Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Reed Labyrinth Reappears for Reunion Week

Six weeks ago a walking labyrinth magically appeared in time for Earth Week and Renn Fayre on the South Lawn. Scores of Reedies – students, staff, faculty, and campus guests – intrigued by the labyrinth’s curious shape, braved the cold and wet to slowly saunter back and forth through the labyrinth’s twists and turns. For me, it was an exercise in personal exploration, not unlike walking meditation, an opening to whatever might appear. And it also became the beginning of a wonderful, ongoing conversation with the driving energy behind the Reed labyrinth, Gary Granger. Although I had worked alongside Gary for many years, I had not realized that Gary wore two hats at Reed: Director of Community Safety and the teacher of Mindful Walking at Reed (available to students as a physical education class).

Recently, Gary, the Keeper of the Reed Labyrinth, informed me that the labyrinth will be reappearing this week in time for the Reed Reunion. Here are some useful details:

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Walking Your Inner Talk

Show someone 5 photos of people in different situations and ask them, “Which of these people is meditating?” and they will invariably choose the person seated in a lotus position with eyes closed. This image of “meditation = seated lotus” is etched into our cultural consciousness, not to mention the Buddha sculptures you see in Portland yards. So what I am about to say may come as quite a shock. You can meditate in any position that supports your intention for your meditation.

Suppose your intention is to practice mindful awareness. In that case, any position that allows you to pay attention to whatever is taking place in this moment is acceptable. Lotus? Good. Sit in a chair? Also good. Lie on the grass or stand in line at the airport terminal? Both good. You can even practice mindful awareness of body sensations, of thoughts (the ‘inner talk’ in the title), of emotions and feelings, and more, while walking.

I am calling attention to walking because Reed College now has a special place on the front lawn to practice mindful awareness while walking. It is a labyrinth. A colored design that has been added to the Front Lawn between the flag pole and the central door of Eliot Hall. There are plenty of lawn signs calling attention to it so you can’t miss it. The labyrinth opened yesterday (4/19) at noon, and, with the plausible cooperation of the weather and the geese, it will remain in place until Sunday, 4/30 (note: this date is part of Renn Fayre and the campus will be closed to visitors that final weekend in April).

You can learn more about the Reed Labyrinth here. And, if the idea of walking meditation interests you, check out one of my previous posts on this topic (see below).

Full disclosure: You don’t need to do walking meditation while walking the labyrinth. Likewise, you don’t need a labyrinth to do walking meditation. But, as I discovered yesterday, they go together very nicely. So try one or the other, or even both!

Well newsletter recommends mindfulness podcasts

Subscribe to the New York Times and you can sign up to have newsletters on various topics delivered to your email inbox. One of the newsletters that I follow is the Well newsletter which delivers tips on health and wellness. The March 9 newsletter is no exception. It contains links to a wide range of articles, e.g., keeping bacteria out of breast pumps, whether cannabis can be used as a sleep aid, and new trends in male grandparenting. But what makes it relevant for this blog is the list of 12 recommended podcasts dealing with health and wellness issues. Two, in particular, focus on meditation, mindfulness practices, and their application in everyday life. The newsletter provides brief descriptions of the broadcasts and recommends two ‘get-acquainted’ episodes for podcast listeners. Here are capsule summaries of these podcasts:

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Welcome to Reed College meditation

“Reed College meditation” probably suggests more than it should. There are many meditation opportunities on campus (see listings of PE classes if you have an unusual schedule). This webpage provides information about a weekly, lunchtime silent meditation session that began operating in 2012 and has been available to all-comers.

The basic features of our sessions are that they are:

  1. silent
  2. not affiliated with any religious group or particular style of meditation (what we provide is a period of silence that you can use pretty much as you wish)
  3. offered during the noon lunch hour with an “official” silent period from 12:10-12:40 pm
  4. open to everyone in the campus community (staff, faculty, students), to all campus visitors, and to online participants (no prior experience necessary)
  5. available on a “drop in” basis, meaning that you can choose when to arrive and when to leave (you don’t need to contact us in advance – just show up!)

The overarching idea is to make it as convenient as possible for you to fit some meditation into your weekly schedule.

If all this sounds very simple and flexible, that’s because it is meant to be so. We offer a time and a place on campus (and online) for you to sit quietly. Come join us.

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Guided Forest Therapy Walk, May 9 !!

4/25 update – The 5/2 walk has been cancelled and rescheduled for 5/9. There are still spots open if you are interested.

I am passing along the following announcement from Reed College’s Wellness committee. This is the 2nd of 2 opportunities (the first walk was held on April 6). Please take advantage of this opportunity to get out in nature and put your mind at ease. The Reed campus is so much, much more than offices, classrooms, and parking lots. If you can’t make the walk for some reason, use the sidebar’s word cloud to find related posts. I particularly recommend posts tagged under nature, walking, sound, and solitude. I also encourage you to start your time in nature with a poem. One of my favorites: Worms by Carl Dennis.

