Introduction to Mindfulness
Session One - Welcome to Mindfulness
I am excited to share more about mindfulness with you. Below is information related to the workshop, which includes background notes, videos and worksheets.
“Mindfulness means paying kind attention, on purpose, without grasping onto judgements, to whatever arises, from moment to moment.” – Jon Kabat Zinn.
So, let’s break this down.
Mindfulness means paying kind attention. We can pay attention to ourselves in different ways. For a lot of us, we can pay attention to ourselves in a judgmental, punitive, cold and unkind way. Which can look like finding all our faults or beating ourselves up. When we are practicing mindfulness, we are learning to pay attention to ourselves with kindness, warmth and compassion. It's kind of like holding a baby. Sometimes the baby looks up at us with a serene, smiling face, and sometimes the baby is screaming and crying. In both these instances, we meet the baby with kindness, warmth and compassion, and it's the same with our mindfulness practice.
Why is this important? Our ability to attend to our own internal struggles and difficulties with warmth and kindness creates the space for those challenges to be seen, understood and most importantly move on. When we meet theses same experiences with a punitive and harsh response they get stuck and stay within us for longer!
On purpose. This is the ability to intentionally direct the focus of our attention. We call this intentional attention.
Why is this important? Neuroscience now tells us that where we put our attention directly shapes the architecture of our brains. This can be a double-edged sword because we can form both helpful and unhelpful patterns. We now know that the key ingredient to changing ourselves is being able to direct our attention away from unhelpful habits and toward more healthy ways of being. We know by doing this, we start to change the architecture of our brain, laying down new neural pathways.
Without grasping onto judgments. Without grasping onto judgments means that we, to the best of our ability, let go of critical judgments about what we think we should be experiencing, and let go of judgments of what we think is right or wrong, good or bad. This is very different from not having judgments. As humans, we judge and make meaning of everything, so being non-judgmental in this context means that you can notice your judgments and let go of them rather than believing they are a fact about reality and engaging in them. A key point in mindfulness is we are aiming to cultivate curiosity and openness to whatever we are noticing in our experience, and this includes our judgments.
To whatever arises. Ultimately everything can be a focus of our attention. We are not trying to control, resist or block away experiences such as feelings, emotions, and thoughts. The aim is become aware of these experiences and to allow them to flow freely without getting so entangled and trapped by them. Initially, we will mostly be focusing on our body to help us anchor in the present moment in order to not get carried away with our feelings and thoughts. As we progress, ultimately everything becomes the focus of our attention so we can notice the connection between our emotions, thoughts, and sensations without getting lost in them.
Moment to moment. This means directing our attention to what’s happening right here and now in this very moment because life is happening in this moment.
The goal of mindfulness
Jon Kabat-Zinn says the goal of mindfulness is to allow thoughts, feelings and experiences to come and go naturally without getting so entangled in them.
Wen we are being mindful we respond rather than react. There is a bigger gap between the incoming experience, like some asking you why...?, and your response.
A helpful metaphor could be when we are being mindful we are like a brand new non stick frying pan. Whatever comes our way we can notice and be with, yet it does not stick! Like eggs sliding off the pan. When we are not mindful, its is like the old pan that everything gets stuck to!
Key points to mindfulness
Cultivating intentional attention.
Cultivating curiosity, warmth and kindness.
Cultivating open stance towards whatever our experiences are.
Directing our attention to the here and now.
Two types of mindful attention
Zooming in and focusing very narrowly on an experience. Like you’ve zoomed in with a camera lens.
Zooming out and focusing more broadly. like you’ve zoomed out with the camera lens with a broader view.
We will be learning both these qualities of mindfulness. Sometimes you will be zoomed in and sometimes you will be zoomed out. At the beginning, we can start with a narrower focus especially in our formal practices until you get hang of it. You will also be developing a wider focus especially in day to day life.
Misconceptions about mindfulness
Feeling positive and calm - We are not trying to control our emotions/feelings. Rather we are learning how to work with our emotions/feelings so we don’t become so overwhelmed and to allow these experiences to flow without get so caught and stuck in them.
Controlling thoughts or stopping the Mind - Mindfulness has nothing to do with stopping thoughts. It is perfectly natural and expected that we will have a lot of thoughts. We will be learning to notice and be aware of our thoughts without getting so entangled in them. It's kind of like there's a radio station on, and sometimes when our attention is focused elsewhere we don't hear the music, which is significantly easier than trying to actively not listen to the music. This is where people get most stuck with mindfulness. There can be a strong belief that mindfulness is about stopping thoughts. Our attempts to stop thoughts actually has the opposite effect, creating more thoughts.
We should be relaxed - Mindfulness is not relaxation. Although this can happen and it’s very nice when it does, it is not the goal of mindfulness.
