Mindful Parenting is a contemplative practice through which we become more mindful of our children and, in doing so, experience a more joyful life.
The Mindful Parent is an organization devoted
to sharing with parents and other child caregivers ways in which to
enhance the many joys of parenting. By mindfully attending to
our children, both when we are physically present with them and when
we are physically separated from them, we can enhance our sense of
connection to them and, in turn, our connection to the cosmos.
This makes us a better parent, a happier person, and a more vital
human being.
To facilitate a more mindful approach to parenting,
The Mindful Parent publishes on its website, and in its bi-weekly
newsletter,
mindful parenting
verses and commentaries. The Mindful
Parent website also serves as a community forum that encourages and
supports a mindful parenting dialogue and the sharing of mindful parenting
experiences.
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experience through verse, commentary, and imagery to share with others.
We believe that through our collective experience, we can help
each other develop a deeper and more meaningful mindful
parenting practice.
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The Daily Sip: Untying
Shoelaces and Knots
It takes two hands to tie a knot but only
one hand to untie one. This rule is demonstrated easily
when you tie and untie shoelaces. Whether tying your own
laces or those of your child's, both hands are engaged. But
when the time arrives to untie a basic knot, one need only pull a
single lace with one hand and the knot opens freely.
It is the
same with arguments and disagreements, the emotional knots
we tie every day. An argument cannot take root without two
people lending a hand. But it takes only one person to
move past the entanglement, to make the unilateral decision to untie
the knot. And when that is done with compassion and a genuine
letting go, the knot opens, like a fresh bloom.
The practice
of mindful parenting can use the cue of tying and untying shoelaces
to open awareness to the gentle power we possess to single-handedly
untie knots -- those involving us and our child as well as fellow
inhabitants of our beautiful planet Earth.
Today, when you
are tying your or your child's shoelaces, sense the motion of
your two hands. Bring to mind foolish fights and disagreements
in which you've recently become enmeshed. Open awareness to your
ability to release yourself from the entanglement.
When
you find yourself untying a shoelace, sense the ease with which that
knot, which held tight for such a long time, falls open. Open
to the compassion within yourself (for yourself) that, with the assistance
of deep breathing and an open mind, can signle-handedly untie
the knots you've spent a lifetime creating and devoting precious
energy to sustaining.
