Health Journal Online

Tag: pause

  • W.A.I.T. a Minute: A Practice to Pause Before You Post on Social Media

    W.A.I.T. a Minute: A Practice to Pause Before You Post on Social Media

    A simple mindful practice that can slow down emotional reaction, invite a breath, and encourage you to pause before you post.

    Social media has made it easy to broadcast our thoughts and feelings far and wide in an instant. At the same time, we often don’t even consider the huge numbers of people who will read what we share. How many friends do you have across your socials? 300 to 400? 500 plus? How often do you really pause before you post?

    When feelings are at a fever pitch, there’s a lot of rapid-fire, non-face-to-face communicating. For teenagers this can be especially tricky, given their proclivity for impulsivity.

    “Adolescents are biologically more prone to making decisions that are not well thought out,” says Tristan Gorrindo, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at The Ross Center in Washington, D.C. “The part of the brain right behind the forehead, which controls judgment, is at that time undergoing a rapid period of development,” says Gorrindo, who is studying the way families use technology.

    For teenagers and adults alike, it’s far too easy for a moment of heightened emotion to result in acrimonious conflict, bullying, or just saying something that lives forever and can be deeply regrettable.

    Gorrindo has created a practice called W.A.I.T., designed with teenagers in mind (but perfect for anyone living in today’s digital world). Here are 4 questions to ask yourself before you post:

    W = Wide Audience
    “Would I say this in front of a school assembly?” (If you’re a grown-up, imagine your entire office.)

    A = Affect
    “Am I in a good emotional place right now?”

    I = Intent
    “Might my intent be misunderstood?”

    T = Today
    “Today, tomorrow, or the next day? Can this wait a day?”

    Evaluating the urgency of what we’re about to say can provide a helpful injection of perspective. Why is it so urgent? What will happen if you take a breath and pause before you post? And if you wait, might you feel differently about it later?

    This article also appeared in a slightly different form in the December 2013 issue of Mindful magazine.



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  • Shifting Habits: Three Mindful Parenting Tips You Can Try Today

    Shifting Habits: Three Mindful Parenting Tips You Can Try Today

    Susan Kaiser Greenland offers three mindful parenting tips to help kids pause and reflect so they can identify and shift habits.

    We all have habits—some of them helpful or neutral, others that persistently create problems in our lives. It’s easier for kids to change habits than grown-ups. One way to start recognising your pattern of automatic behavior is to create external signals that will automatically show up throughout the day. These three mindful parenting tips can be interrupters that provide an opportunity to pause and reflect.

    1. Create mindfulness reminders

    I have seen kids tie a string around one finger, make mindfulness bracelets of ribbons or beads, or tape a colorful sticker to their cell phones. Whenever you see them, just pause to take in what’s happening in your mind and body.

    2. Implement breathing prompts

    Suggest to your children to practice breath awareness whenever they brush their teeth or put their socks on. Breathing prompts help kids recognise just how many things they do are on automatic pilot. By interrupting automatic behavior, kids have the time and mental space to make connections between what they’re doing, what they’re thinking, and how they’re feeling.

    3. Notice funny feelings

    Kids talk about having a funny feeling in the split second just before they do something that they later wish they hadn’t done, maybe a tightening in their chests, or a sinking feeling in their stomachs. That funny feeling occurs in the “about to” moment.

    By noticing their funny feelings, kids pause before they act to ask:

    • Why am I choosing to do this?
    • How does it make me feel?
    • Is my motivation friendly or unfriendly?

    If, upon reflection, the action doesn’t feel right, they can choose to act differently.

    Photo © flickr.com/Josh Kenzer



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  • Celebrate the Power of Pausing Together With A Meditation

    Celebrate the Power of Pausing Together With A Meditation

    In this practice framework, each letter of the word “breath” serves to remind us of our responsibility to honor and promote equity.

