Rooting Institutional Change in Personal Practice Rooting Institutional Change in Personal Practice

By Karolyn Kinane

About seven years ago, contemplative practice had deepened my capacities for and commitment to love and presence to such a degree that I found I could no longer teach and ask students to learn in the same ways I had been. My personal life felt fine but at my small, rural, New Hampshire state university I felt enveloped by students’ distress, colleagues’ stress, and a sense of general dispiritedness and joylessness. Students who, as children, had loved reading, claimed that now, as English majors, they despised it. And so, that August, I knew I had to make a change. The idea of institutional change did not even occur to me. Instead, I started with two questions of myself: How was my pedagogy turning love into hatred? And, How was I depleting those I aimed to nourish?
Through reflection, I developed three goals for my professional persona.

1. Don’t be part of the problem. I worked in a culture of busy-ness. My colleagues and I regularly competed in the “stress Olympics.” When someone asked “How are you?” the correct answer was either “Busy!” or “Drowning in grading,” or perhaps with a tired smile, “Stressed but good.” I decided I would drop out of that game. Yes, I had lots of things to do; we all did. But I also had many other ways to answer that question! So whenever anyone at work asked how I was doing, I chose to share something neutral or positive. “Good—went for a sweet hike yesterday,” or “Looking forward to a family visit next weekend.”
2. Use my power to grant permission. Sure there are many things I am powerless to change or control. But I noted the many places where I did have power and I examined how I used it. As a mentor to new faculty, a professor to students, or a manager of staff, I decided to grant people around me permission to value their well-being. If someone replied to my “How are you?” with one of the typical “stressed” or “busy” responses, I asked if they could look forward to some rest this coming weekend or if they had some fun-time planned. I set the expectation that they would get rest, eat well, and tend to their personal relationships.
3. Bring vocabulary of well-being into workspace. Emotional experiences and personal well-being have been taboo or ignored topics in many professional settings. I decided to talk about this stuff casually and occasionally—in committees, course work, and informal interactions. When appropriate, I modeled whole-human being.

Over the next four years I organized a variety of campus experiences that were all rooted in my own practice and needs, which made every endeavor immanently sustainable. For example, over summer and winter breaks I invited colleagues to read a contemplative book or article with me and gather for brunch & discussion.

Our first reading was “The Heart of Higher Education: A call to renewal” by Arthur Zajonc and Parker Palmer. From that first gathering I identified a core of about fifteen colleagues and collaborators who helped build what has become Contemplative Communities. We went on to host Meditation Mondays (10 minutes of practice each week 12:05-12:15 p.m. in the Student Union, centrally located on campus), partner with Student Life to host a variety of events, and eventually develop a suite of contemplative courses.

While launching these small, collaborative endeavors, I simultaneously transformed all six of my courses with the help of a Summer Session at CMind. From Freshman-level General Education to Senior-level seminars, I redesigned course content to serve questions of meaning and purpose. I modified the skills of reading and writing to develop connection, not merely critique. Classroom culture fostered collaboration rather than competition. And all elements of course design sought to develop and engage the disposition of curiosity. One might ask: Why hadn’t I been teaching this way all along? Good question!

As this rural New England university recently began to reorganize around interdisciplinary and experiential learning, I started hosting workshops for faculty, taking students to conferences, and publishing on contemplative teaching and learning. We now have a contemplative Student Organization (Contemplative Action; Purposeful Expression), a cross-campus Advisory Board (made up of faculty, staff, students, and community members), and a suite of four General Education courses that allow students to take a “Contemplative Pathway” through their foundational requirements: Science (“Curiosity & the Nature of New Hampshire”), Social Science (“Curiosity, Ethics & the Public Good”), Humanities (“Curiosity, Perspective, & Shakespeare””), and Creative/Fine Arts (“Curiosity, Playfulness & Creativity”).

Just last month these courses formed a key part of a large grant the university received in order to transform pedagogy campus-wide. Contemplative Communities now has over one hundred faculty, staff, students, and active regional partners. The group collaborates with campus and regional folks in Environmental Sustainability, Sexual Assault & Domestic Violence Awareness, Adventure Education, Public Health, and even University Orientation and Homecoming activities. It is a gentle, loving, joyful force on and off campus. And as facilitator I never took on more than I could handle joyfully.

