Category: Mindfulness Challenge for the Week

Thanksgiving holiday is a celebration known particularly to individuals who live in America. Families gather together on a Thursday in November each year to gorge themselves with multiple plates of food : veggies, fruits, desserts. Oftentimes turkeys are involved because there is some connection to the history of the Pilgrims who first came to America.

The opportunity this week is put food on the center stage of your mindfulness practice. Elevate the role and importance of food just as happens during Thanksgiving holiday. This week, however, I invite you to give thanks to each bite of food that you eat in a new and quite different way than is the custom Thanksgiving.

For each bite that you take throughout the week, look back into the history of where that food originated. How did each and every bite of food get on your plate – ready to be retrieved and inserted into that precious, sacred vessel of your body?

What do I mean when I say look back into its history? Use the power of your imagination to acknowledge and honor all of the individuals that it took to serve food on your plate each meal this week.

Think for example of the:

• Individuals who planted the seeds that started the growth process;
• Truckers who transported the food;
• Migrant workers – if they were involved – who harvested the food;
• Farmers and ranchers responsible for farming the food;
• Personnel at the packing plant; 
• Grocers;
• Check out people at the grocers (if you purchased your food at the grocery store and had the food scanned by a human rather than a machine);
• Family members or other cooks who actually prepared the food.

When you begin to search deeply into the history of the food that lands on your table each meal it becomes quite amazing to realize the hundreds if not thousands of individuals who were required and needed to make this magic happen for you.

Look back even farther. Acknowledge and honor the contribution of not just human beings but the bacteria, the fungi and even the bees that were needed to help the food grow into the form you now see on your plate. Treat the entire week as if each day were Thanksgiving. Before you actually put the food into your mouth pause. Use the power of your imagination to:

• Celebrate
• Honor
• Give thanks

to each and every individual who made it possible for you to celebrate the delicious morsels you ingest during all meals of the week (whether you are eating on the run or casually at the dinner table).

Celebrate each day as if it were Thanksgiving Day as you give thanks not just to those persons in your immediate family (including yourself!) who had a role in bringing the food to the table but also to those

1. Unseen
2. Unheard
3. Unknown

Individuals and creatures that made it possible for you to have this very special opportunity to nourish your body mindfully,

Robert

© Parkinsons Recovery

I have a warning before I now explain the mindfulness challenge for the week.  This week’s challenge will take an additional 15 to 30 minutes of your time every day.  It is, in a way then, indirectly a lesson in learning to be more patient.  Here’s the challenge if indeed you wish to accept it.

The challenge is first of all to acknowledge which of your two hands is the non-dominant hand.  One of the hands for most people is the hand you use most frequently; the other hand is the hand you use less frequently.  Which of your two hands is the non-dominant hand?  The challenge is to put that non-dominant hand to greater use in three very specific tasks I will now describe.

Task One: Brushing your teeth.  Instead of using the hand that you usually use, use your non-dominant hand when you brush your teeth everyday this week.

Task Two: Combing your hair.  Instead of using your dominant hand as you customarily would do while combing and brushing your hair in a way that you have probably combed your hair for many, many years now, use your non-dominant hand to comb your hair this week.

Task Three: Eat with you non-dominant hand. This is one task that may require extra time and concentration. Place your eating utensil in your non-dominant hand as your eat one entire meal each day this week.

I fully realize that you will be particularly challenged this week if your non-dominant hand happens to be a hand where there is tremoring which will make it particularly difficult and frustrating to use your non-dominant hand for any of the three tasks. I offer one suggestion for being able to activate energy in a hand that may also be associated with some motor dysfunction.

With your intention, take the strong and vibrant energy from the other side of your body where the symptoms are not as prevalent or troublesome and – using your intention – shift the strong and vibrant energy over to your non-dominant hand.  You can accomplish the transfer quickly and swiftly just as a martial artist would shift energy in their body from one side to the next. Here is the sequence:

1. Take a deep breath in
2. Place the back of your tongue up against the top of your throat
3. Exhale your breath out quickly you (with your intention) shift the energy to your non-dominant hand.

This particular exhale sounds something like “Haah…phuh!”  That’s what it sounds like. It is a very quick burst.

When you’re eating with family members, you might want to just explain this is just a fun way that you are experimenting with to shift energy from one side of your body to the other.  It sounds rather ridiculous I’m sure to many of you, but it actually does work.  You can shift the energy and balance out the right and the left sides of your body using this simple technique that is a standard technique used in martial arts practice.

Continue to practice using your non-dominant hand whether it might be a hand on the side of your body that is creating motor difficulties or not. It really does not matter.  What you want to do is to exercise the golden and precious practice of mindfulness. Bring your thoughts to the present moment. Live now, not a second before and not a second after.  Using your non-dominant hand requires full attentiveness so that you can get the tasks that need to be done of brushing your teeth, combing your hair and eating at least one meal a day.

May you have delicious fun with this activity all week long as you practice the art of mindfulness while using the hand that gets ignored all too often,. May the stress in your life vanish forever more.

Robert

© Parkinsons Recovery