Mindfulness Blog

This week’s email introduces a technique uses the STOP sign as a tool for instruction, integration, and inspiration.

Has an emotion, thought, or sensation ever hijacked your morning before you even had your coffee? One moment you're fine — the next you're irritable, contracted, or just... off. Most of us have been conditioned to push those feelings aside, fix them quickly, or talk ourselves out of them. But what if the most powerful thing you could do was simply be with them?

CMP recently completed our new program, Goodnight Meditations, a 4-session program that met weekly on zoom. I'm reflecting on participant feedback and how mindfulness contributes to healthy habits and experiences at bedtime.

Five months of brief stories from the field

Through our mindfulness practice, we awaken to each new moment with kind curiosity.  When we direct our curiosity inward, we might notice: how it feels to breathe, sensations in the body, thoughts on the mind, and we may notice a variety of emotions coming and going. Holding time and space for this noticing, with kind curiosity, can provide insight into how we're doing and lead to self-care strategies if needed.

On Thursdays CMP brings a weekly mindfulness meditation program to a group of people reentering society after incarceration, and in yesterday's session we shared Empathetic Joy as the main meditation. 

I had the distinct honor to sit in a private conversation with Dr. Vivek Murthy, the former U.S. Surgeon General and some of Connecticut's most committed community builders yesterday. 

Each day I try to wake up and remind myself what a privilege it is to be able to wake up and try again. No two days feel the same. And yet, the returning, the awareness itself, is always there. Especially on the hard days.

The other night, I was rocking my littlest one, Ruby, to sleep. Ruby has a classic second child energy. Confidence beyond her years, always down to party and as such, never quite ready to sleep. 

In uncertain times, mindfulness reminds us that we can pause, breathe, and return to one another.