The Mindful Family Guidebook: Reconnect with Spirit, Nature, and the People You Love

ISBN-13: 9781946764782

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Parallax Press

Publication Date: 05-18-2021

Pages: 192

Product Dimensions: 5.90(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.70(d)

RENDA DIONNE MADRIGAL is a Turtle Mountain Chippewa clinical psychologist and UCLA-certified mindfulness facilitator. Featured on the cover of Mindful magazine in 2018, her workshops on Mindful Families, Storytelling as Healing, and Theatre of the Oppressed are popular nationally in the United States. In her clinical practice, she teaches mindfulness to families, adults, and youth including classes on Mindful Parenting, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), Mindfulness for Pain Management, Stop Breathe and Be (.B), and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) for Teens. She has over 20 years of experience creating and directing evidence-based family and child programs for better health. She regularly incorporates storytelling, writing, and mindfulness into her work.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1 FAMILY VISIONING

Your soul knows the geography of your destiny. Your soul alone has the map of your future, therefore you can trust this indirect, oblique side of yourself. If you do, it will take you where you need to go, but more important it will teach you a kindness of rhythm in your journey.
—John O’Donohue

Learning to Breathe

I had lost my direction. I was rolling full steam ahead on the “railway to progress” set forth for me centuries ago by societal forces that told me what comprises a good life. Work hard and make money, so you can be worthy. As an American Indian with a doctorate, I was 1 percent of the other 1 percent, an academic success story. I had figured out my place in this modern society and was on my way. This was progress, I thought, except whenever I stopped for a moment, I couldn’t help but notice feeling like a crushing boulder was sitting on top of me, whispering, “Something is wrong.” Mostly, I ignored the feeling and pushed through it, through my forties.

On the way to school one morning, I yelled at my then five-year-old daughter who was just learning to read to keep doing her flashcards. It didn’t matter how it got done, just that it got done. I would apologize later. Right now, I had to get her to school and get back to my important work. Deep down, I knew that my life was out of balance, but I didn’t have time to stop. I didn’t have time to question what the boulder was that was weighing me down, causing the bad feeling in my stomach; and if I kept moving fast enough, or was distracted enough, I barely noticed it. Even if I had figured out that the boulder was a mass of my suppressed instincts and intuition, I wouldn’t have known what to do with that instinctual wisdom, especially if it pushed me up against modern society’s story of what a “good life” is supposed to look like.

According to dictionaries, intuition is the ability “to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning.” I knew that such knowledge that comes from our instincts is frequently ignored or even frowned upon in today’s world, where good decision-making is based on data viewed through a socially constructed lens that defines what is good and bad. Intuition is not limited by social constructs of who we are supposed to be. Intuition lets us access a knowing that is within us. Modern society prefers things to be tamer and more controlled, more like a zoo than the Amazon rainforest.

What do we know about animals that live in zoos? In the zoo, animals exhibit abnormal behavior. They have a difficult time breeding; their lifespans are shorter, and they develop repetitive, obsessive behaviors like pacing and picking their skin to the point of self-mutilation. I thought tigers in zoos paced for exercise, but appar-ently, it’s due to stress. Tigers in zoos pace 48 percent of the time, but in the natural environment, they spend most of their time—twenty hours a day—resting.

Animals are healthier in natural environments than they are in artificial ones like zoos, and so are we. How many of our psycholog-ical behaviors and habits are our human version of the tiger’s pac-ing in confinement? Mindfulness practice helps us stop pacing and start listening to ourselves. How often do we really pay attention to what we need instinctually, even down to the pacing of our day? Do we feel that need we have for space in order to integrate our learn-ing and experiences, to connect with ourselves and our families in the way that we want to, or do we just yell to get our kids out the door day after day, because that’s the cage we are in? When I began paying attention to my instincts, I realized that leading “the good life” was leading me to a kind of psychological and spiritual malnourishment.

To save myself and my family, I had to recalibrate. I had to slow down and reorient myself away from artificial, external markers to a more internal and instinctual source of guidance. Something rooted deep inside myself, a wisdom that had sustained my ancestors, a strength that is also in my DNA. To listen to my own instincts, I first had to learn to stop and notice.

Stopping may seem a simple action, yet it is revolutionary in its effect. In our family lives, going to bed earlier, or not scheduling both days of a weekend, or letting go of some commitments are small steps that are surprisingly powerful. On the societal level, we’ve seen how the great pause in our industrious economic activities caused by the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic has had far-reaching consequences on almost every aspect of our world. In our always-rushing, overscheduled daily lives, stopping what we are doing can be a challenge, and it can even feel uncomfortable because we’re not used to our natural state of stillness any more. One of the best ways I know how to enjoy being still is by learning to breathe with full awareness.

