The Living Moment
Fall 2020, No. 24
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"My life is not this steeply sloping hour in which you see me hurrying."
-Rainer Maria Rilke
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("Still We Rise” article by Diane Handlin included below) |
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An Invitation to Learn
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction
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Still Standing — Photo by Kyo Morishima |
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Learn to live with greater vitality, health and well-being through Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program.
Presented by the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Center of New Jersey, the program offers powerful methods for reducing stress in your everyday life.
Diane Handlin, Ph.D., is one of the few instructors in New Jersey and in the world not just trained but actually Certified by the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Medical School (founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn). She, and her husband, Jim Handlin, Ed.D., who is also Certified by the CFM, often teach together. www.mindfulnessnj.com
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When I Am Among the Trees
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust, equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness,
I would almost say that
they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the
hope of myself,
in which I have goodness,
and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir
in their leaves
And call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.
And they call again,
“It’s simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Thirst)
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~ Winter 2021 Course ~
Online via Zoom
begins Tuesday, January 19th
7:30-9:30pm
(Sliding scale if needed)
All are Welcome
Reservations are required
~ Summer 2021 Course ~
Online via Zoom
(Sliding scale if needed)
For more information or to reserve a place
for the talk or course, please contact
Dr. Diane Handlin or Dr. Jim Handlin
at 732-549-9100
Current private telehealth instruction with Jim Handlin, Ed.D. (see bio on our website)
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(Please note that MBSR is an educational course and not psychotherapy. If you suspect that you have medical or psychological issues, please pursue appropriate treatment.)
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Still We Rise
(with a deep bow to Maya Angelou)
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"Be still long enough, I thought and the trees would take no notice of me and continue whatever it was they were doing or saying before I happened upon them. For nothing was more certain, to my mind, than that they lived a busy and communicative life which ceased—as at a command given—whenever I appeared."
(Pamela Travers’ impression of the Australian Bush as a child-where she would stand for hours, "listening to the silence” as quoted in Lively Oracle: A Centennial Celebration of P.L. Travers, Creator of Mary Poppins, ed. Ellen Dooling Draper and Jenny Koralek)
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“I spoke to an old therapist friend and finally understood why everyone is so exhausted after video calls. It’s the plausible deniability of everyone’s absence. Our minds are tricked into the idea of being together when our bodies feel we’re not. Dissonance is exhausting. It’s easier being in each other’s presence, or each other’s absence, than in the constant presence of each other’s absence. Our bodies process so much context, so much information, in encounters, that meeting on video is being a weird kind of blindfolded. We sense too little and can’t imagine enough. That single deprivation requires a lot of effort.”
- Gianpiero Petriglieri, as quoted in Steve Hickman’s "Zoom Exhaustion is Real"
Dear Reader,
It is more than 6 months since I shared my reflections about facing into the pandemic with you, and now as I write at a different point in the lifespan (if I may call it that) of our journey together. In addition to the seriousness and too often tragic global medical consequences that serve as the underpinning of all of our lives, there was the unsettling reality in America of the current election, which happily is now in another phase. And, of course, there is the exhausting new way many of us are living in which we are challenged by both the benefits and the downside of the electronic world. So, for this newsletter, I have been wrestling with how to offer something worthy of your time and energy.
This past summer I was fortunate to attend a world-wide Zoom event for teachers of MBSR led by Jon Kabat-Zinn which he opened with the same clear-eyed ferocity (in my experience of it) with which I have heard him speak many times before. This time, in the age of Covid-19, he urged: “This practice is not about self-improvement,” (despite it having many empirically beneficial health effects).It is not simply a cognitive-behavioral intervention. We need to remind ourselves that this practice we do is about life and death.” He added, “It is a reminder to let go of attachment to any outcomes, and to give ourselves over to the silence that is never not here, despite the endless number of thoughts streaming through our minds. And a call to take a stand through staying in contact with our bodies—so as to be here and not miss this precious moment of our lives.”
