Hello

Formation is creating what you perceive you want.

Transformation is when you are informed by experiences, emotions or paradigm shifts that your creation needs to change into something else.  Or when you are just changed by those circumstances without an intention to do so.

Form is part of all three words above.  We are energy and matter.  Form is the container for the integration of our matter/energy.

I wrote about the Tower Card in the Tarot.  It is a card of immediate, unmistakable transformation but there are many constructs that describe transformation.

In the Native American Animal Cards the Butterfly and the Snake are two cards of transformation.  The Butterfly because of its metamorphosis from caterpillar to butterfly.   The Snake because of how it outgrows its skin and has to shed its exterior skin, to transform into its new self.

Both change from the inside out.

Neither formation is considered inferior.

One card represents quantum transformation  (butterfly – two distinct forms) and the other linear transformation (snake – a process of maturity).

Connection to spirit can transform a person.  Those connected to spirit can feel transformed by prayer or meditation.  These are inside out processes.

Mindfulness can transform a person.  Paradigm shifting allows for an internal shift of perspective which can result in a transformation in thinking, feeling and action.

Forgiveness can transform a person.  Holding on to a hurt or a loss holds that experience close – maintains a connection.  There may be reasons to do this but it also inhibits other kinds of growth and other formations.  Allowing the experience to be – to be real and to have an effect – while letting it flow into the whole of who you are allows for the release of the holding pattern.

It allows for transformation – both quantum and linear.

Forgiveness is an allowing and an accepting – it requires mindfulness, understanding, compassion and grace.

Life is a process of formation and transformation.

Think about what formations you are needing or wanting to transform – or embrace the transformation that you are already in so that you may continue to be accepting, forgiving, creating, and living the whole of who you are.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Home is where the Heart is – a metaphor for using mindfulness, your intuition and feelings to evaluate what is the best action or situation, or what best serves you.  This is to say that mindfulness applied to feelings and emotions helps to guide your actions and plans.

I have discussed the usefulness of anger, frustration and irritation.  These emotions can be thought of as early warning systems to inform us that we are out of balance, caught in a survivor scenario or habit reaction pattern, or that someone has crossed one of our a boundaries – just like the alarm systems on our car or home.

When feeling these kind of feelings it’s useful to evaluate how you are out of sync and what you can shift in your perception or action to be in sync.

Maybe you have a misunderstanding with another person about your relationship or maybe you are agreeing to do something that takes you away from your best situation – like taking on too much or agreeing to be in a relationship that doesn’t serve you.

We tend to want to blame someone else for a negative situation; in some situations the other person is doing something that seems unfair or unreasonable, but what matters is how we respond.

Start from the perspective that you are responsible for your attitude and responses in the world.  From that perspective feeling negative or angry has something to do with you, too, not just a reaction to the other person but something out of sync in you.

How did you get into the angry-making situation?  How can you use figure/ground and paradigm shifting to help you see how you are co-creating the negative situation so that you can own that, and realign with your  best self.  It takes mindfulness.

The other side of this is when we feel joy or happiness, a feeling of connection or being in sync with our true nature – these feelings are also part of our internal guidance system.  They connect us with what brings us joy, and if we pay attention to that and do more from that joyous perspective, then we can find ourselves feeling a lot less of those negative feelings.

Now this is different from the feeling numb which some people call feeling good that comes with obsessive addiction.  This is misinterpreted as feeling good.

Feeling the rightness of something, that you are in sync in your life, is how you can have your heart guide you head – have your emotional guidance system guide your decision-making, planning, creating and living.

You’re using mindfulness to help you increase your awareness of the whole of your emotional response so that it can teach or guide you about yourself and your needs and where your center is.

From your center you can create the best possible situation, relationship, and parenting response.  Your center is that place where you can see both sides of an equation, see figure and ground and allow for a paradigm shift if necessary.  You are able to see your part in an argument or negative situation and take the mindful course which benefits the whole.

Carl Jung talked about this as synchronicity.  Steven Covey talks about it as the 90/10 principle that attitude affects/creates your life through your actions and reactions.  Joseph Campbell and Depak Chopra call it following your bliss.  Esther Hicks talks about is as the Law of Attraction.

And I think of it as mindfulness interaction to find your Path to Grace – your way to being fully responsive and aligned to your highest good – which results in an integrated spirit, mind, and body – living in your center.

If you can practice paying attention to how you feel and what brings you joy it can help to guide you in decision-making.  So using mindfulness in assessing what your Heart desires, helps to find your way Home (to your center).

