Being with What Is During the Holidays

Holidays are awe-filled and also can bring about feelings of sadness, grief and loneliness for ourselves and our students. Join Amy Edelstein in this episode of The Conscious Classroom Podcast as we explore how to let go into the present moment and find the posture that allows us to be with what is with grace, strength, and presence.  

The holiday season can be a challenging time, filled with mixed emotions and societal expectations. As educators, we have the unique opportunity to guide our students through these complexities with grace and awareness. This episode goes deep with a guided meditation that will transcend the superficial and allow you to access an experience of presence that can sustain and fulfill you. 

Transcript

Amy: 0:10

Welcome to the Conscious Classroom podcast, where we're exploring tools and perspectives that support educators and anyone who works with teens to create more conscious, supportive and enriching learning environments. 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 own joy and fulfillment in your work and increase your impact on the world we share. Let's get on with this next episode. Hello, welcome to the Conscious Classroom. My name is Amy Edelstein.

Amy: 0:57

Today, I want to talk about the holiday season and how we can approach it in a way that really deepens our own experience of the holidays and provides a steady and confident example for our students. Holidays in our culture are often times that are a little bit ambivalent for us and for our students. Our students often experience loneliness and mental health challenges, and, whether they're deeper mental health challenges or just simply an inability to navigate, a sense of aloneness or a sense of not quite fitting into the roles, a sense of not being where, in the state of mind that one feels like one should be, in a sense where one may not have as many close friends or near or dear ones or where there may be grief and loss. The push from our culture to consume, to get gifts, that gifts make one happy, that buying will fill the void, further exacerbate these feelings of not quite fitting in. As teachers, we need to navigate this for our students as people, human beings. We have to navigate this for ourselves and as role models of what's possible, of people who practice mindful awareness, in order to develop our capacities for unconditional love, acceptance of what is ability to be present now, acceptance of what is ability to be present now, a sense of the fullness and completeness of the moment, a living in the center of sacredness and awe. It's incumbent on us to demonstrate that joy and fulfillment and love and compassion and rejoicing and celebration that comes from an intimate connection with the moment, with the moment. So how do we do this? What the conscious classroom is all about is holding out that ideal that we're striving for, that we want to share, and demonstrate that we can practice. There are tools along the way, there are activities and exercises and contemplations and orientations that will help us get there.

Amy: 4:23

So where do we start? First of all, starting with our own practice of being present, being aware, being able to tend to ourselves, to tend to what's happening in the moment. Being fully present, even with sadness or grief, or emptiness or loneliness, means that we're fully alive. We're fully present. We're awake and able to bear witness to, to be with, to be a companion to ourselves, unafraid of emotion, not drawing any conclusions about what we may be feeling, recognizing that some of these deeper wellsprings of emotion lead to insight, lead to openings, lead to an enrichment of our humanity. We simply don't want to dwell in them in a morose way. But when we're dwelling in those morose feelings, we're not really present. We've lost touch with the immediacy and awakeness of the moment. Being present, you can use your breath as an anchor, watching the inhalation and the exhalation, really being with the sensation of the moment and then noticing of interpretation around the feelings or thoughts. Our interpretation that comes from the past, comes from memory, comes from identity, comes from fear, comes from indulgence in those feelings. Indulgence in feelings is not being present. It's slipping away from the immediacy of the present into our minds, into our memories, into a morass that's disassociated from reality as it is. Being present with grief or sadness or loss or confusion, or simply spaciousness, brings with it an aliveness and an awakeness.

Amy: 7:02

If you're struggling with this, I encourage you to practice longer. So if you're used to practicing for short amounts of time and you even want to shorten those because you become impatient, practice much longer than you're used to. Let yourself be with yourself without moving away. That being with oneself, being present with, is a deep expression of self-acceptance and love. It's a deep acceptance of being with oneself as one is and letting that be enough, without stories or confusion or distraction. Really being disciplined about your mindfulness practice during these times can reveal to you your own strength, the momentum you've built over your months and years and decades of mindfulness practice. And as you tap into that reservoir of strength and consistency, there's an anchor and a weightedness and a firmness and a resoluteness and a confidence in oneself, in one's ability to be with life as it is, that allows for the richness, the juiciness of being alive to come to the forefront. And when that richness and juiciness of being alive comes to the forefront in your own being, it's that strength that's going to show up in the classroom for your students, for your family, for your spouse, for your relatives, for your spouse, for your relatives, for your friends.

Amy: 9:12

So the first thing is always returning to the essence of the practice of meditation, being bearing witness to what is with loving friendliness, with loving friendliness and companionship. You know that picture of a beloved dog snuggling close by the fireside, fireside, it's that loving friendliness and settling in with yourself that you want to bring to yourself. That loving friendliness is going to enable you to be present, peace of mind, to not get involved, to feel empathy, to feel connected but not to tip into your students' emotionalism. And that ability to have loving friendliness and that ability to have loving friendliness first towards yourself and then towards your students, is what shifts the classroom context during this time. The second practice during this time is to really work on extending gratitude, bringing gratitude to the forefront of your consciousness.

