Savor Life/Be in the Moment and Helping Students/Children

I have been thinking about how quickly my summer vacation seems to be going by.  I'm a teacher and I get 2 months off in the summer.  It feels like it is speeding by as I get caught up in everything I have to get done.  June seems like it just started yesterday and now we are more than half way through it.  As I contemplated this, I realized that if I truly enjoy every day and savor the moment, instead of hurrying through the days and checking tasks off my list, I will have a much more enjoyable summer, no matter what speed it goes by.  This prompted me to delve into a saying I try to live by, but I forget about in the haste of the day, “Savor the moment.”  I was trying to remind myself how I can savor the moment because currently, I am not even in the moment.  I'm thinking about rescheduling a tutoring session, about my trip to California next week and how I can use all this new technology training I just completed today.

To begin this subject, I looked up the word "savor" and I found a couple definitions that seem applicable:

1.      the quality that makes something interesting or enjoyable

2.      to appreciate fully, to enjoy or relish

I thought about savoring a meal or a delicious taste, like a spoonful of homemade ice cream. The fact is that I need to slow down to really savor a taste or meal.  So slowing down is a start.  This leads me to the breath.

Here is something simple that I try to remember-to take a deep breath to get into this moment.  If I am ruminating over the past or stressing about the future, I am missing life-this moment. We do need to learn from the past and plan for the future, but many of us need to be more present in life and be present for all those around us. 

We all have hectic lives and sometimes feel that we need to accomplish 100 tasks right now.  We can get so busy and spread so thin, that we do not accomplish anything well and at the end of the day, we ask “Where did all the time go?”  As we live like this, we are not enjoying or savoring the current moment.  We are missing out on life.  Sadly, I can stay in this mode for days, weeks or even longer if I am not careful.  But, there are spiritual tools to bring us back into our lives, into the present moment.  The payoff is that I get to experience all the richness of my life when I am present and not miss anything going on or those precious opportunities to connect with the people I love.

Being aware of my breath is a good start.  I am breathing all the time, yet most of the time, I are unaware of it.  When I get stressed, I tend to breath more shallowly and not get the oxygen deep in my lungs, where it needs to go. 

If I can stop and take a breath, I put some space into our day.  I try to take a deep breath every time I get in my car or stop at a red light.  You can give yourself other prompts, like taking a deep breath before every time you check your smart phone or brush your teeth.  It doesn't really matter, as long as you are trying to establish a new habit that reminds you to simply take a deep, cleansing breath and get into the present moment. 

Now, for any of you advanced spiritual creatures, if you can remember to take that long breath in a stressful situation, then you are doing a fantastic job at applying these spiritual tools in your life.  This is challenging, but I get better at it with patient practice.  Like so many areas of my life, I look for progress and not perfection.

In the classroom, I try to remember to take that long breath before I respond in a discipline situation or when responding to an email.  One friend calls this the 3 second cushion.  Every morning, this friend says to himself, “Today, I will give everyone that I come in contact with a 3 second cushion.”  He says this helps him respond with love and not from anger.

Taking just a few quiet minutes to start your day or stopping for a few quiet minutes on the way home from work will help transform your life.  Personally, I set my alarm 10 minutes before I need to get up in the morning, so I can spend that time in quiet contemplation.  It radically transforms my day and I do not miss the 10 minutes of sleep because I am setting up for a day where I can be at peace, no matter what happens.  This quiet time helps me slow down and sets a peaceful foundation for my day.  However, I did not start with 10 minutes, I started with 1 minute and worked my way up to 10 minutes.

Also, on the way home from work, I sometimes stop for 5 minutes and sit quietly under a huge oak tree in a quiet spot.  This clears out any garbage from the day and allows me to be with my family and give them 100%, being completely present.  When I walk through that door and my son runs to me yelling, "Daddy," I feel his love to the marrow of my bones as it restores me, deep in my soul.  If I am not present, I will not savor this moment as I should.

One interesting test to take is called the “shower test.”  The question is, “Can you take a shower in the morning and be fully present for the shower, not thinking about the million things you need to do today?”  Try this and see if you can be present, enjoying the warm water and the feeling of getting clean.  When I start my day with some silence, I can pass the shower test and be present throughout a stressful day, even feeling the gratitude of all I “get” to do today, not “have” to do.

But we don't want to stop with just a breath.  One friend adds something to the deep breath.  She talks about “taking a snapshot” of the moment in her brain.  She said that she takes time throughout the day, when something good happens and takes a deep breath and says to herself, “I am taking a snapshot of this moment and savoring it deeply.”  Then, at the end of the day, she writes down her snapshot moments to preserve them and reinforce them.  These moments may include something as simple as hugging your child or laughing with a friend.  This is a powerful way to apply gratitude to the process of savoring our lives.  Think back on today and what moments would have been perfect opportunities to take your own “snapshot.”  Try this until it becomes a habit.  There is more on this in the article at the bottom of this blog.