From a spiritual perspective, Home is where the Heart is relates to a spiritual path of mindfulness, forgiveness and joyous connection.

When applied to parenting, you’re teaching and modeling compassion, understanding, accepting, and being with while guiding forward.  These actions as parents make it so that injuries may be avoided or healed from the inside out.

It allows for children to discover through their internal guidance system what is in their best interests.  Where they have talents and limitations and how to incorporate these in their actions and style of being in the world to create productive, happy lives.

Recognizing that how you respond may bring you away from Or closer to what you want is the key.  So that you may be in the flow and guide your life to where you want to be.

Whether you approach life as a thinker or a feeler, mindfulness applied to emotions leads to a balanced way of moving through your life when you let your emotions guide you to your center.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

It’s difficult to create what you want if you do not know what that is.

In most cases people can identify what they do not want, but are less clear about the picture they want to create.

Men and women get out of bad relationships and identify the things that were problems in that relationship and then focus on not choosing a person with those things – then the next relationship fails for a different reason.

The same is true of identifying what you want in an employee or employer – individuals focus too much on the most negative aspects of the outgoing employee and avoiding those, rather than looking at the whole picture and the interplay between that individual and the make up of the group in which he worked.

While you’re focused on avoiding one thing you miss something else.

I call this being attached.  The problem with attachment is that it tangles the free flow of energy so the best possibilities are blocked or you miss them.

When working with individuals in career counseling or relationship counseling I have them do an exercise about what brings them joy.  And I have them identify aspects of a job or person that are have to haves as well as preferences.  So the focus is on what works rather than what doesn’t.

Have to haves are the important characteristics that are requirements for the job.  In relationship that may have to do with religion, or political affiliation or looks, or even temperament.  In working environments they may be skill-sets that are required.

Anyone who has developed the key characteristics for a future employee knows how difficult this process is to complete.

I think it’s because we have a general way of going about the world that is similar to choosing food to eat at a buffet.  At a buffet there is a set menu of foods available, and you move down the table comparing the choices to each other – do I want salad or lasagna.

But I think the way to really create what you want is to consider a larger set of possibilities.  Miracles could be part of that set – they do not always present themselves but they may be there.

So creating what you want can take on a different process.

First you must have the ability to know what you want de novo, outside of what is necessarily offered – regardless of what is on the buffet table.

Strangely this process is most difficult when applied to your own personal happiness.  What you want to create in your own world.

Some of the things that keep getting in the way of identifying what we want are all the expectations from others about what we should do/be; and then there’s those pesky habit reaction patterns, and survivor scenarios too that interfere with our direct relationship with ourselves to ascertain what we want.

The application of mindfulness to this process helps us to remain in the present and to use our intuition and connection to joy to see our own path to grace.

Spend some time reviewing your life to identify what activities brought you the most joy as you were growing up.  Think small and big.

Don’t just evaluate if you liked math or puzzles; also think about how you spent your days and what activities were really joyful – singing, painting, innovating, walking walls, ice skating, riding bikes.

Now just because you loved painting doesn’t mean you should become an artist  – but it helps you identify what the components of your perfect path might be – art, exercise, writing, singing, playing cello.  And then put your energies into creating what you want.

There’s that great book out there about following your Bliss, I’m suggesting creating your life of the things that bring you Bliss.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

You don’t plant a seed and then the next day have fruit.  Whether talking about gardening, parenting, or visioning, the same is true.

Nourishment both energetic and material, opportunity, care, consistency, congruence, and mindfulness, are ever-present components in this development, growth process.  And it’s collaborative in the sense that you are being with while guiding forward.

The two biggest elements to true success in these endeavors is to remain mindful and to trust the process.

Applying mindfulness in everyday interactions takes faith. It creates faith too.  Lately my inner mantra has been “you have to trust the process”.  That doesn’t mean you are passive.  It means you are active, open, unattached, mindful and faithful.

Many valued aspects of life take time to develop, prosper, grow to maturity, and flourish.  Working to transform or create a healthy environment for learning or collaborating requires trust in the process and steadfast mindfulness.

And when there is an unexpected loss, or change in direction, the way in which you respond to that loss and integrate that transformation into the plan requires mindful, active interaction.

When working in groups you may find that you thought you had agreement but indeed you did not.

