Category: Meditation

Buddhism, Family, Marriage, Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting, Politics, Special Needs, Uncategorized

Basic Goodness in Strange Times

Posted on by kosanford

The basic goodness of humanity is at the heart of Buddhism.  The idea that all people are basically good, regardless of their behavior is important to developing compassion.  When people do terrible things they do them out of confusion and ignorance.  Ignorance is not defined as stupidity but as ignoring, or not seeing.  In the week since the election I have thought a lot about basic goodness.  It sounds like a simple concept but when you really start to apply it to people with whom you disagree on what is practically a cellular level it can be challenging.

When I ask myself if I think Donald Trump or Mike Pence is basically good, a riot breaks out in my brain.  I find them and virtually everything on which they built their campaign completely repellant.  It is a scary thing to doubt the basic goodness of your president; it is a feeling of vulnerability and fragility that I have never experienced before.  The sadness is most similar to a broken heart in its betrayal and shock.  There has also been a sense that something was taken from me.  I wasn’t an overly enthusiastic Clinton supporter but I did think that she would keep our country moving in the general direction of decency that would allow people of all colors, creeds and abilities access to a basic level of education and healthcare befitting a democratic superpower. Now, I am not sure if those things are true anymore.  

When my daughter woke up on Wednesday morning I was awfully grateful that she has non-verbal Autism.  She came skipping into the kitchen grinning and clapping, totally unconcerned about our now very uncertain future.  It was not so easy when her brothers came down, after months of telling them that Trump was unfit to lead, and that he had no idea what he was doing.  I found myself singing how a bill becomes a law from Schoolhouse Rock and explaining the checks and balances of government. When the kids left for school I cleaned my house, listened to jazz and classical music, and wept.  I thought of how certain everything had seemed just a few days before and even though nothing was different everything was different.

In reality this is always true, in the blink of an eye your life can shift completely. Usually when it happens it is specific to your family or your work.  A death, a new job, falling in love or out of love, built in to our lives is a baseline level of uncertainty.  This election however, was a shared experience.  It was a shared sense of disbelief and sadness, of disconnection from your neighbors, and disbelief that they don’t see or want what I see and want.  It was an awakening. Any time we get too comfortable, any time we start to take things for granted, it is inevitable that we will get shaken out of it. We can respond with anger and disbelief that our dream has been interrupted or we can respond with action.

I have decided to respond by appreciating the things I took for granted.  I will give to NPR and Planned Parenthood. I will renew my subscriptions to the newspapers and magazines that will provide us with real information about our new leadership.  I will educate myself on things like the Voting Rights Act and support places like the Southern Poverty Law Center.  If Hillary had won I would have felt validated and safe, not activated and alert.  I would keep on tending my own garden, raising my kids, volunteering in my community, being polite, and that would have felt like enough.

But that isn’t what happened, and I don’t feel safe. I feel exposed and uncertain but I also feel energized.  I know lots of women in my mother’s generation and older who spent their lives fighting for equality, for basic human rights for all people. I never felt the need to pick up their fight until now.  I am hoping to get to a place where I trust the basic goodness of our leadership, but if I don’t, I have been reminded of an important lesson.  Nothing is certain. The only thing I can control is my response, which in this case is to fight for the things and people I believe in and to teach my children to do the same.

Buddhism, Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting, Special Needs, Uncategorized

The Many Faces of Memory

Posted on by kosanford

I think a lot about memory.  As I get older I remember details or the way something felt, rather than events.  I can’t remember the name of my second grade teacher but I remember exactly what the hooks looked like where we hung our jackets.  It was a small hallway leading into our classroom, with hooks on either side.  There was a window at one end and when the sun would shine in you could see all the dust moving in the air. I liked that little room, the wood of the floor worn down by many years of kids like me, the hooks with our names written underneath, a spot for everyone. The only thing I really remember about that school is the coat room and it’s hooks, and the way the sun would slice into the space lighting up a small section of busy dust .  

 

Memory is all about connections, fragments of days and events stick around in my head, some feel random like the coat room, some are sweet like the memory of the day Colin proposed or the days when we met our kids. Some are still very sharp and real like the hours we spent in waiting rooms of doctors as we slowly unraveled Mae’s diagnosis of Autism. I can remember both the feeling and the details of these days with incredible clarity; the emotion of them accompanies the home movie as it plays in my head.  Sometimes it can be like reliving the experience, both the happy tears and the sad ones.  

