Page 24 - Alumni Horae: Vol. 94, No. 1 Fall 2013

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Mindful of the moment is a mantra for Jessica Morey ’97
by Michael Matros
The exercise goes something like this: Hold a single raisin
in your palm and try to imagine you’ve never encoun-
tered such a thing before. Closely examine this small,
wrinkled item. Turn it around between your thumb and
forefinger. What does it feel like? Does it have an aroma?
Finally, place it in your mouth and take a minute – yes, a
minute – to taste, bite, chew, and swallow it.
Demonstrated on PBS for Bill Moyers by Jon Kabat-Zinn
of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, this
exercise is not really designed to commune with the rai-
sin’s innermost being, but instead to focus for the sake
of focus, to be deeply within the moment. To be mindful
of where you are and what you’re doing.
Mindfulness is the point, the recognition that the here
and now is all you can truly know, and, as Keats might say,
all you need to know.
But such concentration takes work, or “training the
attention,” as meditation teacher Jessica Morey ’97 told
students on a visit to St. Paul’s last year. The idea,
though, is profoundly simple, as Morey explains:
Mindfulness can be practiced formally, sitting
comfortably or lying down for a period of time
and training the attention. It can also be practiced
informally as you go about your day, paying con-
scious attention to everyday experiences like show-
ering, eating, walking and talking.
You can try it right now.
Take a moment to listen to the sounds around
you, near and far. Notice your posture. Feel the
sensations in your body. Are there any places of
tension or relaxation? Wiggle your toes and bring
your attention down into your feet. Now notice the
sensations in your hands as you hold the magazine.
What kinds of thoughts or emotions are you ex-
periencing right now? That’s being mindful.
Morey now serves as executive director of Inward
Bound Mindfulness Education in Northampton, Mass.,
which offers “transformative retreats for teens, parents,
and professionals.” During her visit to the School, she
met with teachers in the required Living in Community
course, discussing ways to include mindfulness training
in the curriculum.
She had come to the School on the invitation of Michael
Spencer, SPS dean of Chapel and religious life, who hopes
she can return soon for a retreat with interested students.
Morey began meditation practice at age 14, the summer
before matriculating at SPS.
“I attended a four-day teen meditation retreat in Massa-
chusetts,” she explains, “where we practiced silent, formal
sitting and walking meditation five hours a day – 30 min-
utes at a time. I remember how agonizingly long that
seemed at the time and how desperately I awaited the
freeing sound of the large metal bowl at the front of the
meditation hall. It seemed like torture.”
But she returned to the retreat every summer during
high school, observing the “light kindness I felt in myself
on retreat and reverberating for weeks afterwards.”
“I also felt I got to glimpse another way of being in the
world,” she says, “and a group of adults who were at
ease. I wanted to have what they had. Each year my
commitment to the silent meditation practice and
interest in understanding the experience of
my own mind grew deeper. Before my senior
year I even tried a 10-day adult retreat.”
Peace in the Pa