Under those circumstances it is important to go back to the beginning and see where you may have gotten off course from each other.  Usually there is a true agreement that then is affected by other matters or side concerns that are not brought into the situation openly. Other times there is a lack of agreement that has not been clearly identified.

In either case, due to this a slight skew a divergence begins to develop.  If people are not remaining connected and clear that slight skew can become a large divergence resulting in two parties that agreed at the beginning finding themselves with opposite positions.

This kind of divergence can steamroll, start out as slightly different and become very lopsided.  Remember when I talked about throwing pots on a wheel?  The slightest blip of imbalance becomes a wobbling mess because of the centrifugal force of the wheel and the faster you let the speed go the worse it gets.

I see this a lot in business partnerships, relationship partnerships/marriages, and parenting.

The same is true for collaboration in groups, especially if you want people to come to a consensus.  The slightest blip in this circumstance might be discussion outside the group which is called confidential but actually is a skewing of the process through an in-group/out-group behavior;  Or a beginning confusion about goals and priorities can have the same result especially if this is not brought to the fore to be resolved.

If you add speed, ie:  we have to decide immediately, or a lack of time, so that there isn’t sufficient evaluation of paradigms, and figure and ground theory, or investigation of perspective, then you get a greater imbalance in the outcome/product.

Once the process comes back together individuals are hurried and inexact in their decisions.  There is a dissonance of information, and therefore although they think they agree they end up with a lopsided thrown pot.

This usually happens when there are parties that don’t trust the process but want to control the outcome.  This occurs when there is an overall paradigm regarding power and resources that is a habit reaction pattern or a survivor scenario.  These are based on past experiences and interfere with interacting openly and mindfully.

Need to control outcome is based in survivor scenario mentality; trust in the process is based on thriving mentality and mindfulness.

The problem with relating in past time is that you are not actually seeing the situation in front of you.  Present time interaction means the relationship is happening in real-time and related to current events not past events.  It requires fuller, and more complete interactions, gathering information and being open to whatever outcome gets presented not attached to a specific outcome.  This is especially important in all kinds of relationships, decision-making, planning and visioning.

The first step is to slow down the process – when you immediately feel defensive, question yourself – what am I feeling and how is this different?   Then you can try to do some investigation about what the other person is actually saying, meaning, doing and see in present time what you feel.  Try to get a sense of the other person’s motivation, fear or block, or your own.

Sometimes it seems like things are going in the wrong direction yet may be part of the transformative process, because some things need to be broken-down before they can be re-built.

You have to discover if it is that or a skew in the process.

Having a faith or trust in the process allows for and engenders mindfulness and increases your chance for the best outcomes in parenting, relationship and group deicsion-making, planning, and visioning.

Staying present and having more thorough conversations rather than less, will help to continuously define the best step, focus, direction, or procedure while trusting the process and being mindful.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Have you watched the Disney channel lately?

If you have a child and you have a TV you’re going to get stuck on this station at some point.  It’s not your fifties TV that’s for sure.  And what are they really trying to teach our kids?  Well I can’t get into the heads of the studio talking heads, but from my perspective I can see indoctrination hook in, addict, market hard, and then release is the fishing strategy.

It’s a challenging task to stay on top of the many ways my child is being targeted and this is the Disney channel not HBO.

I can see I have my work cut out for me if I want to raise an enlightened, mindful, centered, balanced, independent-thinking child.

There’s this way of writing for pre-adolescents and adolescents that uses their colloquial language; and I don’t mean like and you know what I mean, down-low, or 411 – that would be cool or interesting or awesome.  No, just forget about grammar – split infinitives are so ever-present it’s difficult to identify all of them.  Adverbs do not include the requisite ly at the end of the word.  While other words are truncated to parts of the word – yo‘ instead of your.

Okay, you get the point.

So what can we do.  Well you could get rid of your TV; but as my Mom used to lament when she was raising us – you can raise a kid in a vacuum, but at some point they have to go out and navigate the actual world.

I think you have to give your kids the tools to navigate the world in which they live.

Limits, structure, mindfulness, attention to process, paradigm identification and shifting, and timely present-moment, compassionate interaction

The best response is mindful TV watching.  It’s an intervention similar to de-briefing after an interaction.  This is the reason that child development experts suggest you watch TV with your kids.

After viewing offer interpretations and clarifications about the misrepresentation of things and why it’s funny vs. whether it’s a good idea to have that be a style of being in the world.