 

I am always interested in how memory affects behavior. My sons don’t like getting in trouble because they remember how rotten they feel when they have done something they shouldn’t.  They are motivated to make choices that keep them out of trouble by the memory of a feeling.  I can’t really eat sugar any more, not because I don’t like it but because I remember that it makes me feel awful.  When I am struggling to motivate myself to go running or sit for meditation I remind myself how good it felt the day before.  Memory is a powerful force in everything I do.

 

I am always interested in the things Mae remembers.  Does she remember the feeling of the day we adopted her or of being on the airplane? Does she remember the feeling of all of the operations and doctors visits that filled our days when we first got home from China?  I remember the sadness, exhaustion, and helplessness of them more than I remember the names of the various doctors and all their grim reports. I always wonder if she remembers them at all.  

 

She has a very clear memory for the things that matter to her, she always knows where her favorite snacks are, and a stash of plastic for her to play with.  She remembers where we keep her swimsuit and is more likely to find the ID card for the pool than I am.  She pays close attention to the things she cares about, and ignores all the rest. She is my child and I think that she is brilliant; one of the ways I convince other people of this is using her memory as an example. She can’t speak but her very good memory is proof that she can learn, and I am always quick to point it out.

 

When you live with someone whose brain is largely a mystery, memory is proof of connections she can’t verbalize but that clearly exist. As I age, my memory is changing.  It requires more effort to hold on to the details.  I feel like my brain has become one of those vests that people use for fly fishing.  It is filled with pockets of information, song lyrics, old phone numbers, directions to homes I don’t live in anymore, passages from books long since passed on to friends.  My sons are always interested in my memories of life when I was their age, what was it like for me to be 11 or 12, they are often frustrated when I describe the memory of a feeling instead of telling a story.

 

Most interestingly is how we can change the role that memories play.  I remember that first crazy year after Mae’s diagnosis as a series of events, but also now in retrospect as my own personal endless Ironman.  My memories of having survived it are something I call on frequently to remind myself that nothing is impossible.  I have started to think of my memories like money in the bank, I can call on them when needed to provide perspective, motivation or to save me from myself. I have also learned through my meditation practice that I have a tendency to get stuck in my own memories. I have learned by watching my own mind that I can replay or relive events long since over and still feel the irritation or sadness that accompanied them.  It is a habit that does not serve me well.  Why not revisit the happy memories instead of the ones that make my blood boil?  Your memory can keep you from making the same mistakes twice and encourage you to repeat things that have worked in the past, but the best idea is to invest yourself and your attention in your present, because for better or worse that is where your life is actually happening.

Buddhism, Family, Marriage, Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting, Special Needs, Uncategorized

Acceptance is not giving up..

Posted on by kosanford

Very early on right after Mae was diagnosed I had a constant and overwhelming desire to try and fix Autism.  I was convinced that there would be a doctor, a supplement, a therapy that would unlock the words from my child’s mouth.  We traveled from New York to Boston consulting every expert we could. We tried every combination of nutrients and foods imaginable.  Every conversation, every thought was consumed by the need for answers.  I struggled at the time to reconcile this endless search with my Buddhist studies.  Those studies told me to live in the moment, to be present with whatever arises, to learn to love what was right in front of me.  I wasn’t sure how to align the need to have answers about my child’s condition and my belief that honest and loving acceptance of what is in front of you is the best way to live.  

 

We don’t really understand acceptance in Western culture.  Or at least I didn’t.  I felt like accepting my daughter’s diagnosis was a kind of capitulation.  Acceptance felt like giving up, so I resisted it.  We spent every penny we had. We turned every meal into a therapeutic endeavor. We sued our school district so she could go to private school. We watched her like hawks waiting for evidence of improvement. Our sense of wellbeing was entirely wrapped up in whether or not Mae had a good day or a bad day, on whether or not she was “improving.”

