When Possible, Sit Together

Today I got to watch CMP’s fabulous facilitator, Lisa Sheehan, work with the camp counselors at the Darien Y as they get ready for the arrival of summer campers. We’re hearing from many educators that COVID has taken a toll. Many little ones have missed out on as much as a year of in-person schooling. Kids don’t just learn reading and writing at school, they learn essential interpersonal skills, so the lost year means lots of kids are behind in these skills, making caring for a room full of them even more challenging than ever. It’s been a tough few years on the adults, too. Lisa shared tips for how to bring awareness to our own emotional states, as well as tools for self-regulation when we’re feeling like our nervous system is leaning toward “tilt”. If we can stay regulated, those around us are more likely to sense into that regulation and emulate it. It’s contagious in a good way!

The room started out a bit fidgety, but as Lisa instructed us on how to bring our attention into our hands and feet and faces and shoulders, the room grew progressively stiller. When she invited us to narrow our attention to what it felt like to breathe, bringing our attention back to the breath every time it wandered away, you could feel the energy level in the room settle. By the end of the practice, you could have heard a pin drop.

I felt great joy as counselors (many of them high school and college students) reflected how relaxed they felt. Alongside that joy, there was also an ache in my heart. It felt so good to be in the same room, practicing with a group of people! Before COVID, CMP offered its community sessions in person, usually in libraries. There is incredible power in coming together and practicing in person - in feeling the energy level of the group shift as the meditation progresses… a sense that we’re doing this work together, supporting each other. Many of us practice for longer, and with greater diligence when we’re in a group. There is a reason that the first word in our name is Community.

For the time being, our only in-person sessions take place on Tuesdays at 12PM at Ferguson Library in Stamford. We encourage you to join us there! While we wait for the circumstances to evolve so the we can be together in person in more locations, we’ll continue to strive to offer a sense of community and connection in our virtual live sessions.

In the meantime, we encourage you to find a friend to sit with in person, maybe outside under a tree on a park bench or on a patio or balcony. You can take turns leading each other in meditation, put on a guided meditation from the CMP website or an app, or join a live CMP session as a group. However you do it, we encourage you to explore what it’s like to meditate with others in person.

As for when we’ll be able to offer more sessions in person, it depends on local libraries, on the health, well-being and comfort of our facilitators and on the comfort level of our community members. We’d love to hear from you and we encourage you to reach out to your local library if you’re interested in being able to meet there.

As ever, we invite you to join us for any, many or all of our live sessions this coming week.

May all of us feel connected and part of a community,

Your CMP family