January is the quiet month - a respite after the frenetic busyness of the holidays. In January, I love to awaken to the calm of white , after soft snow has fallen overnight and spread a blanket on our world. Even better is when it comes as a surprise as I draw open the curtains. Quiet sometimes speaks more than words. It's a new year's message that says, slow down you're missing what’s here in this moment because you're rushing.
This process of living consciously in the moment is called mindfulness and popular culture seems to rediscover it every few years in different guises. One year it's all about yoga, another tai chi, meditation or feng shui. It may be a bestselling book series about Cups of Comfort or a guide to the calming power of de-cluttering your home. The methods of mindful meditation even include mindfully dancing or walking mindfulness.
Of course it's not new. For centuries, the Japanese have known how to rake a sand garden with precision or prepare tea with the quiet mindfulness of ceremony.
Currently, mindfulness comes in the form of adult coloring books. According to the online bookseller Amazon, one-third of the 15 bestselling books last year were adult coloring books. These books feature titles like "Color Me Calm" and "Color Me Happy", "Coloring Book Mindfulness" and "Anti-Stress Art Therapy for Busy People".
Even the academics have chimed in. A study in the journal Art Therapy documented the benefit of coloring a mandala as a way to decrease anxiety and manage stress. It was so effective, that the study concluded coloring might be able to ease test-taking anxiety or free us from the fear of flying.
But it's not just academics who understand that a major benefit of mindfulness is being immersed in what’s happening in the moment, so firmly rooted in the place where we are that our mind can be at peace. I think here in Vermont when we slide across a field on cross country skis or walk in faint moonlight down a snow covered road, we know a lot about the experience of mindfulness.
I felt that kind of calm on a recent morning as I looked out my glass doors to the expanse of white stretching across the back lawn. Brown reeds hugged the edge of a newly-frozen stream, rabbit tracks criss-crossed the snow and the sun almost felt warm , smiling through billowed clouds. Sharing the crystalline quiet of that January morning, I felt completely at peace. It was even better than coloring.
