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mindfulness

Brooklyn Mama Mindfulness

August 28, 2018 By Anna Keller Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: anna keller, mindfulness, yoga

It always begins the same way. I wake up with a plan. Perhaps, this is my mistake. After all, is there such a thing as “planning” when you have a toddler? Is there such a thing as “mindfulness”? I didn’t think so. Not when my daughter ripped off her diaper and ran around the apartment yelling “Elmo! Elmo! Elmoooooo!” I definitely didn’t believe in mindfulness when I found a sock in the toilet, a raw egg from the fridge cracked over my desk and a piece of chewing gum on the back of my pants (that last one was totally my fault). I only first began to believe in mindfulness when I lost my temper at a coffee shop in Windsor Terrace. 

Mistake #1: I brought my hungry two and a half year old daughter to a coffee shop in Windsor Terrace, right near a park where we usually like to play. 

Mistake #2) I did not take her to the park where we usually like to play. Instead, I wanted to have a picturesque Brooklyn coffee. 

Mistake #3) I also had not eaten. 

Mistake #4) I had gone to bed too late the night before.

Hunger, sleep deprivation and the need to plan a day can take its toll on any mother. But, there is something about being a hip Brooklyn mama that triggers all kinds of high expectations. For example, we still want to be cool. We want our kids to grow up in a creative, culturally diverse setting. We want them to know about math, science, writing and how these subjects often spark a revolution. Many of us believe in the public school system. We believe that these things will set them out on a path to greatness. We believe that Lou Reed, Lena Horne, Joan Rivers and Jay-Z, all Brooklynites, are part of our children’s genetic makeup. Well, at least their neighborhood makeup. We also want them to have extraordinary upbringings. They should learn how to cross the street, ride their bikes safely along Prospect Park, window shop on Seventh Avenue in Park

Slope, yet be experimental enough to try brunch with us at the hottest new restaurant in Cobble Hill. And sometimes, when we think about all of these things, when we think about how to get from the Carroll Gardens playground, to the new bookstore on

Smith Street and still get back home in time for lunch, a nap, a snack and a cuddle…we lose it. We lose our tempers.

This is what happened to me, anyway. My two and a half year old did not want to sit at the café’s quaint table. She did not want to color with the Ziploc bag of broken crayons I had brought along. She did not want to look at pictures on my phone. I knew it was bad when she didn’t even want a vanilla Donut Factory donut. At the last second, when the tantrum was in full view of everyone trying to concentrate on their laptops, as my coffee spilled across the table and onto the floor, when I could feel that the room and everyone in it were holding their breath, I yelled. “Stop it!” I snapped, “just stop it right now!” 

Often, I think that as mothers we hold so much inside of ourselves that when the time comes, and we actually allow ourselves to break, we’re like a steam pipe that releases an explosion of hot air into the atmosphere. Yet, we don’t feel better after the air is released, we feel horrified. It’s like, how could we have lost control? Who do we think we are, human beings!?! If we are mothers who work, our guilt is magnified. We ask ourselves, how, when we have one free afternoon with our precious child, could we have lost our temper? Some of us have two children, or three. Some of us have nannies and some of us can’t afford the help. Whatever it is we have or don’t have, we are raising little people. People who will one day run for office, or build bridges, little people who will write books and hopefully not include the parts about their mothers bringing them to trendy coffee shops while losing their minds. 

Here’s what happened: I started to cry. Right there, in full view of the laptop convention, I burst into tears. The young girl behind the counter who looked like a 90’s supermodel with a shirt quoting Beyoncé that read, “I Woke Up Like This” bent down to help me clean up the spill. Her youth and beauty made me feel worn out and tired. When she bent over I could see her perfect breasts and thought of my own sagging ones. If her breasts had a voice they would say, “Hi I’m Linda and I’m Shirley, nice to finally meet you!” My 

breasts seem to say, “I’m Rita and this is Bob now leave me the hell alone.” If my breasts could smoke a pack of Camels, they would. My daughter touched my face with her pudgy hand and whispered, “sorry Mommy, sorry.” Ooof. 

So, yeah…mindfulness. That day my daughter and I skipped our visit to the public library free reading time series. We went home and ate cookies. We played with all of the dolls on the toy shelf and we put magnets on the fridge. We sang songs. We filled the tub with toy ducks. In those moments I realized I was living in the moment. There was no plan, no “oh, we should do this next.” That’s part of mindfulness and maybe that’s the hardest part of it: the ability to let go. Mindfulness is a superpower. It allows us to thrust ourselves into the full living moment without aggression or anger.

Mindfulness is a state of awareness. It is the ability to bring the breath back to the present moment. Having a plan is ok. Often, as a Brooklyn Mama, we need to have a plan. We live in busy, bustling neighborhoods. But, maybe that plan can be more flexible, and if it can’t be maybe our own minds can. 

If I had tuned into myself and been mindful the day of the coffee shop disaster, I would have taken a moment to find my breath.  I would have looked around and seen the situation. Then I would have understood that although I was a part of that situation, I still have the ability to look at the each moment from a third eye perspective. This idea will not stop my daughter from throwing a tantrum. It will not stop people from staring. The coffee is still spilled; the crayons are still broken. But with mindfulness the day is not ruined, instead it is steeped in possibility.

