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MINDFUL MOMENTS # 126
I’ve got a few things I’d like to share with you this week.
Firstly, I’ve changed my mind about voicenotes. In last week’s Mindful Moments I rather slated them (for myself); I called them out for being a one-way conversation. Subsequently, I sent more voicenotes last week than I probably had in the last month. Sometimes the universe works like that…Anyway, I eat my words and remain open to all forms of communication as supporting the space between seeing each other IRL.
Secondly, I wanted to talk to you about being mortal. We’ve talked about the Stoic value of memento mori here before and how remembering our own mortality can be a gateway to humility, compassion and cultivating gratitude. Last week, I went to my first (medical) book club and we dissected Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, a seminal piece about our current approach to ageing, nursing care and what it might be to have a natural death. We spoke about how our attitude to death and dying has changed over time, with life expectancies changing rapidly from our 30s and 40s to 80s and 90s. But when did we make mortality a medical issue? When did we making dying the domain of doctors? “Death”, he writes, “is not a failure. Death is normal. Death may be the enemy, but it is also the natural order of things”.
I just spent a weekend volunteering with a charity called Camp JoJo, which allows children with disabilities to experience camping. It’s quite a full-on weekend, and I always come away with a kind of terrified awe at any parents’ ability to keep children both continually safe and entertained. Sometimes people who haven’t had experience with children with disabilities before feel nervous, but you soon learn that children all really want and need the same things.
I was volunteering with a family with three children, one of whom was a 4 year-old with Down Syndrome. For me, the highlight of my weekend was chatting with mum. She spoke to me about her experience of being told her baby would have Down Syndrome and how the use of language immediately framed it as something negative. She told me about a movement in the Down Syndrome community to ban the words “I’m sorry” when delivering the diagnosis. Unfortunately, she had had a lot of negative experiences with healthcare professionals (apart from the girl’s cardiologist who said “She’s got AVSD. This is what it looks like [and showed her a model heart] and we can fix it”).
In a strange (or perhaps not strange at all) serendipity, we ended speaking about lots of the same themes as were raised during our book club’s discussion of Being Mortal. During the family’s time in hospital while the youngest had her heart operations, several of the other children on the ward didn’t survive. I don’t think many people have an experience of child death - and I think we can all be grateful for that - but mum told me how she suddenly realised during this time that death is just a part of life. It changed the way they as a family dealt with the death of the family dog; how they made the focus on being “he’s had a good life, so let’s give him a good death” and cooked him eight sausages the morning he was going to the vet to be put down.
I believe I’ll be a better doctor because of my conversations and experiences this weekend. Dealing with death threatens our identity as doctors who are supposed to “fix” it all, but there’s an arrogance to that, inherent in the profession, that I think we can all overcome.
Mindful moment: Conversations with people are the lifeblood of our community and our continued learning. Everybody has something of value to share and to teach you. When we read, we learn. When we speak and share and keep open to experiences, there is no point at which we stop learning and growing. What was the last conversation you had that moved you? What do you really know about the life of the people you work with? What was the last book you read that made you really reflect and think and choose to do something differently?
YOGA
Mindful Movement with Laura
Join us every Saturday from 11am-12.15 at the Cornerstone Community Centre in Hove for an all-levels vinyasa yoga flow class, meditation and mindfulness (mats provided or bring your own).
£6 per class or £24 for 5.
Upcoming classes: Classes will resume September 23rd
REFLECT
“Intuition is the whisper of the soul”
- Krishnamurti
Mindful moment: Intuition is our friend. It is the knowing in your gut of what feels right or wrong. It is an awareness of knowing that what you are doing is filling you up and feeding your soul (whatever the word means to you); it is a deep awareness that you are doing something that gives you purpose and pleasure. Do you feel that? That deep sense of knowing that you are exactly where you are supposed to be? I believe this feeling comes when we are living exactly in alignment with our true selves and values. Is your intuition telling you you feel uncomfortable? That something isn’t sitting quite rightly? Can you listen and allow it to lead you to what you can do instead?
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Welcome to the Community.
I'm Laura, a yoga teacher and NHS doctor. With this weekly newsletter I aim to help you incorporate mindful moments into your week. I want you to feel inspired, empowered and creative. I promise to always be authentic; to only include content that speaks to me and which, therefore, I hope will do the same for you.
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Thank you for reading! Until next time, Laura x