Favorite Poems on Mindfulness -2

THE GUEST HOUSE (Jellaludin Rumi)

translated by Coleman Barks

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

The Summer Day (Mary Oliver)

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-the one who the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down –
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Hokusai Says (Roger Keys)

Hokusai says look carefully.
He says pay attention, notice.
He says keep looking, stay curious.
Hokusai says there is no end to seeing.

He says look forward to getting old.
He says keep changing,
you just get more who you really are.
He says get stuck, accept it, repeat
yourself as long as it is interesting.

He says keep doing what you love.

He says keep praying.

He says every one of us is a child,
every one of us is ancient
every one of us has a body.
He says every one of us is frightened.
He says every one of us has to find
a way to live with fear.

He says everything is alive —
shells, buildings, people, fish,
mountains, trees, wood is alive.
Water is alive.

Everything has its own life.

Everything lives inside us.

He says live with the world inside you.

He says it doesn’t matter if you draw,
or write books. It doesn’t matter
if you saw wood, or catch fish.

It doesn’t matter if you sit at home
and stare at the ants on your veranda
or the shadows of the trees
and grasses in your garden.
It matters that you care.

It matters that you feel.
It matters that you notice.

It matters that life lives through you.

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
Peace is living through you.

He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.

Love, feel, let life take you by the hand.
Let life live through you.

Tao Te Ching (Lao-Tzu)

translated by Witter Bynner

There is no need to run outside
For better seeing,
Nor to peer from a window. Rather abide
At the center of your being;
For the more you leave it, the less you learn.
Search your heart and see
If he is wise who takes each turn:
The way to do is to be.

Favorite Poems on Mindfulness – 3

Childhood Friends (Jellaludin Rumi)

Trust your wound to a teacher’s surgery.
Flies collect on a wound. They cover it,
those flies of your self-protecting feelings,
your love for what you think is yours.

Let a teacher wave away the flies
and put a plaster on the wound.

Don’t turn your head. Keep looking
at the bandaged wound. That’s where
the light enters you.

And don’t believe for a moment
that you’re healing yourself.

Tasting Mindfulness (Jon Kabat-Zinn)

“Have you ever had the experience of stopping so completely,
of being in your body so completely,
of being in your life so completely,
that what you knew and what you didn’t know,
that what had been and what was yet to come,
and the way things are right now
no longer held even the slightest hint of anxiety or discord?
It would be a moment of complete presence, beyond striving, beyond mere – acceptance,
beyond the desire to escape or fix anything or plunge ahead,
a moment of pure being, no longer in time,
a moment of pure seeing, pure feeling,
a moment in which life simply is,
and that “is-ness” grabs you by all your senses,
all your memories, by your very genes,
by your loves, and
welcomes you home.”

Love after Love (Derek Walcott)

The time will come
When with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you have ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Lost (David Wagoner)

Stand still.
The trees before you and the bushes beside you
are not lost. Wherever you are is a place called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you,
If you leave it you may come back again saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.

I Am Not I (Juan Ramon Jimenez)

I am not I.
I am this one
Walking beside me whom I do not see,
Whom at times I manage to visit,
And at other times I forget;
The one who remains silent when I talk,
The one who forgives, sweet, when I hate,
The one who takes a walk when I am indoors,
The one who will remain standing when I die.

Enough (David Whyte)

Enough. These few words are enough.
If not these words, this breath.
If not this breath, this sitting here.

This opening to the life
we have refused
again and again
until now.

Until now.

Health and Wellbeing

Health And Well Being Holistic Health CounselorThe World Health Organization (WHO) definition of Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

In the past, the emphasis has been largely on treating diseases with little emphasis on wellbeing.

In the context of health and wellbeing, it is important to distinguish between treatment and healing, disease and illness and, pain and suffering.

Treatment is usually external and physical, with defined end points and death seen as a failure and avoided at all costs. Healing is internal, addresses the physical, spiritual, emotional and spiritual dimensions, a way of being/becoming whole with death seen as part of the process of life.