Tip: A clue when you are trying to stop your thoughts or have a certain emotional experience is when you can notice frustration when practicing mindfulness. This is information that you have an expectation of what the experience should be which is not happening.
Formal mindfulness practice
Formal mindfulness practice is when we dedicate a block of time solely to the practice. This could be sitting, lying, or standing. It’s kind of like going to the gym but rather we are training the muscle of mindfulness so when we go out in daily life it’s more accessible. Formal practice is essential to becoming more mindful!
Informal mindfulness practice
Informal mindfulness practice is when we bring mindfulness to all aspect of our day to day life. Nothing is excluded.
Benefits of mindfulness
Anxiety, depression, and irritability all decrease with regular sessions of meditation. Memory also improves, reaction times become faster and mental and physical stamina increase.
Regular meditators enjoy more fulfilling relationships.
Studies worldwide have found that mindfulness reduces key indicators of chronic stress including hypertension.
Mindfulness helps us understand our unconscious habits more clearly, which supports personal growth and change.
Mindfulness has also been found successful in reducing the impact of serious conditions, such as chronic pain and cancer and can even help relieve drug and alcohol dependence.
Studies have shown that meditation bolsters the immune system and thus helps fight off colds, flus, and other diseases.
Mindfulness has been proven effective in improving our ability to regulate emotions, which means we remain more stable.
Mindfulness helps have insights into our deeper patterns and habits that limit us.
Automatic Pilot/Unconscious
It appears we operate mostly from our unconscious, about 95% of what we do! This can also be called our procedural/implicit memory, the memory of how. Like how we walk, ride a bike or know someone is sad, we do not have to think about it!. We believe this is an efficiency of the brain, imagine what it would be like if we had to think how to do all these things! If we do anything enough, like ride a bike, or believe nobody like us then that then becomes part of our unconscious memory. Which helps when it is riding a bike and not so helpful when it is the belief nobody likes me.
It’s also kind of like taking a backseat and letting your thoughts and emotions drive your decisions and actions. When we are in automatic pilot and being run by our habits, it’s hard, if not impossible to change. Automatic pilot is a natural human process, and only becomes problematic when these habitual patterns are damaging within our lives.
Some thoughts about habits
New habits are subtle and powerful.
As you become more aware, you gain greater control of automatic pilot and you can deploy new habits as needed.
Over years you concede increasingly more control to habits.
Habits trigger thoughts, which trigger more thoughts.
Thoughts from difficult patterns then amplify difficult emotions.
Without warning habits can seize control of your life and drive you in a direction different from what you had intended.
Tip: Bring mindfulness to one small area where you go on automatic pilot. Some examples might be brushing your teeth, ironing a shirt, or eating a meal. Two to three minutes is a good amount of time. This helps you bring mindfulness to your day to day life.
Mindfulness Practice
Let’s get you started on how to practice formal mindfulness. First things first, you need to find a comfortable posture. This could be sitting upright, lying on the ground, or standing. The first foundation of mindfulness is bringing our attention to the sensations of our body. We do this because the body is always here and now! We are using the body to anchor our attention so it does not wander as much. You will still experience thoughts, sounds etc, the attention on the body is to help you not get so lost.
The YouTube clips below talk about bringing attention to your breath. Another option is to do what we call the body scan, where we move attention around our body. This is where we are going to start.
Task focused attention
This is when our attention is on the task at hand. The task is to bring your attention to the sensations that you feel in your body. This could be the sensations such as warmth, coldness, tightness, achy, trembly, throbbing, scratchy, prickly, dull, dense, pressure, etc.
Self-focused attention
This is when we get caught up in self-analysis, e.g. thinking, remembering or imaging.
How to practice
Downloadable Guided Practices
(In case my voice doesn't work for you, there's a link below to some other guided mindfulness practices)
Our job is to notice every time we get caught up in self-focused attention, which is completely natural and to be expected, let go and bring ourselves back to the task. We have to do this again, and again.
This transition between self-focused and task focused attention is what we are training. It’s not important how long you stay on the task, or how much you’re caught up in self-analysis. The idea is to keep starting again, keep returning to the task, again and again. Then, over time, naturally and organically we will be able to stay more focused. If you try and force this, then you will get caught up in more self-analysis! We need a lot of patience and kindness at the beginning, as all good things take time.
There is no magic time to practice. The feedback I’ve got is that first thing in the morning works best, as people are often too sleepy in the evening.
Tip: Remember, if you’re getting frustrated, it’s because you’re trying to control the mind or emotions. We’re not trying to stop the mind! The mind is like a radio station, sometimes it’ll be playing softly in the background. Sometimes the volume will be up!.
Key points to practicing Mindfulness
Posture – Upright (comfortably in chair, or lying on the ground with knees bent)
Feel the sensations in your body.
Notice and let go, notice and let go, notice and let go.
Thoughts are to be expected.
