{"id":866,"date":"2017-11-20T17:06:23","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T17:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/?p=866"},"modified":"2017-12-01T18:35:43","modified_gmt":"2017-12-01T18:35:43","slug":"workplace-mindfulness-tip-sparkling-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/2017\/11\/20\/workplace-mindfulness-tip-sparkling-water\/","title":{"rendered":"Workplace mindfulness tip: sparkling water"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"At a mindfulness workshop that I led at a client site last week, one of the participants offered a beautiful and elegant practice for dropping out of our habitual obsession with thinking into a clearer and more present awareness.<\/p>\n

He really likes to drink Talking Rain sparkling water. Fortunately, in his office there are refrigerators stocked full of the stuff, so more than once a day he steps back from the intense stream of demands from business stakeholders and dev teams (he’s a product owner), and does a little ritual. (Full disclosure: I have elaborated on his description a little bit, but I trust it’s fully in the spirit of his practice.)<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Turn away from crazy email inbox and walk to kitchen.<\/li>\n
  2. Take cold can of Talking Rain out of refrigerator.<\/li>\n
  3. Get drinking glass (real glass) from shelf.<\/li>\n
  4. Carry can and glass back to desk and set them down.<\/li>\n
  5. Pop top of cold can.<\/li>\n
  6. Listen to hiss of escaping carbonation.<\/li>\n
  7. Pour contents of can into glass.<\/li>\n
  8. Watch bubbles rise, and listen to fizzing sound.<\/li>\n
  9. Watch bubbles settle and clear until surface of water is smooth and calm (though still fizzing just a bit!).<\/li>\n
  10. Take cold, refreshing sip.<\/li>\n
  11. Turn attention back to crazy email inbox.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    A few observations on this brilliant practice:<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Soft drinks are such an embedded part of tech workplace culture, and I love the idea of taking that iconic daily reality and turning it into a basis for clear awareness.<\/li>\n
    2. The multisensory nature of the practice is wonderful: it stimulates kinesthetic, tactile, visual, auditory, and taste sensations – all of which are excellent vehicles from expanding awareness beyond the cognitive-analytical.<\/li>\n
    3. It’s very wise to associate mindfulness practice with simple and necessary acts.\u00a0Drinking water is not optional! And with practice it becomes clear that mindfulness is pretty essential too.<\/li>\n
    4. Coke would probably work well too, but for obvious reasons might not be quite as effective in creating a sense of grounded calm. (But if you are a Coke drinker don’t let that my judgmental attitude stand in your way!)<\/li>\n
    5. There is typically an abundance of drink cans in an office kitchen, lined up in neat rows and gleaming in the light. I think of this is a reminder that opportunities for mindfulness abound: we just have to pick them up and partake.<\/li>\n
    6. Although it wasn’t mentioned when I first learned of this, I could imagine extending this practice into gratitude: for your organization which pays for the drinks, for the delivery person who (with great physical effort) wheels a hand truck full of drinks into your office once or twice a week and loads up the fridge, for the drink manufacturer and all the people who work there, for the sources of the miraculous water* and the equally miraculous bubbles.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      * I looked at the Talking Rain company website<\/a>\u00a0for information about the source of the water, but couldn’t find anything about that. Since the company is based in Preston, WA, in the Cascade foothills, I’m going with a nice visualization of the White River tumbling down from Mount Rainier.<\/p>\n

      Join my\u00a0Mindful Technology Delivery<\/a>\u00a0class, December 6, 2017 from 4-6pm in Pioneer Square.\u00a0Learn more and register here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      At a mindfulness workshop that I led at a client site last week, one of the participants offered a beautiful and elegant practice for dropping out of our habitual obsession with thinking into a clearer and more present awareness. He really likes to drink Talking Rain sparkling water. Fortunately, in his office there are refrigerators […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stable-attention"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=866"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/866\/revisions\/874"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jhanderson.biz\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}