I understand that many parents use TV as a nanny of sorts when they have to get things done.  Okay fine, then multitasking is required.  An ear to what is happening on the TV and an ear to what you have to do.  So that you can at least catch the big things and deal with them in a debrief moment or when they come up later in your child’s behavior.

You can’t let yourself be drawn in, you have to be mindfully present; it’s a mindfulness task for us parents to be sure.

Don’t be confused it’s not entertainment – it feels like it but it’s indoctrination.  So if you don’t want a spoiled brat, who lies to you, has little respect for authority and hard work,  and thinks you’re an idiot, all in the name of a laugh or fun – then you have to correct the premise and action on these shows.

This is a truly difficult job, requiring calm, mindful, intelligent, connecting conversation with your child.  Just calling it stupid will shut your child down to you and cause him or her to think that the show’s premise is accurate.

So be mindful and be real; and most of all be centered, compassionate, and caring.

Remember the Stop, look, and Listen techniques.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I spent a lot of time ice skating as a young girl – 36 hours a week.

One of the things I enjoyed most was the feeling of gliding across the ice at maximum speed with all the other skaters.  Often we would pass one another, intently focusing on our jumps and just miss each other.  It was exhilarating to be so in tune with my body and my in the moment response time.  We always adjusted for each other with great adeptness.  I could feel the wind from the other person as we passed each other, but no tangled skates  – just our energy bodies seemed to connect.

I bet there is some math equation involved in this but for me it was all feel and intuitive response.

The art of ice skating requires a highly developed sense of being in one’s center; it’s feeling in 3-D – knowing where your axis is and how to adjust for curve, lift or speed.  It is a type of pure centeredness to lift off the ice into a jump and land perfectly on one foot with grace and strength.  I miss that time as a time of pure freedom and a sense of being alive through to my core.

I watch my daughter do gymnastics and I witness this inspirational experience in her.  No nervousness, no fear, just feel/knowing/action and grace as she moves on the uneven bars and balance beam.  It’s as if the requested move is coming from within her rather than being taught to her.

Like Michelangelo’s chained statues in Florence that seem to be exiting the stone as you stand there and look on.

Centeredness is something that happens from the inside out.  It’s a listening, an experiencing, a honing, and an honoring.

Another of my favorite activities that requires centeredness is throwing clay pots on a potter’s wheel.  The wet clay begins as a triangular blob and becomes a beautiful pot, vase, plate, bowl or cup.

The key is to position it centered on the wheel and then work the clay evenly as the wheel spins.  Sounds easy but it takes a deep sense of connection between clay, potter, and potter’s wheel.  It’s an art that requires being with while guiding the development of the shape and navigating the centrifugal and centripetal forces.

When I was starting out as a therapist, I used to get my therapy supervision while throwing pots.  I have many examples of wobbly cups or bowls when I was not in my center.  The pottery wheel can sense an un-centered person and it produces off-centered  pieces under those conditions.

So what do these two vignettes have to do with the art of mindfulness?  The art is centeredness that leads to an openness to the simultaneous competing factors that lead to clarity, and clear action.

Mindfulness requires inner and outer, present-moment sensing and action.  In the most basic form one needs to be standing in their center to be open to mindfulness.

Standing in one’s center is a concept of standing in the center of your knowing while being open to new information that allows for change in perception and action.

This all happens at light speed like breathing.  While breathing for most of us doesn’t require practice, being in our center does because most people have spent their lives contorting their center in order to remain in situations which required developing habit reaction pattern formations. These are reactions that have no connection to one’s true center.

Remember the tree pose in yoga.  That’s a great beginning to get you into your center, feel your axis, experience your feeling in 3-D.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Depression interferes with one’s capacity to be mindful.  It skews one’s vision – not the vision in your eyes so much as the vision of your heart and mind.

When one is depressed their thinkings and feelings are skewed to the negative.

Often they have no ability to actually remember when things felt better or positive.  They don’t have access to memories of being successful or things working well.

I call this depressive thinking.  Depressive thinking is the opposite of mindful thinking.  I think of depression as blocking out the exact thinking and feeling style that is required for mindfulness.   It’s a problem because one of the best antidotes to depression is mindfulness.

It’s a conundrum.  So I suggest the first action is to somehow trick yourself out of it.

This is difficult because the depression makes it so that you don’t have access to the part of your thinking that helps you paradigm shift, be mindful, and bring in historical positive experiences to modulate the depression.

There are a number of tricks to try.  Here are some that I think are clever and effective.

Change your environment.

