Squiggle & Heart No. 21

The moment has arrived, a brand new Squiggle & Heart! The drawing wobbles a bit, I had to do this on a moving train as I head back to NYC from 2 days teaching at Smith College. I had an amazing time doing lectures, a screening and panel discussion, and facilitating a conversation among students and faculty in the theater department about compassionate casting practices, and extending inclusion, access, and general welcome from the audition room to the rehearsal room. I have quite fallen in love with being an Itinerant Scholar, and hope to do more of this work. If you are a member of a higher education community and would like to discuss a visit to your school, please get in touch!

One of my first meditation teachers once referred to mindfulness like gently training a puppy. You ask the puppy (your mind) to sit, and it will immediately get up and walk away, so you gently, without judgment and with great love and affection ask it to sit again… over and over and over and over…

My therapist, relatedly, refers to “stress” as the distance between the mind and the body. If your body is here, but your mind is elsewhere (either in space or in time), then you are experiencing stress - perhaps not unlike the tension on a leash. The good news is - as I explained to my NYU students last week who have entered into a challenging, busy period of the semester - science has shown that the physical benefit of mindfulness practice, lies not in the the holding of focus (the “sit”) but in coming back over and over again. Each moment of coming back activates the parasympathetic nervous system, and facilitates healing, relaxation, and homeostasis, or the “rest and digest” functions.

So keep training those puppies, and know that every moment of straying is in turn the valuable gift of coming back.