Last spring as we were entering this challenging time, I wrote about a robin sitting in the cherry tree outside the second floor window watching me as I was writing to you, but I realized in approaching writing to you today that I forgot to tell you about the cherry tree itself which has stood by steadfastly through every season and every newsletter I have written to you. On this fall day, it is actually sporting two scolding blue jays who have shown very little interest in me. It is a grand tree that had been knocked down in a hurricane 20 years ago, but refused to die! Every spring it sports the most lush, white cherry blossoms, cradling the song-birds that arrive unfailingly each spring. And every fall, as it gracefully ages, readying itself for winter, it sheds its leaves, while becoming more and more bejeweled with rich green moss. You can see a photo of the tree at the opening of this newsletter.
Also, last spring, Jim and I realized that if we were going to try to continue to share what we’d learned from MBSR we were going to finally have to “turn toward” and adapt ourselves to the electronic world (which those of you who have been reading our newsletters know that I have had, to say the least, an ambivalent relationship). Over the years, I have been quoting Linda Stone who wrote about our living in a time of “Continual Partial Attention” and I’ve written about my personal exploration/struggle with wrestling back a sense of agency from my electronic devices. However, much to our surprise, we found a meaningful way to share via Zoom what we’d learned from a lifelong meditative practice and MBSR training with a large MBSR class this past summer.
Happily, one of the students from last summer’s Zoom MBSR class shared the following with me: “What I got out of the class is—that everything I need is in myself—right here—inside me.” She added that she realized that she had begun to more deeply value a daily practice that she had developed before going to work. She shared that each morning, when she went outside and got into her car, she had begun sitting there for a few minute before putting the car into gear, taking stock of herself, deeply valuing the silence, the deep pause, before moving into the activity of her day, and that it had come to have great meaning for her. It reminded me of how often I have told our classes how powerful “beginning again,” and “starting small” can be.
What that invoked in me was a memory of the time we were down-sizing from our beloved home of 20 years with its lovingly cultivated white garden (so we could enjoy it at night) with its beautiful stone patio, designed by a sculptress friend of mine. One hot summer night, exhausted from sorting through boxes and boxes of papers in preparation for moving out of our home, (and having only the screen door between me and the intoxicating fragrance of the white lilies in the garden), I literally fell back onto the couch feeling unable to move. Near my feet lay our dear black Standard Poodle, Saki, who had followed me from basement to attic all day and evening long. On the glass coffee table in front of me was a large crystal, cut glass vase in which there were many of the elegant, long stem white Casablanca lilies I had brought in from the garden. As I looked at them, I was so still that I was able to witness one of the lilies gracefully opening as I followed the entire movement, as if we were participating in an adagio pas de deux. I knew as it was happening that it was a miraculous moment of which I had been invited to be a part.
As I write to you now, the memory of that beautiful moment, invokes another memory from several years earlier. It was a time when I had first learned to use a PC and had been working for months on an MBSR presentation for a group of NJ psychologists. Just as I finished the document, the computer crashed, stunning me into silence. I still can go back to that moment, and re-experience its full dimensionality. After a little while, very still, I went out onto the patio and sat down in the late afternoon sun on a swing which looked out onto the garden and began swinging ever so slowly. And as I sat there quietly swinging, wordless, I was still enough to be present to that moment when the light changed as day turned into night. It is not really possible to describe the experience of being that still, of feeling part of something so quiet, and yet so much more expansive than the small, partial, disconnected, busy me, and what I had experienced as such pressing concerns. I sat there for a long time quietly swinging as evening continued to descend. For that moment, nothing else in the world mattered. It was as if on the cusp of loss of home, of months of creative work, of the past, I was being shown a doorway to something much larger of which I was a clearly a part. And, what it also evoked in me was the realization, that even though our life was about to change, all I ever really needed was a swing and a small patch of late afternoon sunlight, along with a tenderness of connection to myself and the world, and I could be wholly at peace.
The question I am wrestling with as I write this to you is whether it is possible to intentionally cultivate a sense of wholeness and well-being, that sense of being wholly at peace, as we live in this time of Covid where much of our overt connection to each other is occurring through the digital world. And, in a time when Zoom exhaustion is a reality in so many lives, Steven Hickman, in Zoom Exhaustion is Real, Mindful, April 6, 2020, reaffirms the very helpful insight that, “On Zoom we are living in the constant presence of each other’s bodily absence.” To this, Dr. Alexandra Solomon responds, “There’s no solution, really. Just acknowledgement. Thank goodness for the technology that allows us to...connect with people who mean the world to us. But let’s extend ourselves the utmost kindness when we feel drained...and let’s extend that kindness to each other too.”