For me, institutional change came about as a result of my personal practice. Sure– over the past seven years things got stressful and I got busy. But I always returned back to my three core goals, which made change sustainable, infused it with joy, and enabled loving, long-term transformation.

SELF-CARE: THE OPPOSITE OF SELFISHNESS SELF-CARE: THE OPPOSITE OF SELFISHNESS

For some an oxymoron, a new concept has emerged in our vocabulary recently: that of “digital wellbeing”. Perhaps it is not surprising that academics have been researching the impact of new digital technologies on people’s wellbeing for quite some time already, but the fact that tech-giants like Google are now paying attention to the topic is a sign of its relevance for our modern societies.

As Google acknowledges, technology is transforming the way we spend time, and this is why it’s more important than ever to ensure the tools we use are helpful, and not a distraction. Let’s consider for a brief moment how digital tools have changed the work of changemakers and social innovators. Many of them use digital tools at the core of their ventures, e.g. think about tech-preneurs teaching digital skills to children to equip them with the skills of the 21st century. Others rely on technology to scale their impact, e.g. think about social entrepreneurs who can reach (back-then-unimaginable) large audiences through online platforms and apps.

It is clear that digital tools have opened up new horizons for changemakers (and for all of us), but as we learn to navigate in these waters full of fascinating possibilities, we must also make a well-rounded assessment on the impact of digital technologies on our work and life. In fact, many are pointing to the negative impact of digital technologies on our wellbeing, which contributes to behaviours such as addiction, distraction, anxiety… Whether we want it or not, digital tools will possibly become more and more present in our lives, so we might as well learn to recalibrate our digital diet so that it is diverse, balanced, and nutritious.

To help people – professionals, changemakers, youth, educators – consume healthy digital diets that feed their minds, bodies, hearts, and souls with the nutrients they need to thrive, is what motivated us to contribute to Google’s new course on digital wellbeing. This course shares a new series of digital wellbeing online learning videos, available here. As Google explains, “each video encourages you to think about how you use technology and suggests ways to find the right balance for you.” Have a look at the videos and let us know what changes you are making to maintain a more balanced digital diet.

Read Google’s blogpost on the topic here.
Visit Google’s Digital Workshop new course landing page here.

FEEDING THE MIND, BODY, HEART AND SOUL FEEDING THE MIND, BODY, HEART AND SOUL

By Greta Rossi

How do you feed yourself?

I am a foodie, hands down. I do not eat out of hunger alone; rather, I take enormous pleasure in savouring all the flavours in the meal in front of me. Especially if I cooked it myself, expressing my culinary talent (no, I am not ready for MasterChef, but I do like to expand my repertoire by trying out new recipes). I find it deeply rewarding to get locally sourced seasonal ingredients at the farmers’ market and to dedicate time to artfully create a balanced but tasty culinary experience that provides my body with the nutrients it needs. As I am feeding my body, I am also feeding my soul. Hopeless Italian romanticism? Maybe so, but I can genuinely say my levels of joy increase if this becomes a shared experience where I am cooking for others.
In a similar manner, I love working. Even if I won the lottery and did not have to work to sustain myself financially, I do not think I would stop. In fact, working goes beyond feeding my bank account (which has been on a fairly regimented diet since I started my first social enterprise almost five years ago); it deeply nurtures my soul. I see my work as a lifelong journey that invites me to explore, experiment, and express new ways of being and acting in the world. Like me, many people around the globe find infinite joy in dedicating their lives to enacting a purpose that serves other people and the planet. These are what I call changemakers, people devoted to imagining new recipes for a nutritious, balanced, and flavoursome world.
However, the dominant paradigm is urging us to do everything bigger, faster… even bigger and faster… without taking a moment to breathe between one bite and the other, between one project and the next. As a result, many people find it difficult to maintain healthy and nutritious habits. To keep up with the demands of modern life, some opt for hypercaloric fast foods (think about people who work in fast-paced stressful environments where it is all about maximising profits at the expense of others’ wellbeing); others slip into binge-eating (observe how many friends mindlessly move from one task to the next without absorbing the experience), while yet others forget about eating altogether (how many colleagues compromise their health by stopping to sleep or exercise to work longer and longer hours?).
This growing disconnection with the food, the ingredients, and the land, is nothing but a reflection of a deeper sense of alienation from ourselves. Our kitchen is a complete and utter mess, with dirty pans left everywhere, the smell of burning covering everything else, and a stained apron left hanging on the table… Could we find inspiration from the great chefs to learn to clean our internal kitchen?