 

After almost two years of battling with an enemy of our own making we couldn’t do it anymore.  We had no more money for therapies. We were tired of meals whose success hinged on whether or not she sat and used a fork. We just wanted to enjoy our family again.  So we stopped. Instead of trying to solve the “problem,” we worked on accepting our daughter for who she was.  She stopped being a diagnosis and became our daughter again.  It doesn’t mean we don’t work to make sure her life is filled with activities and people who nurture and care for her, or that we don’t high five her when she joins us at the table, or demand that she use her limited language skills whenever possible. We do all those things.  It also doesn’t mean that I don’t occasionally get sad about the things she could be doing this summer if her brain were wired just a bit differently.  I would be lying if I said I never think about it.

 

In our case, acceptance was not capitulation. It was actually a very conscious and loving gesture towards both ourselves and our child.  Learning to accept her diagnosis and what it meant both for her and for us as a family liberated us from our own expectations.  I have found that the more willing we are to accept the truth of difficult situations the more easily we can adapt to them.  When we resisted the hard truths of Mae’s diagnosis by insisting we could fix it we were blind to what was really in front of us, which was a beautiful little girl with a twinkly smile and an awful lot to teach us.

Family, Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting, Special Needs, Uncategorized

Want to know what it’s really like…

Posted on by kosanford

Autism for me has a perfect black page-boy haircut, it has rounded cheeks and long eyelashes. Autism for me bounces in and out of rooms, ripping and twirling paper.

Autism never sleeps through the night

Autism means that my child cannot tell me if her stomach hurts

Autism has made me fierce and difficult in the eyes of many school administrators.

Autism means I have been changing diapers for more than a decade

Autism means I run a small home-based pharmacy

Autism doesn’t make me sad anymore although some days it makes me tired

Autism means I will never have an empty nest

Autism means nothing scares me except the day when I can no longer care for my child

All over this country parents go to bed at night knowing that there is no system to support their children as they age.  April is Autism Awareness month, I am never unaware.  

I would ask that if you really wanted to be aware of what it was like to have a child with Autism, look at your children, your beautiful, talented, amazing children and imagine what it would be like if you knew that the world had no place for them.  Look at your baby, your toddler, your tween, maybe even your adult and imagine for a moment that without you they couldn’t survive.  That is what it’s really like to be aware of Autism.  

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Buddhism, Family, Marriage, Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting, Yoga

By Any Means Necessary

Posted on by kosanford

As school vacation ended this past week, I was desperate for my children to go back to school.  When we have all been in the house for a little too long there is an itchy, restless feeling around the edges of everything they do.  In my body it manifests as massive fatigue. When they were all home it felt like a huge effort to do anything, the second they left I found myself energized and able to address my to-do list.  

I don’t like that itchy, cranky feeling, it feels like a lack of gratitude.  Sitting in my warm safe house with my three kids and my loving husband and feeling unsatisfied seems fundamentally wrong.  I know I only feel this way because I am desperate for us to return to the routine that comes with school and work.  Even knowing that, I search for an antidote, I remind myself how lucky I am, I sit for meditation, or go for a run.  Truly there is only one thing that really helps, and for me it is reflecting on the alternative.

Last New Year’s, Colin wasn’t feeling well.  He was tired, stressed and his back hurt.  In fairness, we are both tired and have been since Ben appeared in 2004, so when he complained of exhaustion, I ignored it.  When he talked about his back hurting I told him to stretch, put your legs up the wall and breathe deeply.  When he said he was going to see a doctor, I shrugged.  The doctor ran a million tests and they were all inconclusive. Colin’s face  was slowly turning gray but I couldn’t see it.  I was too busy thinking about the details of our life.  The kids’ schools, our leaky roof, our muddy driveway, my own aches, pains and frustrations.  I was so engaged in our day-to-day that I wasn’t able to see that my husband was fading away.  Or maybe I didn’t want to see it.

In February he had an angiogram, and they found and cleared a significant blockage, one they call the “widow-maker.” At the time I just focused on how lucky we were. I heaped praise on Colin for seeking out a second opinion. I talked about the miracles of medicine and joked that he had eaten his last cheeseburger.  We have a habit in our family of turning difficult realities into punchlines and this was no different.  He would joke that with his new “gear” as we referred to the stent that he was like a newborn; he could throw himself into bad habits with gusto.  I would feign horror, knowing that we would find some easy middle ground.

