they might be on the desk in front of you or on your thighs or one resting on top of the other. And notice just, is it smooth? Is it rough? Is it warm? Is it cool? Just noticing the immediacy of sensation in your hands

and you can close your eyes. If you'd like, you can keep watching the screen. You can just choose, a pleasant spot in the room.

and let's turn our attention from. The visuals to sensation and let's start at the top of the head and just bring your attention to the top of the head and see what you notice. Maybe you notice a little tingling along your scalp.

Maybe you notice a little tightness in the forehead.

Maybe you notice a little pressure in your ears,

bring your attention to your face and let your eyes soften and just settle back into your head. Letting that computer strain relax a little. Let your cheek soften and drop.

Bring your attention to your mouth.

Is it dry? Is it wet? Are you thirsty?

And bring your lips into just a tiny smile and see how it feels on your face and what happens.

Now move your attention to the back of your head, noticing where it rests on the top of your neck or head is heavy and then the narrow vertebrae of your neck carry that.

And imagine just with your mind's eye, that you could breathe just a little bit of space in between the vertebrae of your neck.

Allowing there to be a little bit more room, a little less compression, letting your head just float at the top of your neck.

Now notice the inside of

your head. Is there pressure? Is there space?

And if you'd like on the next couple breaths, you could just breathe in imagining that you're oxygenating your whole head inside and out refreshing all the.

And on your exhalation, just expelling all the toxins

and then just pay attention to the sensations of your head. Have things moved? Does it feel different? Is your attention drawn by a different sensation? You didn't notice.

And now move your attention from your head down your neck, into your shoulders, seeing what you notice.

Do they feel heavy?

Do you feel the weight of your arms drawing your shoulders down?

Do you feel the heavy bones of your shoulder blades and your back,

and then notice your whole tors? Your breath going in and out. Is it tight? Is it easy? Is it shallow? Is it deep? It doesn't matter. Just be with what you notice, be with it as it

is practising radical acceptance.

Bring your attention to your spine.

The spine is so amazing. It holds us upright. It's a channel. The spinal cord, brings so much important information from our bodies to our brains, to our brains, to our bodies.

And again, imagine that you could send your breath into your spine and imagine that you could oxygenate each of the little discs between each of the verte.

So that they were plump and full providing a good cushion, creating some space, relaxing your back,

giving you ease and mobility.

And now bring your attention to your diaphragm and stomach and intestines. Just noticed what's happening

tight or lose hungry or.

Too much coffee, not enough coffee.

Bring your attention to your torso as a whole. Any other sensations you notice?

The way your clothes feel on your skin light or heavy, warm or cool.

Now let's turn our attention to our arms, the long sheets of our arms and your hands and see what you notice, any sensations as you scan your arms. The balls of your shoulders down to the tips of your fingers.

And then let's move our attention. To the long bones of our thighs and the muscles of our thighs, our knees and shins and ankles and feet

scanning for sensation.

And then use your breath.

Just sending your breath all through your body and to anywhere in particular that you feel could use a little space, your ankles and your toes, your

stomach,  your stomach or your lungs, your neck, or your.

And you can begin to bring your attention back. And when you hear the bill, we can finish.

I've used the body scan a lot in my own life to help through, long-term injury and, chronic pain and recovery. And it's very flexible. So you, you can see that I did a couple of different things. So we went through sensations in the body, just looking at the sensation. You could just do that going from your head to your feet or your feet to your head.

You can use that at night when you're lying in bed, bringing your attention to the immediacy of your body. You start to notice as somebody chatted there, you start to notice things that you weren't aware of. When you notice tension, just be easy with it is sometimes you realize, oh, I need to stretch. Maybe I should stretch before I get into bed.

Or you can use the breath and just send the breath, with your mind's eye to that spot. And a, and imagine that the breath was just breathing in a little bit of.

The power of visualization, is, is extraordinary. And I just encourage you to experiment with it. There really, you can't do this wrong, so don't tie yourself up in knots about how to do it. But the scanning of the body just brings attention and immediacy to see how you feel. Do you feel more grounded?