It's not important how long you can stay present for but rather that you make a choice to return and start over.
Start over again and again and again.
Tip: Remember curiosity, openness, and kindness. These are the foundations of mindfulness. It takes practice and patience, you’re a beginner.
Resources
Free downloadable mindfulness practices:
http://franticworld.com/free-meditations-from-mindfulness/
http://www.freemindfulness.org/download
Apps:
https://www.headspace.com/
https://smilingmind.com.au/
https://www.calm.com/
http://www.wildflowersmindfulness.com/
Articles and websites for teachers and parents:
http://www.mindfulteachers.org/
http://mindfulnessforteens.com/
Replacing detention with mindfulness
Mindfulness for children with ADHD
Tips for teaching mindfulness to kids
Guided Mindfulness Practices - Week One
Week 2 - Mindfulness in the Mind
Mindfulness and the Mind - How we get stuck and how to get unstuck
One of the first experiences we notice is how busy our mind is, sometimes called the monkey mind! Our mind can often feel out of control or rather controlling us. Can you notice what your mind is saying to you right now as you read this? We are constantly talking to ourselves and often these thoughts can have quite a destructive power over us.
I am going to spend some time explaining how the mind works, the different patterns of thinking we can notice and how we get stuck in these problematic mind states. Then I’ll be sharing about how to take control back from your mind.
What does evolutionary science have to say about the mind?
Fear and worrying mind. We all have four basic needs, food, water, shelter and sex. We need these to survive and if we don’t meet them we would be dead. So one of the patterns of mind we can observe is how much we worry and are fearful of the future. This makes sense because to protect our basic needs we need to be on the lookout for danger. Our mind is extremely well designed to look out for future risks and danger. In fact, perhaps the reason we are here is because our ancestors were very good at this. So, it is natural to be worrying about the future, as we are designed to do this. Even though what you fear may only come true one out of a thousand times, that one time could be all the difference.
Comparing mind. Do you notice how much you compare yourself to others, how much you try and fit in with the group? It seems there is an evolutionary advantage to this. When we used to be living in small groups and we weren’t at top of the food chain and it was important and essential to be part of the group to survive. How we do this is by constantly comparing ourselves to others, checking that our behaviour fits within the group so that we won’t be rejected. This is all good when it’s a small group but has become rather problematic now that we can compare ourselves to billions of others, including superheroes and famous sportspeople. This can often lead to a thought that can be quite deep within us that somehow, something is wrong with me.
Ruminating mind. It was also appears an advantage to ruminate about the past, because otherwise how is it possible to do things differently if we don’t learn from our mistakes? The problem being often we get stuck in these patterns and don’t how to shift out of them.
Doing and solution focused mind. Another pattern of mind we can notice is what we call the doing mind or the solution focused mind. This pattern of mind is fantastic for external problems like fixing a broken window or working out how to get the marks off the floor. In this pattern of mind, we look at the problem then imagine a future without the problem and analyse how to get there. Like I said, this is fantastic for external problems yet has the opposite effect for internal states such as feelings.
When we are unhappy it is natural to look for why we are feeling this and turn towards finding a solution. When we start looking for a solution, critical thinking turns on and your mind analyses a gap between where you are (unhappy) and where you would like to be (happy). Rather than fixing the problem, more often than not, we feel worse because internal states are not problems to be fixed, they are experiences to be felt.
This doesn't mean that there isn't external problems that need to be addressed, but rather that when the mind identifies those internal experiences as a problem and tries to fix the feeling, the feeling gets stronger.
Inner commentary mind. It’s kind of like there’s a little parrot on the side of your head constantly narrating your experience. This part of the mind has something to say about absolutely everything. Notice how your mind has an opinion, a comment, or a question about everything!
Inner critic mind. Special mention needs to go to the inner critic. This often a pervasive and damaging experience of our mind. It is that part of our thinking which is always critiquing ourselves and can often be very punitive and damaging.
The inner critic, in my experience, is very corrosive and damaging to when listened to. It stops us from healing and changing and often we end up shaming ourselves and feel worse.
Our attempts to stop these patterns often make them worse. So we’re all in the same boat and I haven’t yet met anybody that doesn’t experience these patterns of thinking. You can’t stop these patterns of thinking, yet you can stop what happens next, you can take the power out of your critic.
The problem.
The major problem is often that thoughts and beliefs are taken literally as though they are not thoughts, but they are facts about who you are. When we get hooked by our thoughts, our world can collapse around this thought, and our choices and possibilities disappear. We see and experience the world through this thought. Thoughts come and go. It's a choice which ones we give energy to. We get hooked, caught, and trapped in our thoughts. We get pulled around by our thoughts like they are in control, and we become leaves blown in the wind. When we get hooked by our thoughts and we get stuck we often make actions that move us away from what’s important to us.