If you are inside and feeling bad, go outside for a walk or run or to sit in the nice sun.  If you are outside in some activity go inside and look at an inspirational book or listen to beautiful music.

Take a break.

If you are dealing with a stressful activity or situation, then take a break from it to get back your distance, perspective, or focus.

Don’t give in to the seductive negative thinking – fight it.  This is a big one.

Depressive thinking is seductive and the energy of depression is passive and going along with it… so to fight it is a non-depressive action.  Just that can help to change the curve of your thinking and feeling.

If you feel like you want to quit and give in you can say that, acknowledge it, but then say and do the opposite – fight for your perspective.

Don’t argue and prove how your depressive thinking is right – what Richard Bach called argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours – this is the automatic depressive thinking, action.  Don’t do that instead Argue with your limitations.

This is hard in the moment unless you prepare ahead of time.

Get your arguments established when you are not depressed so that you have them when you feel depressed.

Write down a list of times when you were able to get out of depression and had successful, positive experiences.  Or just document that there have been good, happy times and that depression is transitory – it comes and goes SO it will go again if it comes again.

Know your depressive patterns so that you can immediately identify when you are sliding into depressive thinking.

Ask for help.

Maybe the help is another person to remind you of the whole truth of who you are your successes and positive qualities.   Maybe the help is the list you created when you were feeling mindful.  Go to it and read it – not fighting what it says but using the information to fight the depressive thinking.

Fight for mindfulness.  Stand by yourself instead of against yourself.

Writing exercises that can help.

When you feel the depressive thoughts write them down and then write down the opposite of what you’re depressive thinking is focusing on.  Also write down what you actually want.  It shifts the energy of the negative, depressive thinking.

Sometimes the depressive thinking has an obsessional quality and you can’t let go of what you have stuck in your thoughts and feelings.

A great trick to deal with this, especially if it is interfering with your sleep is to write it all down.  Often if you can get it out, you will find that you can sleep.

I think of this as a way to let your mind know that you will not forget about these worries – because they are written down – so your mind will quiet and let you sleep.

If what is bothering you has to do with negative events that happened in your past then writing them down is a way of dumping them so that you can have some peace for sleep.

Mindfulness is an antidote to depression.  Getting to mindfulness is the best way to treat depression.

Depression can be insidious and difficult to see at first but if you can identify it is happening these tricks may be helpful to get you to a neutral place so that you can use mindfulness to redirect your thinking and actions.

Try them to see if they shorten the course of your depression or give you time to breathe so that you can get your bearings in a situation.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

I see mindfulness, present moment interaction with the insight of figure/ground understanding, being congruent in speech and action, having compassion and empathy, and acting for the prosperity of all  as a set of principles on how to inoculate your child from the infection of being a bully or being debilitated by  bullying.

In the previous Power blogs, I wrote about the importance of having a number of different group connections, including spiritual, and physical activities, so that if one group had a style of bullying as part of its foundation then other groups would allow for personal self-confidence and resilience building.

Most of the information that I have presented on this topic is designed to set the foundation to develop the kind of resilient character and personality that allows a person to choose to not take an action like bullying or suicide.

I have also been writing about how adults being more mindful, ourselves, in how we communicate, speak and act towards other groups with which we disagree sets the stage for teaching such to our children.

These two components go together to create an environment where bullying is not tolerated.  They are the meta and micro, figure/ground, aspects of how we transfer social aspects of being in the world to our children.

It’s a choice to behave in a way that supports the upleveling of the whole group – not to see life as a limitation of resources so you have to step on others to get to the top of the heap.  The latter sets up the in-group/out-group behavior that results in the outsiders resorting to bullying or suicide.

When you have adults speaking in this in-group/out-group way, choosing a group to belittle and malign, you have the makings of a situation where it is acceptable and almost respectable to be a bully.

In this kind of scenario it’s seen as cool – and makes you part of the it crowd.  That’s what I think we’re going to find out about the recent bullying/victim tragedy in the Northeast; it was the cool and popular kids that were harassing the young girl who ultimately took her life.

Setting laws to try to punish the perpetrator(s) is a way of dealing with them after the fact.  But if you want to extinguish the behavior it can not be condoned – not in the schools but also, and very importantly, not in other high-profile areas like entertainment and politics.

I see this negative behavior in television and movies even those identified as family oriented, and from our politicians on both sides of the aisle.  I have heard teachers support this bullying behavior, possibly in reaction to their own sense of powerlessness.  Even the cool media too, are using labeling techniques rather than reporting neutral facts.

