HARTLAND — While some may have spent Tuesday morning preparing for parties, working or digging out from this week’s winter storm, a small group sat quietly in plastic chairs arranged in a semi-circle at the Hartland Recreation Center.
As the four adults sat up straight, feet flat on the floor and eyes closed, meditation instructor Ed Greenlee urged them to “feel how your body is sitting.”
During this break amid the various tasks of the holiday season, Greenlee encouraged the participants engaged in a free “Winter Holiday Meditation Session” to focus on “spending a bit of time for yourself.”
Greenlee, who lives in Philadelphia but regularly visits his brother Richard in Hartland, has guided the annual event for the past several years. In doing so, Greenlee puts to work skills in mindfulness-based stress reduction, which he’s developed over 25 years.
Greenlee trained in the field at the University of Pennsylvania and has led meditation sessions for students and staff at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.
“It just works,” Greenlee said of mindfulness techniques during a break.
He practices meditation daily and found that when he stopped at one point, he “felt bad.”
“It really requires just doing it,” he said.
First developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979, the mindfulness-based stress reduction program aims to help people to respond more effectively to stress, pain and illness. Mindful meditation has been shown to decrease psychological symptoms such as anxiety and depression, and help to stabilize physical symptoms such as blood glucose levels and blood pressure, according to the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at U-Mass Medical School.
After the first breath-focused exercise on Tuesday morning, Greenlee read a poem The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi and translated by Coleman Barks, “This being human is a guest house/Every morning a new arrival … The dark thought, the shame, the malice/meet them at the door laughing and invite them in/Be grateful for whatever comes/because each has been sent/as a guide from beyond.”
Then, beginning with the left big toe, Greenlee invited participants to complete a scan of their bodies, observing how each part felt. Releasing tension that may have gathered there by letting it “melt away.”
“Just be centered here and now,” Greenlee said.
Greenlee’s husband Daniel Johnson, who is retired from a career in public health and also has studied mindfulness-based stress reduction, read the poem Tasting Mindfulness by Kabat-Zinn.
“Have you ever had the experience of stopping so completely?” he read.
In the next meditation, Greenlee encouraged participants to listen to a nearby clock, his voice and their bodies’ gurgles, and bring awareness to them, before letting them go.
“Allow the distractions to come,” he said. “Just don’t be attached to them.”
After a break, Johnson led the group on a walking meditation in slow loops around the room.
Greenlee, who had injured his knee in a fall on the ice a few days before, observed from his chair, but at times encouraged the walkers to “feel how your body feels” and “focus on your breath.”
After another poem, the group practiced eating raisins and chocolate mindfully. Greenlee asked them to first smell the food. Then he directed them to place pieces into their mouths, tasting them without chewing first, before gently biting down.
While they continued this slow process, Greenlee asked that they consider where the food came from; who grew the grapes or cocoa beans; who transported the ingredients to the manufacturer; who processed them; and who sold them at the stores.
He asked that the chewers practice: “Just being grateful for all of those people.”
During a break from the practice, Hartland resident Elaine Brousseau said she has returned to the meditation session annually for the past few years.
“It grounds you,” she said. “…My life is way too crazy. It’s a great way to start the year.”
Nora Doyle-Burr can be reached at ndoyleburr@vnews.com or 603-727-3213.