Beliefs are like always looking through a pair of glasses
When we believe in our thoughts, it's like we are looking through a pair of glasses at life, and life is coloured and changed by the glasses we wear. We forget we have the glasses on! Neuroscience tells us that when we are looking at the world, a third of our brain capacity is used to process what we see. Out of the third, only roughly ten percent processes the information directly, e.g. colours, shapes, and forms, and the other ninety percent interprets reality. So, we are always interpreting reality, not seeing it directly.
Another metaphor is that the brain lives in a dark closet and never leaves. The brain then experiences the world through the messages it receives and guess reality. This guess often serves us, yet can also cause pain when the glasses says something like 'I am worthless"
This explains why it's so important to know what pair of glasses you are wearing, and be able to take them off, and put a new pair on. Mindfulness is an extraordinary tool that allows us to both notice what glasses we have on, and shift our perspective.
The bus metaphor.
The bus metaphor says that there are many passengers on the bus and some of them are wanted guests and some of them are unwanted. The unwanted guests represent difficult thoughts and beliefs. Everybody has a mix of wanted and unwanted guests. The question is are you listening to the unwanted guests and following their voices, or are you following what’s most important to you. Who’s in control?
The first stage from getting unhooked and taking the power back from difficult thoughts is first to notice them, if you don’t notice you can’t change. The more we notice our difficult thoughts, the less power they have over us. It’s a choice whether we believe in our thoughts or not, it’s a choice we all have. It’s only a choice if you can first notice the thoughts.
Did you notice who was paying attention to your thoughts? You were! That’s right, you can be aware of your thoughts which tells us you are more than your thoughts, you have choice when you can notice them.
A note about positive thinking.
I am often asked the role positive thinking has. There is room for positive thinking yet evidence suggests that if we use positive thinking to cover up or stop the negative thinking it makes things worse. Think of a food platter in front of you. If the platter is just completely full of tomatoes, that’s all you’ll see and experience. So there can be some real use in putting some different food on the platter, some cheese, some chocolate and nuts. Also, it’s really difficult, if not impossible to get rid of all the tomatoes, the more we try and get rid of tomatoes the more tomatoes we see!
What we are instead trying to do is create more of a selection so we’re not only eating tomatoes. So this is how positive thinking can be used in a supportive way. To place the positive thoughts on the platter next to the tomatoes that so there is more to choose from. The positive thoughts need to be based in reality for this to work!
How to get unhooked.
These interventions are to try and help you get unhooked from your thoughts. This is not a one size fits all and I encourage you to try a couple and see which would be best for you.
Remember a thought you were having when you were beating yourself up, really allow yourself to believe in this, get hooked and trapped in this thought. (i.e. “I’m not good enough”) Now in front of the thought, say “I’m having the thought that” ……”I’m not good enough”. What did you notice happened? Was there a shift? Now add “I notice that I’m having the thought that” ….. “I’m not good enough”. What did you notice this time? Could you notice the difference in your body?
Tip: We are not trying to get rid of the thoughts, rather were trying to unhook from them and take the power away from them. Remember the analogy of the radio station playing in the background. Sometimes the radio station of the mind is a distant sound with little power and sometimes it’s loud.
Try imagining the thought in front of you, change the shape and form of the thought. You might imagine it in pink fluffy letters with ice cream on top of it. Notice what happens. Is there a shift?
Imagine the thought on a computer screen. Try changing the font, the size, or the colour.
Try calling different thinking patterns silly names like Donald Duck or Pluto. Again, notice what happens when you do this.
Tip: After practicing an intervention bring your attention back to something in the present moment to ground yourself.
Cultivating kindness, warmth and understanding
Whenever you notice beating yourself up, STOP PAUSE take a breath and offer yourself warmth and understanding. This may look like when you hear yourself saying "you idiot" you Pause and offer warmth and say something kinder like " I'm doing the best I can right now". Basically saying to yourself what you would to a dear friend.
Formal mindfulness interventions
Interventions are something you can try in daily life and in your formal mindfulness practice. Some people find labeling their thoughts helpful. Again, once you label your thoughts, return to the present moment. Some suggestions for labels are below. You can also get creative and find your own labels, you might notice that your mind spends a lot of time thinking about work or worrying about the future so you might label it work mind or worrying. Be careful as it’s easy to start thinking too much about your labels in your meditation practice!
Thinking
Not now
It’s okay
Click here for mindfulness and mind guided practices
In summary it is natural that we all are faced with difficult thinking patterns as part of being human. What we are attempting to do with mindfulness is not stop the thoughts but take the power out of them. The first step in this process is noticing your thoughts.
Guided Mindfulness Practices - Week Two
Week 3 - Mindfulness & emotions our brain and nervous system
Mindfulness and Emotions - Creating a safe space to explore emotions from.