    To begin this practice, let’s ground ourselves in deep gratitude. Gratitude for all those who have come before us and those who have paved the way for us to sit in this moment with a sense of relative safety. Whose tireless efforts allow us to be and move within the spaces we navigate each day. Acknowledging the responsibility we also share in making the world a better place than we found it. In this way, we can recognize our own sense of belonging as we take time now at the start of our practice to breathe for belonging.

    In this mindfulness framework, each letter of the word “breath” serves to remind us of our responsibility to ourselves and to others to honor and promote equity. “B” invites us to breathe for belonging. “R” for restoration and renewal. “E” to exercise equity. “A” to activate and advocate. “T” asks us to trust the power. “H” is for healing. 

    A Guided Meditation to Celebrate the Power of Pausing Together

    1. Let’s pause for a few breaths to allow us to focus on our breathing for belonging. As we focus on the positive elements of belonging and our gratitude for all that has made this possible, begin to feel a sense of restoration and renewal.
    2. Belonging. Restoration and renewal. The first two letters of our equity breath will prepare us to receive the world with as much positivity and energy as we can. With this in mind, take some time to breathe for belonging as well as our collective restoration and renewal.
    3. Allow a welcome pause. For several breaths focus on restoration and renewal. Take some time to turn inward and focus on a sense of belonging, restoration, and renewal.
    4. Let’s turn our attention outward to the rich diversity of people in our lives and everyday interactions. With that, we will begin to reflect on how we exercise equity as well as activate and advocate for that equity—the “E” and “A” in our equity breath. 
    5. Now we can turn our attention to opening our hearts and minds to the vast intersectionality of our world in ways that cause us to examine things like: Who holds power across our communities and across facets of our society? What is grounded in the ways that we live, work, and play? 
    6. In our collective efforts to advance intersectional equity, may we take the necessary steps to recognize and value each of our many identities. May we exercise equity through our genuine care and concern for one another. Through sharing, openness, and curiosity. Through open invitations to participate, broadening access and opportunity, and through collaboration and co-creation with those impacted by institutions, systems, and communities. Holding those most affected in our hearts and directing this practice toward justice. May we breathe for safety for ourselves and one another. May we breathe together for justice, for the positive change we see each day in the march toward social justice. May we honor and nourish the relationships so necessary in advancing equity in our world as this cannot be done alone.
    7. Let’s pause again and enjoy a few deep breaths to focus on our vast potential to exercise equity. To activate and advocate. Anchoring ourselves in our equity breath as we now turn ourselves to the end of our practice. We use the breath as a tool to focus on breathing for belonging, restoration, and renewal, exercising equity, activating and advocating, trusting the power, and healing through hope. 
    8. Holding ourselves with the utmost compassion, we move into the last two elements of our equity breath, allowing ourselves to trust the past and heal through hope. Anchoring our awareness on the breath; focusing on simply breathing in and breathing out. Aware of our body, let us release all of the tension and pain.
    9. Now, let’s bring our awareness to our hearts. Welcome tenderness to our hearts, bringing our awareness to our emotions. Holding in compassion. Smiling. Easing and releasing with the breath. As we notice our own suffering, notice how it manifests in the body, in our emotions, in our tone, and in our words and actions. Try to hold the suffering with deep compassion. Easing suffering with the beautiful power of our breath. Being aware of suffering as a pattern in the world. Visualizing how it affects so many. As we take in this pattern of suffering, hold it in compassion, and send ease with each out-breath.
    10. As we notice the suffering of others, what are you aware of? What do you feel in your body? What emotions? Hold it all with compassion, sending ease and relief to your mind.
    11. Now slowly return awareness to the breath. Welcome ease and with each out-breath, release any tension. Notice the suffering of those that hold privilege. Recognize guilt and disconnection. Feel this energy and hold it with deep passion as we release it with ease and send relief.
    12. Return awareness to the entire body. Our heads, our hearts, our hands, and our feet. From this awareness, honor your deepest intentions to address suffering and what we need to do in order to create conditions to thrive. Strengthening and bringing into awareness the steps we take next. How does this feel in your body, in your head, in your heart? Hands and feet? What are you? What are we? Carrying forth from today may we keep the flames of determination, courage, and conviction burning no matter what difficulty or odds arise.
    How We Heal Together 

