Tag Archives: reconnect

Give time

18 December 2013

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Do you remember the time when there was no internet? No cellphones, no smartphones, no computers, no emails – just perhaps a landline, but no answering machine!

Television, yes, but no broad casting 24/7 and only a few channels to chose from.

Do you remember when the shops were closed on Sundays?

That was peace!

To me, holidays and Christmas in particular, means peace and time to reconnect with the people I love. But it seems to have become increasingly more difficult to actually create that space of complete peace. Don’t you think?

Just have a look and see how distracted we are here and  here – these stories made me laugh, but really, they are sad!

Stories of people falling down stairs while texting, someone falling off a bridge, a lady into a fountain, someone fell down onto the  train tracks at the station! All were they  “Wexting” – walking while texting.

In London they are padding the lampposts because people walk into them while texting….

People in restaurants busy on their phones and not in contact with the people they are with.

All this 24//7 online connection is making us crazy, more and more stressed and disconnected.  We are missing out on precious present moments.

So how do we create a space of peace, or at least more of it?

How about something as wonderful as an “Unplugged Holiday” ? Just a few days…… unplugged, undisturbed –  connected to the real world?

Join me on my “unplugged holiday” 

This is what I plan to do:

  •  I will turn off my iPhone over Christmas
  • unplug my computer
  • No checking email, no blogging, no twitter, no Facebook, no Pinterest

I will attempt to convince my teenagers to do the same, I know it will be a hard one, but perhaps as a role model I will inspire them further down the road.

After all THE most important gift we can ever give one another – is time, time to truly be,  present with life and with each other.

“Our relationship lives in the space between us – it doesn’t live in me or in you or even in the dialogue between the two of us. It lives in the space we live together and that space is sacred”

-Martin Buber

 IMG_1362I wish you peace, reconnection and fun this holiday! 

Check this great idea out from the Clinton family:

Gifts that Give

Balancing life with mindfulness

27 September 2012

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I don’t know about you – but my meditation practice went down the drain as we got into summer with the kids being home, guests arriving, dog sitting, trips away from home and things going on all the time.

Meditation is one of those things that is as important to me as brushing my teeth. It is where I reconnect with myself, find balance, tune in to my core, listen to the songs of my soul and come home.

When I get out of my life-balance rhythm, I suffer and it leads to unrest in my body. As a result, I get stressed, I feel grumpy more often, feel restless. I get distracted and feel disconnected. I may overeat, convince myself I don’t have time to run or that I really, really need that bag of chips!

When this happens, I know it’s time for me to reconnect with myself, and one of the best ways I find, is mindfulness meditation.

In an earlier post I wrote about how meditation changes the brain – how meditation keeps us clam and grounded long after we finished mediating. It helps us stay calm and focused, even in stressful situations. The situation is very much like the way that running helps us to burn fat even in between runs and while resting, because our muscles have become a fat burning furnace. The same happens in the brain when we mediate – and even after just a short period of time it is possible to see changes in the brain. The propensity for relaxation becomes larger and it becomes easier to find back into the same peaceful place within, just as we experience during meditation.

I know that in beginning meditation may very well feel inside like Times Square during rush hour! It takes a while to find the calm and it is important to remember that meditation does not mean that the mind is totally quiet. As my mediation hero, Jon Kabat-Zinn, says: “If you have a mind, it is going to wander”! When the mind wanders and you start thinking about shopping lists, who is driving the kids to soccer, what you should have said to someone or should not have said, when you start telling yourself you will never learn to meditate and you don’t need it anyway – the trick is, to return to the breath – again and again, without judgement.

I have downloaded my meditations to my phone so I can hear them whenever I need them – 5 min, 10 min, 15 min 20 or 30 minutes meditations – voila no excuses.

The latest addition to my collection is a Mindfulness Meditation App – it has 4 guided meditations 3 min, 5 min, 15 or 30 min – it also has 4 silent meditations and a guided Body Scan. You can set it so that at certain times, it reminds you that it’s time to meditate. It can even poke you at certain intervals to remind you to be more mindful and allowing yourself to be exactly as you are – not escaping life as it is, but to be mindful in the moment.

For years I have used Jon Kabat-Zinn’s  mindfulness meditations and I never get tired of them

Here is a workshop Jon Kabat- Zinn gave at Google some years ago