Mindfulness Part 2
Theory and Practical application. (Using mindfulness for pain management, self-development and way of life)
The wondering mind is an unhappy mind!
Confession time… I am the annoying person I have been reading about who is writing this based on research and NOT experience of holding down a consistent practice. I have been in the wellness circle my entire adult life and use guided mediation and exercise as my mindfulness hour each day. I have only used formal mindfulness when times have been tough, only to let it fall away until this summer. I started formal meditation and breathwork, to accompany my reading and research and have really enjoyed it and seen many benefits.
This blog is merely a collection of books and videos I have read and taken sections I deemed most valuable to relay in this blog. a large amount is direct copy of text from two books shown at the end. I have merely relayed the highlights and added my personal knowledge where I could, to see if it’s something you feel could be for you. Lastly writing the blog allows me to practice the knowledge to pass to clients who may benefit.
This blog (part 2) is for further insight into mindfulness and how to use it daily to aid you in times of adversity, for health conditions, pain and for self-growth as a way of life.
Mindfulness is the heart of the Buddhist meditation; an English word meaning “pay attention”, Formal mindfulness is paying attention on purpose, it is deemed the best way to capture moments fully, nonjudgmentally, in a particular way. It means being awake. The art of closing one’s eyes and using our senses to feel our breath flowing in and out, sensing the temperature, the beating of our hearts and scanning the body to sense aches and pains which we ignore when on auto pilot according to Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) (Santorelli et al., 2017).
Mindfulness is a short and powerful route to clarity, acceptance direction and improved quality of life, relationships and ourselves. Mindfulness is used for self-regulation, compassion of the self and others, curiosity, openness, wisdom, and vitality (Scott Bishop, 2004).
Buddhism, Taoism, Yoga and American tribes all have their roots in mindful living. These wise groups understand our interconnectedness, the delicate relationship with our environment and how mindful living protects our health, well-being and survival as a species.
Finding words for the experiences of practice from devoted meditators has proven difficult. It is thought that the language used to describe them will be reductionist, much like describing feelings of love.
Mindfulness can only be experienced in the present moment. We cannot spend time ruminating over the past or dreaming about the future and be mindful. To be present is to be alert, curious and sensing ourselves. The power and possibilities are in the present. It is a simple practice, but not easy. It takes discipline.
Joseph Goldstein suggests that when we live on auto pilot, we are not aware of how our changing moods changes our perception e.g., we could receive a constructive criticism when we are feeling happy and open and use it to improve and grow. We could also receive the same comment when we are in a bad mood and use it to drag up other past criticisms and use it to beat ourselves and become histrionic. The difference is the colour of the mood. When we practice time in the present, we see ourselves clearly, we see our behaviours and how they impact, and we can take responsibility and grow. Over time our lives become clearer, calmer, we respond rather than react and we no longer find ourselves in dramas trying to protect our egos (Goldstein & Kornfield, 2001).
We carry stress and tension in the body and allow it to build and build until it screams with pain. Daily meditation allows us to feel and address issues before pain become acute. We miss pleasant sights, smells, and the laughter of our families. We miss seeing our children discover new achievements and noticing their faces when taking in experiences, noticing what they like, understand, and find curious. We miss crucial information we need to make good decisions and time to process how we really feel about opportunities, offers and choices and whether they match our true values and motivations. We ruminate and hold onto unpleasant memories, experiences and harbour judgments about people who are constantly changing and are no longer that person we hold in those memories. When the present moment could be pleasant or neutral (Teasdale & Segal, 2007).
