Mnemonics aren't the strong suit of Fully Present, an engaging book about mindfulness by Susan Smalley and Diana Winston. In Chapter 4 ("Mindful Movement") they suggest STOP as a reminder to:
- Stop whatever you are doing
- Take a breath
- Observe what is happening in this moment, in your body and your mind
- Proceed onward
Present-moment awareness is indeed a golden key, but an acronym like STOP that includes itself, without deliberate recursive intent, is clunky. Likewise the suggestion in Chapter 6 ("Feeling Bad") to think RAIN:
- Recognition: become aware of and label your current emotional state
- Acceptance: nonjudgmentally acknowledge what you are experiencing
- Investigation: objectively explore what's going on in your body; tune into the sensations
- Non-identification: separate your self from your emotions, disidentify, delink, open a gap
Those -tion and -ance latinate nouns are far too passive and polysyllabic. "Non-identification" is so negative. Instead, how about simply SAIL?
- Sense
- Accept
- Inspect
- Let-go
Short, punchy action verbs. Come SAIL away ... and carry on.
(cf. "Pause On Each Threshold" idea in Meditation Made Easy (2008-11-01), Rebalancing Doing and Being (2011-02-28), Breath and Awareness (2011-03-12), Core Buddhism (2011-10-17), ...) - ^z - 2011-11-26