    Change ripples out from the places we heal ourselves, writes editor-in-chief Heather Hurlock. And when we connect, we’re capable of great things.
    Read More 

    • Heather Hurlock
    • May 26, 2022

    When Mindfulness and Racism Intersect 

    Point of View Podcast Episode 7: Exploring how we’re missing out on the joys of our rich human community, and how mindfulness can help us dismantle the subtle patterns and habits that separate us from each other.
    Read More 

    • Barry Boyce
    • March 21, 2018



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  • Let Curiosity Lead the Way With A 12-Minute Meditation

    Let Curiosity Lead the Way With A 12-Minute Meditation

    When we allow what is to simply be, we relieve ourselves of the suffering that can get heaped on top of our moments of difficulty. Frank Ostaseski leads this meditation to let curiosity lead the way.

    A lot of times we use languages like enlightenment or liberation or awakening. These terms feel far off and distant to me, like we’re trying to achieve something supernatural or transformative in our lives. I think meditation practice is about learning to become intimate—intimate with ourselves, with every aspect of life. Then we can bring the healing power of loving awareness to what scares us, what’s sad for us, and what feels raw for us. I prefer the word intimacy because it expresses a wish to come closer—to know that we already belong, that we’re not separate. 

    To me, intimacy expresses what liberation actually feels like: relaxed, easeful, ordinary, in a way. Liberation isn’t found someplace else. It’s found right here. That’s why one teaching says the path is right beneath your feet. When we look into the mind’s conditioning, in a close and personal way, we begin to understand the ways that we cause ourselves suffering—and that’s the real freedom of meditation. It isn’t about helping us to transcend or get out of our experience. It’s about learning to know our experiences intimately. 

    When we look into the mind’s conditioning, in a close and personal way, we begin to understand the ways that we cause ourselves suffering—and that’s the real freedom of meditation.

    To love the past is simply a memory, and to love the future is just a fantasy. The only place we can love, the only place we can really be aware, is right here, in this present moment. Intimacy connects us with each other with a deep sense of belonging. And with this belonging, we know that we’re not separate anymore. And this helps us to move beyond our small story of a limited sense of self. 

    Meditation, like love, is intimate, and this intimacy is the condition of deepest learning. Mindfulness and compassion are the least expensive, most available, and most appropriate tool we can use in just about every situation in our lives. But sadly, often they’re viewed as inappropriate or even shelved for some other time. And I think, as a result, a lot of us live and work in a great deal of fear and distress. And I think we can do something about that.

    A 12-Minute Meditation to Let Curiosity Lead the Way

    1. Let’s begin really simply: Just pause. A pause is an opportunity not to be swept away by the habit of our lives. A pause is an opportunity to remember who we actually are. A pause is a way of bringing our mind, heart, and body, collecting it all into the present moment. So let’s just pause. No hurry. 
    2. Now, relax. See how little effort is required just to hear the sound of my voice. Relaxing body, heart, and mind—mindfulness emerges much more easily in a relaxed mind, heart, and body. So, pause. And relax.
    3. Now, open. A Characteristic of an open mind is spaciousness infused with interest. Open. You’ll be open for just a moment, liberating yourself from any limiting ideas about who you are and what you think is possible. Can your curiosity be greater than your criticality? Open. So, again and again: Pause. Relax. Open. 
    4. And now, allow. Allowing takes us beyond accepting and rejecting altogether—beyond hope and fear. Just rest in a moment of allowing. There’s no one special to be, nothing special to do, no place special to go. It’s resting in allowing, again and again: Pause. Relax. Open. And allow.
    5. And now, become intimate. This is a kind of communion with your experience, or willingness to enter the immediacy of your life. It’s a kind of fearless receptivity—a willingness to welcome everything and push away nothing—nothing between you and your experience: no subject and object; no I and other. Just intimacy. So, again and again: Pause. Relax. Open. Allow. Become intimate. 
    6. Pause. Relax. Open. Allow. Become intimate. 



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