To work skillfully with emotions we need to have a basic understanding of how the brain and nervous system works. This knowledge helps us better understand what is happening within us and how to navigate our emotional worlds.
If you have suffered Trauma and live with the impacts of this trauma please get professional help in how to use mindfulness to support your recovery.
The Brain:
To Understand how emotions work it is important to have some basic knowledge of how the brains works. With this knowledge we are better able to grow our capacity to manage emotions in a way that is as kind as possible, as well as growing our emotional intelligence.
Neocortex / Frontal Lobes
Language of thought and verbal expression
Intellectual and executive functioning
Verbal language
Conscious thought
Memory for events and facts
Limbic Brain
Language of emotion and feeling tones
Emotional experience
Implicit memory
Traumatic memory
Nonverbal
Relational experience
Brain Stem
Language of body sensation and impulses
Instinctive responses
Heart rate, breathing, etc.
Amygdala
The brains alarm system
Responsible for detecting fear and preparing for emergency events
Stores memories of events and emotions so that an individual may be able to recognize similar events in the future
Key Point: When the amygdala fires the alarm the limbic system and brain stem take over from the prefrontal coretx and we enter into survival mode and the higher cortex is disabled. There is no direct connection between the frontal cortex and Amygadala, which explains why we can not think ourselves out of an emotion!
The autonomic nervous system: The autonomic nervous system is a control system that acts largely unconsciously and regulates bodily functions, such as the heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, pupillary response, urination, and sexual arousal. This system is the primary mechanism in control of the fight-or-flight response.
Nueroception: The term "Neuroception" describes how neural circuits distinguish whether situations or people are safe, dangerous, or life threatening. Neuroception explains why a baby coos at a caregiver but cries at a stranger, or why a toddler enjoys a parent's embrace but views a hug from a stranger as an assault.
The three systems that make up the nervous system:
Our nervous systems have evolved over hundreds of millions of years ago, starting from the oldest, freeze, to the newest the socialized mind.
1- Safety: The socialized Mind/The ventral Vagal
This is the most evolved part of the nervous system and is developed in relationship with primary care givers during the early years. When you are in the socialized mind you can be grounded, connected, curious, receptive to others, creative, have a wide perspective, can be aware of both internal and external experiences. You are able to feel feelings, have difficult conversations yet are still able to stay present and grounded during these experiences.
2- Danger: Fight or Flight/ The sympathetic nervous system
You nervous system has received a warning of threat either consciously or unconscionably and has moved to take action. When you are here you are either fighting or fleeing. These can be experienced as irritation, annoyance, avoidance, worry, concern, panic, rage or anger.
3- Life threat: Freeze/Dorsal Vagal.
This is the oldest part of our nervous system. When fight or flight are not possible and we are or feel trapped the Dorsal Vagal takes over. This experience is one on no to little feelings, immobility, struggling to think, feeling Blank.
Window of tolerance:
this is a window where feelings and reactions are tolerable, we can think and feel simultaneously, our reactions adapt and fit to the situation. This is the goal of mindfulness, it's not to get rid of emotions, rather to grow our capacity to feel emotions without getting overwhelmed. When we do get overwhelmed to be able to return to safety (the Ventral vagal) . This is what we are aiming for!
Signs of chronic hyperarousal: (This is when the sympathetic nervous system is chronically activated)
Emotional overwhelm, panic, impulsivity, hypervigilance, defensiveness, feeling unsafe, reactive, angry, racing thoughts.
Signs of chronic hypoarousal: (This is when the parasympathic nervous system is chronically activated)
Numb, "dead", passive, no feelings, no energy, can't think, disconnected, shut down, "not there", ashamed, can't say no.
Internal Mindfulness: Bringing our attention to internal sensations like the beating of your heart, the ache in your knee.
External Mindfulness: Directing your attention to external phenomena like what you can see and hear, like the sound of birds, or the a tree blowing in the wind.
We're all different:
Working with emotions is not the same for everybody. Some of us experience our emotional world as overwhelming and raw, and we need to learn how to come out of emotions safely. Others struggle to engage with emotions, and are often caught up in defensive behaviour, and need to learn how to name and feel emotions. Sometimes this can be very confusing, and you may need to seek help in what's going to work best for you.
The happiness trap:
We can get a lot of messages from our culture, our friends, and ourselves that we should be happy. It can seem that to be a success in life, we have to be feeling positive, happy, and joyful, and if we're not, somehow we've failed, something is wrong with us. I believe it's very useful to start challenging this misconception, and can actually bring a lot of ease into our lives when we stop judging certain emotional experiences as negative, wrong, or bad. After all, we're all human, we all experience a wide range of emotions, and it's impossible to have the pleasant emotions without the unpleasant emotions. Being human is a messy business and we are wired for struggle. It's part of being human.