North Star Breathing:  A Formal Stopping and Noticing Practice
North Star Breathing is a formal learning-to-breathe practice. It builds the skills of stopping and noticing what is happening in the present, and it helps us orient our attention to our bodies and minds in the here and now. The breath is a good anchor for this practice because it is always available to us in the present moment; it just takes a shift in our attention to remember this vital connection to life that is happening whether we are aware of it or not. Like the North Star, its existence has the quality of stillness, even when everything else is moving around it.To prepare for North Star Breathing, find a place where you won’t be distracted. Plan to practice for about five minutes. You can read the directions and do the practice yourself, or you can listen to a guided North Star Breathing on the Mindful Practice website.

NORTH STAR BREATHING
Sit in an upright but comfortable position. With eyes softly closed, bring to mind a bright star sitting still in the sky. That’s the North Star. Imagine breathing in from the North Star and breath-ing out to the North Star. From there, narrow your attention to the touch of your breath—the sensation of it moving in and out of your body at your nostrils. Then focus on the rising and falling of your chest as your breath moves in and out. Then focus on the rising and falling of your belly. Choose one of those areas where you can anchor your attention on your breath; your belly, your chest, or your nose. Follow the breath into that part of your body, feel the breath there, and then follow it out.

Now follow your in-breath all the way in until it stops, and notice the stopping, notice the space between the in-breath and out-breath. Then follow your out-breath all the way out until it stops, notice the stopping, notice the space. In the space is stillness. The North Star sits still in the sky, and in between breaths that stillness resides in you. The North Star isn’t perfectly still; it’s almost still, just like your body as you follow your breath in and out to the place you have chosen as your anchor.

Your mind is also not perfectly still. This is natural. You might notice that it wanders from your breath to other things like thoughts, emo-tions, memories, sounds, or other body sensations. When this happens, gently bring your attention back to your breath. The act of noticing your mind wandering elsewhere and gently bringing it back increases your capacity for mindfulness. If your mind wanders off every second, just bring it back every second. In this way, you build the stillness in yourself. With stillness, you gain more clarity and find your direction much easier. You can even expand your attention out to your whole body, imagining that it is the North Star, almost still; focus your mind on breathing in and breathing out from this expansive place.

Follow the in-breath and out-breath for five minutes.

Child Variation: Children can do one minute of North Star Breathing practice for each year of age. So a one-year-old can do one minute, a two-year-old two minutes, and so on.Invite your child to put their hand on their belly and feel their belly rise as they breathe in, and deflate as they breathe out and see if they can find the stillness between breaths. If they are really distractible, and even a minute feels too challenging, you can try just three breaths. It’s important to have a pleasant expe-rience, so never press your children to practice; just ask them to try it and see. 

The Train: Understanding the Railway to Progress
When I teach, I often talk about being on a train on the “railway to progress.” I don’t mean the old-fashioned kind of train with steam coming from the engines, rolling along at a pace where you can look out at the landscape and appreciate seeing a deer grazing peacefully in a meadow. That’s a train you can breathe on. I’m talking about the sleek silver bullets of modern trains, careening down the train tracks at 150 miles per hour. Like the characters in Bong Joon-ho’s film Snowpiercer, imagine the entire population of the planet on that train, placed in different cars. Some tell themselves they are content with the car they’ve been placed in. Some tell their children to work hard and get into a first-class cabin. Some push their way through the cars, doing whatever is necessary for a seat in the front. They want the cabin with the expensive linen tablecloths and silverware, or, better yet, a personalized sleeping car. They all focus on where they are inside the train. But what if I told you that the train was headed for the cliff? Would you try to get off, even if no one else did?

We are herd-like creatures. It is easy to just go along with things. We tell our children not to give in to peer pressure, but we do it all the time. If you try to go against the herd, people think you’re crazy. You could say that our global civilization, which is heading toward any number of cliff edges like climate change or eco-catastrophe, is just like that class-stratified train of progress. I’ve heard things like, “It’s too late to change course,” or, “More harm will come to you if you don’t go along with things.” People even feel threatened and say, “To push on the brakes would slow down progress—and that is a danger-ous thing,” or, “It’s not realistic.”

Flying to the moon was not considered “realistic,” but it happened. Stopping most international travel would have seemed impossible in 2019, but in 2020, it happened. The problem is that the train is going so fast that people can’t get their bearings, no one even remembers where the brakes are, much less how the technology works. No one knows how to live outside the train car of our way of life. The most tragic thing about our civilization is that we can no longer imagine different possibilities. The hustle and bustle of daily living and enter-tainment distractions stop us from looking deeply into these kinds of thoughts should they arise in the first place. Our ability to envision a different life for ourselves has atrophied. Our global habit of favoring material gain above all else is the direct result of centuries of insensitive, colonial-industrial thought and action. When we talk about decolonizing our thinking, we mean to allow ourselves to think both around and beyond what is considered normal.

