In the past I’ve had a hard time concentrating during meditation exercises, maybe it was the distractions around me, or maybe it was that I keep a mental calendar of my daily activities and placed stress on myself if I am unable to accomplish each task for that day. For this exercise, I intentionally placed myself in a quiet and calm place with minimal distractions, and the person I envisioned was my maternal grandmother. For me, my grandmother was the epitome of a woman, and that transcended to my mother, me and now my daughter. She had style, compassion, wisdom and most of all she loved herself and her family. It is hard at times to become another person, adapt their strength and wisdom, but for someone I admired, it was surprisingly very easy. I often talk about my grandmother strength and wisdom which had an impact on shaping my life. The exercise for me was calming, there was a sense of peace after I was done with the exercise, I even found myself smiling during the exercise, I believe that the love I felt for her made the exercise much easier to do and kept my focus intact.
As a provider we must work on ourselves, mind, body and spirit in order to help patients towards achieving it. I believe as professionals we do have an obligation to our patients to learn, understand and practice what we teach.
Hi Karen, really compassionate post. If we are lucky enough to have that type of mentor in our life, it is extremely important that we pass down the knowledge and warmth to others in our circle. I was lucky enough to have that type of Grandmother also who was giving and always had a smile for you :)
ReplyDeleteWell Said Karen,
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way about my grandmother. She could get so much done in a day, help to keep the family stress at bay, have time to cook, talk annd loved everyone. Even people she had problems with my grandmother was able to be tacktful and resilient to whatever came her way with grace and ease. Alzheimers has taken much away from her memory but her ability to maintain her grace and dignity has often surpised me. Those who we love are the easiest to visualize. Great post!
Greetings Karen,
ReplyDeleteYour post hits many of our heart strings with our connection to the monarch of our family tree. I too cherished my "nannie" as we called her growing up. I believe I got all my inner most values and ethics from her. She passed on my 30th birthday, many in my family see this as a very sad event but for me I see it as a gift from her in a way. The gift to celebrate her homecoming on the day of my birth. Thank You for sharing.
April
Karen that is a thoughtful post. I wish that I could have could been able to focus on someone that I knew that would have made it better. I just made up a wise person as an example to think about. As a professional you have a responsible to educate yourself properly before trying to help others.
ReplyDeleteKaren, your grandmother obviously influenced you very much. That is great to see. It is exciting to see that thinking of someone with such love and compassion allowed you the opportunity to benefit from the exercise. How do you think you can take that experience and translate it to others in the future?
ReplyDelete