This moment, stop right where you are. Stop all effort to get whatever you think will give you fulfillment, whatever you think will give you truth. All that is required is one instant of truly stopping.  Gangaji

Frank was talking about stopping at the Mindfulness Yoga weekend.   The basics are this.  We’re body, breath and mind beings.  Body and breath are always grounded in the present moment.  My belly is growling *now*.  I’m inhaling a breath *now*.  In the next moment both of those conditions are very likely to be different, I’ll feel a different sensation and I’ll be breathing another breath. 

The mind is where the challenges starts.  I am regreting the stupid thing I said yesterday.  I’m freaking out about the thing I need to do tomorrow.  Or I’ve started telling myself a story about something, making all kinds of assumptions and I’m starting to feel really pissed off. 

And the way to detach from all that is to bring my awareness back into my body so I can notice my rumbling belly or whatever is there to notice.  And to bring my awareness back to my breath so I can notice whether I’m inhaling or have stopped breathing all together.  It’s that stopping and coming back that helps me to detach from all the head stuff that makes me cranky.  And boy it takes practice.

Frank suggested using mindfulness bells.  In some meditation traditions the leader will ring a bell at random times to remind the practioners that if their mind has wandered off, to stop, bring it back, to come back to the breath or whatever they’re focusing on. Frank suggested finding our own random mindfulness bells in our daily life. 

He gave the example of using the sound of car alarms when he lived in Brooklyn.  Other suggestions in the class were yawning, walking through doorways,  hearing your child say, “Mom?”, getting in/out of the car, opening your email box etc.  When these things come up you can use it as a reminder to come back to the present.  To come back to the breath and the experience of being in the body.

A mindfulness bell I’ve been using these days is helping my son get dressed.  It feels like there is no end to the things he can find to do while I hold out clothing out for him.  So I’ve been trying to spend the time breathing.  And I try hard to avoid the stories – the ones where I think he’s *trying* to drive me insane, he’s rotten to the core or he’s Not Listening. 

Because the minute I go there, I lose patience.  But really he’s just being four and seems to believe that dancing around ones bedroom starkers is really fun.  It probably is.  But if I stay with breathing, he comes around and finally gets into his clothes.  Without it being a lousy experience for anyone.

Frank told a great story about stories.  A guy is in the grocery store line-up to buy a quart of milk and an older woman is in front of him with a baby.  After she gets the groceries taken care of she’s chatting to the cashier and he starts getting angry.  He starts thinking - this is rude, all I want is a quart of milk.  Can’t they see i’m here waiting?  How rude can you be. 

Then he notices what he’s doing and starts to breath and calm down.  He’s able to notice that the baby is cute.  So the woman passes the baby to the cashier and she starts gooing at the baby and he starts feeling himself get pissed off all over again, but he goes back to his breathing.  Finally the woman takes the baby and moves on and it’s his turn. 

When the cashier apologizes for his wait instead of blasting her he’s able to say that the baby was really cute.  She says, “you think so?”  He says yes and she says, “my husband was killed in Iraq 9 months ago and I had to go back to work.  That’s my Mom, she takes care of my daughter while I’m here.” 

I love that story.  It’s a great reminder to drop the stories and the assumptions and the head stuff.  Frank said that the zen folks have a term, “Don’t Know Mind”.  Where your practice is to recognize that you don’t really know what’s really going on so you let go of the stories.  And it’s worth doing because the stories usually cause us a lot more suffering than the circumstances themselves. 

So I will go on breathing and holding out clothing to my son for what seems like forever at the time.  Because I know that he’s not trying to piss me off.  And because I know that one day he’ll be heading out of the house in the morning and I may not even know what he’s wearing.  And on those days I’ll miss him at four years old dancing starkers in his bedroom.