Exercises:
1-Applying the brakes
If at any time any of the below exercises are too distressing or overwhelming, we can apply the brakes. If you have trauma in your past this will be especially important to learn. The best way to apply the brakes is to only use external mindfulness. Bring your attention, with a lot of effort, to what you can see, and what you can hear. For example, the sounds outside the room, the trees blowing in the wind, etc. You could also work with an object such as a stone. Hold the stone in you hand, look at how the light bounces off the stone, notice the different colour, notice the temperature of the stone on your skin, the pressure on your hand. Every time you get pulled into the emotion, keep redirecting your attention to the stone, or to something external to you. Keep bringing your attention to the direct experience or what you can see.
2-Dropping an anchor
Dropping the anchor does not make the storm of our emotions go away, but it helps us weather the storm, to not control the emotion, but to steady ourselves and respond appropriately. We are trying to expand our awareness to unhook ourselves from the emotion. This doesn't mean that it will go away, we are hoping to lessen the effect. In some ways we are trying to expand our awareness and notice more of what's around us instead of being narrowly focused on the feeling and thought. This will often take a lot of strong will, especially at the beginning because the feelings and thoughts are easy to get sucked into. So, how to do this when you are caught in a difficult emotion?
Start by expanding your awareness with internal mindfulness.
Push your feet into the floor and really feel your feet contacting the floor.
Feel your back against your chair.
Notice your arms and your hands.
Notice your body in the chair.
What can you notice? Is this helping? Now start expanding your awareness with external mindfulness.
Look around, what are four things you can notice?
What are four things you can hear?
Keep bringing your attention to what you can see, and what you can hear.
What can you notice happening now? Remember, we're not trying to take the feeling away, but to help you manage it more. So now, bring them all together.
There's a painful thought or feeling
There's you body in the chair, your feet on the ground.
There's the room around you, what you can hear, what you can see.
This could take a minute for some people, ten minutes for others, working with emotions is challenging.
3-Using the breath
The breath can be a wonderful tool to help work with emotions. I suggest starting with a pleasant feeling before moving on to something more difficult. Start by imagining an event or a situation that evokes a feeling of joy, or ease. Bring your attention to noticing the sensations in your body. Can you notice tightness, tingling, warmth, heat, etc? Now, use your breath and breathe into the sensations and then follow your breath out. Keep breathing into the sensations and following your breath out.
4-Dual awareness
Dual awareness simply involves being able to maintain awareness of one or more areas of experience simultaneously. We shift our focus of attention from internal experiences such as bodily sensations to external experiences such as the colour of the walls. Then we hold both experiences simultaneously.
Start by remembering a pleasant experience. Now, turn your attention to the sensations that are evoked in your body by remembering this experience. Do this for about a minute.
Now bring to mind a mildly distressing event – something where you are slightly anxious or embarrassed. What can you notice in your body? Has your heart rate increased or decreased? Has your breathing changed? Is it shallow or deep? Are you warm or cold?
Turn your awareness back into the room you are in now. What are the colours of the wall? How many different colours can you see? What is the texture of the floor? etc
Again, shift your attention now back to the sensations in your body - what can you notice?
Direct your attention again back into the room and what you can see. Then, hold part of your attention what you can see, and another part to what you can notice happening in your body.
Finish this exercise by bringing you attention completely to what you can see or hear.
Click here for a guided dual awareness practice.
5-Rain
This is a more advanced way of working with emotions.
Another approach to working with emotions and thoughts is the using Tara Brarch's RAIN method. I suggest that you first get to grips with applying the anchor so you can know that you can come out of difficult emotional experiences first. For those of you that really struggle to feel emotions, this can be a great way into the emotional world. The below description is taken from Tara Brarch's website. For a fuller description please visit her website.
Link to Tara's website
R – Recognize what is happening
A – Allow life to be just as it is
I – Investigate inner experience with kindness
N – Non-Identification.
RAIN directly de-conditions the habitual ways in which you resist your moment-to-moment experience. It doesn’t matter whether you resist “what is” by lashing out in anger, by having a cigarette, or by getting immersed in obsessive thinking. Your attempt to control the life within and around you actually cuts you off from your own heart and from this living world. RAIN begins to undo these unconscious patterns as soon as we take the first step.
Recognize what is happening:
Recognition is seeing what is true in your inner life. It starts the minute you focus your attention on whatever thoughts, emotions, feelings or sensations are arising right here and now. As your attention settles and opens, you will discover that some parts of your experience are easier to connect with than others.
Allow life to be just as it is:
Allowing means “letting be” the thoughts, emotions, feelings or sensations you discover. You may feel a natural sense of aversion, of wishing that unpleasant feelings would go away, but as you become more willing to be present with “what is,” a different quality of attention will emerge. Allowing is intrinsic to healing, and realizing this can give rise to a conscious intention to “let be.”
