Build Resilience and Channel Compassion with Sister Peace | B-Well Together | Salesforce

We have just the perfect way to wind down for you today. Here on Be well Together, we have a woman who made it just a huge impression on my heart and my soul. Several years ago, it must have been probably, gosh, I don't even know, maybe six years ago when I first met Sister Peace. And what a just beautiful woman and beautiful soul and just so lucky to have her with us today. So prepare and open your heart and open your mind and just prepare for just a beautiful, soothing, guided meditation. A different kind of meditation we're going to do today than we have done in the past. A little bit about our friend Sister Peace. She is a Dharma teacher, and she is a longtime friend of Salesforce. So with that, Sister Peace, welcome to Be well Together.

Thank you so much. I am so happy and so honored to be here. And I'm going to share something perhaps unique with you today, and that is we're going to do a virtual walking meditation. And I just wanted to share with you a little bit about how that came about. I had the distinct pleasure to work with children in the juvenile detention center in Memphis, Tennessee. And this. I always have to say this so that people get that it's a jail for children 12 to 17 years old. But I was so grateful to have had the opportunity to work with them because this exchange changed my life forever. I had no fear. Oddly enough, I felt very much at home with what I would call my children. My mother would say they felt like they belonged to me. They felt. And of course, most of them are African American young boys. But let me tell you that, you know, after having worked with them in a project where we combine mindfulness and collaborated with the arts to help them to delve into those parts of themselves that they could see and begin to understand and to transform, we used many, many methods for it. But two of them I will mention here, one was slow walking, and we would walk in a circle, and I would do a guided meditation while they walked slowly. The other thing that I introduced them to was hugging meditation. And fortunately, I didn't know you were supposed to touch children, but, you know, I probably would have broke the rules anyway. Turns out it was a great success. We created the ritual of hugging one another when we greeted at the beginning of the class, myself and my other partners of what we call our grounded team in Memphis. And before you knew it, not only were we all hugging, the kids and us, but the guards and the teachers. And it was a wonderful thing to see how the energy of mindfulness could really come in and Calm that situation. And fortunately we were able to find out that after just being there three months, a small team of us, and not even touching all the children, but the violence in the facility went down 54%. And so, like I say, the compassion grew so deep in me. And I called these young children Zen masters because, you know, I said, you just simply managed to stay alive, you know, and circumstances mostly are not, we're not of your, you know, you didn't cause. And the depth of my compassion, like I say, it changed my life forever. And the best way that I can describe it is that the well in the well of my compassion, the bottom fell out, was just an extraordinary, you know, feeling. I don't myself have children, but you know, my saying is they don't have to be issued from my tissue to be mine. And so. And the joy, you know, that I never had any fear, Ali. And some people. Oh, aren't you afraid? No, I feel at home. I'm with, you know, these children and the joy as I saw them, as we saw them grow and be able to recognize the things in themselves that were not their fault and the things that they could change and to offer them creative methods to move in whatever direction that they chose. It was joy. It was a deep joy. Again, it was, you know, I can only say it was near absolute. It wasn't an excitement or an exhilaration, but it was a depth of, of contentment to be able to see the manifestation of change we not only imagined, but beyond what we imagined. And wow, every time I think of that place, I just smile. And I'm hoping as a result of today that there'll also be a lot of smiles. So let me also just sort of go into, explain to you what we're going to do. I call, we call this slow walking with the kids. And so kind of like that moniker. And you're gonna walk wherever you are, whether you're in a room or whether you're outside. If you only have five or 10 steps, that is enough. You can imagine for the children in jail who had a 6 by 8 cell or room, they did walking meditation in their spaces. And so I invite us to do the same. So leave your phone and your computer where it is. Turn up the volume so you can hear me. And again, it can be around your room, around your space. I am going to pick up my computer so that you can see, of course, and hear me. And then we're just going to do a slow walking meditation. So pardon me while I we can stand up And I'm going to invite the bell. While you just stand where you are, center yourself, just become aware of your breathing. No wrong way to breathe, right? And I'm going to invite three sounds of the bell.

Sam.

So usually what we do is we walk in a circle, if you can, or just back and forth, whatever that you're doing. And knowing that when we're walking, we're.

Actually going to be unwinding and releasing attention.

So let's just begin to walk wherever we are and walk slowly, a little more slowly than what you normally would do because you really want to be able to feel the heel, the sole.

And the toes or the ball of.

The foot touch the earth. Boy, what gratitude we can offer to our greatest and our eldest ancestor, our Mother Earth. And let's just feel her beneath our feet. And we also just want to be aware of our breath.

We don't have to try hard with it. We just breathe naturally and we just walk. We focus on the breath.

Thoughts may come and go and that's okay, that's part of being human.

And just simply continue to walk. And we may notice we're walking a little bit slower.

We're having an awareness of our breath.

That our breath will actually slow down.

And our breath deepens.

Breathing in, I'm aware I'm breathing in, breathing out. I'm aware that I'm breathing out. In and out. If you like you step, you can say in and out to yourself. You may even take one step to inhale and two steps to exhale. And we notice maybe our hearts are calming. Mine certainly is. And I find myself inhaling and exhaling a wee bit deeper. I'm breathing in deeply. I'm breathing out slowly, Aware of the earth beneath my feet. And I'm walking slowly enough that I can feel the earth. And every step offers gratitude to our great Mother, she that sustains us as two leggeds, four leggeds, six and million legged. Not only in this time that we live in, but also.