We all have vitality (life force) and it can’t be snuffed out completely, just clouded over. Our society in the twenty-first century has mastered clouding over people’s instincts and vitality. The very things we think help us—entertainment, drugs, processed food, business as busyness—are the very things taking us away from who we are, who our families could be, and, really, who the world needs us to be.

Society is currently designed so that the easiest thing for many of us to do is sit in front of an electronic screen. This helps us numb out and forget that we noticed something was wrong in the first place. Most of us don’t notice we’re on the train, and we certainly don’t think about getting off, not even when we hear the train is heading toward a cliff. We might notice that the train is carrying a virus that is making us sick, yet we can’t stop it. We numb our instincts and dull our abili-ties to connect with our deepest ways of knowing just so we can keep going. Sound like a dystopian novel? There’s a reason big apocalyptic books, films, and TV shows are so popular among young people.

With this book I’m trying to grab you and tell you, you must find a way to get off of the train, for yourself, for your family, for the future generations of the world. This book is about protecting your family and guiding you all to a place of deep safety and peacefulness.

Since it appears there’s no easy way off, we’ll have to start with our imagination. Take my hand and imagine jumping. Dream with me and let’s create an intention for your family that comes from your deepest-rooted wisdom. For that kind of powerful intention, let’s invite your instincts to awaken.

Waking Up Our Instincts
In modern society, we don’t hone our instincts, but we did just a few generations ago. For most of humanity’s history this was an important practice, necessary for survival, leading to greater health and wealth for individuals and families. Today, our instinctual wisdom is something we trivialize or fear.

There is a game called Peon that the American Indians of Southern California play, in which two teams of four players each face off against one other. A large blanket hides the playing team from their opponents. Hidden in the playing teams hand are white or black coyote bones. Songs are sung and players on the opposing team guess which colored bones are in which hands, once the blanket is dropped. Correct guesses win the team a palito (counter stick), which is thrown at their feet by the palito holder. There are fifteen palitos in all. Once a team wins all the palitos, the game is over. Today, it’s easy to see it as a game of random luck, but it is actually a game of instinct.

Once I was working on an American Indian parenting project and a group of research scientists from the Oregon Research Institute came down for a conference to work with the tribal people. A game of Peon was set up—American Indians against scientists. The Indians beat the scientists in one of the fastest rounds I’ve ever seen. Peon can go on all night. This game was completed in less than an hour. One of the top scientists could be heard mumbling in the corner, “It isn’t possible that they could guess and win that many times based on probability theory. It’s against the odds.” He didn’t have the capacity to under-stand that it wasn’t a game based on odds—it was based on instincts.

Our instincts are naturally rooted deep inside of our bodies, con-nected to an ancestral line that was strong enough to survive through insurmountable odds, and launch us into the world that we live in today. As far as artificial and sped-up industrial society is concerned, honing our instincts is a nuisance, but since The Mindful Family Guidebook is about what’s best for our health and happiness as human beings and families, it is a vital practice.The first step in understanding what is important for your family is identifying your core family values. This can’t come from external markers of societies where families are falling apart and so many peo-ple are depressed. Did you know that the World Health Organization reported that in 2004 major depression was the third leading health problem in the world? They predict that by 2030 it will rank as the leading illness across ages and genders.

To understand what is important for you and your family, you have to rely on something more sacred and vital, something internal that is connected to your ancestral line, and for that you need to revive your instincts. Let’s start with a practice to invite your instincts to awaken called a walkabout. For this activity, you will need to go outside, but first, read through the instructions below.

WAKE-UP OUR INSTINCTS WALKABOUT
Find a place outside to go for a walk, preferably a place with nature (with trees). For ten to fifteen minutes, walk and follow your instincts, letting your body be your guide.

Direct your attention to your senses. Pay attention to the sounds you hear, the smells you take in, the feel of the wind or sunlight on your skin. Notice how you are on your own. Slow down, you’re not trying to get anywhere.

[…]

Table of Contents

Preface Beginnings: Initiation ix

Chapter 1 Family Visioning 1

Chapter 2 A Family That Looks Up at Stars Connects to Ancestral Roots 15

Chapter 3 Mindful Family Circle 49

Chapter 4 Family Joy 75

Chapter 5 Mindful Family Meals 99

Chapter 6 Family Rhythm 113

Chapter 7 Family Peacemaking 127

Chapter 8 Family Community Building 147

Chapter 9 Family Protection During the Teen Years 161

Chapter 10 Butterfly Wings 181

Mindful Family Quests 185

Mindful Practices for You and Your Family 196

Mindful Family Maps and Activity Logs 198

References 199

Acknowledgments 203

About the Author 205