Thursday, November 15, 2007

Raisin Contemplation

Our local hospital frequently offers free noontime lunch programs on a variety of topics, aimed primarily at women's health issues. Yesterday's topic was coping with stress during the holidays. Scheduling too many events is on the list of stressers, so Mother and I had to laugh that here we were squeezing in another event so close to Thanksgiving.

It was nice, though, to gather with other women acquaintances, enjoy a sandwich lunch, and listen to a speaker remind us to relax and live in the moment, rather than worrying about the future.

To illustrate this concept, she distributed raisins to each of us. Our job was to focus all our attention on the raisins...their shape, their characteristics, how they felt, how they smelled, and finally how they tasted. The idea was to empty our minds of everything except the raisins. Whenever our minds tried to wander, we were to bring them back to the raisins.

It was a difficult exercise for me, because I'm guilty of letting my mind wander all over the place all the time, making mental lists of what I need to accomplish in the next hour, the next day, the next week, rather than fully focusing on what I'm doing at the moment. At this time of the year, I'm especially susceptible to mind-meandering.

But I'm going to do better. I'm going to relax and... need to gather my gear for water aerobics in the morning...focus...need to finish my grocery list for shopping tomorrow...on the raisin...wonder what's on TV tonight?

2 comments:

Ann crum said...

Good job focusing on the raising! lol

Sixty Something said...

...or the raisin. lol. I figured you would enjoy this one, and probably relate to it, Sis.