Now, as my title says, I will get to the part teaching students and children in this area.  I know students have all the distractions that we have as adults, plus many more with the technology of today where everything is instantaneously at their fingertips. When I starting teaching, I asked my principal if she has any activities she would recommend to do with the students.  She replied quickly, “Help them to get comfortable with silence by taking some quiet time in your class every day.”  I was intrigued because I start my day with silence and knew this could be a powerful spiritual tool to instill in my students.  She said she starts with just 1 minute of silence and then increases it by a minute every month, until she had her middle-school students sitting quietly for 8 minutes every day.  That, in itself, is astonishing, that teenagers can sit quietly for 8 minutes without having to be stimulated with electronic devices.  This incremental approach was similar to the way I had got comfortable sitting in silence, so I had confidence it would work.

I tried this idea in my classroom and I have been doing it successfully for 8 years.  I will briefly outline how I applied her system and what has worked for me.  On the first day of school, as the tornado of the first day starts to come to a close, I tell the students that we are going to sit silently for 1 minute.  Furthermore, I tell them that it doesn't sound like a long time, but the first time I sat quietly for a minute, it seemed like an eternity.  Together, we take 3 deep breaths and relax our bodies on every exhale.  Some students will not breath deeply, so I tell them to breath in and count to 3, hold it for a second, and then breath out and count to 3.  I tell the students to close their eyes and that rubbing their temples gently as they breath deeply helps relax the body.

Then, I tell everyone to comfortable but sit up straight.  Initially, I let students put their heads on their desks, but some would fall asleep.  Next, I turn out the lights and tell them to sit quietly and try to feel the peace this brings.  After the minute, I ask the students about their experience with 1 minute of silence.  One student said it was so peaceful that he would use it every night before he goes to bed.  Another student suggested we do this before we take a test.  We tried it and the students all agreed that it helped them relax and focus at the task at hand.  We also like to end the day with this activity, rejuvenating ourselves.  Sometimes I get so busy, I forget to take our silent time, but the students will remind me.  I love that!

It is always interesting; most of the students feel the peace this immediately brings into the classroom.  But, I see some students struggle and I try to help those students, telling them it will get easier with practice, like everything in life.  I tell them that sitting quietly was very hard for me at the beginning also. 

As the school year progresses, at the end of each month, I let the students vote as a class if they want to elongate our silent time for another minute.  This incremental approach seems to work well and the vote is always overwhelming to increase the silence.  Some years, I do get a couple students who vote against it, but perhaps they are the ones who need this quiet time the most.  I also remind them that pain is in the “resistance” to sitting quietly.  It is always satisfying to see these resistant students get into the silence as we practice it as a class.

So, don’t be afraid to try this yourself and with your class or your children.  You can even do it a couple times a week, whatever your schedule will allow.  Recently, I sat quietly with my 5 year old and we both felt very refreshed after our session.  I asked him at the end why he wanted to sit quietly.  He told me that his favorite superhero, Wolverine, sits quietly.  I didn't realize that Wolverine could inspire my son to embrace silence.

After saying all that, I still feel like I have only started the conversation about this topic, so I went searching for more.  I found this fantastic article about savoring life that gives 10 practical tools to help us savor life.

Before that, here is a funny quote I saw this week, "Math illiteracy affect 8 out of every 5 students." -Anonymous

Here is the article.  If you like it, check out more articles on the following website:

http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/

10 Steps to Savoring the Good Things in Life

By Stacey Kennelly 

We get plenty of advice for coping with life’s negative events. But can we deliberately enhance the good things in our lives.  Browse the self-help shelf of your local bookstore and you’ll find plenty of advice for coping with life’s negative events, from divorce to illness to death.

But what about dealing with the good ones? Reaching the top of a magnificent waterfall. Hearing your child’s laugh. Seeing your favorite band perform your favorite song.

“It’s been presumed that when good things happen, people naturally feel joy for it,” says Fred Bryant, a social psychologist at Loyola University Chicago. His research, however, suggests that we don’t always respond to these “good things” in ways that maximize their positive effects on our lives.

Bryant is the father of research on “savoring,” or the concept that being mindfully engaged and aware of your feelings during positive events can increase happiness in the short and long run.

“It is like swishing the experience around … in your mind,” says Bryant, author of the 2006 book, Savoring: A New Model of Positive Experience.

Bryant is in the process of analyzing a wide range of studies on savoring to determine what works and what doesn't.  Already, he has distilled his research into 10 succinct ways for us to develop savoring as a skill.

