CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Meditation -- the mental practice of using mindfulness to focus attention -- might be a simple activity, but it isn’t necessarily easy, Eliza Wing said.
The mindfulness teacher and author has practiced meditation for more than two decades, using the activity to reduce stress. She’s been trained in mindfulness-based stress reduction approach, and has taught the practice for the past five years.
Wing and artist Karen Sandstrom have teamed up on a new book, “Just Breathe: A Simple Guide to Mindful Meditation," which offers straightforward instructions to explain and demystify the practice.
The book walks readers through the process of meditation. Wing said she wrote the book to help with her teaching curriculums, and also as a way to concisely explain the practice to first-timers.
“I wrote this book in particular for my niece, who’s around 18,” Wing said. “She was questioning, ‘What is meditation?,’ and I was trying to find a book for her. At the time, I couldn’t find something that was really clear and straightforward.”
Meditation has been used as a practice for centuries, and has recently been popularized in the United States. Medical studies have also shown that meditation can be an effective treatment for depression, anxiety and high blood pressure.
In the past five years, the popularity of mindfulness and meditation have sharply risen in the United States, according to CDC data.
“It feels like mindfulness is having its yoga moment,” she said. “I think it’s because people are looking for meaning. The world is getting more and more chaotic. Mindfulness allows you to have a distance, but not an unhealthy distance… it allows you to be much more resilient when things come up, and to be less reactive. I think people are drawn into that.”
Wing, currently the chief communications officer of Cuyahoga County, had previously worked in various roles in Cleveland media, leading cleveland.com as the president and CEO for over a decade.
Wing first met Sandstrom during her cleveland.com years. At the time, Sandstrom was features editor at The Plain Dealer.
Sandstrom is currently the Director of Communications at the Cleveland Institute of Art. She is an avid artist, who recently finished a mural that will be on display in Public Square through Jan. 30, 2020.
Sandstrom agreed to do the artwork for the 32-page book, and also helped design the layout of each page. There is a drawing of a person meditating on each page, accented by a bird flying from the left page to the center of the right page. Some pages intentionally feature brief passages with white space dominating the design.
“Getting it to work visually was probably the hardest part,” Sandstrom said. “The space on a spread was very important. You have a character and you have a bird traversing the space over time. You want air around the words.”
Wing continued: “You wanted it to live on the page and have space around it. Even looking at it is meditative.”
“Just Breathe: A Simple Guide to Mindful Meditation” costs $14.95 and is available now at Loganberry Books, Mac’s Backs and the BAYarts gift shop. It can also be ordered online on Etsy.
To give a glimpse into the book, Wing shared give her Top 5 tips on how to be more mindful in everyday life:
Attention
“Take one daily routine task, and really pay attention to it. Like brushing your teeth or drinking your coffee. Everything about it -- your body, your emotions -- all of that. If you do that every day, it makes it very interesting.”
Catchphrase
“Have a catchphrase that brings you into the present moment. Mine is ‘Be here now.’ It helps. A lot of times, when you’re in the midst of a difficult situation, the last thing you want to do is be there right now, but that’s what you need to do.”
Breathe
“The reason we meditate and focus on the breath is because it’s always with us. It can anchor us. Anytime you need to, you can just go to your breath.”
Language
“A lot of times people think of mindfulness as just meditating. But it isn’t. It’s about being aware of the body, the mind and the emotions. The more vocabulary people can get around how they’re feeling either in their body or their emotions, the more particular they can get about their experience, [the better].”
Intent
“Intention brings a sort of alertness to the meditation practice. There’s a whole thing about striving and goals. I’m not saying sit down and say, ‘I will be calm after I do this,’ but it’s more like, ‘May I approach everything with a calm heart today,’ or, ‘May I feel gratitude for whatever comes my way.’”