A message from Erica Nukaya and the Wellness Committee to Reed College staff and faculty (sent 3/31):

The wellness committee is hosting two guided forest therapy walks and a plant swap. We hope you can join us!

Guided Forest Therapy Walks
Wednesday, April 6 and Monday, May 2
12:00 to 1:30 p.m.
Meet at Cerf amphitheater

Join us for a gentle, restorative walk in the Reed Canyon or nearby Reed grounds, depending on accessibility needs.

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A Quiet Place, An Open Place (reposted)

Back in the 1960′s, a Trappist monk named Thomas Merton wrote,

Douglas Steere remarks very perceptively that there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist fighting for peace by nonviolent methods most easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence.

He went on,

To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. More than that, it is cooperation in violence. The frenzy of the activist neutralizes his work for peace. It destroys his own inner capacity for peace. It destroys the fruitfulness of his own work, because it kills the root of inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.

from ‘Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander’ by Thomas Merton*

I have spent most of my 60+ years being ‘carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns.’ If the internet and email and work haven’t been enough, there has also been my natural desire to be valued by my peers and my unshakeable belief that my ‘value’ is rooted in my accomplishments, real and imagined.

Believing that, I get carried away.

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Mindfulness in the Classroom

In Spring 2019, just when COVID was getting serious, I received an article titled “Mindfulness in the Classroom” (Faculty Focus, 29 Apr 2019). It was written by biology professor, Erica Kosal, who had been teaching at North Carolina Wesleyan College, and together with 2 other colleagues, had been introducing short (5-7 minute) mindfulness practices into their classroom sessions.

This very charming article is a quick read that describes a few of the practices that Kosal employed, student reactions to them and how these changed over time, and how the faculty also felt transformed by this addition to their class. As Kosal explains,

At first, most students reported that they felt silly engaging in the activities and/or didn’t see how five minutes of meditative practices could really help. But over the next several weeks, they found themselves looking forward to the practices, welcoming the opportunity to clear their minds so they could in fact focus on biology. Some students even reported that they were using the practices on their own—for example, before starting homework or a study session. One student even reported he started doing a short mindful practice prior to soccer games and his teammates noticed an improvement in his performance.

Several things stand out here. First, the practices were diverse. The students didn’t necessarily sit silently, nor did they repeat a single practice over and over. Second, student (and faculty) appreciation for the short practices grew over time. In the beginning, the mindfulness practices may have seemed like unexpected (and perhaps wasteful?) uses of classroom time. I am certain that they didn’t fit with student expectations for what their time in a biology classroom would look like. Nevertheless, as Kosal reports, students “found themselves looking forward to the practices, welcoming the opportunity to clear their minds so they could in fact focus on biology.

Mindful teaching of this sort is something that every teacher might consider. There is no single recipe for what the best mindfulness practice might be for any given teacher on any given day, but once a practice has been selected, repetition will cultivate familiarity and acceptance, and likely make the practice more effective over time. Rather than being a sacrifice of precious class time, the practice becomes something that enhances the classroom experience by making everyone more present, open, and focused. And it may also pay off beyond the classroom.

Breath & Your Body

There are many forms of meditation practice, each with its own appeal and promise. Here’s one that seems so simple on the face of it, and yet it has been the gateway to a deep understanding and ease for thousands and thousands of people over time. The instructions go like this:

Just breathe. Let your always busy mind open itself to whatever sensations, feelings, emotions, thoughts, are passing through. In other words, be aware. Continue breathing. Continue being aware. Repeat.

The simplicity of this breath+awareness practice is deceptive. Some will say, “this practice can’t be very deep if that is all there is to it.” Others, discovering the merry-go-round of sensations, feelings, etc., will try to latch on to one aspect or another. They will say to themselves, “I must only sense things, I must not think. Arrggh! I’m thinking! I’m a failure.” But there’s no need to stop thinking. And thinking is not failure. It’s just the thought-of-the-moment revealing itself.

Today I came across a short article by Jill Satterfield (Tricycle, 2011, Meditation in Motion: How to Be Present in Your Body). Satterfield describes this practice as “being present by being in our body, wherever it is and whatever it is doing. When we are exactly where our body is, we are in the present moment.” She goes on to say that this practice is available wherever we find ourselves, sitting at our computer, walking across the Quad, standing in line at Commons. As Satterfield puts it, “Our mind training doesn’t have to stop when we are not in a seated meditation posture, because most of the time we are in some sort of posture without actually naming it as such. … So how are we occupying the posture we are in? By simply locating our breath at any given moment.”

