Interconnection
Welcome to ATTUNEMENT, my monthly blog!
Each month we "tune into" a theme related to mindfulness,
and I share a creative mindfulness practice and tune based on this theme.
This month of March we're TUNING INTO the frequency of:
INTERCONNECTION.
I am just getting over a moderate bout of COVID--my first ever...I've been one of the lucky "super-dodgers" up until now. This experience reminded me of how interconnected we are.
We are breathing the same air as each other, and we are sharing the same space….
….inhabiting the same planet.
All of us together.
That brings to mind the lyrics to the song "All the World is One" by Minnesota-based singer/songwriter Peter Mayer.
Here's an excerpt:
Ask an atom in the breath you take
Ask the water by the river bank
Ask a strand of DNA--it's written in your blood
One life running in your veins
One light from one big bang
You can try and separate it
But all the world is one, all the world is one
We're so connected to each other that our nervous systems can communicate to one another in a phenomenon known as "limbic resonance", wherein we attune to each other's emotional states. This relates to the concept of attachment, first theorized by John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.
As a marriage and family therapist, I studied attachment theory in graduate school and throughout my career, culminating in me receiving advanced training in the attachment-based modality Emotionally Focused Couples and Family Therapy. What I learned through my studies and clinical practice is that humans are relational beings.
As relational beings, our behavior has a huge impact on our fellow human beings' behavior (and vice versa). Since behavior is largely driven by emotion (here's an article about the related concepts of mirror neurons, emotional contagion, and attachment theory), one person's emotions can easily influence another's.
This is definitely the case in my house!
When my husband is stressed, I can "feel" it when he interacts with me, and IF I'M NOT MINDFUL I'm likely to respond back to him in a tense, irritable way.
Similarly, when I'm the one having a bad day (which is the more likely scenario, if we're being honest), my husband is apt to "catch" my bad mood and reflect it back to me. However, he has gotten really good (better than me) at spotting the potential for "emotional contagion", and he'll mindfully bring to my attention what he's noticing about how my mood is affecting him.
I'll admit I don't always take it well...
but my mindfulness practice and time spent in therapy over the years (both as the client and as the therapist!) has helped me to breathe and code this information as loving and helpful instead of reproaching and threatening.
Point being is that because we are relational beings with integrated nervous systems, we affect each other ALL the time...ANY time we are in ANY type of interaction with each other.
Therefore, it's of the utmost importance to do what we can to bring good energy into these interactions. This doesn't mean we have to fake niceness (our nervous systems can actually spot inauthenticity, which gets coded as a threat). But it does mean we need to try to be skillful (a.k.a. mindful) in our interactions.
This starts by relating to our own emotional experience with mindfulness.
We first have to recognize what we’re feeling so we know what is ours and what is someone else’s. This awareness can then be met with compassion, so that when we encounter someone who is suffering we can send love towards their suffering without being taken down/consumed by it.
A lovingkindness meditation (as highlighted in last month’s newsletter) can be a helpful tool in this practice.
There’s a lot of suffering in the world, and so much of it is caused by humans. I try to remember the adage that ‘hurt people hurt people.’ And I try to remember that the more I work on healing my hurts, the less likely I am to hurt others.
I invite you to consider how you might gift yourself some healing today, knowing that healing has a ripple effect–an emotional contagion, if you will–that can positively impact those you love and who love you, and on and on.
Creative Mindfulness Practice: Spinning A Web of Love
Draw a spiderweb in your journal (use the below picture as a reference), and within each space put the name of someone you interacted with today. If you don’t know their name you can write “grocery store clerk”, etc.
When you’re finished, choose a person in your web and reflect on how you might have “spun more love”* into your interaction with them.
Do this for every person on your web, if you’d like.
*A note: Spinning love into your interactions doesn’t mean you can’t have boundaries. Boundaries are incredibly important; in fact, you might reflect on certain interactions you had during the day and notice that it would have been an act of love TO have set a boundary with that person so that they knew where you stood. You can use this web prompt every day, or you could do it once a week or once a month. You could also just complete it in regards to your interactions with your family or at work. Make it work for you by adapting it as you see fit!
This Month’s Tune:
Each month I'll share a tune that resonates with the newsletter theme.
For our March theme of INTERCONNECTION I've chosen the song I referred to earlier in this email, "All the World is One" by Peter Mayer.