In the beginning.

Of time when beings came here on the planet. Breathing in and breathing out. And I'm aware of what's happening inside of my body. And as I breathe in and out, I have an awareness that the air that I breathe in from my brother and sister trees fills my lungs. And as I breathe out, I return the breath to them. In thank you trees out. Much gratitude. Now that we're breathing deeply, we can have an awareness of where is the breath going? It's in our belly, of course. But are we feeling any stress or tension in any part of our body, we can ask the breath to please find those places. Maybe a little tense. Sometimes they're corners, sometimes they're round places. But whatever they are, they are there. There's no right or wrong. There just is. What is. This is what we sometimes call mere recognition. Just see no critique, no judgment, no discrimination. And if we feel that there may be some spots in our back or leg or elbow, let's send loving breath and attention to those places. Breathing in. I've been sitting so much, I'm feeling my lower back. I send attention and love and gratitude to my back. And breathing out, I release that tension into the earth with my steps, knowing that the earth can transform all things. And every time we walk on the earth with awareness, with mindfulness, with consciousness, we can send her healing too. Continue breathing in and breathing out, In.

And out.

Take several steps in silence. Now it. And we're about to take our last three to five steps. And with these, you can really slow down and really feel the earth. You can actually breathe through the soles of your feet, sending energy to the center of the earth and receiving energy from the center of the earth. Now let us just, wherever we are, just pause for a moment and stand about shoulder width apart and just breathe and feel the centeredness, feel the stability, feel that we are steady. And we can feel everything settle down into our feet. And we know that wherever we are, at any time of the day or night, that we need to have a release. We can just take a few steps. And during this new time in our world, it can be inside, it can be outside, it could just be a few steps in the round, because we're returning our attention, we're returning our mind to the body with the bridge of the breath. So take a few more steps or breaths rather, and I will invite two sounds of the bell and you can return to your position.

Thank you for walking with me.

That was quite delightful. I had not really thought of my little space here as a space that I could walk in. Just seemed too small. It was really profound when you said to me that the boys would walk in their cells and that if they could walk, surely the space that you have is one that you could walk into. That was rather profound.

I'm happy to hear that. And we can share this with others. One thing I didn't say while we were walking is you can invite others to walk with you with slow walking, not only those who are around you in your space, but also those who have walked on. We can bring them to mind and bring their energy and consciousness alive in us.

My father, while I was walking. Yeah, that was really nice. You know, I wonder if you could speak a little bit. I found it surprising, and I felt this way the first time I did a walking meditation with you. But I felt it again today, that. The feeling of the slowing down. Intuitively, I would think that would give me more balance, that I was very shaky, I was very wobbly. Like it was, you know, like a toddler learning to walk. It wasn't always graceful. But I wonder if you might speak for a little bit about why that. What is it that when we slow down that we get a little wobbly versus when I'm plowing my day? I certainly. I like to think mastered walking.

Oh, yes, we have. And we've mastered walking fast. You know, when I was a kid, my dad was the fastest walker, and he always had somewhere to go. And we would always say, daddy, wait up, wait up. So when I got to, you know, the monastery and started to learn how to slow walk, I, too, was a little bit wobbly. So the way to cure that is just walk at whatever pace you feel comfortable and balanced. And then in time, you can slow it down a little bit. You know, slow it down a little bit. And it took me a while to get accustomed to being on my feet in that way. And so that's quite. You know, that can be quite normal. And if super slow is uncomfortable, it's okay. You know, we can do walking meditation, really, at any pa as long as we are aware that we are walking.

And that we are aware of our.

Breath and that we make sure that our mind and our body are united. That's real yoga. That's real unity.

It's real union.

And we use the breath to help bring them together. So whatever feels comfortable for you is quite.

All right.

Perfect. Well, I thank you very, very much. Very, very much. Per usual, you are opening up my heart and my eyes to so many different things I can be doing. And I will definitely start using the space in this room a little differently, you know, differently. That felt really, really good.

Great. And it's a wonderful practice of compassionate self care, because in these days of zoom, and I've experienced it as well, you know, I'm zoomed out. At the end of the day, I feel like a zoom Bee used to say zombie, but I feel like a zoomie. And so, you know, we're hunched over, so, you know, it helps to stand up and be erect in a relaxed way. And of course, we can do that with sitting meditation as well, but, but my favorite is walking meditation.

And I keep, you know, I definitely, I mean, I take a walk, a long walk every day now. That's just part of my routine. That's part of how I.

Up until.

This moment, I have looked at those walks. Like, I have to carve out an hour. I've got to get up early. It's got to be later in the day. And I feel it in the same place for 10, 11, 12 hours at a time when I could use my space more effectively and efficiently. All these, like, get to that point at the end of the day when I'm like, oh my gosh, I need to walk right. And try to even a little bit more muscular skeletal health.

You can consider it your appetizer before you eat.

Yes, it's my little appetizer. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. It does not surprise me that I got such a great big learning and a big eye opening experience, because I always do when I'm with you.

Thank you. I'm honored to be here. Thank you. Thank you.