Friends, lately I’ve been thinking of how my life took a positive upturn when I realized I wasn’t stuck in my symptoms and did not have to let them define me! So I want to make sure that besides my stories of solidarity, this blog also features resources and ideas you can grab onto to help you learn new mindsets and skills you can harness and use to overcome or lessen depression, anxiety, and flashback symptoms.
I’m honored have as a guest on the blog today Mrs. Eli Lund to talk about the value and art of mindfulness as a practice. Eli has developed her mindfulness practice over time and is now using it to help others with her Better Now website and podcast (linked below). The website has many tools to help you get started, and the podcasts feature real people’s experiences you can draw from to help yourself.
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As a native Costa Rican, I grew up near a rainforest, cradled by verdant, velvet blue hills in a small town called Ciudad Colon. I remember the pitter-patter of the raindrops on our tin roofs every afternoon around 3:00 PM. The tropical thunderstorm would create latte brown ravines down the gravel streets in front of our adobe home. I’d run barefoot through the rain, from one cousin’s house to the next. We had no fences back then, no iron bars protecting our homes. A provincial freedom ran through our veins, completely wild and untamed. I remember those moments so fondly, there was no linear space and time, instead, time was marked by the brewing of coffee in the cotton socked-shaped filters used for drip coffee, now trending in America.
Because I was raised in such present moment oriented culture where spending quality time with family mattered, the idea of planning ahead or setting goals was very foreign to me. As a young child, I was unfamiliar with the concept of anxiety, strategic planning or future-oriented thinking. What was there to be anxious about, except the occasional lightning and thunder that split heaven and earth?
Later in my life, around my thirties, I remember a dear friend saying to me, “you are very mindful.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so I asked. It is in the way you move, how you serve food, the way you play with your baby and embrace your husband. I was perplexed by her answer. Doesn’t everyone move this way or perceive life this way?
I suppose the presence and mindfulness came from months of having “nothing to do, nowhere to go and nothing to attain,” as Jon Kabat-Zinn says. This short simple phrase is loaded with an incredible power-the permission to let go, relax. Do absolutely nothing? The mere idea is contrary to the ingrained societal expectations of productivity. Doing nothing is tied to the principals of non-attachment, non-striving and letting go.
As I grew older, after graduating from college, I remember packing every minute of the day and living from the agenda items of my calendar. In fact, I was so attached to my calendar, that when I lost it, I felt completely lost and disoriented stripped of temporary purpose.
Phil, a spirit guide that fell into my life in my mid-twenties, would say, “You fill up every minute of your schedule so not a moment is left to be with yourself and understand who you truly are.” And so began the journey of self-study that brought me to the study of yoga and meditation. The practice of meditation spoke to me because of my upbringing in Costa Rica.
As COVID unleashed a world pandemic and changed our world in the month of March, I began a deep practice of mindfulness each morning by practicing yoga and daily sitting meditations. In an effort to share how to be present in the moment, deal with boredom and nurture creativity, I video-taped these small moments and called them A Mindful Moment with Miss Eli and hope they may be of use to listeners.
Presence and following the breath is a liberating act that quiets the mind chatter and focuses on the space between the Self and whatever is occurring in the mind. For me, it creates a release of any tension in the body and allows my being to let go of holding on to any thoughts or emotions that produce stress. Presence deepens my awareness of the here and now.
This summer, as I fell deeper into the well of creative energy, I began to dabble with podcasting. And so began, Better Now Living Mindfully. This website houses many of the Mindful Moments with Miss Eli Youtube videos and meditations produced by my dear friend and dharma sister, Georgiana Lotfy. Georgiana is a Marriage and Family Therapist. To combine our studies in psychology and mindfulness, we decided to share our conversations about life with the hopes of providing mindfulness resources to our listeners during this worldwide adjustment to COVID. Our Better Now Living Mindfully Podcast is a body of healing work that we share, one conversation at a time to reduce stress and increase awareness of the present moment.
