What was your oddest Zoom moment in the last 12 months? Mine involved listening to a sultana. It was a Tuesday night when we sat in our separate windows with a raisin in the middle of our palms (except Mrs Odd One Out with the sultana). We moved them around, examined their wrinkles. Then we held them to our ears and listened to their tiny squidgy sounds.
The oddness was heightened by the Zoomy thing of being together but alone. It was an intensely 2021 moment, with dried fruit. But then we each ate our tiny morsel. And boom. I tasted warm sun on a grape, rolling waves of time and work and sweetness ending in this one lovely experience.
My friend Aoife Fitzgerald was our teacher and the sessions were part of her studies in mindfulness at UCD, a course that brings evidence-based rigour to something that many dismiss as airy-fairy. Each week she ended our session with a poem. Lines from the last one, Mary Oliver’s Wild Geese, dropped into my heart like oranges into a string bag.
"Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things"
Mindfulness can free us from the monkey cage of a noisy brain and drop us down into quieter flesh, bones and breath. But it’s not all self-involved introspection. “True mindfulness is about clearly seeing reality and cultivating the conditions for greater compassion for ourselves and for others so that ultimately our actions may be more wise and helpful,” Fitzgerald says.
A mindfulness practice takes time but can be done in tiny sultana-sized shards of time: noticing your breath waiting for the green man at a pedestrian crossing, feeling the ground under your feet at your desk or the air on your cheeks in a queue. I've been using a meditation app but these in-person sessions with a teacher (even online) brought a greater depth. Fitzgerald recommends the Mindfulness Teachers Association (MTAI) to find accredited teachers and evidence-based courses. There are also interesting offerings, she says, at the Dublin Mindfulness Centre, the Sanctuary, Oscailt and the Dublin Buddhist entre https://Centre.
How does it relate to a greener life? In the face of climate catastrophe we need to look after ourselves, minister to our yearnings with something other than dopamine hits of stuff. Mindfulness expert Orlaith O'Sullivan brings fun and joy to her sessions and they're especially good for families. On her website she has a chocolate meditation, which seems perfect for this time of year. So have a Merry Mindful Christmas. Grab the nearest chocolate bar and begin.
Catherine Cleary is co-founder of Pocket Forests
