Because intention and practicing mindfulness meditation are what help anchor us to staying present and working toward cultivating who and what it is most that we aspire to be, do and create, I began 2023 by focusing on both mindfulness and intention in the biweekly online meditation classes that I offer and in the first two blog posts of 2023, Calling On Ancient Wisdom In The Modern World: Mindfulness Meditation for Presence, Awareness & Strengthening Your Heart, Spirit and Mind and Intention Meditation: Anchoring with Kindness, Compassion & Resolve In the Face of Cravings.
We started the year with installing the idea that mindfulness is rooted in the intention to pay attention to both what is inside and outside of us, and spent the month fine tuning our intentions—be they as brief or bite size as noticing something in nature every day, to as large as identifying a new career path and beginning to activate that.
This month, the theme is on relationships, attachment and connection, which we can bring into our mindfulness, meditation and intention practices to help us foster thoughtful, nourishing and mindful relationships. When I speak of relationships, I’m referring to the relationship we have with ourselves, with others, and with the world around us.
Reflecting On Your Relationships
I invite you to take a few minutes to take a pause from reading and sit quietly reflecting on what comes to mind when you think about your relationships. These relationships can include those you have with your family, partner, children, parents, friends, pets, colleagues, and even with your spiritual connection. If you enjoy journaling, you may want to jot down a few notes as you reflect on the following:
What nurtures you in your closest relationships?
What describes the way that you feel when you feel connected to others?
What does it feel like when you feel seen, heard and valued in your relationships?
These relationships, as well as the relationship that we have and continue to cultivate with ourselves, are what informs the rest of this post, so please keep yourself and those people, pets and and your spiritual connection in mind and heart as you read on.
Safe And Secure Relationships Foster Deep And Meaningful Connection
I welcome receiving suggestions for books, articles, movies, Instagram posts, etc, which is how I learned about Dr. Becky Kennedy (she generally goes by Dr. Becky). Dr. Becky is a parenting expert, clinical psychologist, mom of three, and the founder of Good Inside. Her work became increasingly popular during the pandemic, and she was featured in the Time Magazine article, How Dr. Becky Became the Millennial Parenting Whisperer. As someone also passionate about attachment, studied attachment theory in depth and even wrote a book called Creating the Capacity for Attachment: Treating Addictions and the Alienated Self in the late 90s, I was delighted to have found her!
I love how Dr. Becky frames her approaches to parenting under the large umbrella of attachment theory, which includes the importance of attunement and the interactional dynamics of rupture/repair. In reading her book, Good Inside: A Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be, I realized that her approach easily fits into the framework of mindfulness skills and even Buddhist psychology!
The frame Dr. Becky draws from is rooted in the theories of John Bowlby’s work on attachment, which highlight the optimal benefits that humans experience when we feel a sense of security and safety within our primary relationships. Bowlby began writing about attachment in the 1950’s, and following in Bowlby’s footsteps and echoing his assertions about the need for safe, secure, nurturing relationships, I, along with many other therapists and parents, have spent decades insisting that loving connection, empathy and kindness are crucial to the social and emotional development of our kids. We argued, even—or especially— during the years that the Ferber Method, other similar parenting techniques and reward and punishment approaches were popularized that it was not independence or self-reliance that we needed to “teach” our kids—those skills would come. Rather, what they needed—what we all need—is the connection and trust that develops within safe and secure relationships.
Buddha Nature: Healthy, Mindful Relationships Begin With Each Of Us Knowing That We Are Inherently Good Inside
I love that Dr. Becky focuses her work with parents on the “Good Inside.” Her mission states, “By focusing on the parent behind the parenting and the child beyond the behavior, we help families heal—bringing out the good inside everyone.”
The concept of there being ‘good inside’ each of us can be tied directly to Buddhist psychology, which begins with the premise that there is an essence of goodness within everyone. This goodness is called our buddha nature, and defines the first principle in Buddhist psychology: “to see the inner nobility and beauty of all human beings.” The primary aim of Buddhist psychology is to help each of us see beneath our amoring and bring out our original goodness, our buddha nature.
Fostering Mindful Awareness, Mindful Relationships And Meaningful Connection
In her work on parenting and attachment, Dr. Becky explains there is a multiplicity of experiences happening all of the time—that we, our children, our spouses, our friends, etc, all have various and varying thoughts, beliefs, perceptions, emotions and body sensations happening all of the time, and that none of these are wrong! There is no right or wrong. Rather, there are multiple realities.
We know this from meditation, right? To use my meditation class as an example, every time we meet, I offer a guided meditation and then everyone in the class has a bit of time to share their own experience. No matter what the theme or focus of the class and/or guided meditation is, we ALL experience a different sense of what has happened. For instance, someone discovers their breath, someone else had a vision, a third person couldn’t get into it that day, and someone else experienced an “ah ha” moment. All of this—everything that occurred for everyone—is well within the larger aspect of awareness and everyone’s experience is valid.
From a Buddihist perspective, we might call a multiplicity of experiences “mindful awareness.” Mindful awareness incorporates all that is around us. It does not judge, and there is not a right or a wrong. Mindful awareness has a sense of what Buddhism calls equanimity, meaning that all is held equally.