Do you feel like you've arrived more? When we started half an hour ago, you know, do you feel like, oh, I'm here. I'm not being pulled in 25 directions, you know, and as soon as we stop, we will be pulled in all those different directions, but it might be a little bit easier to find our way. So that's the, what happens with mindfulness is you are just bringing attention to the immediacy of your experience without qualifying.

We're not judging our bodies. We're not working our bodies to become the athlete of the year with this exercise. We're just bringing awareness, to inhabit our bodies because usually, our mind is so far away. So you could extend this to half an hour, an hour. You can do it in just a couple of minutes.

I find. If I'm distracted, which is, I mean, these times are so frustrating cuz you feel like you wanna get something done and you can't get anything done because either everything you need to do, you have to build a whole new system for, because like our programs used to be all in person and now they're having to go all online, which means web skills that you don't have and video skills you don't have and et cetera, et C.

So it's hard to get things done. And also it's just hard to focus. It's hard to prioritize, cuz there's been this stop and we can't move forward doing a body scan, especially when you can't focus and can't figure out what's next. It gives you something to put your attention on so that the right thing can come to the surface.

One of the comments is, you know, that the mind's floating from thing to thing. That's. It's not it's okay. First of all, it takes time. Mindfulness is it's a skill that we have to practice. We're not gonna be experts at it. The first time around people do this, all their lives. You know, they, they do it for 60, 70 years.

They start in their twenties and they go all their lives. There's a reason for it. So it's the same, you know, as a musician, if somebody handed me a guitar, I'd be useless right now, but I'm sure if I tried every day, you know, in 20 years maybe I'd develop some musical ability limited. So, with the mind wandering, what happens with mindfulness is you start to get used to it because we're not fighting the mind.

This is not a thought cessation program. This is not a hypnosis program where you're supposed to click out of your mind and into something else. I don't know anything about hypnosis. I know that it was used a lot for things like, cessation of smoking and things like that. I, I don't know anything about it, but.

Sometimes the kids go, miss, is this hypnosis? Don't know, we're just watching. We're observing, but they say that because they're, they, sometimes they slip into this space where the mind is quiet, but you don't need a quiet mind. All we're doing is paying attention. The thing is when we're paying attention, we start seeing that the mind is moving versus when we're lost in thought we're completely identified with that thought that's moving around.

So we're pulled back and forth and back and forth by that thought, cuz we're identified. So when, when we're watching our thoughts, we're not identified we're that which is aware of thought it's not dissociation. It's not an objective witness. We're not stepping outside ourselves. We're not like, it's hard to explain, but we're not we're ourselves, but we're expanding the context.

So the example,  the example I always use with which some of you have probably seen if you've been in the class before. Our hand represents everything we're thinking about the mind is a machine. It generates thought. So this is everything we're thinking about and is always going on. Usually, we don't see any different distance between ourselves and what we're thinking.

So when we try to look at our thoughts, all we see is just complete total identity. If you move your hand out just a little bit. If we get a little bit of space on our thought, we can see the thought a little bit more objectively, but you can't see it at all. When we practice mindfulness, where we're aware, we can see our thoughts and go, oh, that's interesting.

We can choose to look at it. We can choose to look at it from a distance and see the context all around it. Or we can choose to look at it closely. So we can see, oh, this is very interesting. It's a hand. I can look at the back. I can look at the front. It's connected to my arm. I'm in a context I'm talking to you.

There are other people in my world, so we're not completely identified with thought. That's what mindfulness does for us. It doesn't take away the thought. And when we're observing the thought, it's still our thought. We're not some dispassionate witness. That's separated. From ourselves, we're simply creating a little bit more space.

So if you're noticing that your thoughts are racing all over the place and you had a hard time paying attention to the instructions, that's just going on anyway. So now you're aware. So if you feel tired at the end of the day, you go, oh, my mind was racing, surprise, surprise. These are stressful times.

And then you're okay. You don't, you understand why things are the way they are. Without adding intensity and stress and judgment and negativity. And self-criticism on top of the pressures that we already have. It doesn't help.

So mindfulness is really to help us be gentle with ourselves and be accepting of ourselves and know what's happening. Without, without that kind of self-recrimination because the mind's just a machine and then we can say, wow, my mind is really busy. I can't focus. I'm probably like three-quarters of the planet right now.