In a similar vein, in terms of my psychology practice, this time of Telehealth has led me to wonder what it is about speaking about psychological issues in person (or even on the phone) that makes it less enervating than having also to maintain screen contact at the same time. Then, I realized that on the phone my eyes could rest, which led me to remember that in originally setting up my psychology practice I had intentionally arranged my office so my chair faces both my patient and out onto the patio where we have a small Japanese garden and a small Japanese maple as well as that graceful, wounded, cherry tree, not to mention the occasional birds and squirrels that constantly appear and reappear. This, of course, is in direct contrast with my engagement with Zoom which tends to force my eyes to be taken into, and my attention automatically narrowed, to the image on the screen. So, I realized that to be more comfortable with using Telehealth with a client or Zoom to teach MBSR, what I needed to explore was what kind of physical cues I could be in touch with within myself and in the other person in order to experience what often is the rich texture and multi-dimensionality of the experience.
For me, personally, the work that has attracted me most as a health professional has been body-inclusive. Similarly, in terms of being with a mindfully-oriented group on Zoom, I have found that if I can prepare myself, there is a way to soften the gaze when looking at the screen so that it is possible to be receiving a more open-hearted impression of other and self. A poet might call it “seeing” rather than “looking,” the latter often suggesting a narrowing or one- dimensionality. Softening the gaze calls for the kind of seeing that might occur when looking at a tree, a flower, a lake, a mountain, or a beloved grand-child or pet—a looking with more of one’s whole being—where what one sees is nourishing and more expansive, including the experiencing of oneself as well as the other. Some have described it as an opening of the heart, rather than a narrowing—almost like a feeling heard which is sometimes described as a feeling seen, wherein both subject and object are included.
One of the things that Jim and I learned from participating in the MBSR class this summer was that besides the importance of trying to set up a space (if at all possible) that is free from work associations during a time chosen to be meditative, or when meditating with a group, is that it helped to push a little bit away from the computer and even (when appropriate) to close one’s eyes or at least let one’s eyes wander restfully, in order to take some concrete measures for distancing from the technological world. Friends who spend long days on the computer have shared that even at work, having a desk which allows them to alternate standing as well as sitting is helpful in this regard.
This reminds me of one of the most important lessons I took away from my psychology doctoral education—that more problems arise in families and relationships from too much closeness than too much distance—and that the most important work that often needs to be done is to help people build healthy boundaries. (And, importantly, this also allows a health care provider to stay more centered and grounded.) On a related note, when the question arises in MBSR classes of how mindfulness can be a help when dealing with difficult communications, what often comes up is that if a person can get grounded, in the body and the breath, and not be so immediately reactive (symbolically, this is potentially also helpful when physically pushing away from being lost in the Zoom screen) our human proclivity as Kabat-Zinn describes it, for “reacting rather than responding,” which too often results from not being able to access the inner spaciousness needed to allow for more degrees of freedom, or a more fulsome responding to what is occurring can again bring forth fruit or blossoms like those that arise on our beautiful patio cherry tree that got knocked down, but seemingly against all odds, still stands, thriving, and bringing such beauty into the world.
Since the beginning of the COVID lockdown, the Wall Street Journal estimated on Oct. 30th that Americans working at home spent an extra 22 million hours on their primary jobs each workday.
“Generosity is another quality which like patience, letting go, non-judging and trust, provides a solid foundation for mindfulness practice. You might experiment with using the cultivation of generosity as a vehicle for deep self-observation and inquiry as well as an exercise in giving. A good place to start is with yourself. See if you can give yourself gifts that may be true blessings, such as self-acceptance, or some time each day with no purpose. Practice feeling deserving enough to accept these gifts without obligation-to simply receive from yourself, and from the universe.”
- Jon Kabat-Zinn
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Diane Handlin, Ph.D.
Licensed Psychologist
NJ Lic. #3306
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Diane Handlin, Ph.D.
Founder and
Executive Director
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Jim Handlin, Ed.D.
Educational Consultant
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Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.