Amy: 11:02

Let it not be to get your steps in, let it not be a cold and scientific measurement for your health or a self-criticizing activity in relationship to your weight or your strength. Let it be a pilgrimage and, whatever that means to you, you hold on your right shoulder that image of that which you hold sacred, so that as you're walking around the park, or you're walking around the block, or you're walking around the shopping mall, or you're walking around the parking lot in your townhouse unit, you're actually doing a sacred pilgrimage without what you hold most dear on your right shoulder. On your right shoulder, and maybe you listen to music that inspires you, or maybe you have a poem or a phrase or a prayer that you repeat to yourself, or maybe you have beads that you can click through your fingers as you walk, keeping your attention on that which you hold most dear, that which you value, that which is sacred to you, and making each step a part of your expression of that sanctity. Whether this holiday time aligns with your own religious practice or not in some sense doesn't matter. You can allow the presence of a holiday spirit to tap into your own interpretation and understanding and knowingness of that which is near and dear to your heart. We don't have to believe in the Christmas trees and mistletoe and all of the other symbolism of this moment in order to turn our attention to that which fills us with joy, with preciousness, with sacredness, with that which is not measured by money or by time, or by success or by the practical. Letting ourselves be full and complete and express all of that is what will bring the holiday spirit to life, and when we care about that, we can be present in our classrooms with our students and when we care about that, we can be present in our classrooms with our students. Happy for those who have material gifts that they're excited about and supporting our children, but happy because of something deeper, because of that valuing of connection and joy and signs of affection and signs of love.

Amy: 14:41

The human connectedness is so important and I know that our culture has really struggled with that. Since COVID, we've been moving further and further away from community and family and the simplicity of being together in person and sharing time and sharing silence, sharing games and sharing food, sharing warmth and sharing spirit with each other. The COVID time had a deep impact on our culture and on our global culture. It lodged a fear of one another in us. It lodged a preference for isolation over connectedness. It created loneliness and that loneliness is still a bit of a shadow over us.

Amy: 15:40

As practitioners of mindful awareness and systems thinking, we want to understand that how we came to this holiday season is deeply impacted by the recent holiday seasons. We carry with us some impact, some effect and understanding. That brings a sense of gentleness and sympathy and empathy for ourselves, for our culture, and it brings a sense of openness and curiosity. How can we lean in, how can we engage with this moment, with the momentum that's led us here, and not just try to go back or fix it, but recognize that there have been disruptions In our sense of human connectedness, and what can bring those about? Simply forcing ourselves on others doesn't help bring that connectedness back. First we need to connect with ourselves and feel that sense of goodness and joy, feel that sense of wanting to be with others and others wanting to be with us, and then creating possibilities and environment for that to happen. Creating gatherings and not worrying about them being perfect, not worrying about them even having everyone we love present. Creating simple ways to connect, simple ways to get together, simple ways to be with one another, simple ways to get together, simple ways to be with one another and, through that being with one another, experiencing and rekindling the joy and love and holiday spirit.

Amy: 17:51

Let's take this time to do a short meditation and really allow yourself to come into a presence, a sense of spaciousness and awareness and being where you can really let go. Bring your attention to your whole body, to that warmth in your belly, that prana, that chi that brings light and life into you. As you turn your attention there, feel your sense of boundaries move further and further away from your core, feel that sense of vibrancy in your center and yet feel that you are as big as the ocean. Really, let yourself rest in yourself, experiencing that field of consciousness, that profound sense of self. Thank you, and work with your breath, breathing in in a natural rhythm, breathing in fullness, presence, a quiet and subtle, almost invisible, but very real ecstasy and joy flood your being, expanding your heart area, your chest, expanding your vitality center in your stomach, expanding your wisdom center behind your eyes, behind your forehead, feeling the shape of your body beginning to glow so that those three energy centers become stronger and the light and the pulse from each merge with one another. So there's a central core of luminosity and love.

Amy: 22:46

Take a deep breath in breathing in the presence of all dimensions, of all life, of that one unified essence of consciousness in all its multiplicity of form. Let it fill your whole being, which has no boundaries, breathing in the infinite consciousness so that it pools in the infinite consciousness of yourself no difference between the outer and the inner, full and vibrant and filled with bliss and joy. Open your palms and imagine holding two orbs glowing with that presence and consciousness, two balls of energy, or prana or chi, vibrating that miraculous paradox and illusion of a form made out of all that is and what it could never be separate from. Recognizing that you are inherently all the love that is and that you could never be separate from. And now begin to release your focus, allowing your attention, your vision, your mental state to return to your familiar surroundings, focusing on what is around you and feeling the glow of that different object of attention. Object of attention, feeling that glow from putting your attention on the current of energy and love and presence and awareness that permeates all that is.

Amy: 26:53

And now, no longer feeling separate, no longer feeling bereft, no longer feeling like there's anything you need to do or be or become in order to experience the awe and joy of the holiday season. Reaffirm for yourself, your own experience, that you are in this moment exactly enough. And, as we close this podcast, let's collectively dedicate the joy and bliss and fruits of our practice to our own calm, abiding in presence, to the upliftment of all beings in all directions and all times, and to harmony, love and care throughout the cosmos. Happy holidays. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to the conscious classroom. I'm your host, amy edelstein. Please check out the show notes on inner strength foundationnet for links and more information, and if you enjoyed this podcast, please share it with a friend and pass the love on. See you next time.