Come SAIL Away

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