Beyond Mindfulness
I’m a big fan of mindfulness. Being able to turn inward and dwell with myself is crucial to my work and to my life. I simply
cannot be healthy
without practicing this crucial skill. Pretty much all the time.
BUT.
When it comes to wellness, mindfulness is just the first step.
Here’s why: Emotions are not just blips. They are not just waves of sensation that break over our souls, only to retreat into the haze. (Even if that’s how they behave when we sit in meditation.)
Emotions are information.
Yes, we can watch them come and go, and that can be relieving. But every single emotion is a signal that can help us balance our lives and align our relationships.
So paying attention to them can be
life-changing.
For example:
Say I’m agitated. I sit on my meditation cushion and breathe. Say, over time, an emotion comes up and I label it. “Anger.”
(This is such an important move, as being able to feel an emotion and label it succinctly is called
detachment
and detachment allows our minds to collaborate with our bodies rather than to be ruled by them.)
I could just let my anger go away, “like the weather,” as Oren Jay Sofer of 10 Percent Happier puts it. “It wasn’t here before, probably won’t be around later.” Done.
Or I could
get curious.
Why did anger arise? What does it mean?
Spoiler alert: It does not mean you’re a bad person. It does not mean you’re ungenerous or selfish or rotten or cold.
More likely your anger means you’ve experienced or witnessed an injustice, an imbalance, a boundary breach, which of course feels wrong and needs to be made right.
Think about it: What tends to make you angry?
being erased, unseen, overlooked, unacknowledged, taken for granted?
being treated like a sexual or exotic object?
being acted out on?
being merged with?
being misunderstood?
being treated unfairly or seeing someone else being treated unfairly?
All of these are moments of injustice. Imbalance. Boundary violation. To which anger is an appropriate response. But which require detachment (mindfulness) and then careful attention. Deliberation. So you can move backwards in time from the anger and discern the source.
If you can discern what makes you angry, then you can work your way forward towards a plan of action. Something you can do to address the source of your anger. Which transcends just managing the emotion. It gets you into the realm of
personal empowerment.
By, say, figuring out how to show up next time someone erases or merges with or misunderstands you. By deciding whether and how to be used by someone who’s acting out. By calling someone in when they’re being racist or sexist or otherwise unjust. By offering corrective action. By learning. And teaching.
In short,
mindfulness is not enough.
When it comes to personal wellbeing and empowerment, when it comes to changing the world — yourself, your relationships, your classroom, your students’ learning — you’ve got to take action. Action that is informed by mindfulness, yes! But, above all, action that goes beyond mindfulness and is solidly anchored in emotion work.