We are in a difficult social environment where acting properly is NOT seen as good and cool, or something to which one should aspire.  Ask an adolescent and they will tell you that it is NOT cool to be a good and supportive person – that’s being a nerd or a sissy or a pushover. It doesn’t leave a lot of space to teach mindfulness to children and adolescents.

The developmental stages of high and mid school age kids are profoundly laden with being cool, which makes it feel like a losing battle when the social environment is working against you.

So, if we want our children to be strong, resilient, thrivers then we need to stand up for them and stand up to those who are pushing their agenda by putting down others or using bullying tactics to get to power.

And we can’t use the same in-group/out-group tactics to stand up for our children either.

Think about the blog on being descriptive rather than labeling.  We need to communicate to our children about mindfulness and help them develop their self-confidence and internal sense of empowerment.  And we need to be decisive, strong, compassionate, congruent, and mindful in our actions and responses.

It is a lot, but these go together easily when remaining and responding in the present moment, connected to your own self-confidence and faith.  Mindfulness is the key.

Think about how you already do model this behavior and teach this way of being in the world.

Look for sources that identify this as cool and something to aspire to develop as best benefiting oneself and society at large.

See you tomorrow.

Beth

Hello

Parenting, healing, Cranial-sacral energy work, and relationship all have this one thing in common – Being with while guiding forward.

Cranial-sacral work is a type of energy work wherein the practitioner holds the client’s head and gently moves it back and forth  to realign the natural flow of energy from the cranium to the sacrum.  Practitioners of this type of energy work state they both follow and lead the energy.

This seems contradictory in nature but if you think about it we do it every day in other arenas.  It’s a function of staying mindful, and focusing on the present moment, with individual responses to input stimuli, and making adjustments to our actions.

Think about driving on the freeway.  You have a plan and you pick a lane but you also have to go with the flow of the traffic both in terms of how you move forward and what speed you travel as well as whether you continue on your path or make an immediate decision to change the course you chose based on the blockage of flow due to an accident, or emergency vehicles.

Healers and management consultants have a similar situation.  They have a plan and goal based on the information requested/provided by their client.  Then as new information presents itself the facilitator may need to go a different route to get to the identified goal – or the goal itself may be dramatically changed based on the circumstances.

The process of psychotherapy itself is much like this – both following the flow of energy as well as directing the client to reveal and investigate different aspects of the situation through mindfulness and paradigm shifting to come to a new understanding and or style of being in the world.

Parenting is this action of Being with while guiding forward on a minute by minute basis both in meta– and micro terms – big and small issues.  Meta issues being things like how the child sees himself, moral development, and socialization.  Micro issues being things like getting dressed, going to school, doing homework, and  getting along with friends.

From this perspective parenting is the most powerful kind of energy work – responding in  a moment to moment basis with mindfulness and recognition of figure/ground issues to the realities, daily requirements, mood, and unconscious of the child.

Parents need to have a mindful approach to their children to be able to both identify the flow of the situation as well as guide the flow in a direction that is most beneficial.

Think about this from the perspective of de-escalation.  If your child is sleep deprived or feeling sick she may have a tendency to react negatively to any push to move forward toward going to an activity that is less preferred.

Paying attention to cues from your child really help to identify blocks in energy or flow.  Vocalizations like whining especially if the child tends to be easy-going is a cue that something is off and needs attention.  Also moving slowly, not at their typical fast pace is another cue that the child needs attention.  Silence is another type of cue especially with a child who tends to be active, talkative and social in nature.

Using the Stop, look, and listen technique is a great way to gather information quickly and respond quickly.  When one is mindful and knows her child she can better utilize cues from her child to identify blocks in the energy flow.

Being mindful and reading the flow of energy – your child’s mood and behavior – allows a parent to use responses that both validate the emotion/feeling while guiding the child forward toward the required activity.

If you are a manager you can utilize these techniques and concepts to better manage and supervise those individuals under your care.  You can look for complaining, delay and excuses to identify where there may be problems.  This is especially true when you are interacting with someone who overall does not have these kinds of behaviors as a general course.

Mindfulness applied in this way to one’s everyday life can increase your connection to others and sense of real power in your own environment – it increases one’s and others’ empowerment.

Being with while guiding forward is a beautiful concept of how to be interacting in an empowered and respectful way in your environment.

See you tomorrow.

Beth