In deciding on what to blog about this month, I started thinking about where the word January originated from. From a quick Google search I learned that the name January is derived from the Roman God Janus, the God of doorways, gates and threshold—of beginnings, endings and transitions. Janus has two heads—one looking backward at where we have come from, and one looking into the future to where we want to go. I think that’s so apt for the new year given that for most of us, January is all about both reflecting back and thinking about what it is that we want to create in the new year.

We’re once again in the final throes of another holiday season and approaching a new year. While this season of lights can create feelings of joy, love and connectedness, it can also create stress, strife, loneliness and/or feelings of overwhelm. 

As we’re in the throes of the holiday season, especially as we’re finally and fully moving out of pandemic lockdown, many of us are finding ourselves faced with some uncomfortable situations with family and/or friends and feeling increased stress, including the holiday stress that generally increases this time of year. We may also find ourselves harboring resentments toward others and/or being particularly hard on ourselves, perhaps having a hard time forgiving ourselves for things we have done over this last year that may have caused harm to others or to ourselves. 

With Thanksgiving recently past, I’ve been diving into deep contemplation on gratitude, what constitutes goodness and taking in that good. It’s well-known that focusing on gratitude and goodness is an important aspect of living mindfully and doing so helps us show up and live with more compassion, appreciation and joy.

As I’ve been watching our three kittens grow, exploring all the cracks and corners of our home, exercising the classic curiosity of a cat, I’ve found myself returning to the Zen Buddhism philosophy of the “beginner’s mind,” also sometimes referred to as the “don’t know mind.”

Over the years, I’ve heard a lot about the healing energy of sound—that practices like chanting and using sound bowls have healing properties. However, I never fully understood the healing power of sound until I experienced it firsthand through the beautiful, healing sound of cats’ purring and a subsequent deep dive into the research behind purring and other high vibrational sounds.

I shared this grounding, exploratory walking meditation with the online biweekly meditation group that I facilitate. The group loved this grounding opportunity and the invitations to look at both objects that are loved and objects that we usually ignore so much that I felt compelled to share it in a blog post and build on the grounding techniques—which it feels like most of us could use more of these days—that I offered in my last blog. If you missed it, check out Mindfulness & Grounding Techniques: Bring Yourself Back To The Safety Of The Present Moment.

With so much going on in the world and in our communities, families and individual minds, hearts and bodies right now, it can feel hard some days to remain calm, centered and grounded. It’s often easy to get quickly swept away in feelings of overwhelm, worry, grief, shame and fear—feeling both figuratively and literally like you’re losing your footing. When in the throes of these moments, it can be helpful to remind yourself to take a pause, employ mindfulness and utilize your senses and grounding techniques to help you feel a little stronger and more stable.

So often, in the throes of our busy lives, it’s easy to lose track of and/or overlook the small gains, which can be like guideposts, gently reminding us that we are progressing, that there is hope for growth, change and transformation, and that we’re on the right path. These periodic check-ins help us stay focused, motivated and can elicit feelings of satisfaction and joy, as well as aid us in staying hopeful. I think that these reflections and guideposts so beautifully offer us hope—as individuals and as a collective humanity—especially right now given all the dis-ease, conflict and trauma that is prevalent in the world.

I had an interesting awakening of sorts earlier this week. It occurred as I sat down to meditate in my usual spot at home and closed my eyelids, imagining them to be blankets gently covering my eyes as I brought focus to my inner experience.

One of the most deeply-rooted conditioning in our world is that of “Othering,” the human phenomenon that compels us to look at anything that is ‘not us’ as ‘the Other.’ Othering, particularly “Bad Othering” occurs when we look at another living being—an animal, for example—and assume it is ‘not us’ so it doesn’t think or feel like us. When this happens, it becomes easier to rationalize that it doesn’t suffer and it doesn’t really feel pain.

Compassion means to suffer together, and it arises when we not only empathize with someone else’s suffering, but we also feel compelled and motivated to try to do something to relieve their suffering.

With so much violence, oppression, strife and pain going on in the world today, as well as a beautiful change into the spring season of rebirth and growth, I’ve been thinking about love and why it is that, in general, we don’t find ourselves infused with love and excitement about the miracles that are literally unfolding each moment, every day.

Shame. It’s a loaded word and an emotion/experience that underlies so much of our individual and collective suffering. Unlike guilt, which is a belief that we’ve done something bad, shame is a feeling that we are bad. As described by Dr. Chris Germer, clinical psychologist and international expert in mindfulness and compassion, “Shame is an inner, invisible energy.” However, shame is certainly something we feel inside our heads, hearts and bodies.

Habits are conditioned responses that we have, well, habituated. And, any addiction that someone develops is, in essence, a habit. Whether that be as potentially benign as caffeine every morning or as complex as an alcohol or substance abuse disorder that is increasingly adding to personal and collective suffering, addiction, as extreme behavior, habitually pulls us away from the middle path or the middle way.

In my last blog, Using Wise Effort To Live As Your Best Self As We Move Through The Holidays And Into The New Year, I focused on applying a firm hand of kindness and wise effort as defined by the Buddha in the noble eightfold path to guide us in moving away from over-efforting, as so many of us do, while kindly and compassionately using a firm hand of kindness to help keep us accountable to those aspects of our lives that help us live as the highest version of ourselves.

The holiday season—while it brings invitations to spend time extra with loved ones, give and receive, practice gratitude, celebrate, and cultivate joy—can also feel stressful, overwhelming and lonely for some, especially if this season of lights feels dark.

Compassion is having a sensitivity to the suffering of self and others, with the intention of finding ways to prevent or at least mitigate it. This sounds great as no one wants to be in distress, but how can we bring increased kindness and care into our daily lives?

I recently got a new pair of glasses, which showed me, quite literally, that I’d not been seeing reality clearly. This realization came as a bit of a shocker as I soon began to see with more clarity all that I had been missing.

Water is essential for life. It’s needed for cleansing, to purify and to sustain our human existence. Water can also teach us a lot about how to approach our lives, especially if it’s our desire to live with more fluidity, flexibility and a gentle and patient strength.