The importance of mindfulness as a parent

An interview with Shannon Smith of BellissiMamas

Tell me a little bit about BellissiMamas and about what’s so important about guided meditation.

Shannon:

At BellissiMamas, we are helping moms to be able to create their most beautiful motherhood--whatever that looks like. A lot of what we find in our day as a mother is a lot of chaos. Being able to just set aside five minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes, whatever it is that we can set aside for ourselves. Maybe it's when the children are quietly playing or they are just dropped off at school and you've got five minutes in the car to yourself. Maybe it's during nap time. Maybe it's right after you put them to bed. Whenever you can carve out, just a moment for yourself, to be able just to find that peace within the chaos is really important for our mental, our emotional and really our physical well being. So many times what we think and what we ponder on become our reality. And so if we can really protect ourselves and be proactive as mothers, it really pays forward for us in our day. So that picture of the airplane, and the oxygen mask coming down. What do they always tell us?? They tell us that we have to put our oxygen mask on first, before we can help others around us.
What we've been talking about BellissiMamas this week is gravity, and how gravity can have both a negative and a positive feeling for us in our lives. Gravity as we know is the force of nature that pulls down on us. And while sometimes it can feel a little suffocating or heavy maybe burdensome, really gravity is just a way of us being able to feel grounded. So as we come together we're going to just be focusing on that aspect of gravity and how it makes us feel grounded and how we can actually slow down and listen to our bodies, and be able to find that peace, and gravity is something that we can embrace.
Guided meditation is a release. You can just stop, and you're not thinking about what to do next, you're just letting your body be.

It’s really a challenge.

Shannon:

It really is—especially when we have lots of distractions, whether it's work piled on the table or animals or children running around the room around us. It is. It's a challenge to be able to set aside that attention for ourselves of just peace--just to remove the chaos.

Put on Your Own Oxygen Mask Before Helping Others

Lara:

Yes, exactly. I always talk about the idea that children are emotional sponges. All of us really are emotional sponges, so the things that we do to put our oxygen mask on, make a difference for all of us.

Shannon:

Oh they really do. We need to have that grounding, that moment, just to process all of the different sensations and feelings and expectations that are put on us throughout the day. Some of them are self-inflicted. Some of them we put on ourselves. It's good to clear the mind, to let our breath guide us.
And I think a lot of times people think, "I can't do meditation. My mind wanders." Well actually that's a good thing, because your mind was created to think. That's what your mind is supposed to do. That's your work house, right? That's your computer. And so we want our mind to think. When thoughts come and we're processing through those thoughts, we need to be able to acknowledge them, and then evaluate them. Do they serve us? Great! Hold on to those thoughts. Do they not serve us? Let them go. It's like a little bit of a personal inventory.

Teaching Mindfulness to our Children

It's a good thing to teach our children too. I think it's really important. Our children feel overwhelmed and feel anxiety or stress over different things, and it’s really helpful if we can really teach our children to quiet their spirit, and just sit down and just be for a moment. So many times we filled their day with activity and school and sports and they're all wonderful things but our children need time to process also. That helps them to be able to behave, to be able to sleep, to be able to process the world.

Lara:

I love to work with kids to teach them breathing. I like doing bubbles as like a way to teach fast and slow breathing when they're just starting to learn.

Shannon:

Bubbles are so fun. They're soothing anyway as they float through the air. We do a lot of that with our kids a lot, whether it's a stressful moment--whether they can't sleep, whether they're feeling angry. Children have big emotions, and we need to help them to identify, because sometimes they don't even know what it is that they are feeling. And if we're able to help them to identify how they feel and then give them the way to process those feelings, it makes them happier, more content, more at peace, and it makes really our parenting more peaceful.

Benefits of Mindfulness FOR Our Kids

Lara:

I know that some of my big parenting breakthrough moments were when I was able to stop and just observe what was going on. By being present in the moment, and being able to observe what was happening, I was often able to figure out--not every time, but a lot of times— that was helpful for me to be able to figure out what was happening and what I needed to do about it.

Shannon:

Exactly, just being mindful of the moment and sometimes we don't have those mindful moments until after the fact. And then letting guilt or remorse or regret set in. Okay, well let's use those moments as a catalyst to change so that next time we don't feel regret, remorse--that we can go back and we can say how can I do that differently? Because we're imperfect. Everyone is imperfect, but we're all striving to be the best that we can be, to be able to process the world. We didn't get to choose the world. The world is what it is, but how we choose to navigate through it is really important, we can teach our children the same thing.

Guilt versus Shame: Mindfulness as a Personal Inventory

Lara:

Reminds me of the way that Brené Brown talks about guilt versus shame. Guilt is "I made a mistake" and shame is "I am a mistake, I am not enough". Guilt is productive, it helps us to make better choices. Shame is not productive. It tears us down and tears down those we love.

Similarly, when we look at the divorce predictors, two of the big divorce predictors are criticism and contempt (sarcasm, eye rolling, mockery). To me, contempt is shame dumped on others.

On the other hand, if we say, "I feel upset when you do this," and "I need that,"-- complaining about behavior and saying, "I made a mistake." That’s guilt. That’s healthy. If we say, "I am a mistake", "I am not enough", or "you're not enough. You're a mistake," pointing fingers, whether it's at myself or others, it’s not healthy. But saying "I made a mistake" and making a better choice, that’s healthy and part of life.

Shannon:

And being able to recognize it and to be able to take some time set aside so that you can process all of those feelings, so you can process whatever it is that passes through, and be able to choose, like you said, which ones are you going to keep and which ones do you need to let go.

Find Us

Join Shannon (and Lara) in a guided meditation at https://fb.watch/82vt1DuCc9/

Find Shannon at http://bellissimamas.com

Find Lara at little-elf.org

Find Lara and Shannon at Placer Birth Connection at https://www.placerbirthconnection.com