1. Share your good feelings with others.

“What’s the first thing you do when you get good news?” Bryant says. “You go and tell someone that’s important to you, like a spouse or a friend.”

He suggests that we treat positive events just like positive news. Tell another person when you are feeling particularly appreciative of a certain moment, whether it be a laugh with friends or a scene in nature. Studies about the ways people react to positive events have shown that those who share positive feelings with others are happier overall than those who do not.

In fact, research shows that one only has to think about telling others good news in order to feel happier, says Chadwick.

“You fake it ‘til you make it,” she says. “If people are unhappy and put a smile on their face, within an hour or so they’ll be happier because they’re getting smiled at by other people. That interaction works.”

“Savoring is the glue that bonds people together, and it is essential to prolonging relationships,” Bryant says. “People who savor together stay together.”

2. Take a mental photograph.

Pause for a moment and consciously be aware of things you want to remember later, such as the sound of a loved one’s chuckle, or a touching moment between two family members.

In one study, participants who took a 20-minute walk every day for one week and consciously looked for good things reported feeling happier than those who were instructed to look for bad things.

“It’s about saying to yourself, ‘This is great. I’m loving it,’” says Bryant.

3. Congratulate yourself.

Don’t hesitate to pat yourself on the back and take credit for your hard work, Bryant says. Research shows that people who revel in their successes are more likely to enjoy the outcome.

Bryant notes that self-congratulation is not encouraged in all cultures, especially Eastern ones, where many individuals downplay their achievements or believe a good experience is likely to be followed by a bad one.

“They tend to tell themselves not to get carried away,” he says, “but in our culture, we say, ‘This is great and going to continue.’”

4. Sharpen your sensory perceptions.

Getting in touch with your senses—or taking the time to use them more consciously—also flexes savoring muscles.

With all the distractions we face today, this is particularly difficult, Bryant says. In one study, college students who focused on the chocolate they were eating reported feeling more pleasure than students who were distracted while eating.

Chadwick suggests slowing down during meals.

“Take the time to shut out your other senses and hone in on one,” she says. “Take the time to sniff the food, smell the food. Or close your eyes while you’re taking a sip of a really nice wine.”

5. Shout it from the rooftops.

Laugh out loud, jump up and down, and shout for joy when something good happens to you, Bryant says.

People who outwardly express their good feelings tend to feel extra good, because it provides the mind with evidence that something positive has occurred. Several experiments have found that people who expressed their feelings while watching a funny video enjoyed themselves more than those who suppressed their feelings.

Bryant notes that some forms of positive expression are based on cultural context. For example, jumping with joy is acceptable in American culture, whereas it is considered inappropriate in many Eastern cultures and therefore would be less likely to have a positive impact.

6. Compare the outcome to something worse.

Boost positive feelings by reminding yourself of how bad things could be, Bryant suggests. For example, if you are late to work, remind yourself of those who may not have a job at all.

Comparing good experiences with unpleasant ones gives us a reference point and makes our current situation seem better, he says.

7. Get absorbed in the moment.

Try to turn off your conscious thoughts and absorb positive feelings during a special moment, such as taking in a work of art. Studies of positive experiences indicate that people most enjoy themselves when they are totally absorbed in a task or moment, losing their sense of time and place—a state that psychologists call “flow.”

Children are particularly good at this, Bryant says, but it’s tougher for adults, who are easily distracted by technology and the temptation to multitask.

Chadwick recommends pausing and reflecting on positive experiences on the spot.

8.Count your blessings and give thanks.

Tell your loved ones how lucky you feel to have them, Bryant suggests, or take extra time to appreciate your food before a meal.

Research suggests that saying “thank you” out loud can make us happier by affirming our positive feelings. Bryant also suggests thinking of a new blessing for which you've never given thanks each night in bed. Recalling the experience through thanks will help you to savor it.

9. Avoid killjoy thinking.

Avoiding negative thinking is just as important as thinking positively, Bryant says.

After a rough day, try not to focus on the negative things that occurred. Studies show that the more negative thoughts people have after a personal achievement, the less likely they are to enjoy it.

“People who savor the positive sides to every situation are happier at the end of the day,” he says.

10. Remind yourself of how quickly time flies.

Remember that good moments pass quickly, and tell yourself to consciously relish the moment, Bryant says. Realizing how short-lived certain moments are and wishing they could last longer encourages you to enjoy them while they’re happening.

In fact, savoring can be used to connect you to the past or future, argues Bryant. This can be done by remembering a good time and recreating it, or imagining a time in the future when you will look back with good memories.

“If you’re working hard on a project, take the time to look at your accomplishment,” she says. “Look at your experience and tell yourself how you’re going to look into the future with this—tell yourself, ‘This is such a good day, and I know I’ll look back with good memories.’”