HEAL WITH PRACTICE

MBSR teacher John Taylor offers a five-step meditation for finding a greater sense of peace and freedom after trauma.

Find a comfortable, supported position and take a deep breath in. Let your breath move entirely through your body. As you inhale, pause for a moment at the top of your breath and then exhale, letting your outbreath extend just a bit longer than your inhale. Noticing and knowing that when you're under stress, it may be difficult to take deep breaths, but simply do what you can in this moment.

Know that we have potential for healing, for positive change, for a greater sense of inner peace and even freedom. All of this and more lies within each of us.

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1Stop. Here, simply notice any reactions you're having in this moment. You might notice a particular sensation or stressor. Simply notice. This gentle act of noticing allows us to create some space for our automatic reactions. When we notice, we allow ourselves to choose to respond with intention. 2

Take a breath. Allow yourself to breathe as deeply as is comfortable for you. Breathing deeply can bring us to a state of equilibrium—to a place of support, and maybe even a little peace. 3

Observe. With this greater sense of ease that you're cultivating, you can continue to observe what is arising for you in this moment. Between stimulus and response, there is space. 4

Imagine. Now, let's imagine together. First, imagine a door and an invitation to open the door. Imagine walking through and inside the space feels quiet and peaceful. Pause there. Now, bring to mind a memory that brings feelings of joy, and peace, and even a little excitement. Feel the energy of this moment. Pause there. Next, bring to mind a moment when you felt awe. Maybe a beautiful scenic view at the end of a long hike. Imagine the work it took to get you there. And now feel the satisfaction of arriving at this spot. Feel the joy. Pause there. Finally, imagine a kind, loving figure, maybe a grandmother figure. Feel them sharing their warmth and love with you. Reminding you that you are loved. Rest in that peace and love for a moment. Know that this kind, loving space is available to you at any time. 5 about 50 people were there, but, again, Mitch felt safe. He sat in the sand and let himself be guided in meditation, focusing on his breath. He listened to the ocean rolling in. “And I was very comfortable with that,” Mitch says. He had begun to discover a new tool.

Proceed. When you're ready, bring your attention back to your breath, wiggle your fingers and toes. Know that you can carry this feeling of spaciousness, joy, trust, and ease into your day with you.

Mitch mentions how Shelly “showed up for me”—he means it literally, in her warmth and friendship, but it’s also a sort of metaphor for connection to the moment, what mindfulness, with a great deal of practice, began to give Mitch: A way to be present, a way to show up to the here and now instead of going down the rabbit hole of past trauma.

It gave Mitch a way to begin changing his relationship with his pain—not to overcome it, but to begin to live with it.

Annika—who, like her husband, possesses an openness borne of deep sensitivy—started joining Mitch in the group meditation sessions at the beach, but the process was slower for her. “Every time I closed my eyes and went to that still place, I had such horrible, horrible thoughts in my mind that I had to stop,” she says. “It was much too overwhelming.” Mindfulness can take a great deal of practice— no matter where you’re starting from. Slowly, in small increments, it became useful for Annika too.

She would learn to bring mindfulness into ordinary life, to practice mindful eating, mindful walking, even taking mindful showers. She learned to stay within the moment, and within herself. Now she often goes to sleep with a guided meditation playing in her headphones. It’s mindfulness as a way of life: Out of the trauma the Dworets have suffered, the value of what the practice offers has emerged.

It would be absurd to think that they’ve found a way out of grief. The grief is permanent. They lost their son. Alex, now 18, lost his brother. The loss of Nick is part of who they are now. As Mitch puts it, “There’s not an end to this.”

Alex, Annika says, is doing OK, as he continues to see a trauma therapist. The practice of mindfulness, he’s decided, is not for him. Last fall he started training to become a mechanic.

Learning to be present in the moment, through mindfulness, has helped Mitch as a father, he says: “I wanted to show up for Alex and be a better listener instead of thinking forward or back.” It happens in small, typical family moments, he says, just hanging out on the couch, talking about, say, cars—Alex’s passion. Mitch has learned to slow himself down and listen rather than telling Alex what to do or how to think. Instead, he tries to hear what his son is saying.

It’s a day-by-day practice.

One morning late last summer, Mitch Dworet got up early, as the sun was just rising, before it was hot in Parkland, and went out into his yard. He sat and meditated, resting his attention on his breath, on the sounds of birds beginning to sing in the dawn light. As he sometimes does now, Mitch placed his attention on an intention for the day: That day, it was patience. He sometimes feels angry over how long it has taken to bring Nick’s killer to justice. But he doesn’t want to go down that rabbit hole, to live in that rage, to go back to the chaotic emotional hell he had so much trouble coping with in the aftermath of his son’s murder.

Instead, when the pull of the trauma threatens to take over, Mitch breathes. He listens. He stays with himself. He notices. And with patience. With breath. He knows he’ll keep tapping into that simple way back to the moment, and to himself, at vulnerable times throughout the day, and during every day to come.

Choose to Live

For Brenda Mitchell, mindfulness meditation opened the door she had closed on herself after her son Kenneth’s murder.

In 2019, Brenda would go to a big mindfulness retreat near Boston, organized by Shelly Tygielski and Sharon Salzberg, that included survivors and family members of victims from shootings in ten cities. “Let me just tell you, it was five days with no outside contact, no phone, no TV, no nothing,” Brenda remembers, laughing now at the sacrifice she thought she was making. “The only person I could listen to was me.”

What she learned at the retreat was both simple and profound. When she feels vulnerable, or, as she describes it, “when I find myself in a position, I pause and I breathe. I take a vacation with myself, for three minutes, whatever it takes me to just bring myself back and center myself. Mentally, I’m focused on absolutely nothing. I let my head go back and it just takes me to a place.”

After confronting her pain in therapy, Brenda says meditation allows her to remain with herself when grief threatens to derail her. It can seem, on first blush, to be a contradiction: The recognition of her pain over Kenneth’s murder, finally feeling her pain, led to her healing; the denial of it was literally killing her.

As she says, “I kept trying to get back to normal and there’s no such thing as normal for me. And so what I learned in the process is that I had to create a new narrative for myself and choose to live."

Mindfulness allowed Brenda to heal "from the inside out as opposed to the outside in" she says. "Mindfulness helped me see me again. It told me that my brain belonged to me. ●