Investigate with Kindness:
At times, simply working through the first two steps of RAIN is enough to provide relief and reconnect you with presence. In other cases, however, the simple intention to recognize and allow is not enough.
Investigation means calling on your natural interest—the desire to know truth—and directing a more focused attention to your present experience. Simply pausing to ask, “What is happening inside me?” might initiate recognition, but with investigation you engage in a more active and pointed kind of inquiry. You might ask yourself: “What most wants attention?” “How am I experiencing this in my body?” or “What am I believing?” or “What does this feeling want from me?”.
Realize Non-identification; Rest in Natural Awareness:
The lucid, open and kind presence evoked in the R, A and I of RAIN leads to the N: the freedom of Non-identification, and the realization of what I call Natural awareness or natural presence. Non-identification means that your sense of who you are is not fused with or defined by any limited set of emotions, sensations or stories.
Guided Mindfulness Practices - Week Three
Week 4 - Acceptance and Self-Compassion
The Next Step
Please note the background information on acceptance and self-compassion is below this section.
All the evidence shows us that mindfulness works, yet it only works if you practice! It's really important to spend some time reflecting on mindfulness, because if mindfulness becomes something we value in our lives, we are far more likely to practice. We know that the brain takes two to three months to lay down a new neural pathway, to create a new habit. So, it will take some time to develop the habit of mindfulness, but if you keep practicing, it will happen.
Suggestions
I highly recommend doing a half day mindfulness course. This will support you to deepen your practice, learn more about mindfulness, and learn more about yourself. The half day course is a very different format, where we briefly cover the themes, yet will spend more time practicing mindfulness in a variety of forms.
The courses are located at Houchen House from from 1:00PM till 5:30PM.
83 Houchen Road, Glenview, Hamilton.
For more information, visit mindfullyalive.co.nz
To book directly, click here.
To receive a discount, apply promotional code: “Alive”
Practice mindfulness at least five to ten minutes a day.
Don't be too concerned about what happens during that time, the first step is creating a regular practice.
Keep noticing. In as many moments as you can, bring your attention to the here and now.
Keep engaged. There's a list at the bottom of recommended apps and books.
Other services I offer
Training for organisations
Many organisations from Facebook to Google are discovering the benefits of mindfulness in the workplace. I design trainings to suit the needs of your organisation. Trainings range from an hour introduction session in mindfulness to more in depth training and establishing mindfulness within the workplace culture.
For more information visit:
www.mindfullyalive.co.nz
Psychotherapy / Counselling
Click here for more Information
Acceptance and Self-Compassion
The vicious cycle
We can often find ourselves in a vicious cycle trying to feel okay, trying to feel calm and have a quiet mind, trying to have the 'right experience'. We often have a lot of 'shoulds' in our heads. These 'shoulds' don't necessarily match up to reality and often we try and push away or resist unwanted experiences. This can create an enormous amount of stress in our nervous system and can be completely exhausting. What we’ve learnt over the training is that there is a huge range of thought patterns and emotions which is a natural and normal human experience. When we try to deny and stop ourselves thinking, feeling or having certain experiences this can cause us a lot of pain and suffering.
Life is like a hamster wheel
Sometimes it can feel like we're in a hamster wheel. We have these difficult experiences and we can put a lot of effort into trying to change them, trying to change our internal landscape and sometimes it will work for a while, yet often we find ourselves in same place, faced with the same difficult internal experiences. We can engage in all sorts of different strategies to try to avoid and suppress these difficult internal experiences and we call this experiential avoidance.
Experiential avoidance or resistance is when you are unwilling to remain in contact with private internal experiences such as body sensations, emotions, thoughts, or memories and take steps to change these experiences.
How much do you try and avoid, change, or resist your experience that might be your thoughts, your feelings, sensations or memories, which include memories of past actions?
What do you do to try to avoid these experiences? Going to the movies, bed, alcohol, food etc.
Experiential avoidance can have a really big impact on people’s lives and ironically is often the very thing that keeps us caught in the hamster wheel. The more we resist, the more we stay in battle with our internal experiences and the less space and energy we have to do something different. Paradoxically, often the first step to changing is allowing yourself to be how you are right now, to bring curiosity, kindness and warmth to our experiences. From here we can start to learn more about ourselves and respond appropriately rather than react.
Our culture has a lot to say around what we should be feeling and thinking and really encourages us to avoid these difficult experiences. We are often trained that the best course of action is to avoid things and that we should be feeling a certain way to be successful in life. If we are not happy and joyful somehow we're not successful, and if we are feeling lonely or sad, somehow we're a failure. It’s really important to challenge these beliefs because they don’t fit into the reality of being human. Being human is a messy business which we're all trying as skilfully as we can to navigate.
The impacts of experiential avoidance
Being exhausted
Damages our ability to change and adapt appropriately to the situation and respond.
Keeps highlighting the gap between where we are and where we want to be which creates stress.
