Winter Series- Both winding up and winding down can lead to anxiety

Winding yourself up with coffee, winding yourself down with going to a baseball game with friends, winding yourself up with a work project, winding yourself down by going out to a bar…

The wind up and the wind down can be graphed two-dimensionally as a progression over time:

Winding up and winding down can be looked at as two sides of the same coin, if you are graphing things in two dimensions. And my thought is that the push to lead life conscribed as a windup countered by a winddown is one of the reasons for the growth of anxiety rates.

I’m trying to propose that what we do with the contemplative practices at Mindful Boston is an unwind outside the limits of a two dimensional coin flip.

Your time spent with a contemplative practice might just be the opposite of, or off the chart of, both the winding up and the winding down.

A contemplative practice is not one more way to wind.
Neither up, nor down.
When talking about contemplative practices, we are off the charts!

It cannot be placed on the same graph paper at all. If I had drawn the above graph of winding up with a pencil, in order for me to also draw out a line for what contemplative practices do would require either an eraser or a mirror. I would have had to put the pencil down entirely.

Time check!

We are seven weeks away from the New Year.
This edition of the Sunday News is part of a count-down series of emails where I will be detailing a weekly journey exploring what mindfulness is for.

More to come in part 3 for the next installment of the Sunday News, Nov 26.

Take care,

Gena Bean
Lead Meditation Teacher
Mindful Boston