guided mindfulness

a group exercise

by Katya Mills

Let’s try and get centered for a minute. Okay? (get permission from group). I am going to ring these Tibetan bells to start and to finish. I want you to relax. You can close your eyes or keep them open. You can relax your eyes and soften your focus. Let yourself get comfortable in your chair…

Ring bells

Now notice your breath. You can breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. You can imagine yourself inhaling sweet goodness and exhaling all the negative energy you may have picked up along your way here. Just breathe in that yummy oxygen… let all the bad stuff go. You do not have to breathe deeply but you can if you want. The point is to notice your breath and not change it.

Feel how the chair supports your weight.

Notice the fabric surrounding your toes.

Notice the floor beneath your feet.

Notice any thoughts coming into your head, just notice them.

See if you can watch them and let them go on their way, like mist carried off on a breeze.

Come back to your breath…

Notice your sensations

What do you feel against your hands

Your arms, your back, your legs

Feel the chair supporting you

Notice any feelings you are having at all, try and just notice them

Let them pass by like clouds across the sky

Come back to your breath…

Inhale the good energy…

Ring bells 

a deepening

if you wait in the least comfortable place you may let yourself into an inner door of a greater force and inspiration, well, i just experimented myself and got there and how did it happen? Okay, first ingredient was the new moon. I have apparently been wrong again! in my awaiting the full moon, investing too fully in the symbol of the full moon and nothing else for a return on my energies. This is what happens when one is pulled at by so many angles you lose yourself and collective archetypes begin to pronounce themselves to you... so you go for a really hard exercise (in my case an 8mile run followed by a 1mile walk yesterday) which takes you out of your mind and into your body. then you get some uneven sleep chopped up by the trend of cats in motion and a subtle but heavy rumbling through the walls (the inhabitants of adjacent apartments). then you get up after midnight and heat the coffee and milk on the stove and walk around feeling the dull aches and pains in the body, softened by slippers on the feet. the pain is all further softened by cereal followed by a whole thermos of coffee taken slowly over time in capfuls. the sounds you allow are windchimes and passing trains and autos in the night, and voices and laughter of late nighters, all through cracked windows, and inside its gotta be either silence or kitchen humming and a low volume atmosphere of local public radio - classical. jazz is not to be discounted, but jazz is better for winter, classical for summer to counter the general liveliness. I tried a firm chair in the back room with the laptop on a small glass table. Had a capful and bantered with the cats. Stepped outside on back and front porches between times of writing or reading or thinking. Delta breeze in effect tonight. I was several times convinced I would need to go back to bed to restore energy. But these thoughts make no sense. I am nothing if not well rested! For several months now! Last year this time it was quite the opposite, or two years ago, when I was much more invested in coffee and perhaps a whole pot a day versus today less than half a pot a day and much easier on the nerves. At any rate, this was the semblance of my condition about three hours into my new day at night, a dull suffering through a lull period alone, when scanning a cell phone article about a famed spanish director who just cut a film loosely based on a famed canadian author's short stories, i suddenly felt my energy congratulate me with a shift and i stepped down into the dark of my backyard (seeking lightly the one cat whose always out and about hunting), and saw the new light from the apartment building across Eggplant alley which was always there but now the entire building presents itself to me on one flank, for the tree removal people took down the side of trees for some reason last week and what took so many years to hide, is suddenly bare and exposed forever. And I thought in an passionate way about a dispassionate subject of renting a home, well, how many little spaces with aircon units jutting out in little boxes, how many little nooks and crannies there are in this and any city! That if you set your heart on a little space, man or woman, you may seek and find your very own! For there are so many even right here within a hundred yards radius of my own! And this was a happy thought which followed and follows with more and more inspired and happy thoughts, and I certainly would have laughed in your face two hours ago when I woke up sore and wondering, had you told me then that several inspired happy thoughts would come my way and brighten up these new moon days of crescending energies, and they have. they truly have.

matching socks to enlightenment

All that confusion in your head has an end. The secret lies hidden in plain view, in your dresser drawer. Pull on those handles. They will knock three times against the wood paneling when you let go. Now on your knees may you witness the truth in woven cottons. The spindly bastards await your efforts to reunite them with their twins. This is best done just after the latest trip to Launderland, with the big sack of fresh linens carried home on your back, opened to a flophouse of orphaned socks. You begin to lay them out side by side on the carpet, segregated by color and size. All the little ones seem smaller than they are, and some you stretch over your toes, amazed they still fit. Some have holes or are grossly disfigured or stained, and will be laid to rest. Their twins, if found at all, shall be laid beside them. Many of the pairs were adopted in a spirit of adventure; the ones with toes, the super furry ones,  fluorescent ones. Look for further uses of these ones, may the adventure continue. You like to cut the toes off the toe socks, and use them for wristbands. The furry ones make for great dusters. The fluorescent ones could be tied to a bike frame. Knee highs could be fashioned into leggings. You begin to feel an extraordinary peace of mind as the painted strips of cotton alongside you begin to mate with the orphans spilling out of the sack. You ball them up and bounce them into a clean drawer with its wooden walls. Nothing like the smell of stale wood and fresh linen. You haven't done this in years! Now all those crucial hours before work will become easier with all the pairs together at last. One last thing before you go. Be sure to take all of the remaining orphans and perhaps elastic the strips together and run them down the side at one edge of the drawer. Compassionately. This way you will still have the chance to mismatch your way to enlightenment.

08.18

Find yourself behind your eyelids.
There you are.
Read all about you.

Touch the softness of your upper lip
pressing into your bottom lip.
That's you.
Soft like that.

The enamel surrounds your teeth.
That's you.
Protecting you.


Visualize all the media of all the days
getting vaporized. So your head is clear.
Finally free.

Now remember who you are.
Who you ever were.
What you wanna do.

Canary.
Ocean.
Yellow and Blue.

The blessed.
The good.
In me.
In you.

Now
can we love?