Discovering Recipes for Wellbeing

This is the intention behind Recipes for Wellbeing, a newly-established not-for-profit association, co-created and co-led by young changemakers who find joy in cooking and sharing wellbeing experiences with others. Our aim is to shift the culture of changemaking to re-discover the importance of holistic wellbeing to enable anyone to contribute more effectively to creating positive change in the world. We interpret wellbeing both as a catalyst for positive change in the world, and as the positive change in the world itself. In particular, we support changemakers in experiencing wellbeing for themselves and in spreading wellbeing to their teams, societies, and to the whole world.
Recipes for Wellbeing offers a series of services and products to boost the wellbeing of changemakers and their organisations to increase their capacity to tackle more effectively the challenges that are in the way of broader societal and ecological wellbeing.

Wellbeing recipes

In the same way a recipe in a cookbook takes you through the steps to prepare a particular dish, our wellbeing recipes guide you through specific processes to cultivate wellbeing in your everyday work and life.

There are a number of ways you can engage with our recipes: you may wish to focus on a particular category, which guarantees a balance among all recipes; or you may prefer to dig deep into the main courses but across categories; or else you may want to choose a particular level of difficulty, based on your needs and previous experience.

Our recipes are divided into four main categories:

Mind: Recipes that engage your mind and benefit your mental wellbeing.

Body: Recipes that engage your body and benefit your physical wellbeing.

Heart: Recipes that engage your heart and benefit your emotional wellbeing.

Spirit: Recipes that engage your spirit and benefit your connection to your unique and deepest identity, as well as to the universal consciousness that animates the cosmos and everything in it.

As with any cookbook, there are different kinds of recipes: starters, main courses, desserts, etc. but also quick-on-the-go options, or more elaborate alternatives. We also provide various difficulty levels, from easy recipes that do not require any previous knowledge or experience of wellbeing, through medium to hard recipe that require some or extended knowledge or experience of wellbeing.

Wellbeing labs

When you go out for a meal, you look for more than merely satisfying your physiological need for food. You may be curious to taste new combinations of flavours, to savour new ingredients, to find new recipes to try out at home… overall, you are looking for an experience. Our wellbeing labs offer similar experiences for individuals and their organisations to savour wellbeing.

We host anything from short inspiring talks through half-day interactive workshops to emergent personalised wellbeing retreats immersed in Nature lasting from 2.5 to 4 days for groups of individual changemakers or changemaker teams and organisations. Our retreats allow participants to explore the different ingredients of wellbeing through our recipes, which they choose at the beginning of the retreat to meet their needs and fulfill their hopes. Participants also receive valuable insights into how to become “wellbeing cooks” able to create a wellbeing plan to incorporate in their life and work to sustain their wellbeing.

Check out our website to find out more about our work and explore our wellbeing recipes to feed your mind, body, heart, and soul!

WELLBEING INSPIRES WELLDOING WELLBEING INSPIRES WELLDOING

by Martin Kirchner

I’m loaded with inspiration and joy right now and would like to share a little of it the best I can. This is not an “ordinary” blog article, but a travelogue and will be especially valuable for people who are interested in holistic change, recipes for wellbeing or the interface of social change and spirituality.

HOW I AM RIGHT NOW

I’m so grateful right now. Again and again I have had the luck in my life to spend intensive times with unbelievably great people in really amazing places.

This week I am at a retreat with 40 social entrepreneurs and activists from Brazil, Mexico, Kenya, Hong Kong and India, in the middle of a small mountain village above Lake Geneva.

