PRACTICING MINDFULNESS OF OUR ENVIRONMENT IN JUDO PRINCIPLE
May
28
This morning, part of my honoring my environment was to clean the area we see as one comes in the door here at my daughter’s apartment. At home in Seattle, I let our girls create and leave a mess up stairs, but I always make my bed and keep our common living area cleaned each day. My secret for getting them to clean their rooms is to invite company over for dinner and they have no problem cleaning their rooms.
The next part of mindfulness in Judo is the skill of understanding our relationship to man. We can not fulfill our basic needs of food/clothing/shelter/safety/learning alone. As Sam shows us in his comic strip, learn to leverage our own energy so it matches the direction of our opponent’s energy producing desired results. Learning skills for opponents can be skills for collaboration and leadership in general
Therefore, I start my mindful practice by understanding my direction in life - “to bring out the best in myself and others”. It took a lot of practice to keep that in my mind as I saw the girls doing something else when they had a limited amount of time to dress and eat breakfast to get out the door for going to school. It was time to use “‘I’ language” or “No talking during problem times” which are skills I have worked to teach in my counseling sessions.