Dear friends,
In two weeks, I am heading to Plum Village in France for a month-long meditation retreat. I know I have a lot of privilege to be able to take a month to practice deeply with my community. For that, I am very grateful.
Recently, a friend of mine reached out to see if I could help her with a direct action for social justice, taking place during the time of my retreat. She made a very compelling argument about these unique times that we are in and how important it is to do what we can to end genocide and destruction.
Dear Friends,
This week I would like to share some tips for using mindfulness to help you if you’re having difficulty with your sleep. I’ve also shared some of this in a recent video. Many people have told me about their difficulties sleeping, and I have also had periods of time when sleep was more elusive as well.
I think of the challenges of sleep in four main categories:
Can’t sleep because I’m ruminating on past situations, conversations or actions
Can’t sleep because I’m dreading something happening the next day or in the future
Can’t sleep because my system is revved up and I can’t settle down
Can’t sleep because of medications or hormonal changes or pain
For the first two situations, I use my mindfulness practice to notice what thoughts are plaguing me the most. If it’s something that happened in the past, I ask myself the question: Can I do anything about this right now? If there is something small I can do, maybe send an apology email or make a note about something I want to do the next day, I do that.
In early October, I was in planning mode for a one-month retreat at Plum Village to soak up the teachings and energies of the annual Rains Retreat (see last years post on this here), when I started feeling discouraged about the divisiveness in the U.S. and fearful about the upcoming presidential election between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. Over the weeks leading up to my departure, my heart let me know that I needed to get involved in the election in a more serious way before I left.
I had not gone door to door since working on my Dad’s county commissioner campaign in 1981. My parents were both political activists and their care for the community and belief in the democratic process gave me the courage to get involved. I knew that my home state of Michigan and in fact my home county, Macomb, was what they call a “battleground” area because it was a county that could decide the election for Michigan and Michigan was one of the states that could decide the election for the whole country.