36 By the way ...
Ponte Vedra Recorder · October 22, 2015
Are there time-out chairs for adults in college?
Here I am in the fourth of six
Wednesday classes at UNF. The OLLI
course (Osher Lifelong Learning
Institute) is called “Mindfulness Basics: Enhancing and Sustaining Mindful Awareness” and the teacher is Dr.
Toni Nixon who has given a Tedx talk
and is brilliant. We (23 of us, mostly
women and a few men) like her very
much. We sit in silence for 35 minutes
while she quietly tells us to breathe,
listen, hear, feel… We are doing our
“practice,” another word for meditation.
Practice simply (not so simply as
it turns out) helps us tune out worries about tomorrow: the laundry we
must do, the food we must put on the
table, the money we owe, the really
annoying political scene. Or maybe the
chemo we must endure. Our monkey
minds constantly spin with thoughts
we want to banish for at least a while.
This constant mental static causes us
worlds of anxiety, and sucks us into a
whirlpool of stress, which is responsible for making us sick. Apparently
75 to 90 percent of all sickness relates
to stress. Most of us don’t know what
to do with this
tension. Can’t
we have a pickup day for us to
throw out our
anxiety? Bring on
a 90-gallon plastic
bin so we can
dump our anxiety in it. No bin?
Mims Cushing
Breathe,
observe
By the Way...
what’s happening,
make a decision
and proceed, Toni says.
The first three classes I settled into
seated mountain posture with my
classmates, hands in my lap, shoulders,
spine, legs and arms relaxed. Toni
gently hits a chime three times on her
desk, which signifies practice is about
to commence. We try to banish our
botherations and throw ourselves back
to the days when we sat in Tibet with
Siddhartha and meditated.
OK, well not exactly.
This Wednesday is different from my
earlier three classes. I’d won the triple
crown that morning: a call, not texts—
THEME: FAIRY TALES
a miracle—from my granddaughter,
my daughter, and… my son. Driving
to class I levitated with happiness onto
the campus. The calls were brimming
with happy delights: My granddaughter came in first in two swimming
races, surprising for a Division One
college freshman, my daughter was
blossoming with her new job, loving
every minute, and my son, well, I can’t
remember what his latest triumph was,
but it’s always something.
It’s ten minutes into this week’s
practice, and I deserve to be put in
the time-out chair, even though there
is none. Actually, if people are thrown
out of class for misbehaving, I should
be tossed out. Why? Because today I
simply cannot stop my own monkey
mind from misbehaving and taking dictation from whomever it is (somebody
upstairs?) who gives me essay ideas.
About 30 years ago I knew if I didn’t
scrawl what I wanted to write about
some day, it would disappear. Over
the years I told my students “Use a
notepad! Take it with you everywhere.”
But writing and meditating (practicing)
ACROSS
1. Black ____ snake
6. NY Giants HOF
outfielder Mel
9. For capturing attention
13. Relating to axis
14. National Institute
of Health
15. Aussie bear
16. Rekindled
17. Compass reading
18. Sign of bad news
19. *Hans Anderson’s
Emperor lacked
these
21. *Reflecting truthteller
23. 1/60th of min
24. What aides do
25. *”Beauty and
____ Beast”
28. “The Sun ____
Rises”
30. Chinese tea
35. Lemongrass, e.g.
37. Wrong
39. Golfer’s accessory
40. Arm part
41. Shipping
weights
43. Beige
44. Sprays
46. River in Egypt
47. Innocent
48. Lowest part
50. Use a cat o’ nine
tails
52. Brit. fliers
53. Not straight
55. Dot-com’s address
57. *1001 what?
60. *Genie’s master
64. Pope’s court
65. Philosophical
system
67. Famous bandmaster
68. Make fit
69. Wow!
70. What a bridge
does
71. Affleck and Stiller
72. Indian bread
73. WWII conference
site
don’t go together.
Today in class I can’t stop jotting
down a few phrases for one of my
weekly Ponte Vedra Recorder columns.
Up until four years ago. I’d be at a
movie or concert and would have to
write down a few phrases to spark an
idea for a piece I wanted to write. So
disconcerting. I have, over time, taught
myself to let the creative muse sleep a
bit so I can live my life.
Today, thoughts pop up that no
amount of measured breathing can
crush. I have a notebook and scribble
a few distracting thoughts. I write that
my daughter told me when her child
went back to college after Columbus Day, it was as though a “whirling
dervish had vanished.” She and her
younger sister had been at each other’s
throats just like the old days. “Mom,”
she said, “after she left, it was so quiet
in the house, like Little House on the
Prairie.” I love that. There. I wrote it
down. Now I can relax.
There is actually a book called Mindfulness for Dummies. Maybe I should
pick it up.
SUDOKU
DOWN
1. Painter ____
Chagall
2. Michelle Kwan’s
jump
3. Venus de ____
4. Entices
5. Tennis great
Gibson
6. Singles
7. *Steadfast Soldier’s substance
8. Unifying idea
9. For, in French
10. Kind of palm
11. Hurtful remark
12. Toni Morrison’s
“____ Baby”
15. Kasparov’s famous opponent
20. “Bravo! Bravo!”,
e.g.
22. International
Labor Organization
24. Tell a scary story?
25. *Tom’s size
equivalent
26. Sunny prefix
27. Famous German
artist Max
29. *Ugly Duckling,
at end
31. Bank holding
32. Grouchy Muppet
33. Waterwheel
34. *”Three Goats
____”
36. Quilt stuffing
38. Raise the roof
42. 1988 Olympics
site
45. “____ ____” by
Pink
49. Yoga class accessory
51. The infamous
____ knoll
54. “Peace” with
fingers
56. Parkinson’s disease drug
57. Artist’s model?
58. Formerly Persia
59. Deprive of by
deceit
60. So be it
61. Like Jekyll and
Hyde’s personality
62. Antonym of “is”
63. Rover launcher
64. Uber alternative
66. *Little Mermaid’s
domain