It wasn’t until the end of this year that I really thought about how differently the story could have ended.  There are many skilled practitioners of Buddhism who can find gratitude without thinking of what could have gone wrong.  I am not one of them.  As 2015 ended, I found myself thinking more and more about what could have happened, about my life without Colin.  Not just the practical financial aspects, which would be grim at best, but also the impossible loneliness I would feel in his absence.  When I find myself irritated by the hundreds of water glasses he manages to use and leave behind in a day, or the peanut butter with a knife sticking out left on the counter after lunch, or the fact he never quite remembers to close the fridge….  When I see those things and start to think to myself “what the ????” I think about the other ending we could have had to 2015, the ending where my husband got so gray that he disappeared altogether.  When I think about that I don’t even see the water glasses or the peanut butter.

One of my favorite phrases in Buddhism is “skillful means.”  It is used to describe the many different methods available to people as they search for truth.  The longer you practice, the more clear and efficient your means become.  It isn’t especially skillful to appreciate the life you have by imagining the worst case scenario.  But for now it’s what i am working with.  I cannot seem to learn the lesson enough times that the real treasures are hidden in the most ordinary days.

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Buddhism, Family, Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting, Yoga

It’s not really a superpower

Posted on by kosanford

Last weekend, I was talking to a friend about yoga and meditation and she told me she didn’t feel like she was good at either because she could never “clear her mind.”  It is a fact that we all believe that we are the proud owner of the world’s busiest mind.  Every one of us is convinced that no one’s head or life is as busy as our own.  However, “clearing one’s mind” is a common, but impossible directive.

In a yoga practice, one’s attention should be primarily with the breath, and then, with where one’s body is in space.  When you look down at your feet and see that you desperately need a pedicure, note it.  But, you can’t do anything about it in the middle of a yoga class so go back to your breath. It is not about “clearing one’s mind” at all, it is about returning your attention to where your body is, neither in the future or the past but right there on your mat.

The same is true with meditation.  There is no better way to bring your “to-do” list front and center than to try and not to think about it.  In meditation, we try to just watch our thoughts. Knowing that we are safely seated somewhere, we can just observe our chaotic mind, as if we were at the top of a tall building looking down on a busy street.  If you find yourself so swept up in a thought or fantasy that you are no longer in the present moment, you are either in an imaginary future or a completed past.  

When we meditate we are actively watching our thoughts and when they move away from the present moment we notice it by labeling it “thinking” and then return our attention to the present moment.  It may be that the labeling “thinking” has made students believe that they should not be thinking, that they are chasing a state of thoughtless bliss.  This is not the case at all.  Thinking in and of itself is not a bad thing.  Meditation is an opportunity to sit quietly and pay attention to the direction your mind is going.  Can you gently steer your mind and attention back to the present? When you notice your mind has wandered, label it “thinking” and return your attention to your breath, or the sound of your feet as you walk, or your body in the water as you swim.  We are practicing paying attention, which doesn’t involve having no thoughts. It means investing all our attention in what we are doing.

Just as we can place our feet on our mats, or sit on a cushion, we can also learn to place our attention where our body is, and try and develop some clarity about where our mind is going.  If your habit is to put your body somewhere and let your mind race anxiously into the future or lope around in the past, then ask yourself if that is really serving you. Isn’t it better to try and keep our attention in the one place where we can actually effect change, which is the present moment?

Whether you are practicing yoga, going for a walk, or eating a meal, see if you can’t try to keep your attention on what you are doing, or at least notice when it has shifted and bring it back.  It’s valuable to have clarity about where our thoughts go, but clarity is not developed by pushing our thoughts into some sort of corner where we pretend to ignore them in search of a “clear mind.” Clarity comes from watching our thoughts with a generous and loving attitude towards ourselves and making every effort to let go of anything that doesn’t serve us.  

It’s easier said than done, but like anything, it’s a habit we can develop, not a superpower that’s out of our reach.

