April 22, 2021
The Poster Child for Just Being What Is: A Q&A with eMindful Teacher Elaine Smookler
Each Q&A conversation that I have with eMindful’s teachers is different, but I knew that Elaine Smookler was going to be an interview like none other. The actress, singer, comedian, trained clown, and mindfulness teacher entered our chat room with a personality as bright and fiery as her red hair, and within minutes it was as though we were old friends.
One of the first questions I often ask mindfulness teachers is how they start their day. Most of the time, the answer to this question is a schedule that includes a walk in nature, a mindfulness meditation, quiet time with a newspaper, and other peaceful, reflective activities.
Elaine laughed – heartily – when asked how she begins her day.
“I fall out of bed and ask the present moment not to start without me,“ she says, laughing between her words. “Generally speaking I do often try to do mindfulness practice, but I’ve been practicing for so many decades that for me, every breath is practice. I don’t get myself going in the morning because the minute I breathe, I feel what’s there. Some days it’s ‘holy crap, lots of stuff is going on,’ or ‘I am sleepy or sluggish’…whatever normal human beings feel. It’s about me befriending myself; it’s less about what I do and more about just being there with myself, whatever it is.There’s nothing to hide.”
She added that an important part of her day is not hiding from whatever is there.
“If I’m cranky, it’s important to encounter that crankiness and meet it with curiosity and awareness. I am not the poster child for peacefulness; I am the poster child for being what is. I notice what is here right now, and that’s my starting point.”
Q: Something that’s unique to your mindfulness teaching is comedy. Can you go into that a little bit?
“My nature is to sense what’s hilarious about everything. It’s just the way my mind works, and not just that, but playfulness is so wonderful. It doesn’t matter what language you speak, everybody speaks the language of playfulness. I have had so many extraordinary experiences with the highest and lowest of humanity, and everyone is hungry to play. Everyone wants to feel appreciated and seen, and comedy – being able to not take things too seriously – is not the same as being glib. I have great respect for what people are going through; I hold tenderly the challenges people face, but at the same time, I have observed that suffering is greatly reduced when we can bring in the sunlight of a light touch, where appropriate.”
Q: Between being an actress, a singer, and your other talents, how did you find mindfulness? How do those other talents add to your teaching?
“I’ve had a sense of humor my whole life, but I was also a child that read Siddhartha, and I was interested in meditation and began to explore that when I was 11 years old,” she said.
“I don’t have a lot of taboos about how to teach; I bring a lot of technicolor to it. I am big energy; even in my Mindful Dailies I sometimes sing upon request. Occasionally the people who know I sing will ask me to sing at the end, and I do because, for me, it’s an extension of the practice and I’ll sing to augment what we’ve shared,” she says.
Q: You also teach an eM Life webinar called “Breathe In, Laugh Out.” What can participants gain from that experience?
“It’s about showing that we can learn mindfulness with a light touch. I use comedic stories and it’s not just that I’m telling things in a funny way, it’s this idea that when we open up to the technicolor of life, it can look lively or it can look like something else. As long as we’re present, that’s what we are pointing to rather than trying to make people feel peaceful. Peaceful is not quiet; it’s the experience of allowing and being with and letting things flow. Of being okay with what’s flowing,” she says.
Q: For people who are new to or curious about mindfulness, would you say to them?
“At a very basic level, simply start with noticing your senses, because your senses are only experienced in the present moment. Without a big fancy idea of thinking you have to sit or have to do something, notice how it makes you feel when your feet are making contact with the floor or when you hold a cup of tea in your hand and you feel the warmth of the cup. Or if you smell a fragrance in the air or hear a sound, it’s noticing “is it worth it to be here?” or “is it a beneficial experience for my body and mental health and what’s the simplest way that I can help myself be here?” she says.
She adds, “So many of us are trapped in the past or hooked into catastrophic thinking about the future, so no wonder we are all exhausted – we are trying to live three lives at once: the past, present, and future. To me, mindfulness is about doing the math – doesn’t it just make sense from a purely logical standpoint to just experience being here, and see how that changes your available energy, to be alive and present for the moments that you are alive on planet earth?”
Q: Last question. What’s your favorite joke?
After assuring me that her real favorite joke isn’t fit to print, Elaine delivers a joke that she feels encapsulates her unique sense of humor:
“What’s brown and sticky?”
After a moment’s pause, I tell her that I don’t know.
“A stick.”
Experience the light and laughter of Elaine Smookler in:
Written by Becky Greiner