Mindfulness and routine

My friend Ian once talked about a lifestyle program, actually it was a diet plan, that was based on the Buddhist practice of mindfulness. In our ordinary lives we get into routines and patterns such that we do things out of habit without even thinking of them. The practice of mindfulness is to purposefully do things differently, so that you become aware of them again. Purposefully eat something different for breakfast that you normally do. Purposefully go a different way to work. Purposefully use a different plate for dinner than you normally do. Purposefully go to the movies at a time of day when you ordinarily wouldn't. The way this works as a diet plan is that it makes you aware of portions, how many times you eat in a day, snacking, nutritional content, taste, texture, etc. The way the practice works in general is to make you aware of the world and notice its features, rather than moving through blind and numb.

Another friend I knew in Sydney was having trouble with her new baby, because she wouldn't sleep and wasn't feeding properly. After many months of exasperation, she gained a place in a residential facility (run by the government, for free, including meals and lodging for a whole week - just remarkable) for new mothers who were confronting similar problems. I saw her about a week out, and she was a new woman, with a new life and a new peace. And the key problem was routine. Her baby needed a regular routine, of sleeping, waking and eating. I remember she said, "I had to tell J. (her husband), we just can't take her out to a cafe in the pram at 9 o'clock at night any more." No wonder she was having trouble. The family and the household had now been rearranged so that the baby could follow her routine of waking, sleeping and eating, every day, at the same times, no exceptions. And this made everyone's life better.

Thinking of the mindfulness exercise today, I thought of how I'm craving and requiring a routine here - I have to schedule waking and sleeping (I now have both "wake up and go to work" and "go to bed" alarms that ring on my phone), I have to schedule in exercise and be absolutely relentless and exceptionless about it (long way from that yet), I should also schedule in down-time and knitting time and relaxation time (can you say "Pyjama Saturday?), and so then when I'm in those times I can relax and not worry that I should be doing something else.

People stuck in routines need mindfulness to give them awareness, but babies and me need routine to give structure and avoid the crying and fussing and insomnia. For babies, the world is new, so maybe they need lots of sameness and predictability in their life to be able to cope with the new things. For me, my world is new. I wish there was a residential facility run by the government here that I could book myself into, to establish a calming routine. Knowing that I need one, though (and being more than a foot tall and having my own driver's license and all that), I should be able to put one together for myself.