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Buddhism, Meditation, Mindfulness, Parenting, Yoga

Nothing interesting happens…

Posted on by kosanford

I have this battered green spiral notebook that I have used for all my teacher trainings and meditation retreats. It is in many ways my spiritual brain. It sits on the bookshelf next to my desk and I pull it out periodically when I am feeling stuck. Every yoga sequence I have ever really loved is scrawled into it, as well as bits of wisdom from all the teachers I have worked with. At one point, Peter got his hands on it and covered a few pages with some construction vehicle stickers and elaborate drawings of rocks. He must have been about three when that happened.

Today while leafing through it a phrase that I had scrawled in the margin caught my eye. In my barely legible script it read “nothing interesting happens in your comfort zone.” I have been turning the phrase over in mind ever since.

I wondered about the context of the phrase. I bet it was in the spirit of encouraging yoga students to push themselves a bit. To try something new and surprise themselves. Or was it part of a meditation training, a nudge to connect with our students in a more meaningful way. Did someone else say it, or had it occurred to me? The rest of the page is blank, so I don’t know how that phrase ended up in the margin, a footnote on a blank page. It made me think of Ben off to middle school and pushed out of his comfort zone whether he likes it or not.

All of childhood seems to have built into it this concept of constant change. Even my children’s bodies are forever stretching and growing, their comfort zone as challenged as their pants to keep up with the endless transformation of their limbs and identities.

I feel a little envious of how, within my children’s lives,there is the built-in expectation that they will grow and change, the idea that a comfort zone is more of a launchpad and less of a trap. I would like to think of my own comfort zone that way, a safe starting point for unlimited potential. As adults our lives and habits can easily become fortresses Old relationships and safe places keep us from building new connections and stretching ourselves. We retreat to the familiar, the safe, the stable. These things are not inherently bad; we all need a strong foundation. Ideally, it should be one that supports us enough that we can safely test the edges of where we are comfortable.

You don’t have to jump out of airplanes, or start middle school to challenge your comfort zone. It can be as simple as smiling at a stranger, picking up a new book, letting go of an old resentment. We hold on to all sorts of ideas, places and things because we think we need them to feel safe. When we hold on to them too tightly they become walls that keep new ideas and new information out. It is only when we are open to peeking around the edges of our life that we will turn our comfort zone into a launchpad rather than a stop sign.

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Family, Meditation, Parenting, Yoga

Making peace with quiet……

Posted on by kosanford
When I first started teaching Yoga, I would drown my classes in detail.  I had learned so much and I wanted to share it. I was also using mountains of words to hide my insecurities about being a new teacher.  The more comfortable I became holding the space for my students the less  instruction I gave.  It took time to get comfortable with leaving gaps, moments of quiet to allow  people to create their own experience. I had to learn to trust the silence.
It’s the same in relationships.  When we meet new people it is harder to leave open space in conversation. At least for me, I fill the space with tsunamis of words and questions.  There is no greater compliment that I can give someone than to allow for silence and space.  I have tried as I get older to lean into that quiet space in relationships more.  It is a funny twist of personality to  think I always need to take center stage…I don’t.
We have so many ways to fill silence, often in my house music is playing while I read emails and carry on a conversation.  That is the opposite of silence and of leaving space.  I am trying to make a practice out of not filling the space.  Applying the lessons I learned teaching to other aspects of my life, will I be able to leave space in conversation?
I notice that when I leave more space for quiet in my life, I am also less busy.  I don’t feel the urge to be moving constantly, I actually am able to do less. It seems that when my mind and
mouth are moving quickly my body follows, I busily move from task to task with little awareness. When my mind and mouth are a little more quiet and spacious my body feels more at ease.  As with almost everything it is about balance.  Sometimes I need to be fiery and animated and busy, and sometimes I don’t. For me my natural state is one of action, it simply takes a little loving awareness to know when to just be still…..and quiet.
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Family, Marriage, Meditation, Parenting

Listen, this is important…

Posted on by kosanford

photo (11)As anyone who has been in a relationship for any length of time knows, there is a big difference between hearing and listening. In the early days of any relationship, romantic or otherwise, we listen very carefully to the other person when they speak.  As we become more familiar with people we may hear them but not with the same attention.  I can recall with incredible clarity what Colin and I talked about on our first date, despite the eagle-sized butterflies in my stomach. I was as present and aware of every detail of the day as I have ever been.  If you asked me the details of a conversation from this past weekend I would have a harder time.  It is not for lack of interest.  I still think that at any given moment Colin is the most interesting person in the room, it’s just that familiarity makes it easy to confuse hearing and listening.