Our energy is caught up in resisting and isn't available to change. Change comes from accepting our internal experiences so we can then respond rather than react.
Research shows us the higher the level of experiential avoidance, the greater the chance of psychological pain and disorders.
Think back to the pushing away your difficulties exercise. This was where we got hooked in our difficult experiences and represented it by pushing the piece of paper away from us. Remember how exhausting it was, how difficult it was to respond when resisting.
We don’t always have all the information
We now know that what is unconscious to us has a far greater impact than what is conscious to us. Think of an iceberg and how what is above the surface is only five to ten percent of the iceberg. Mindfulness and in particular acceptance helps us dive down and see more.
What is acceptance
Acceptance is an overused and often misunderstood word. It does not mean that you’re okay with the experience. Is not an admission of failure, it is not giving in.
Acceptance is a pause, a period of allowing letting be and seeing. Acceptance is turning towards and befriending what is challenging within us. Other words to help us describe acceptance are: opening up, making room, allowing, and willingness. I prefer the word allowing because I think allowing holds more of this active engagement and is truer to what we’re trying to do. Allowing difficult experiences can be really tough because our training can be to avoid. That’s why noticing is so important because it is the first step towards allowing.
I think for most of us we hold this fear that if we allow the difficult thought, the difficult memory or sensations or emotions we will be overwhelmed, be overtaken by them. Yet what I have witnessed in others and myself is this not to be true, rather avoiding and resisting is far more stressful, impacting and full of suffering. If we look carefully the experience is already there, so allowing it and making room for it actually allows it to move through our system quicker than resisting which often keeps it stagnant. (If you have suffered serious trauma in your life you need to be incredibly careful around allowing yourself to experience emotions and thoughts and memories. I suggest you talk to a professional around how to do this appropriately and safely.) When we allow difficult experience to be, we can often be surprised how much this helps us to respond and to make wise choices rather than being caught in this reactionary pattern.
Tip: We are not trying to get rid of difficult emotions and thoughts by allowing them. We are trying to find a creative way to respond, we're trying to learn and understand ourselves; what we need, the deeper information.
Allowing is a voluntary active process. It is not passive.
The first step to allowing is noticing. This is what we've been developing over the weeks.
Acceptance / Choice-less Awareness Mindfulness Practice
So far, as we've been practicing mindfulness, we have been using the body as an anchor. These practices have been designed to stabilize the mind so that you can open your field of awareness to include all your experiences. The choice-less awareness practice is like being at a movie theater and watching a uninteresting movie! When this happens, you know you're in a cinema, watching a movie. So, it's the same with choice-less awareness. Our job is to simply notice what comes across our movie screen. It could be sounds, thoughts, or emotions. You simply notice the interconnected-ness and flow of all the different experiences without getting lost in them. This practice is really the art of letting go and also supports us to learn how our minds and hearts work. We can use our breath to still anchor our attention, yet we are not to notice the anchor exclusivity.
Click here for a downloadable awareness practice
Self-Compassion
Self-Compassion is the other side to acceptance. Without compassion there can be no acceptance.
Self-Compassion involves an acknowledgement that life can be difficult, that we all face challenges. Self-Compassion involves bringing warmth and kindness to our inadequacies, our struggles, our difficult thoughts, emotions, and memories. Self-Compassion involves acknowledging our humanness, our vulnerability, our imperfections and that this is part of the shared human experience. Another aspect of self compassion which we have been cultivating with mindfulness is to try and step out of being fully self-identified with our struggles. So in a way, acceptance is creating openness and a willingness to be with our experience, so that we can start to shift out of our self-identification and bring compassion towards ourselves.
“Instead of mercilessly judging and criticizing yourself for various inadequacies or shortcomings, self-compassion means you are kind and understanding when confronted with personal failings – after all, who ever said you were supposed to be perfect?” - Dr Kirsten Neff
Dr Kirsten Neff has a fantastic website which speaks more fully on self-compassion.
It’s also really important to name that self compassion is a practice of goodwill and good intentions towards ourselves. It’s not a practice of feeling good. We can bring self-compassion to ourselves when we're not feeling good and when we are struggling. We are attempting to bring this goodwill to ourselves in the presence of what is difficult to us.
Guided Mindfulness Practice - Week Four
Blair’s mindful tips
1. Be kind and gentle towards yourself.
2. Mindfulness doesn’t mean stopping thinking.
3. Mindfulness is about cultivating a new relationship to your experience rather than changing your experience i.e. thoughts or feelings.
4. Excellent news – you can’t get mindfulness wrong which means you are always getting it right.
5. Every time you get lost, make the choice to come back to the present moment. Try not to be concerned about how long you stay in the present moment for.
6. Keep going even when it seems hard, dull or boring. You can’t always see the benefits straight away but they will come.
7. Be kind and gentle towards yourself.