Mindfulness is not easy and requires consistent practice. Acceptance, non-judgmental, non-striving, letting go / letting be, patience, trust, curiosity, gratitude, and generosity, kindness, and humour can be strengthened and worked on daily, like cultivating a garden (Chödrön, 2008). You will be surprised at how delightful everyday life is, when you stop saying our usual autopilot learnt phrases e.g. “I’m tiered, I have to do everything around here, I am running out of time, I am so busy, I am stressed, I can’t keep up etc.…….Mindfulness teachers suggest practicing cleaning the house with a smile (emotional postural proprioception) (Shafir, 2015: Stepper & Strack,1993) and pay attention to the colors of the floor you are cleaning, the feel of the water, the textures, and contrasts of the wet floor in comparison to the dry floor. I can vouch that it is the most pleasant experience. Cleaning, cooking, breathwork walking, interacting with your family, done mindfully is a completely new world I am really enjoying (Kabat-Zinn, 2005).
Practicing strengthening each attitude:
Curiosity
Curiosity is the antidote to boredom and auto pilot. Asking questions such as why did I have an emotional reaction to this experience? Why does my lower back ache? It is said that we have our own innate wisdom and already know the answers to our questions, we just need to have patience and to be curious.
Kindness
Kindness practice allows judgments and harsh views to dissipate. Practicing kindness allows us to feel the pain, protect ourselves from bad behaviour but to understand possible drivers or causes which led to the wrongdoing, thus responding with kindness.
Kindness and generosity can start with yourself, practicing feeling worthy of kindness and generosity. The gifts can be time, compassion, and self-acceptance. You can also give yourself physical gifts to practice receiving and feeling comfortable with it, before gifting to others. Be cautious if you hear yourself saying statements such as “all I ever do is give”, I’m exhausted, or no one a appreciates what I do already. If you feel taken for granted then some self-kindness and observation to bring clarity into relationships may be needed, you may also want to give to different people.
It is important to give to others from a full cup and it is important to observe reasons for giving to others…….giving to others with expectations, out of fear or to buy attention or friendships should be avoided. Giving time, energy and money expecting nothing in return is a practice encouraged by mindfulness teachers. You can give away your energy in the form of your best self. Practice your best attributes such as vitality, enthusiasm, passion, joy, spirit, openness, and trust.
Gratitude
Gratitude is the attitude of I already have a feeling of peacefulness, content and gratefulness rather than driven by need and discontent (Emmons & McCullough 2003). Writing down what you are grateful for can elicit positive feelings of abundance and love.
Acceptance
Many people turn to mindfulness to get rid of pain, suffering, only to realize that sometimes we have to learn to accept what is, make peace with it and turn into it. That’s not to say we have to like it or have to stop trying to change it, it just means we need to stop forcing and struggling and flow downstream as opposed to fighting upstream. There is a misconception that meditation is escaping what is ( It can be used wrongly, by going into addictive trance states, but this is not mindfulness, as meditation is grounded and awake), it’s facing past memories, pain and confusion head on, much like therapy it takes a brave person to feel difficult feelings and see things clearly, but overtime the old baggage is released, attachment to worn old behaviour patterns, thoughts and feeling are liberated.
Non-judgment
This is a particularly difficult. We inherently judge and have an opinion on everything, its how we communicate and form connections with people. We chose friendships based on similar values, beliefs, and prejudices. We’re constantly evaluating and comparing our experiences against our standards created out of fear. Fear that we will not be accepted, loved, or that we are not good enough or that we may get hurt or that we may not get what we want, our way.
If we don’t have an opinion on something it unlikely, we would even register or think about it. We cannot stop judging but we can spend time noticing our assessments and judgments to observe and learn about ourselves, we could stop labelling good and bad thoughts, condemning, or pursuing them. Some judgements have been subconsciously carried all our lives which often when questioned make no sense, are not true or no longer fit our values, they enable unconscious feeding of addictive behaviours and constant wanting and desiring. can we suspend judgment and observe more. With practice we can be balanced and act effectively with clarity, consistency, and ethically
Non-striving
A core mindful principle asks us to be human beings not humans doing. Our culture places so much value on doing and progress. Chasing the busy, I’m not good enough, I am not perfect, I need to achieve can all be painful and stressful. Practicing letting go- rejuvenating, restoring, and healing the pressures externally and internally over time. Non-doing is seen as passive to those of use who like to get things done, it feels threatening to our lifestyle and the perceived responsibilities and expectations from others. Practicing non doing, can be restorative making us more effective when we are doing. It also eliminates the stress in forcing and pushing things to be our way, trying to control situations causing ourselves stress and hurt. Allowing things to unfold in their own time, is graceful, effortless, and wise.