My daughter is throwing a tantrum. She is frustrated. I am exhausted. I feel that exhaustion. It’s ok to feel this way. It’s ok for my daughter to feel this way. Breathe. This is the moment. This is what’s happening in the moment right now. I want to cry. I feel so tired I want to cry. Feel this exhaustion. Breathe. Let’s pack up our things slowly, mindfully. Let’s put our bags back on the stroller. Let’s help the young woman cleaning up our own mess. Let’s do this mindfully. Look, she’s wearing a Beyoncé shirt. Breathe. Look, her breasts are perfect and mine are weary. “Sorry, Mommy, sorry.” I fed you with these breasts and they look like this because of love. My hair is a quiet tornado. I should have brushed it. Breathe. We are here, in Brooklyn, in a coffee shop, at a table, getting ready to go home. We are sleepy, cranky, overstrained, overburdened. We are fully aware. We are absolutely alive.

Filed Under: Bending Towards Brooklyn (Yoga) Tagged With: anna keller, mindfulness, yoga

A Daily Practice

February 15, 2016 By Ambika Samarthya-Howard Filed Under: Mindfulness Tagged With: Brooklyn, buddhism, Buddhist, enlightenment, meditation, mindfulness, Pema Chodron, sitting, Zen

When Pema Chodron, the well-known Western Buddhist writer and ordained nun, went to the dentist and he asked her what she did, she responded that she taught meditation. He told her that one day he would begin meditation when he was less busy. She said you probably won’t need it as much then.

A daily meditation practice is like getting to the gym: The longer you stay away, the harder it is to return to, and the more you do it every day, the more your body eases into the habit. When I first started my daily practice several years ago, I fought the usual demons: Restlessness while sitting, lethargy, laziness in getting to the cushion. It was only through repeated group practice at the non-lineage Interdependence Project in lower Manhattan that I began to integrate a daily practice into my life and start feeling the benefits.

[pullquote]Ultimately meditation and daily practice—however it transpires in our lives—can be our treat to ourselves and those around us throughout our lives (and especially the winter).[/pullquote]

In Brooklyn itself there are many centers that provide courses and spaces for mindfulness and meditation, including the Vajradhara Meditation Center in Boerum Hill, the Brooklyn Zen Center, and Third Root Community Center. Paul Sireci, dharma teacher at Third Root, started practicing when he was fourteen or fifteen. A former monk, he’s had a daily practice since he was twenty. “I think it’s given me a better perspective on my emotions. My lows are less low and my highs are not necessarily less high but they don’t seduce me in the ways they did before. I’m more content and when you are more content you don’t need to be wildly happy.”

A daily practice of even fifteen to twenty minutes can be surprisingly difficult in the beginning. Often sitting alone with our thoughts provokes more anxiety in us than peace, even though (or maybe exactly because) the primary purposes of meditation is to become friends with our own minds. People may not find slowing down easy or pleasurable. My husband enjoys his sitting practice except ironically when he feels particularly stressed or anxious, which is when meditation can really help ground us. Sitting with your own thoughts and feelings can be daunting, and it’s not until one begins to trust how they arise and pass, and approach themselves and others with gentleness and kindness that meditation becomes an essential part of one’s day.

Another hurdle to daily practice is prioritization— it sometimes feel overwhelming to bring in a new daily task amongst all the other responsibilities one has. The crucial turning point often comes when you can begin to see the benefits and changes your practice has for yourself and others around you. There’s a leap of faith and often some amount of discipline to go from the intention of having a daily practice to embracing one. At some point, not meditating feels like not taking a shower—like something is amiss.

Practice doesn’t always have to mean sitting. In fact, sometimes the rigidity of having a sitting practice itself intimidates many and can be an obstacle to meditation. Peggy Horwitz, a Brooklyn-based psychotherapist emphasizes mindfulness and kindness to oneself. “I’ve been meditating for over twenty years but for me practice means paying attention and going inward with kindness. For clients who already judge themselves for not sitting long enough or daily, practicing mindfulness throughout the day and in other ways can be equally powerful.”

While having a specific place and time for practice can help structure the daily routine, I often find that being mindful on my commute or while I am in line can be powerful elements of practice. They involve being kind to myself and others, of relating to those around me, and of paying attention at those key moments when we often forget ourselves and our surroundings the most.

Besides habit, there’s also faith. A teacher at the Interdependence Project, and long-time Brooklyn resident, Kate Johnson is a student at Brooklyn Zen and New York Insight. She remembers how it took her nearly three years to make daily practice a reality. “I had this unconscious belief that I was the one person in the world for whom meditation just wouldn’t work.  Of course, I was wrong.

“I think I was inspired to practice daily when I noticed how much kinder I was to myself and others on days that I practiced, and how much more I was able to let go of striving for perfection and just appreciate being alive. I practice meditation because I care about myself, and want to give myself an opportunity to feel grounded, expansive, and connected.  I spent so much of my life not treating myself very well at all.  Meditation is a way for me to tend to my own heart, so that I can tend to the world with love.”

Ultimately meditation and daily practice—however it transpires in our lives—can be our treat to ourselves and those around us throughout our lives (and especially the winter). And maybe if we’re finding ourselves too busy to consider it, we should feel even more compelled to sit. That challenge could be our biggest gift.

Buddhism and Meditation

Third Root Community Health Center

380 Marlborough Road

(718) 940-9343

Vajradhara Meditation Center

444 Atlantic Ave

(917) 403-5227

Brooklyn Zen Center

505 Carroll St. #2

(718) 701-1083

Rock blossom Sangha at Brooklyn community of Mindfulness: meet Sundays from 6:30-8:30 at Church of Gethsemane in Park Slope

Filed Under: Mindfulness Tagged With: Brooklyn, buddhism, Buddhist, enlightenment, meditation, mindfulness, Pema Chodron, sitting, Zen

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