By Abby Straus

If you’ve spent any time with the M&B team, you’ll know how enthusiastic we are about mindfulness practice. Focusing our attention with skill allows us to get more done, minimizes stress, improves performance, supports health, and enhances relationships. Many of us associate mindfulness with sitting meditation, yoga, prayer, or martial arts. While these are tried and true avenues, we can also bring awareness to simple acts in everyday life, like cleansing our bodies to keep ourselves safe during a pandemic.

This is a video of “Embodied”, the last sermon by the Reverend Elizabeth Teal, a dear and longtime friend of mine, who passed recently. Liz describes how the mindful act of washing our hands, face and feet can provide us with connection we so need in these times of physical distancing. She shows us how to turn a mundane necessity into a sacred rite of self-care and compassion, which is exactly the kind of alchemy that can take place when we bring awareness to everything we do.