Letting go or letting be
This speaks of clinging on to feelings and emotions. When we experience good emotions, we want to hold onto them, when we experience uncomfortable emotions, we want to deny and push them away. Learning to appreciate and lightly hold both allows for a calmer existence. When we breath in, we must let go to make space for fresh air to come in on the next breath. Clinging to desires, a particular idea, an identity and self-serving hopes all leads to pain
Patience (In patience lies wisdom)
We are rarely here because we are always trying to get there. We rush from one thing to another to obtain a feeling we believe we will acquire when we get there. Patience allows for life events to unfold in their own good time, without stress and pain. Taking time to choose the right action with clarity, compassion as opposed to reacting to constant demands and notifications. Impatience is a symptom for underlying anger at not wanting things done as they are, at the current pace often blaming ourselves or others. When right action is chosen in response to allowing things to unfold, we can mindfully spring into activity and productivity.
Do you have the patience to wait
Till your mud settles and water clears
Can you remain unmoving
Till the right action arises by itself?
LAO-TZU, Tao-te-Ching
Simplicity
Going against the norm of our society and simplifying our lives takes conscious effort. It is very easy to blindly fill our time, squeeze a few more errands in. Multi-tasking is seen as a great characteristic and employers and family members applaud and commend it. An unconscious life misses so much beauty and opportunity in life and creates a need for expensive sparkly materials to fill the void we have created. Spend a day without technology, consciously being present, notice colours, smells, feel the air watch your family with fresh eyes, with curiosity, see them in a new light and engage with your full intention. Try resisting engagements and spend an evening reading, watching the moon, going for a walk. Notice how you feel, notice your lack of desire to need a holiday, new material items or time out from relationships, notice how much you haven’t noticed about your loved ones before, notice how unconscious you live on a daily basis. Every choice has far reaching consequences, practice saying no, create space, create simplicity.
I have these conversations with clients all the time, from a place of empathy and knowing how difficult it is to change a lifetime of identity and conditioning and to untangle ourselves from the huge financial, family and community roles we play which take up all of our time, energy and thoughts. Our society associates business with success in career, taking on a career secondment, higher education, a new arm to a business, or a bigger house / newer vehicle are all depicted as positive and create euphoric feelings for a short period time, until the enormity of commitment, energy and entrapment dawn on us. Overtime we feel guilty, exhausted and once again unhappy, so we seek more distractions to fill our time, because we still believe that being over there in the new is better than here.
The west is notorious for believing if we just move house, or countries then we’ll be happy, if we swap this wife for that one then we’ll be happy, If we just got a new job then all our problems will disappear. Unfortunately, everywhere we go, we take ourselves, and after a short while the new house will irritate us, the new wife will show the same annoying traits as the old one and the new country will lose its newness and things will become problematic.
If however we feel ourselves become agitated, needing to move, be distracted or having difficult relations, rather than reacting outward, we could go within and ask why? Be curious, what’s my part? What am I meant to be learning and overcoming?
Humor
Laughing at the habits of our stubborn, petty minds and shortcomings, can release tension and create space from intensity.
Trust
Practicing trust of ourselves, many believe authority, wisdom and knowledge are outside of ourselves. We are incredible, we can breathe, pump blood, digest food, create energy, move, heal and create. Mindfulness cultivates self-trust and self-trust cultivates inner security, balance, and openness, protecting us from self-destruction. Trusting in our ability to observe and reflect on experiences, learning, growing, and allowing our hearts to open a little more each day.
If we observe ourselves and find up until now, we have had bad experiences and find it hard to see positive aspects of ourselves, we can start with trusting the present moment and build from there. When we look long enough, with our eyes closed into the stillness we can feel who we really are, that perfect person before we were conditioned to dislike ourselves, forced to take on the weight of other people’s judgments and opinions through relationships and experiences, mindfulness overtime can restore self-trust.