Okay. That's the way it is. I'm gonna keep going anyway and I'm gonna do some things that will help me relax. You know, I'll do some body scan or I'll do some mindful breathing. So that'll help me centre a little bit, even though my mind's all over the place. And maybe I just need to go for a walk and maybe I need to put down what I'm doing today and come back to it later.

And, or maybe I need to accept that today was one of those days where I just really didn't get anything done and be okay because of how we navigate this time. And the gentleness and compassion that we're allowing ourselves to experience are gonna help our immune systems. We all know that stress puts pressure on the immune system.

We all need to stay healthy for ourselves, for our families, for our parents, our ageing parents, our grandparents, and everyone in our circles. We need to stay healthy for them. Creating extra stress for ourselves is, is gonna. Put a demand on a system where the actual opposite is needed right now. So if you feel like, you know, if you come from the school of, you know, where you were told, you know, just, you know, buck up and do it anyway, recognize that that's gonna, that deeply ingrained American habit of, you know, just do it is not necessarily gonna help us.

Right. So we need our health. We need our sanity, we need our stability, and that's gonna start with this kind of, you know, radical acceptance of things as they are, so we can move forward intelligently.

I was thinking, also about little rituals, I mean, rituals kind of a big term, or it's a new age term, but little habits that make a difference. I was thinking, you know, particularly about like either habit in the morning, right. When you get up or, okay. Thanks for coming. Yes, bye. Either habits right in the morning or habits at the end of the day are there and you can chat or you can unmute any things that you do that help make a difference that creates a little bit of.

Sanity or stability. I have a few which I'll share any ones that you guys are doing,

personally in the morning. I, I, I find, yes, so the morning, you know, getting up early to do faith-based, reflect. So important if we, if we have a faith that we're, connected with, now's the time to take a long walk? Yes. Take a long walk at least once a day. For some getting out is just so important.

Moving the body, not having anywhere particular to go being, Just being in life, you know, and seeing the life around us, even though we're, sequestered,

noticing your own, the things that you appreciate about your life because it's very easy these days to wake up on the wrong side. To feel frustrated for nothing happened yet, but just to feel frustrated for no particular reason before you, before anything objective starts to frustrate you and either having a gratitude journal or just a journal where you just write and maybe you have two different journals, one journal where you're trying to work out the things you need to do.

And another one that's just for the things you appreciate, the things that you're grateful for, the things that you notice. The things that moved you, we have so much, that's harsh in our world right now, or frightening that, that taking that time for reflection of the things that we appreciate can make a big difference.

It doesn't have to be a lot or just looking around your house and maybe, there's, something that you find beautiful. I tried to, I have a 90-year-old mother and I tried to bring her some food things. Not realizing that her entire centre is closed. You can't even drop things off for her. So they sent me away.

But, she's out in Roxboro and, Langnau school is right there where we usually teach. And I have a friend who lives right next to Tolan. And now. Big bushes and she cut me some of these. So just having fresh flowers, out of an experience that was a little concerning, a little worrying. I mean, I'm happy, they're closed, but I'm worried about my 90-year-old mother, who's losing her memory and she functions a lot less than people think she does.

And, so, but I appreciate this. I appreciate the safety that they're trying to provide. To her and the other people there. I appreciate that there are these beautiful lilacs that just started blooming. I appreciate that Langnau school is there and that the teachers and staff have been, trying to provide support for their students.

Not that successfully yet, but they're trying, 

yes, the garden. So letting things grow at this time is, is helpful. Being appreciative, noticing, the small things that even in challenging times, taking time to make space for that, what it does is it gives some control back in our hands. We, we are asserting ours. Power of choice over our experience.

We're choosing to put time and attention on those things that are positive. We're not saying that it's not a hard time and there isn't a lot that's wrong, but we're also exerting our will to recognize that, which is good. And that's very important because that's gonna help us move from one good thing to another good thing, to another good thing.

And that's gonna help us through cuz we will. On the other side of this. As we talked about at the beginning, we wanna cultivate habits that are going to sustain us now and that are the well-being habits that we want to move forward with.

Thank you for listening to the conscious classroom. I'm your host, Amy Edelstein. Please check out the show notes on inner strength, and foundation.net for links and more information. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and pass the love. See you next time.