~ Blaise Pascal ~
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A Dream of Trees
There is a thing in me that dreamed of trees,
A quiet house, some green and modest acres
A little way from every troubling town,
A little way from factories, schools, laments.
I would have time, I thought,
and time to spare,
With only streams and birds for company,
To build out of my life a few wild stanzas.
And then it came to me, that so was death,
A little way away from everywhere.
There is a thing in me still dreams of trees.
But let it go. Homesick for moderation,
Half the world’s artists shrink or fall away.
If any find solution, let him tell it.
Meanwhile I bend my heart
toward lamentation
Where, as the times implore
our true involvement,
The blades of every crisis point the way.
I would it were not so, but so it is.
Who ever made music of a mild day?
~ Mary Oliver ~
(Thirst)
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Storage
When I moved from one house to another
there were many things I had no room
for. What does one do? I rented a storage
space. And filled it. Years passed.
Occasionally I went there and looked in,
But nothing happened, not a single
twinge of the heart.
As I grew older the things I cared
about grew fewer, but were more
important. So one day I undid the lock
and called the trash man. He took
everything.
I felt like the little donkey when
his burden is finally lifted. Things!
Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful
Fire! More room in your heart for love,
For the trees! For the birds who own
Nothing—the reason they can fly.
~ Mary Oliver ~
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Still I Rise
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still like dust, I’ll rise.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries?
Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.
~ Maya Angelou ~
(from And Still I Rise)
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may my heart always be open to little
birds who are the secrets of living
whatever they sing is better than to know
may my mind stroll around hungry
and fearless and thirsty and supple
and even if it’s Sunday may I be wrong
for whenever men are right they are not young
and may myself do nothing usefully
and love yourself so more than truly
there’s never been quite such a fool who could fail
pulling all the sky over him with one smile.
~ e.e. cummings ~
Complete Poems (1904-1962)
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Look Out Over the Prow
Look out over the prow;
there are millions of boats
of righteous souls on the waters with you.
Even though your veneers may shiver
from every wave in this stormy roil,
I assure you that the long timbers
composing your prow and rudder
come from a greater forest.
That long-grained lumber is known to
withstand storms, to hold together,
to hold its own,
and to advance, regardless...
...Struggling souls catch light from other souls
who are fully lit and willing to show it
If you would help to calm the tumult,
this is one of the strongest things you can do.
(Excerpt from Writings by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves)
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The Living Moment
There is a stillness at dawn
asking for me
I hear
the note not played
I see
the line not written
I understand
the word not spoken
I am
in stillness
I am
the Living Moment
uncommitted.
~ Cliff Woodward ~
(with Stephen Damon)
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Jon Kabat-Zinn founded the world-renowned Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Clinic in 1979 and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society (CFM) in 1995 at the University of Mass Medical School. Jon's excellent foundational book, Full Catastrophe Living, 1990, describes the exact program which is still the touchstone for this work, and Jon's inclusion in Bill Moyers Healing and the Mind on PBS in 1993 sky-rocketed his work into the public domain.
Louie Schwartzberg, TedxSF Talk
David Bowie, from Couches all over the World
Penguin, Random House, 2018.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, March 30, 2020
by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Recorded March 25, 2020 at
Recorded meditation sessions
with Jon Kabat-Zinn
Brown University's Mindfulness Center:
The Brown Center's mission statement related to research states: "We are at a time in history when mindfulness research is rapidly expanding, and mindfulness has become a $1 billion industry in the United States alone. There is great need for methodologically rigorous research to help determine whether reported impacts of mindfulness on health are fad or fact. The Mindfulness Center at Brown leads initiatives in this area. Our researchers include experts from medicine, public health, and humanities to examine mindfulness from all angles."
Brown's program is centered around Jon Kabat-Zinn's work and his definition of mindfulness as, "awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally." (And, we have heard Jon in person, add, and "with affection.")
Heart-Based Mindfulness - Kate Mitcheom, MBSR instructor at Brown, is currently offering online free meditations and also a Silent Retreat with Lucia McBee and much more--
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At www.jonkabat-zinn.com you can view many videos of Jon speaking and teaching on the About page as well as Anderson Cooper's 60 Minute Interview with Jon on the Home page, as well as much more.