Vulnerability
Having an image of a strong-willed, accomplished person can create barriers to connection, creating isolation. People who are viewed as invulnerable often have a cue of people willing to collude in projecting the Rock of Gibraltar persona disallowing you to have any real feelings and overtime causing a disassociation to your true self.
There is a caution of this happening through meditation, people can become victim to believing that meditation makes them supremely wise, full of wisdom and infallible. Believing the aim is to become in control, non-reactive and above emotional pull, makes them above others and thus creating barriers to relationships. So if you feel you have special knowledge, gifts, strength and invincibility or wisdom, it may be time to use your practice to ask yourself whether you are running from your vulnerability, fear or grief you are carrying?
Allowing vulnerability: when you feel like being hard, practice being soft
Generous when your impulse is to be withholding
Open up, when the urge is shut down emotionally
When there is grief or sadness, try allowing it to just be there
Ride the waves, allow, accept observe and flow
A beginners mind
Looking at situations with fresh eyes, a sense of wonder and awe, ignoring preconceived, concepts and opinions and allow new information to come in.
Compassion for others and ones-self is to feel with or to feel the pain, to understand, to express loving-kindness, but not try and change!! Empathy has been shown to be transmitted through mirror neurons, thus experiencing the trauma pain with the person, or group. This leads to fatigue due to a lack of protection or buffer. It can easily lead to burnout, resentment, and links to the rescue / persecutor triangle cycles. Dr Tanya Singer has been researching the differences in Germany. Compassion can protect from burnout (Klimecki et al., 2013: Duarte et al., 2016).
Awareness or loving awareness through mindfulness practice, is the practice of cultivating wise affectionate attention (Szalavitz,2012). Meditation can cool heated feelings through observing, witnessing, and resting with experience, reducing the impulse to react to situations or people, whilst practicing loving-kindness embracing warmth and compassion. Remaining balanced, present, and kindhearted involves being aware that whilst practicing mindfulness without compassion can become cold and detached, practicing compassion / empathy without wisdom and the skill to see the situation clearly can become distorted and sentimental. You need both wings to fly, e.g., a loved one is in pain, this presents as pain and aching in your body when you tune in. during meditation you can name that feeling i.e., right now I feel sadness and pain, but this does not make me a sad person. I can observe the thoughts and feelings and use self-compassion in the form of comforting words to myself, allowing me to connect to my loved one’s difficulties without feeling fatigued.
Richard Davidson; after meeting the Dalai Lama in 1992, agreed to study the effects of long-term meditation on the brain, he had a long career researching and practicing meditation with promising results, allowing research in the field to grow exponentially over the past decade.
Mindfulness for chronic pain and psychological symptoms of life-threatening illnesses. Carlson, 2012: The beauty of a mindfulness approach is that it is eminently adaptable to a wide array of circumstances. Simply absorbing the general understanding that the only certainty in life is change, and that sometimes the best thing to do to solve a problem is nothing, can be extremely relieving and even liberating to people who are desperately and often frantically trying to fix things. Realizing that in fact they can slow down and see things as they are, without blinders, and learn ways to hold the strong emotions and sensations that arise can be transformative. When we practice formal meditation for chronic pain, patients need to be aware that they may experience deep emotions which need to come to the surface, such as grief, sadness, resentment, anger, pain, woundedness and fear, a process that may take weeks or months to cleanse and clear, before the joyful feelings are felt. Patients also need to be aware that mindfulness does not stop pain but changes the relationship to the pain experienced through acceptance, to feel more moments of joy, this in turn down-regulates the pain signals and after many months the brain structure changes, it has been shown with consistent practice the pain felt can diminish. “sometimes we need to get out of the current, sit on the bank and watch it flow” from he we can watch, listen and learn (innate inner wisdom).
Mindfulness reduces biological markers such a Cortisol, increases antibodies, slowing cellular ageing (Matousek et al., 2009: Epel et al., 2009: Jacobs et al., 2011: Arch et al., 2014).