This leads to another important aspect of mindful relationships, which asks us to be curious and use inquiry to better understand our partners, children, friends and ourselves at an even deeper level.
Given that our families and partners are going to experience the world differently than we do, then it is with curiosity and interest that we seek to know more. We ask more questions NOT to judge or demean or prove that we are right. Rather, we ask so that we can learn more about who they are, how they think, and what’s on the inside of them.
For example, my husband and I recently had a difference in perspective about a purchase that we were considering. As we contemplated if we should make the purchase or if it was too much money, etc, we were careful to avoid the I am right, you are wrong scenario. Instead, we found ourselves being curious about how we each were approaching the idea. By taking the ‘right or wrong’ and other judgements away, we listened deeply. And as we understood each other, we came to a peaceful place of ease. Forty years of marriage and there are still places for us to learn and grow!!
The last overarching idea that Dr. Becky stresses comes from attachment theory. This is the inevitability of rupture and the very important skill of repair, which may be the most important skill to learn and to employ in all of our relationships!
The past 30 years of attachment research has yielded so much knowledge, and a major piece that has come out of the research is the concept of misattunement. Research shows that primary caregivers of babies misattune—meaning that they are distracted or don’t understand their baby—70 percent of the time!
But, that 70 percent number is not necessarily the problem if the misattunement is repaired. For instance, if a parent is distracted and then “re-awakens” and tends to baby when the baby cries, that’s a moment of repair. However, if the parent continually does not re-attune and re-connect then there is the likelihood that, over time, a dis-connection will occur.
With this knowledge we learn that the way to connection is through repair. And the skills to repair include validation, empathy and compassion. When we are able to put our agendas aside and mindfully attune to another through listening more deeply, asking questions and using curiosity, we can deepen connection. We can also validate. For instance, when coming back into attunement after being misattuned, we could say, “It makes sense to me that you are annoyed right now. You really wanted to tell me about your day and I was looking at that dang phone! I get it.”
And, when we use empathy and draw from what we know about our partner/friend/child, we could also say, “I’m guessing that felt like other times when I’ve done the same thing (or your parents/boss/friend did the same thing).” Drawing from that mindful and heart-centered approach, helps the other person feel SEEN, HEARD and VALUED, which are what we all long for as humans in our desire to be in safe relationships and feel connected.
Four Steps To Deepening Connection With Self: A Springboard For Cultivating Mindful Relationships
Taking these four steps are useful when we want to deeply connect with our loved ones and ourselves. Before we can deepen connection with others, it’s important that we get to know ourselves on a deeper level and lovingly deepen that connection with ourselves. To increase connection and self-awareness, we begin by:
Taking a pause. When we give ourselves the time to slow down and be with ourselves, we can tether to the anchor of being good. You might try saying to yourself: I am enough – or – I am worthy – or – I belong – or - I am buddha nature.
Opening to the multiplicity of awareness. It’s here that we open to the many parts of ourselves and the many aspects of our experience. Be open and accepting of what is going on in your cognition, your history, your story, etc. Work on being open to it all, saying, this belongs too!
Using curiosity and inquiry to delve deeper. It is here that we can anchor in caring for ourselves, as best as we can, by using the breath and drawing from the sense of witnessing the experience itself, calling forth the “one who knows” to be with ourselves as we deepen and explore.
Validating our experience. A sense of peace can arise when we validate our experience, assuring ourselves that what we are experiencing is real and valued. We can empathize with the part of our self that is struggling and hold it all—the strengths and the challenges—with a gentle awareness. Inside of ourselves, within ourselves, we see ourselves, we hear ourselves, and we seek to value all that is within us.
When we stop judging, stop avoiding, stop trying to resist that which makes us afraid or ashamed, we open to our true nature—a boundless field of awareness that is innately fearless and loving.
This recognition of our essential human goodness may be the most radical act of healing we can take. “The gold of our true nature can never be tarnished,” writes meditation teacher, psychologist and author Tara Brach in her beautiful book, Trusting the Gold: Uncovering Your Natural Goodness. “In the moments of remembering and trusting this basic goodness of our Being, we open to happiness, peace, and freedom.”
For some of us, it’s hard to believe that we are inherently good on the inside. We might see that goodness in others, but sometimes have a hard time feeling that way about ourselves. The guided meditation, Cultivating Connection with Metta Meditation, that was designed to accompany this post invites you to try on the idea that there is good inside of you—that there is a deepened presence and a deepened awareness that is indeed good.
Blessings to each of you as you feel into the good that resides inside and in deepening all of your meaningful relationships.
Warmly,
Karen
I recently launched a newsletter, Grow Your Inner Wisdom—in the midst of it all, which includes a little note from me discussing a different theme each month; the link to the most current blog, which includes a recorded guided meditation that you can access and enjoy at no cost; important and/or interesting news and information; and a poem or practice to help you feel into and connect with the theme of the month. If you’re interested, you can sign up here now!
I also offer an online, donation-based meditation class/guided practice every other Monday night at 7:30pm EST in a relaxed and warm setting on Zoom. The only requirement is an interest in increasing mindful awareness and skills through practice and growing your inner wisdom. If you’re interested in beginning, reconnecting with or deepening your meditation practice in community, we’d love for you to join us! Get more details and register here.