Friday, March 20, 2015

Mindfulness and Marriage

I had already grasped that the method of mindfulness meditation is to focus on breath, slowly bringing the mind back from any distractions, but I didn't know that it is also the point of mindfulness meditation. That is what I learned from this Charlie Rose interview with Dan Harris, the news anchor who had a panic attack on the air. 
http://www.themusichall.org/assets/uploads/images/14_06_danharris_event.jpg
The more I hear about mindfulness meditation, the more I believe that it is davening's parallel. I am working to finally achieve true focus during davening, and using the methods of mindfulness meditation has been the most instrumental. 

In other news, it is incredibly gratifying that two days after presenting my thesis on the post-Holocaust marriage model, corroborative material is printed.
Her embrace of Marxism led to a young man who within a week became her first husband. The haste, she said, reflected her loneliness and sense of displacement.
It is “unnatural and unworthy, how I lost my family,” she said. “At my age now, it is normal not to have grandparents, parents, uncles or aunts. But when it happens as it did, you cannot simply get over it.”
Marrying within a week happened “because we felt so terribly alone that it was quite natural to say yes, now at least I have a husband, and one belongs somewhere.”
Hey, she said it. And me.     

4 comments:

Daniel Saunders said...

I've taken to trying to do some mindfulness meditation before davening, although it doesn't always work, not least because my shul struggles for a minyan, so there can be a half hour gap between my meditating and the minyan actually starting.

Mr. Cohen said...

“All are asked to daven and say Tehillim for Tziporah bat Avigayil and Avigayil bat Tziporah, who both jumped from second-floor widows to escape and were treated for burns and smoke inhalation."

Princess Lea said...

DS: I was arguing that davening itself is mindful meditation.

Daniel Saunders said...

Hmm, not convinced. I suppose it depends on if you define meditation as clearing the mind of distractions or clearing it completely (which would imply not thinking even about the content of prayers). Kavannah should be mindful, though.