Once in a while I come across a phrase that helps me drop from the chaos in my mind in the present moment, into the now, into what is most meaningful. Psychologist and author Leonard Felder’s latest book is called Here I Am and the title of the book is the practice I connect with.

What do I mean?

In Judaism there’s a phrase called Hineini which means “Here I am.” It epitomizes mindfulness, intentionally bringing our minds to the present moment, without the filters from the past.

Here’s how it worked for me.

In the spirit of this blog I want share you with a song that was recently sent to me by Jim Angus, a Canadian songwriter. As you listen to this you are welcome to close your eyes and just hear the song or keep them open and allow the images to complement the experience.

Enjoy!

In a past blog, Ronald Pies, M.D. wrote about an experience which left him fuming when a local pharmacy lost close to 50 years of “priceless” home movies of childhood summers and memories gone by.  That same day continental flight 3407 went down and the deaths of 50 passengers that day putting everything in perspective. He said “Having problems means being alive” and even though we may struggle in this life, being alive is something to be grateful for.

Days later I learned that a very good friend’s husband was hit by a bus and left in critical condition only to pass away shortly after. He was a great man with a sweet soul and a gentle nature. He loved his animals, his wife, and kids, and seemed to always have a smile for you when in his presence. When I heard the news, I initially felt resistance to the sadness as I had so much to do that day and didn’t feel like I had time to feel it.

I love how more and more research is coming out in the field of neuroscience pointing to neurological correlates of things we’ve all known for years. It’s validating.

One of the number one things that drive us nuts is outside noises we can’t control. It’s the car alarm, the neighbor’s noisy stereo, or a friend’s baby who can’t stop crying.  Cathy Kerr, a neuroscientist at Harvard Medical School and her colleagues recently found that meditators are quicker and more precise at adjusting the alpha wave rhythms in the brain. These are brain waves that help regulate the transmission of sensory input from the outside and are also a sign of relaxed activity in the brain.

So, as she put it in a recent NY Times article, “If you’re reading something in a noisy environment and you want to be in a bubble, you might use your alpha rhythms like a volume knob, to turn down the volume on neurons that represent sound from the outside world.”

Participants in her study who took an 8-week mindfulness course were asked to turn their attention their left hand or foot. These participants showed quicker and more precise alpha waves than the people who did not practice the meditation.

What does this mean to the rest of us?

A few months ago I was walking with a long time friend of mine who has had a long history of working in the field of personal and professional development. He said something that really surprised me. He had developed a discipline of checking into the present moment every minute of the day. Just for a few seconds he’s check to see where he was, what he was thinking, and how he was feeling. Over a short time he got pretty good at this and his mind just started to automatically bring him to the moment. This may seem extreme, but maybe there’s something for the rest of us to learn here.

What if during multiple moments of the day you had a mini-moment practice where you brought your mind to the present moment and checked in with yourself. What would change?

Once in a while we all come across some information, a person, a story, or a quote that lifts us up for that moment and makes a difference in our day. What you may not realize is that momentary difference goes on to become a difference in many people that you came in contact with during the day.

In their book Connected, Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler make the argument that even our friend’s friend’s friends have an impact on us, that’s how deep the fabric of our interconnectedness goes. We all want to make change in ourselves and our communities and it’s important to be mindful of the fact that in order to get motivated to make change, we need to be inspired.

Recently I came across the website www.weresoinspired.com that is 100% about helping us get inspired for the better.

It started when a couple started sending each other emails every day trying to inspire one another to live “as if it mattered” and then made a life change to make that what they want to help others do in the moments of their lives.

Is it possible that we hold more good within us than we think? Is it possible that our brains are inclined toward looking for negativity in life and breezing over those aspects that are positive? Most importantly, is it possible that with an awareness of how we are wired, we can transcend these conditionings and recognize more choice in life?

Walt Whitman said:

“I am larger, better than I thought; I did not know I held so much goodness.”

What distracts us from this goodness?

A funny thing happened to me on the way to work the other day. No really. I was driving and stopped at a red light. The light just turned green and as I was about to step on the gas pedal the driver behind me honked.

The immediate thought was, “What the heck is wrong with this guy?  The light just turned green, people are so impatient.” My shoulders tensed and I was getting upset. “Let it go, let it go, he could be having a bad day already,” I tried to say to myself. As I started moving forward he pulled up to the lane next to me as if to pass me, but then slowed down next to my window. That’s where things got interesting.

Nowadays most people who come in to see my for private therapy come to see me because of my background with mindfulness and psychotherapy. Whether the issue has to do with stress, anxiety, depression, trauma, or addiction, there is a sense of wanting to come home, to come back into their life, to gain emotional intelligence, to get back in touch with what really matters.

However, there is also a hidden or not-so-hidden agenda that mindfulness will be used as a relaxation exercise of some kind. While this may be a nice side effect of mindfulness practice, mindfulness is not relaxation.

It’s legitimate to ask, what is the difference between mindfulness and relaxation? After all, the most mainstreamed and popular program out there is called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction. Right in the title is the implication that we’re using this for stress reduction. However, it’s just a clever title to get people in the door; the program is so much more than that.

In A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook we answer this question:

While there have been many things that may have gone through your mind the minute you heard of Japan’s recent 8.9 earthquake, all the subsequent aftershocks, the Tsunami and threat of radiation from their impacted nuclear plants, one thing we begin to realize is how connected we really are.

A short time after the Tsunami hit the coast of Japan, large waves rolled into the Harbor of Santa Cruz, Ca thrashing the marina around. It’s become clearer to me that we’re all responsible for one another and I think that’s a huge driving force in the growing interest in compassion.

Compassion is defined as being able to put yourself in the shoes of another and inclining your heart toward wanting to help in some way.

Compassion practices have been shown to reduce stress and increase well-being.