July 19, 2013

Here and Now, i.e.  mindfulness:

I had a client (mother of a young child) ask me today if I had done “mindfulness stuff” with my kids.  I laughed and told her how we started a nude beach once and then suggested that it probably counted as mindfulness training.  Mindfulness, or self-acceptance and understanding, as I call it, has been around for a long time.  Mindfulness, of course, is about being present in the here and now.   I like to think that the Creator initiated mindfulness when s/he declared of herself “I AM”.  Whoa! Talk about self-awareness!  You can’t get more Here and Now than I AM.

Pretty much every day with one client or the other, I stand up and write the words
“here and now” on the middle of my white board.  Then I add an arrow going to the left  in front of the word “here” and another arrow going to the right following the word “now” (scribble it on a piece of paper so you can see it).   At the end of the arrow that goes left I write Hx (historical) and at the end of the arrow that goes to the right I write Ft (future).  I tell my clients that we are always safe in the Here and Now, which is the only place breath exists.

When we live in the past we dwell in depression, when we attempt to live in the future we swell with anxiety. There is no depression, nor is there any anxiety in the Here and Now.  It isn’t possible.  Depression is always based on the fantasy of “if only” while anxiety is based on the projection of “what if”.  Here and Now is the only place we can breathe and be the I Am that we are.

~ DocBrock