We come together on our kibbutz for weekly mindfulness sessions. This we do, even under the threat of rocket attack.
Yesterday, Monday, February 24th, 2020 saw a renewal of red alerts in Eshkol and in the northern part of the Gaza Envelope. But, there was no doubt in my mind that I’d show up to facilitate morning mindfulness with our group of over-70s and then a late afternoon mindfulness with a smaller group of women.
I appeared in the “Gan haCahol” (the Blue Kindergarten), the space for golden agers, and was greeted with smiles. H was describing a trip she’d just experienced down in South Africa. We heard about the stark differences between the rich and the poor. How the poor enclaves included raw sewage running through the streets. We heard about the still lingering signs of apartheid and how only now a middle class of mixed races was beginning to emerge, demanding rights. We heard about giraffes and a tiger sighting.
Then we sat to begin our mindfulness session. I wanted to work on body and breath awareness as an anchor for focus, as a release from thoughts. We broke up the body scan with a listening session, our awareness of breath offering a safe distance from the outer sounds. In wartime, the sound of a boom, the pervasive sounds of planes can trigger fear, anxiety. The use of mindfulness offers a way to separate between the self and that which is outside and out of our scope of control.
We returned to the body, scanning all parts, directing the breath and allowing it to clean and renew as it energized us.
In fact, the session was enriching and I was delighted to see that although we’d been in meditation for longer than usual, there had been no shifting of bodies or signs of discomfort. We continued with energizing our hands, creating a ball of power and doing “la qi” to focus movement, mind and breath as we breathed in, separating the hands, and breathing out, allowing the hands to come towards each other.
After a forty-five minute session of replenishing our minds, and energy, there was only one comment about the noise of the airplanes, but since we were all calmer, we acknowledged it and continued, undisturbed. Thanking one another, we got up to continue our lives, with the uncertainty of what the day might bring.
Later on, I welcomed the women to the Open Center, where we sit on mats and cushions. We checked our current body status – our thoughts, sensations, feelings and then offered ourselves wishes for whatever we required such as, relaxation, safety, happiness. Those words we carried along with the breath to renew our bodies after a day’s endurance of rocket fall on various communities. We soothed and energized our body systematically via the breath.
We took short breaks to simply listen to the sounds in the room and outside. This allowed us to rest before continuing. The scan was divided into 3 parts – the head, the upper torso and the legs. When we approached the torso, I introduced the idea of the breath as artist, with the ability to decorate the arms with colour and energy, like a tattoo of light. We highlighted our back in colour and allowed the body to enjoy the effects.
We shook out the body before continuing to scan, breathing into the legs and ultimately creating shoes of colour, shape and energy: shoes which would allow us to travel wherever we wished, magic shoes to protect us.
Meditation as a doorway to body awareness, with enhancements, why not, I thought!
Afterwards, we shook out our bodies, stretching and engaging in our Dry Shower, patting our body, paying attention to areas with tension. On completion, we referenced our wishes for ourselves, if they were relaxation, safety, happiness or any other wishes that applied to us.
Thanking one another, we left the session. This time, the session had been accompanied by booms, from the beginning at 5 p.m and throughout. Still we held our concentration. Later on I read that rockets had fallen on the neighbouring kibbutzim.
I feel gratitude for mindfulness as a tool in the resilience kit, and fortunate for the ability to offer sessions on the kibbutz and to pupils, via whatsapp or phone. This is an open invitation for anyone who needs a few minutes to disengage from surroundings to focus on the body, mind, breath. Just contact me, Judih, via a comment here.
Let My People Know / talk about it now 