Locating our breath? It’s always in my nose, or my mouth and throat, or my chest, or all of the above, right? What is there to “locate”? Satterfield’s reply is to ask us to consider our “breath” as something that might happen anywhere in our body. She writes, “I like to think of breath and consciousness as travel partners. For instance, when we are asked to breathe into an area of the body, what are we actually doing? Certainly we aren’t literally breathing into our hands, for example, but we are beckoning our consciousness into our hands, or wherever we might choose to bring it. … What we notice when we metaphorically breathe into an area of our body is that we feel something. That something may be difficult to describe, as many esoteric things are, but it is an undeniable experience.”

So, to return to the meditation instructions at the top. Just breathe. Let your always busy mind open itself. Moment after moment, repeat. Should you find yourself fixating on a particular thing – an itch, a memory, a plan for later – realize that in that moment of noticing, you have changed what seemed like a fixation into an experience. Excellent. Continue breathing. Continue experiencing.

I wish you well.

PS Did you know that if you click on “breath” in the word cloud on the right side of this page, you can find several other posts and references on “breath”?

A.A. Milne on Mindfulness Meditation

A.A. Milne, the author who brought us Christopher Robin, Winnie the Pooh, and Piglet, doesn’t immediately leap to mind as a commentator on mindfulness practice. My mother began introducing me to his stories before I was old enough to read, but I don’t recall her mentioning meditation even once.

Decades later, when I was all grown up and serious, I hunted down The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet by Benjamin Hoff (who I just learned is a Portlander – thank you, Wikipedia). I was looking for the Tao and thought I might find it by looking over Hoff’s shoulder, but, whatever I found there, it never occurred to me that Milne might have been a student of Asian spiritual practices.

Perhaps I was missing something? As Pooh says, “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.” These days I often find myself reading familiar words in new ways.

So, in that spirit, I would like to share with you a short poem, “Halfway Down”, from Milne’s collection, When We Were Very Young. I had heard the poem dozens of times over the years, but last Tuesday I read it aloud to some friends and heard something new: a delightful story about a child who likes to stop “halfway down”, sit, and … dare I say it? … practice meditation. Enjoy!

Halfway down the stairs
Is a stair
Where I sit.
There isn’t any
Other stair
Quite like
It.
I’m not at the bottom,
I’m not at the top;
So this is the stair
Where
I always
Stop.

Halfway up the stairs
Isn’t up
And isn’t down.
It isn’t in the nursery,
It isn’t in the town.
And all sorts of funny thoughts
Run round my head:
“It isn’t really
Anywhere!
It’s somewhere else
Instead!”

Milne, A.A. from “When We Were Very Young”, E.P. Dutton, 1924

Just Listen

Listening meditation offers another way to be aware and to work with attention. Beyond finding a relatively quiet place to sit or walk, I have almost no control over the sounds that I hear. They arrive. Sometimes from the outside, a bird, a car on the street, a phone ringing. Sometimes from the inside, the whirrrrring in my ears that I might otherwise ignore, a rumble in my gut, or a crack in my joints.

When you listen to sound with awareness, you are just practicing being aware. There’s no need for anything extra. Limiting myself to awareness, along with attention drift, is the hardest part for me. A science podcast once informed me that the brain (mind) processes sounds much more rapidly than it does visual information. Sound is one of our most fundamental and efficient “alarm” systems for protecting ourselves. And once I direct my awareness to my sound environment, I often find myself naming, and sometimes, even looking around for the source of, the sounds that I hear.

There’s no need to do any of that in listening meditation. Just be aware. If you find yourself naming a sound, smiling at a bird’s song, or flinching at a text message alarm, give yourself a pass. Reacting is not what you intended, but it isn’t a mistake either. A silent “thank you” might be just the right soft, kind touch that will let you notice your reaction, which is part of living, and center yourself back in simple awareness.

Here’s a partial set of the instructions for listening meditation that long-time meditation teacher and author, Martine Bachelor offers in her Fall 2010 Tricycle magazine article, “Instructions for listening meditation”. I’ve included only the lines that emphasize awareness, but you can find the missing bits, the “…”, by going to the original article. And if you would like to read more of my posts relating to listening and sounds, click on “sound” in the tag cloud located in the right side bar.

Try to sit stable like a mountain and vast like the ocean.
Listen to the sounds as they occur … just listen with wide-open awareness.

Let the sounds come to you and touch your eardrums.
Go inside the sounds and notice their fluid nature.
If there are no sounds, listen, and rest in this moment of silence.

Just be aware of sounds as they arise and pass away. Open yourself to the music of the world in this moment, in this place.

See if you can learn to move freely between being in silence and with sounds.

– Martine Bachelor, “Instructions for Listening Meditation”, Tricycle, Fall 2010 (abridged)