New Books by Kabat-Zinn published by Hachette Books:
(1) Meditation is Not What You Think: Mindfulness and Why it is So Important; (2) Falling Awake: How to Practice Mindfulness in Everyday Life, 2018;
(3) The Healing Power of Mindfulness: A New Way of Being;
(4) Mindfulness for All: The Wisdom to Transform the World, 2019.
for Jon's other books
(Please note that any workshop with Jon Kabat-Zinn fills and closes almost as soon as it is advertised, but if you get on their waiting list early enough, you very often will be moved into the class as other people's plans change.)
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Selected Viewing and Reading |
The Medicine of the Moment: How mindfulness is making inroads in health care through habit change, stress reduction, self-care, and decreasing physical burnout, Barry Boyce and Peter Jaret, 5th Anniversary Issue of Mindful magazine, April 2018
Too Early to Tell: The Potential Impact and Challenges-Ethical and Otherwise-Inherent in the Mainstreaming of Dharma in an Increasingly Dystopian World, Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2017
Trouble with Maps, Jon Kabat-Zinn, 2011
Mindfulness and Education at Newark Academy in the Fall of 2015 (For further information on Jim Handlin, see Bios page at www.mindfulnessnj.com)
Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, Daniel Goleman & Richard J. Davidson, 2017
The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smart-phones to Love - Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits, a new book by Judson Brewer
with a foreword by Jon Kabat-Zinn
Nobel prize-winner Elizabeth Blackburn and researcher Elissa Epel
who have demonstrated how the telomeres at the end of chromosomes have the capacity to lengthen as a result of lifestyle changes and the development of stress reduction skills, resulting in enhanced health and increased longevity.
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"A Necessary and Vital Moment,"
Jon Kabat-Zinn's Science of Mindfulness,
Jon Kabat-Zinn discusses Mindfulness in Education, January 26, 2006
Mindfulness in Education (Part 1)
Mindfulness in Education (Part 2)
Mindfulness in Education (Part 3)
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More Videos with Jon Kabat-Zinn |
Google talk, YouTube, Oct 11, 2007.
Google talk, YouTube, March 8, 2007.
Bill Moyers PBS video
from the series Healing and the Mind
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Selected past issues of The Living Moment |
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On the cusp of the next chapter of the time in which we are living when there have been so many challenges that have been met with so much courage, this newsletter is dedicated first and foremost to Dave Kapferer, without whose artistry, skill and huge heart it could never have been brought to fruition. Also, of course, to our dear son, Triston, who made it possible, despite the demands of his life, to send this out to you, and who helped us successfully make the huge leap to offering the MBSR class online. And, let us not forget all the Health Care Workers who have given their all during this time, as well as all the individuals who have shown, whether small or large, oh so important kindnesses, to others and to us. And, lastly, but oh so importantly, all the brave and tireless individuals like my cousin, Gerry Bogatz, who, like all the incredible Poll Workers and Local officials who were in the trenches, worked toward protecting the integrity of our beautiful democracy. |
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"As to the value of the course, I would note that the group workshop designed to work through Jon Kabat-Zinn's curriculum is very effective. The workshop / course added a great deal of depth and opened my mind to a different way of looking at things and fostered exploration. When mindfullly present, time seems to expand for me. I relax, freed from thinking about the next place I have to be or the next thing I have to do ... I have discovered that if I hold off, I usually do not act along the lines of my first reaction. I've realized that I almost always have time not to act immediately. I've also rediscovered my happy me, what I remember from soooo long ago ..., and that is really wonderful." - Jane Dobson, Corporate attorney |
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IMPORTANT NOTICE: Although Dr. Handlin is a licensed psychologist and has a separate psychology practice, please note that this is an educational course and not psychotherapy. In addition, information contained in this document is informational and not to be construed as medical advice. If you suspect you have medical issues, please pursue appropriate treatment. Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is a separate educational course for those interested in developing mind-body connections. MBSR is a non-psychological service offered apart from Dr. Handlin's psychology practice and is not meant to substitute for personal or professional psychological advice which must be received from a licensed mental health professional.
NJ Lic. #3306
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Acknowledgement for Photography:
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Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Center of New Jersey™
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