Full Systems Check City-Dwellers: “Got Intention?”

By Jennifer Egert, Ph.D.

In a group, I was recently leading a “Three Minute Breathing Space,” from Segal, Williams and Zindel’s book on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. The core of the three-minute breathing space is to check in with oneself, to see what is happening in the moment with one’s thoughts, feelings and body sensation. One of my patients, in discussing his experience with the exercise, called it a “full-system’s check”—a way, in a brief moment (3 minutes) to take stock of his state . I like this idea, a “systems check” for life.

So here were are city folks.  How are you doing? I’m just checking in here with you. It is 2010 and the beginning of the year can be a marker, a good time for a systems check. I don’t know about you but with December, in addition to the holidays, snow, busy-ness and the many distractions of the city also came, I confess, the dissolution of my meditation practice. I wanted to sit. I thought about it every morning as I turned over in bed, warm under the covers, for a few more minutes of rest before the workday began. I thought about it as I got ready for work and off and on through the day. I thought about it at night before going to bed. I thought about it a lot, but didn’t do much about these thoughts.

At a quiet moment, I sometimes took an impromptu 10 minutes to drop in. But it wasn’t the same as my regular morning practice. No real intention.

Intention implies purpose, a plan, an aim, a reason behind action. My fall from the mindfulness wagon got me taking stock of my intention for practice. Why do I practice? What am I moving towards? How do I have intent without the striving that can come with plans and goals and interfere with really being present?

Good questions for a new year.

So, this is where I am at the beginning of this new year. Checking in with myself, my intentions, my mindfulness practice. I don’t usually make New Year’s resolutions. I find that when I do, I forget what they were before the year’s end, so why bother. But starting the year without a morning practice was is not my intention.

So this year, I made a New Year’s Resolution, an intention, to restart my regular practice and I am working at it. I guess that is what resolutions are really about, like the Three Minute Breathing Space. It is about taking a look at your life (body, mind and emotions), in this moment and asking if where you are at is your intention. If not, then you try to do something about it. It doesn’t have to be grand. It doesn’t have to be big. It can be a little step in something much larger. It doesn’t have to matter to anyone but you.

My wish for us all in 2010, is to have more moments of intention.

For further reading see:

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: A New Approach to Preventing Relapse by Zindel V. Segal PhD, J. Mark G. Williams, John D. Teasdale  (2001)

Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness- By Jon Kabat-Zinn