We were all invited by The Wellbeing Project and the wonderful place – Montagne Alternative.

WHAT’S THIS ALL ABOUT?

Shifting the culture of the social change sector.

I’ve been invited here by The Wellbeing Project. I was already in Sweden in February at a meeting, where I was well accompanied in my personal Pioneers-of-Change crisis before the Summit.

What a privilege. I’m amazed at the way my life has played out.
The week was intense, with lots of exchange, meditation and fun. For example, I learned the Breath Body Mind method against post-traumatic stress. As a DJ, yesterday I played a 5-rhythm wave (yes, including Rage Against the Machine).

The clear insight is: “Wellbeing inspires Welldoing”.

In order to bring about good things in the world, we have to make sure that we are doing well, that it works and GOOD. If we burn out nobody gets anything out of it, we just pass on unhealthy patterns.

Here I would like to share two interviews I have done:

Interview with Greta Rossi. Greta runs the Ashoka Changemaker Exchange and has collected many great tips, especially for young changemakers and organisations on the website “Recipes for Wellbeing”.

Interview with Frank Hoffmann, Ashoka Fellow and gynaecologist Frank uses “discovering hands” to educate blind women who detect breast cancer early with their increased sense of touch, and get a job through him. He talks about his wellbeing, and has a tip for everyday life.

WELLBEING LABS: SPACES TO SAVOUR WELLBEING RECIPESWELLBEING LABS: SPACES TO SAVOUR WELLBEING RECIPES

Your mind creates an appetising image that makes your stomach growl and your mouth water, sensations that are intensified by the smells your nose is picking up. You are savouring your meal well before its harmony of colours, smells, and flavours reaches your table. When you go to a restaurant, you are looking for more than solely meeting your nutritional needs: you are looking for an experience that will enrich all your senses.

It is precisely this type of holistic experience we aim to recreate at our wellbeing labs. These are anything from short inspiring talks through half-day interactive workshops to emergent personalised wellbeing retreats in Nature lasting from 2 to 4 days for groups of individual changemakers or changemaker teams and organisations. For instance, our immersive wellbeing retreats invite participants to our kitchen to taste the different ingredients of wellbeing through our recipes for the mind, body, heart, and spirit. These help them assess the status of their own “internal kitchen” whilst at the same time exploring ways to boost wellbeing in each of these areas. In the first post I invited changemakers to reflect on their work habits through our relationship with food. Do you consume hypercaloric fast foods, to you slip into binge-eating, or do you forget to eat altogether? What is the status of your internal kitchen?

Our longer wellbeing labs adopt an emergent approach to allow participants to personalise the wellbeing menu they wish to experience in order to meet their wellbeing nutritional needs. This means our wellbeing labs are completely unique as they cater for the needs of the participants who are present.

From mindfulness meditation practices to become more aware of what’s happening in and around them without judgement; through collaborative exercises to increase team bonding, communication, and effectiveness; to methodologies and techniques to create wellbeing strategies and plans for their lives and organisations.

Moreover, our wellbeing labs go beyond simply offering a delicious tasting experience. In fact, they encourage participants to wear the kitchen apron and learn how to become “wellbeing cooks” able to recreate certain recipes to incorporate in their life and work to sustain their wellbeing. This sharing of knowledge, methodologies, and resources is at the core of our model as it empowers changemakers to take control over their internal kitchen without creating a situation of dependency upon us.

Join our Summer Wellbeing Lab

Are you ready to wear the kitchen apron and clean your internal kitchen? Join our upcoming Summer Wellbeing Lab in the green hills of Brisighella, Italy, on 21st September – 24th September 2018 to explore and savour tasty wellbeing recipes. The menu consists of a 2.5 day selection of activities to nurture your wellbeing, from individual and collective practices to actual “recipes” to savour local food and wine.
For more information, please visit our Facebook event and fill out this form to register your interest. And should you wish to organise a personalise Wellbeing Lab for your team, organisation, group, community, etc. please email us at info@recipesforwellbeing.org.

