I'm back

Sorry I've been away for quite a while.

Those who need to have my email: please leave yours written in the comments.
I won't publish yours unless you're spamming me.

As most of my readers know I have been caring for a large family with 4 kids with special needs for a long time without any vacation.
I didn't mind, as I considered it to be my task in life.
I cared for my grandmother until she went in a home at a very old age, a few years before I married and got children. So it was a kind of ongoing theme in my life.

Apart from that I had to deal with quite some bad karma of others or a life I don't know, as I have started to call it.
I have a clean conscience, but one way or another got dragged in the mistakes of other people and caught up in the whirlwind it all caused.
The stress proved too much.

Without realising I was developing a serious heartproblem I went on putting the wellbeing of others first, ascribing symptoms to my asthma.
My health was deteriorating so bad that I started to arrange matters for my death.

A bad pneumonia made me go to our family physician. He asked a longspecialist for advice and she called me in. It turned out I have some strange things going on in my lungs.
She send me off to a cardiologist after she found something seriously wrong on an ECG.
Well, at the moment I was at the cardiology department for an echo, straight during the echo, my heartfunction was almost nothing. I was admitted to hospital straightaway, put on a monitor and went through a whole lot of diagnostic procedures. The cardiologist couldn't do anything else but give me lots of medication.

Now he states that he doesn't understand how I survived, as all others who arrive in hospital in the same condition have died.

I quickly regained most of my health, but recently it took a turn worse. My bloodpressure went far too high even though I was taking all the right meds.

So now I'm having the last pills available for the problem.
I've lost more than 30 kg in weight.
Eat and act healthy.
There's not much more we can do.

I feel the moment has arrived that I have to balance wellbeing, health and medication carefully.
It's like being sliding on a slope with a weight that helps to feel better but which also pulls you down to the edge of the rocks above a deep valley.

What a blessing I've already been living mindful before the whole concept even was (re-)invented in modern times.
So I try not to worry, but prepare.

Will you be walking this last part of my path with me?

Mindfulness as the new trend

I've seen trend of therapies come and go during the past 40 years.
Very interesting to see what people need in certain times of cultural and economical development.

The past year step by step mindfulness became accepted in the psychological care in The Netherlands, even though people rather call it something else.
The idea that a good way to deal with life has been around for thousands of years and is a way of living for millions of people who would never ever be able to pay for one singles session of psychotherapy is almost unacceptable.

That we've here in the home have been able to cope with a complex family thanks to mindfulness is almost unbearable for those who earn their money...with...say...120 euros an hour.

I've taught so many parents the way I deal with autism that I lost count. Pity I didn't send them bills. I would have had a very large villa with pool, 3 vacations a year, a jaguar and a mercedes, and certainly a subscription to my favorite magazines. LOL!
I'm sure I wouldn't have had to look for the least expensive shoes or search to find donations and sponsoring for my girls to go with school to another country.
OK, wrong choice.

But I've reached far more people and certainly those who would never have been able to afford a psychologist teaching them.
And I would have felt a fraud because buddhism provides everything for free.
(Not our local buddhism organisation..alas!)

Today I stumbled across an article in the Guardian about mindfulness in the UK.
In case you're interested. It's here.

When it's not accesssible anymore, please let me know.

Active listening: asking questions

Yesterday we saw that many people think they're listening carefully, whereas in fact they're fitting the information they get in their own streams of thought.

But how do we justice to the speaker?
When do we really listen?

Why do people think their friends listen better to them than others without any proof their friends really do listen better?

That's because they follow the stream of thoughts of the speaker and ask questions at the right time.

So the secret of active listening is not in interpreting and giving advice, but in asking questions to follow the stream of thoughts of the speaker.

When you do that, you'll be able to stand beside the speaker and hear what's happening. At crossroads of thoughts you'll be able to ask the questions that lead to all directions, thus broadening the understanding of what's going on.

That's active listening as it's supposed to be.

Active listening: selective perception and tunnelvision

Many people think that active listening is listening with care and attention, and drawing conclusions right on the spot, so good advice can be given.

But it doesn't do right to what the speaker is saying, because we limit our frame of mind.. because we listen with a frame of mind.

That means that we sort the information we get into streams that fit our thinking processes.
That means in fact that what fits into those streams of thought is heard and many other things are not perceived.
One calles it selective listening: sorting out what's needed, what fits.
And the result: tunnelvision (yes, it's called that way when you're listening too.)
Everything that's outside the streams of thoughts is not perceived.

Sometimes this is a conscious process. When we're studying, or writing a paper, we only need certain information.

But when you're reseraching, examining, assessing or just listening well, you're not doing justice to the person.

children and mindfulness

Spontaneously I developed a routine with the children to walk outside in our garden, no matter which weather it was.

In the summer we would walk after dinner. The sun low near the horizon, casting long shadows from the trees and plants.

In winter we just took the chance whenever the children wanted.

All my children remember these precious small walks.

This is interesting, because other children go for long walks in the woods, and mine just walked the few metres in the garden.

But plants and animals really came alive.

We studied each plant carefully. Looking for new leaves in the spring, flowers in the summer and fruit in the autumn.
Even in the winter there was enough to see, as leaves on the ground changed colour and slowly disappeared, branches changed and the promisses of spring could be seen.
And the animals... they were there too, either the birds, singing their songs of spring, the wonderful butterflies during summer, the hedgehog in autumn, or the small winterinsects beneath a tree with a fluffed up bird.

Every walk was an exercise in being together in a peaceful way, focussing the attention, and enlarging the attentionspan. Even observationskills were trained.

But most of all:  memories were created.
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