Lauren

Linguist, runner, historical seamstress, artist; lover of languages, yoga, music, outdoors, handmade things, and tea.

How are you feeling today?

Mostly just exhausted. I think I have a cold coming on today, but in general I’m always just so tired anyway. Emotionally I’m pretty drained at the moment, really worn down, but for once I’m feeling pretty positive about my own path.

In terms of how I feel about the world at the moment, I’m pretty worried. There’s so much unknown right now and I can see how much it’s affecting the people around me. I’m worried about the second wave of the virus and what will happen when people stop paying such close attention to physical distancing and cleanliness. I’m also very worried about what will happen to the job market in the future. I know that it is going to change, but the real question is how much it is going to change and how do we adapt to it.

Pre-Corona, did you have a mindfulness practice? If so, what was it?

Kind of. I’ve always aspired to have elements of a mindfulness practice, even before I knew what mindfulness was. I was influenced very early on by the movie Amélie. There’s a scene at the beginning where the narrator is talking about the things that Amélie enjoys, and mentions things like skipping stones and putting her hand into bags of beans. I realised that those kinds of sensations were really things that I treasured. Now I actively cultivate that joy in the tiny tiny things.

Pre-corona, I didn’t have much of a formal mindfulness practice, even though I have been trying to build one for many years. In general, it was pretty sporadic and influenced by the busyness of the world around me – I’d have weeks of strong practice and then the world would take over again.

I’ve always struggled with meditation – my anxiety tends to take over very quickly, so finding a way of learning to meditate while managing my anxiety response has always been hard. I try to practice some sort of meditation in the evenings (even if its just two minutes), and my running is a big part of my mindfulness practice. When I feel very foggy in the afternoons, I’ll try and take 5 minutes to just close my eyes and breathe. The majority of my mindfulness practice is in silence and noticing, so whenever I go for a walk, noticing all the little details, sights, colours, smells, sounds etc. I particularly love to drink tea on my balcony and watch the birds in my neighbourhood or the rain.

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Has that changed during the lockdown?

Absolutely. Both in terms of what I’m trying to do and what I’ve been able to do. I’ve been a lot busier during the lockdown – I’m a lecturer at a university, among other things, so there’s been lots to juggle with moving the work I do online and developing materials to support students’ online learning. I spend a lot more time in my home office, which means less time on the balcony for tea – especially on weekends. I haven’t really had any weekends since the lockdown began.

Because of all the media surrounding running and COVID, I don’t feel very comfortable running in my neighbourhood at the moment – it’s very busy particularly in the mornings and the evenings, so there isn’t really a good quiet time to go that fits in with my schedule. I’ve been walking where I can, but because I walk now mostly with my partner, he likes to talk about the day and what’s going on in his head, so I don’t really get that time for mindfulness either. I’ve been meditating before sleep a bit more regularly, but that’s really the most I’ve been getting.

That said, I’m making a commitment to myself to slow down again, and meditation, mindfulness, and time to myself are a big part of that.

What do you find most challenging during the lockdown?

The amount of work that I have to do, and the fact that other people aren’t taking the lockdown rules seriously.

Honestly, I am in a very lucky and privileged position. My work can all be done online, so I still have a job to do. The changes have increased my workload a lot though, so it’s very difficult to manage my time when the home office is always calling.

But of course, the amount of work that I have, the stress of the world situation and everything has had a massive impact on my mindfulness practice. I find it almost impossible to switch off at the moment, especially when both my partner and I are working from home in a small apartment. We don’t have much space so time to myself has been lacking. I feel like expectations are higher on me, which has been spiking my anxiety. All of which impacts my ability to have a mindfulness practice (while also underscoring the point that I really need one).

How are you responding to this challenge?

Lots of planning. I’m trying hard to get to a place where I can stop work in the evenings and relax, and also have the weekends off. It’s not something that I’ve had in a long time though, so I don’t really know how I’ll react to it.

nina gruenewald corona interview mindfulness

Has there been a specific moment that made you pivot? A moment of epiphany?

Definitely. I’m part of a few different programs at the moment which have been getting me to write about future ideas and future projects and while I was working on one of them, I realised how interested I was in my own projects. It was this real moment of “I need to work on these things that interest me, why aren’t I doing that already?” followed shortly by the realisation that the thing stopping me from achieving all of these things I want to achieve is my own bad habits and fears.

Have you developed any new habits or rituals during this period?

Yep. And consciously too. After my realisation that if I wanted to achieve these really big goals, I would have to change my habits, I did some deep introspection to work out which habits they were and where I needed to be with them, and how I was going to get there. A big one for me is improving my sleep, so I’ve now got some (developing) rituals around bed time to help me sleep better.

What will you carry into post-Corona times? How are you going to make room for these changes? And why do you wish to continue them?

Hopefully everything! I’ve taken a big step to completely change how my life is structured, so I’m hoping that all of these new habits will stick, and also continue to develop and grow.

Is there anything else you’d like to pass on to others about mindfulness and/or personal development that applies to this unique global event?

This race is yours and yours alone. Which is a corny way of saying that you should ignore all those memes about learning languages in lockdown or any of the things that society is forcing on us at the moment and focus on the things that you want. See if you can take some time to work through what your goals are and how you might be able to get there. I had to take two days off work intentionally (not together) to forcefully clear my plate and give me the space to work through it all, but maybe you have a better work-life balance than me and you can use the evenings or weekends. Personal reflection is hard, but absolutely worth it.

Mindfulness gets conflated a lot with meditation and constructed practices, people with calm silky voices, plants on windowsills and soft colours; but to me mindfulness is finding the joy in the ordinary, the banal, the unappreciated. I find that joy in anything from organising my pens into a rainbow, to looking at the layers of paint chipped of from the reflective strips on the road, to how my nose gets cold first when I step onto the balcony in fresh pyjamas after a shower. Find a kind of mindfulness that works for you, anything that just lets you focus on this moment right now, and then find a way to build it into your every day, 3 seconds at a time.