 

Hearing is what happens when I ask my children to empty the dishwasher and they don’t move.  They have heard me…but they aren’t listening.  Listening is what happens when you calmly tell them several hours later that ignoring my requests makes me feel rotten, and emptying the dishwasher and making beds is just being a part of the team.  Listening makes change, but in our family for people to listen to each other, voices can’t be raised and eye contact is necessary.  Yelling, snipping, or coming from a place of exasperation pretty much assures that no one in my house will listen to you.

 

Thich Nhat Hanh, a well known contemporary Buddhist scholar, talks about “listening deeply” or “listening skillfully.”  These are practices that one develops through meditation.  By learning to listen to the rhythms of our own mind we are better able to listen to other people.  We learn how to listen by being quiet and practicing non-judgmental awareness of what comes up in our own minds.  It is the same when we are talking to a friend, a stranger, a family member, we have to see that person as they are, not as we wish they were, not rush them through to express our opinion, or in the case of loved ones, without the layers of history between us.


Skillful listening is something we can all develop.  At one time or another it has come naturally to us: a friend in crisis, a new love, a child’s first words, but then we relax back into hearing rather than listening.  These days I am working on really listening deeply, giving those around me my total attention.  When I listen with my whole heart I am a better wife, mother, or friend. Like any practice it starts by noticing when you aren’t doing it, and gently drawing yourself back into the present moment.  Eventually it becomes easier, replacing the old habit of hearing, with a new habit of listening.

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Family, Meditation, Parenting, Yoga

Start somewhere……

Posted on by kosanford

The conventional wisdom is that it takes 21 days to change or create a habit, although new research suggests that it can take much longer.  I have always been really interested in the relationship between routines and habits.  Routines are based on habitual behaviors while habits themselves can exist outside of routine.  For example, I have a habit of biting my lip. I do this regardless of the time of day or whether or not I am driving or watching tv; it’s just something I do. It is a habit that is not influenced by the rhythm of my day.

One of the things about moving to a new house and a new place is that so many of our routines were changed.  I have written extensively over the last few months about how moving or transition can be an opportunity to integrate new habits or cut out things that don’t serve you.  Lately, I have been thinking about reward systems for new habits.  An example of this would be a meditation practice. Students always want to know how they will be able to tell that this habit of meditation is “working.”  In any workshop or class this is always a tricky question. How do we encourage a habit or create a routine when there is no clear timeline or obvious payoff?

I used to tell students that the reward would be that they would be more available to the present moment, more awake to the nuances and habits of their own minds.  I still believe that this is true, but it is the kind of answer that implies that without a formal meditation practice you are sleepwalking through life. This is not at all true.  Meditation, yoga or a routine quiet activity or period of reflection is an important habit to introduce into every day simply because time moves extremely fast.  I find that my days are a blur of activity, much of it shaped by routine.  Every morning our house bustles until the last door has slammed and then it is completely quiet.  Then every afternoon it again swells with movement and noise until everyone has eaten, fulfilled their last commitments of the day, brushed their teeth and then fallen asleep — only to do it all again the next day.

If we don’t build time into every day to reflect or slow down we are simply riding a wave of routine, which will happily carry us day after day, week after week.  By taking time each day to stop moving, or to walk, run, swim, with total attention to the present moment, we are actually stepping outside of the rhythm of routine for just a moment.  Taking that time is the closest thing that I have ever found to a reset button, taking a chance to step back and make sure that we are really experiencing things rather than just orchestrating them.  A routine is an orchestrated set of habits that keeps your life running smoothly, but if you don’t examine it you can very easily lose touch with the fulfilling and exciting parts of an ordinary day.

I encourage everyone to add in something new for 21 days, some new challenge that shakes things up a little.  It can be a meditation practice, or a change to your exercise routine. It can be learning a new skill that requires concentration, just something out of the ordinary.  Twenty one days may not be the magic number but it is certainly a start. If our routines are running the show, it’s only because we let them.  Introducing new habits, challenging ourselves to shake things up a little bit will bring a freshness and a vitality to everything we do.

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