For a little more than a week now, my mom has been quite ill. Thankfully, she is on the mend. She finished her second round of antibiotics yesterday. Although her energy level is still pretty low, she’s starting to engage in some activities again. Today she potted flowers in planters for family gravesites in observance of Memorial Day. I’ve been kept pretty busy coordinating and providing care. I have to admit that it was pretty stressful seeing her so frail. One small thing that I did was give myself permission to put blogging on hold. But a more powerful self-care strategy was my deliberate use of mindfulness with several activities throughout each day. I also made a conscious effort to stop multi-tasking, which seems more efficient than it really is.
Mindfulness doesn’t have to be part of a formal meditation or a religious practice to be effective. Just bringing one’s focus or awareness to the present moment or on what is happening now, is enough. I found that I was calm and able to enjoy doing mundane tasks. I also profoundly felt the exchange of love as I was providing physical care and doing Healing Touch for mom. There was more of a sense of peace than I would have otherwise expected during this time.
Washing dishes is one such example. I focused on each individual element of the experience. I observed the bubbles forming in the dishpan when the soap was added while the water was running. I felt the soothing warm water on my hands and observed the force of the sprayer while rinsing each dish and utensil. I made stacking dishes in the drainer an artform. I noticed stray crumbs and spots of various shapes and colors on the stovetop, counters, and table disappear as I cleaned them with my purple sponge. When I wiped the surfaces dry, they gleamed in the sunlight streaming through the kitchen window. Well, you get the idea. Then when I drained the dishwater, washed and rinsed the sink, I engaged in a little imagery and symbolically sent any remaining tension down the drain.
Now that I’ve experienced some emotional and physical effects of mindfulness, I’m actually finding more ways to maintain the practice. Brushing my teeth has become a new cue to remind me to be here now and not creating a grocery list in my mind or ruminating on an earlier conversation.
Mindfulness is evidence-based. More and more studies are showing that being mindful can help us enjoy life more, cope effectively with illness, and improve physical and emotional health. It’s been about twenty-eight years since Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D., founded the Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center, and brought mindfulness into the clinical arena and everyday life. http://www.umassmed.edu/content.aspx?id=41252 Now the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) http://nccam.nih.gov/ sponsors research investigating mindfulness-based stress reduction for symptom relief in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis and chronic low back pain.
There are several resources available to assist individuals in learning and integrating mindfulness-based stress reduction: books, audio CDs, online instruction, retreats, and trained practitioners. If you’ve never tried mindfulness, I invite you to explore it further. For readers who practice mindfulness, what tips do you have to share? How has it affected your health and wellbeing?
I love that you call it mindfulness.
It’s now being taught in Eckhart Tolle’s book “The Power of Now.” Being present. Biblically, it might be referred to “Be Still and Know.”
I too, found that I could be swept away with the to-do’s of caring for my mom and become exhausted and resentful instead of simply focusing on the one thing at a time–what was at hand.
Sometimes it’s time to emerse my hands in hot sudsy water and do the dishes or give a bath. Other times, it’s time to hold hands and eat popcorn. Sometimes it’s changing sheets or cooking eggs.
I “lose” my mindfulness again and again, but I’m returning to it–and finding that for me, true joy is about enjoying whatever is at hand.
Thank you for your post.
~Carol D. O’Dell
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter’s Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir
available on Amazon
http://www.mothering-mother.com
Hi Carol,
All the great concepts seem to resurface at various times under different names. They have staying power because they work!
I have always loved Psalm 46:10: “Be still and know that I am God….” I heard a meditative tape where this phrase was spoken several times. With each repetition, it was truncated, until it got to just, “be!” That is the essence of the “now.”
I, too, have to keep going back to focusing on the present. Somehow I lost that during my earlier adult years. I wonder what impact the ever-expanding workday and workweek has on so many of us these days.
Pam
Hi Pam, I liked your post on mindfulness and family caregiving. When I was a caregiver support group leader for the Alzheimer’s Association my co-leader Bob Stahl was an ex-Buddhist monk and he taught everyone in the group to do mindfulness meditation (also known as Vipassana meditation) one day. It was great! He had us focus on the pleasure and sensation of fully enjoying a single raisin. People joked that we’d all enjoy our food more and definitely eat less if we really took the time to be mindful when we ate and really relish it. I have a blog you might enjoy based on the articles I wrote when I led that group and worked as a family caregiving consultant called The Spiritual Journey of Family Caregiving. If you don’t mind I’d like to link to this article on my blog. I think my readers would really benefit from it.
Sheryl Karas
http://www.spiritualcaregiving.org
Hi Sheryl,
Thanks for sharing your support group’s mindfulness exercise of eating a raisin. It is a great example of something simple that can engage all the senses and truly give folks a powerful introductory experience.
I love that you have a blog on the spiritual journey of caregiving. An important part of whole person health and caregiving.
Pam
Thank you for this sharing of your life, Pam. Today is a wet and grim morning in this part of Scotland. Father-in-law is now semi-awake but not yet up, and I was trying to psych myself up for another day, hoping not to be too brusque with him. ‘Mindfulness’ is not a new concept to me, though a new description. You have given a timely reminder about the sanctity of the present moment. Thank you.
Dear ChickPea,
Thanks for your feedback. Caregiving is definitely hard work, especially for someone who is elderly with health challenges AND dementia. I commend you for taking the time out from your healthcare career to care for DJ. May this phase of your life be enriching and satisfying.
Pam