An Introduction to Mindfulness: How to Practice Mindful Eating An Introduction to Mindfulness: How to Practice Mindful Eating

By Greta Rossi

On the tip of everyone’s tongue

Google Trends report that worldwide web searches for the term “mindfulness” have increased in popularity from a score of 9 (out of 100) in January 2004 to 100 in February 2018 (the August 2018 popularity is 87/100). This should not come as a surprise: mindfulness seems to be on the tip of everyone’s tongue – from Forbes to the New York Times, the world seems to have opened up its taste buds to this ancient practice. But what is mindfulness and how does it support the wellbeing of social change leaders?

In a nutshell, mindfulness is about being present in the here and the now, observing all that is happening within and around us with an attitude of curiosity which is neither critical nor judgmental. Against popular belief, mindfulness is not passive and isolating; it is rather active and connecting. Headspace App founder Andy Puddicombe highlights it stems from the “genuine desire to investigate how and why you think and feel the way you do”, opening up new pathways for mindset and behaviour change. It is a sort of gym for the brain.

Mindfulness can help anyone live with a sense of happy contentment, but it is particularly effective to sustain the wellbeing of social change leaders as they carry out their work in the world. There is plenty of scientific research that showcases the benefits of mindfulness on mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual wellbeing, including “better control of emotions, decreased rumination (dwelling on negative thoughts), improved working memory, better self-awareness, improved awareness of thoughts, reduced depression and anxiety, reduced physical illness, decreased emotional reactivity, more flexible thinking, increased positive emotion, and decreased negative emotion” (Bridget Grenville-Cleave, Introducing Positive Psychology: A Practical Guide).

Discovering mindfulness through food

There are plenty of ways in which you can cultivate mindfulness in your life, but since I am a foodie (as confessed in my very first blog post for Shift media channel), I would like to introduce a simple mindful eating practice to discover mindfulness through your senses. Mindful eating is the application of mindfulness towards your relationship with food and it can tell you a lot about how you relate to the world in general. In his book The Headspace Diet, Andy Puddicombe highlights some of the main benefits of mindful eating on the mind and body, such as:

  • It increases the density of neurons in your hippocampus, a part of the brain associated with emotional stability, which means healthier eating.
  • It increases the activity of your lateral prefrontal cortex, which is all about self-regulating and decision-making, which has been associated with making healthier food choices.
  • It reduces the urge to binge or comfort eat, with reduced activity in the part of the brain associated with compulsion, and increased activity in the area associated with self-control.
  • It reduces mind wandering, which can often lead to ‘unconscious decision-making’ around food. But if your mind doesn’t wander, then you can be conscious of the decision instead.
  • It increases feelings of happiness, wellbeing and optimism. It’s hard to overstate the importance of these things in living a healthy life and enjoying a sustainable eating plan.

Ultimately, it gives you the power to choose – not what thoughts and emotions come to your awareness – but how you relate to them and respond consequently. This power of choice is essential for any social change leaders who wish to be effective in their outer work.

Mindful eating practice

The following mindful eating practice is a starter wellbeing recipe which you can find on our website. The guidelines have been taken from the “mindful eating” exercise provided by Bridget Grenville-Cleave in her book Introducing Positive Psychology: A Practical Guide.

Take five minutes out of your normal schedule. Find a couple of small snacks or other edible treats, such as pretzels, small pieces of cereal, chocolate, or raisins. You also need a quiet place to sit. First of all, eat one of your chosen snacks in your normal fashion. Then pick up a second one and go through the following steps. Take your time, don’t rush.

1. Observing: Start by looking carefully at it. Imagine that you have never seen a pretzen or a raisin before. Notice its colour and texture, turn it over carefully and slowly in your hand. Notice how its colour changes as the light catches it. Notice the fine grains or salt on the pretzels, or the crinkles on the surface of the raisin. Sniff it. What odour can you detect? Imagine eating the pretzel or raisin, imagine putting it in your mouth. Notice how your mouth starts to water at the mere thought of eating it. If at any point you start thinking “Why am I doing this?” or “This is a waste of time”, acknowledge these as thoughts. Then return your attention to the object.

2. Tasting: Having observed the snack closely from every angle, put it in your mouth but don’t eat it just yet. What is the first sensation you notice? Is it taste or touch? How does the snack feel as you roll it around your mouth?