Disease is what happens to organs while illness is the meaning given to disease. Pain is a distressing sensation in a particular part of the body while suffering is the meaning given to pain. Illness and suffering is what happens to people. (more…)

Alternative, Complementary and Integrative Medicine

Dr. Parkash mindfulness meditation programAlternative Medicine refers to an approach where instead of conventional therapies (western, allopathic, mainstream), non-conventional therapies are used alone.

Complementary Medicine is an approach where both conventional and non-conventional medicines are used.

Integrative Medicine combines mainstream and CAM (complementary and alternative) therapies for which there is some high-quality scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness.

The Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine lists the following Defining Principles of Integrative Medicine (https://integrativemedicine.arizona.edu/about/definition.html):

  1. Patient and practitioner are partners in the healing process.
  2. All factors that influence health, wellness, and disease are taken into consideration, including mind, spirit, and community, as well as the body.
  3. Appropriate use of both conventional and alternative methods facilitates the body’s innate healing response.
  4. Effective interventions that are natural and less invasive should be used whenever possible.
  5. Integrative medicine neither rejects conventional medicine nor accepts alternative therapies uncritically.
  6. Good medicine is based in good science. It is inquiry-driven and open to new paradigms.
  7. Alongside the concept of treatment, the broader concepts of health promotion and the prevention of illness are paramount.
  8. Practitioners of integrative medicine should exemplify its principles and commit themselves to self-exploration and self-development.

(more…)

Holistic Medicine

Happy kid and daddy Holistic MedicineHolistic is an expanded perspective which considers the whole person and situation and as an adjective this can be applied to anything (e.g. anthropology, design, education, management, medicine, etc.)

At the core of the holistic approach is the concept that the whole is made up of interdependent parts.

Holistic medicine is when the holistic approach is applied by a health practitioner of any tradition. You are more likely to hear these parts referred to as mind body connection, physical/mental/emotional/spiritual aspects and mindbodyspirit.

The following are the Principles of Holistic Medicine of the American Holistic Medical Association
(https://aihm.org/about/academy-values/)

 

  1. Optimal Health is the primary goal of holistic medical practice. It is the conscious pursuit of the highest level of functioning and balance of the physical, environmental, mental, emotional, social and spiritual aspects of human experience, resulting in a dynamic state of being fully alive. This creates a condition of well-being regardless of the presence or absence of disease.
  2. The Healing Power of Love. Holistic health care practitioners strive to meet the patient with grace, kindness, acceptance, and spirit without condition, as love is life’s most powerful healer.
  3. Whole Person. Holistic health care practitioners view people as the unity of body, mind, spirit and the systems in which they live.
  4. Prevention and Treatment. Holistic health care practitioners promote health, prevent illness and help raise awareness of dis-ease in our lives rather than merely managing symptoms. A holistic approach relieves symptoms, modifies contributing factors, and enhances the patient’s life system to optimize future well-being.
  5. Innate Healing Power. All people have innate powers of healing in their bodies, minds and spirits. Holistic health care practitioners evoke and help patients utilize these powers to affect the healing process.
  6. Integration of Healing Systems. Holistic health care practitioners embrace a lifetime of learning about all safe and effective options in diagnosis and treatment. These options come from a variety of traditions, and are selected in order to best meet the unique needs of the patient. The realm of choices may include lifestyle modification and complementary approaches as well as conventional drugs and surgery.
  7. Relationship-centered Care. The ideal practitioner-patient relationship is a partnership which encourages patient autonomy, and values the needs and insights of both parties. The quality of this relationship is an essential contributor to the healing process.
  8. Individuality. Holistic health care practitioners focus patient care on the unique needs and nature of the person who has an illness rather than the illness that has the person.
  9. Teaching by Example. Holistic health care practitioners continually work toward the personal incorporation of the principles of holistic health, which then profoundly influence the quality of the healing relationship.
  10. Learning Opportunities. All life experiences including birth, joy, suffering and the dying process are profound learning opportunities for both patients and health care practitioners.

(more…)