STAYING BALANCED IN A SEEMINGLY UNBALANCED WORLD (video) (5334 hits)
Despite what is going on around you, you have the power to stay balanced, even in the middle of chaos.
In the late 1990s, my world was crumbling. Every time I turned around there was a sudden death of someone close to me. My mother, godmother, sister-in-law, and two close friends, all died within the first few months of 1996.
What was going on? I was afraid to answer the phone fearing more bad news. During that time, our special needs adopted son who was ten years old, was becoming more unruly, and our family felt like we were all coming apart. And these were just a few of the catastrophes I was weathering back then.
I remembered feeling my body was even betraying me. Illness had set in from the stress. I prayed for just a sliver of light to see my way back to “normalcy, whatever that was. Something had to be done. I had to find peace.
Despite the fact I had been meditating since college, I still needed something to rely on in the moment. I was dealing with the deaths and walking a tight rope trying to balance working for a fast-paced television network and my family, which included my three children and a husband. I didn’t have time to just sit for a length of time to meditate. I needed something that I could use in an instant whenever I was feeling overwhelmed.
Prayers and meditation kept me from drowning, but there was something else I learned, which which gave me instant relief and restored my balance.
Enter Mindfulness.
Back then when I first learned Mindfulness from the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, who “Time” magazine credits to be the first teacher from the East who brought it to the United States, very few people were aware of the practice. Dr. Martin Luther King, called Hanh his brother and nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Today it is main-stream. It’s practiced in corporations (Google, Apple), sports, hospitals, pain clinics, the military, law enforcement, colleges and in high schools.
Here is my short video on Mindfulness (6:45sec) which can help you use your natural built in de-stressor…your breath.