3. (Really) tasting: Now start to bit into or chew the snack. How does it feel when you bite into it for the first time? Do you get a satisfying crunch, or a soft chewy sensation? Notice the taste – is it a single flavour or a combination? Is it salty, sweet, or both? Take your time, imagining that you must make it last forever.

4. Swallowing: Finally, swallow, noticing any aftertaste or other sensations in your mouth.

5. Reflecting: Having eaten the snack, how do you feel? How did it feel to eat the snack mindfully?

6. Comparing: Now compare this with your experience of eating the first snack. Often, the first time people eat mindfully, they cannot believe how different it is to their normal experience of eating and how much enjoyment can be squeezed out of one tiny piece of food.

Over the coming months we will deepen our exploration of mindfulness through other practices, but in the meantime, if you liked this mindful eating exercise, why not trying a more thorough raisin meditation practice?

TIPS FOR FACING “TURNING POINTS” IN YOUR LIFE TIPS FOR FACING “TURNING POINTS” IN YOUR LIFE

by Radha Ruparell

On April 5, 2020, I started feeling tired, more tired than I usually feel in the middle of the day. Two days later, I realized that I had been hit with this new virus that everyone was talking about,  COVID-19. The virus was like nothing I had ever experienced in my life. I started the year as a healthy, active, young professional. Then I contracted this virus and suddenly found myself bedridden, unable to work, and suffering from a full-body assault on my heart, brain, stomach and other organs. More than a year in, while much has improved, I still have not recovered my full health.

We all face turning points in our lives. One minute we’re doing well, the next, we’re in the middle of a crisis. Turning points can be terrifying. The ultimate question is, how are we going to face them?

Here are three lessons I discovered while battling the biggest turning point in my life:

  1. Get rid of your “invisible mask”: The single biggest thing that helped me through my battle was having a strong support network. In the early days, I barely had strength. So I reached out only to a doctor friend and to my sister for support but no one else. But soon, a work colleague of mine, who I would not have expected to be one of my core pillars of support, started reaching out to me every day. Her encouraging text messages offered me so much comfort and helped me get through the difficult nights. I used to think that reaching out for help implied weakness, that strong people don’t complain, and tough it out. Now, I believe the opposite: that reaching out for help is not weak at all. What I discovered in removing my “invisible mask” was that, on the other side lay connection, a deep human connection with others so beautiful that it completely stirred my soul. What might be possible if you removed your “invisible mask?”

2. Slow down and soak it in: Like many New Yorkers, I lead a busy life. This experience has gotten me to slow down and take life in. Slowing down helped me rediscover things I had taken for granted. When I left my apartment after 27 days in isolation, the first thing I noticed were the beautiful tulips growing in a little patch outside my building. I had lived in this apartment for a year. Why had I never noticed these flowers in springtime before? Oh, and the feeling of a breath of fresh air, a gust of wind, and the first time seeing trees after a month indoors! What would life feel like if we always approached the world with childlike wonder? What if you soaked in the magic of each moment like it was your first and last on earth?

3. Focus on “being” not “doing”: When my life flashed before my eyes, I found myself wondering not about what I had accomplished, but who I had been along the way. Had I been kind to my family and friends? Had I taken full responsibility for my mistakes? We spend so much of our lives focusing on what we are doing, but in the end, all that matters is who we are being. I have found that one way to bring more of a being paradigm to your life is to pick a word or two that defines who you want to be, and then treat this as your highest priority. For me, that word is “generous”. What is it for you?

I’ll leave you with one final thought from my new book, Brave Now: “Being brave is not an innate characteristic reserved for a select few. At any moment, any one of us can choose to be brave.” 

BIO

Radha Ruparell has worked with CEOs, Fortune 500 senior executives, social entrepreneurs, and grassroots leaders around the world to unlock their leadership. She currently heads the Global Leadership Accelerator at Teach For All, a global network of organizations in 60 countries committed to developing leadership to ensure all children fulfill their potential. Her new book is BRAVE NOW: Rise Through Struggle and Unlock Your Greatest Self.