Mindfulness studies have found significant reductions in anxiety symptoms, psychosocial and quality-of-life in Cancer patients (Speca et al., 2000: Lerman et al., 2012: Carlson and Garland, 2005. Moderate Improvements of stress related illnesses, depression and anxiety, increased quality-of-life, sleep, and functional status were found in a two large meta-analytic review and (Hofmann et al., 2010: Goyal et al., 2014), another study showed a reduction in suicide ideation, pain, anxiety, and depression in veterans (Serpa et al.,2014). In healthy people compassion was shown to significantly increase in a study Chiesa & Serretti, 2009) and stress, anxiety and rumination and increased self-compassion (Sharpiro et al.,2007).
As discussed in my last mindfulness post; neuroplasticity has made it possible to rewire our brains in eight weeks, which has been oversimplified by the media, however, positive changes are significant and ongoing commitment to mindfulness creates lasting significant effects in the cortical thickening in areas of emotional processing; of grey matter in the hippocampus after eight weeks of MBSR, and thickening of white matter responsible for self-regulation and an increase in the right pre-frontal cortex which is responsible for emotional regulation (Rossini & Dal Forno, 2004: Macguire et al., 2000:Lazar et al., 2005).
Meditation practice could be viewed like weight training, initially we spend 6 -8 weeks creating strong, quick firing neuro connection, proprioception, and psychological readiness, then we start to build strength, over the years we build muscle memory, knowledge of good techniques, practical application, wisdom, and fluency. So moral of the analogy is, if you want strong glutes you have to put consistent work in, if you stop working out the muscle tone starts to deplete after just two weeks, long-term lifestyle changes and commitment is needed to create and sustain changes “cells that fire together, wire together (Tang et al., 2012: Holzer et al., 2011).
How do we change an entangled life, full of entrapments, anxiety, and stress? Stress is intrinsic to the human condition and a part of life. By watching yourself throughout the day, with curiosity, non-judgmentally. We can work with life stress, understand it, use it to grow in strength, wisdom and compassion. You encourage the deep to come to the surface, to see your blind spots, releasing obstacles and stuck energy to create intelligent understanding of yourself and your life and therefore enriching your consciousness. Overtime, using meditation to weather the storms, to see clearly, rather than reacting and feeding life’s dramas, the storms past quicker, become less frequently and have less impact.
Compassion is a feeling that we are instinctively hardwired for (Keltner et al., 2010). It is not a cognitive response. It is essential for connection, as well as physical and mental well-being and our survival (Seppala et al., 2013: Brown et al., 2012). Self-compassion is the act of recognizing our own pain and being kind to our-selves. It has been linked to lower levels of depression and anxiety and perceived stress (Mcbeth & Gumley, 201). Using self-compassion during addiction recovery from tobacco and alcohol (Kelly et al., 2009: Brooks et al., 2012), chronic pain (Gouveia, 2011: Wren et al., 2012, Allen and Leary, 2013).
Values (using mindfulness as a path)
A mindful life is a path committed to ethical living and an obedience to an unseen force. The more we become awake to the interconnectedness of life, and being as one with nature, respecting the delicate ecosystem, the more we see how our behaviour effects life somewhere else e.g., what we buy can have a trail across the globe of air pollution, unethical work conditions, waste pollution and corruption. This is hard to avoid as global companies have far reaching tentacles owning companies under many names. We can however try to research, be aware, and do our best to avoid unethical companies, products, and latest trends stealing our attention, and try to live as simply as we can manage, aiming to improve, learn and grow. This path also requires letting go of our self-fulfilling wishes, desires and personal gain, and to ask who are we and what we are here for?
Giving yourself the gift of time.
Making time for yourself, just being at the start of your day, can change and enhance the quality of your day. We rush around all day
When people say they can’t meditate, what they really mean is they aren’t willing to spend the time to practice, or they have expectations which haven’t been fulfilled or that they don’t enjoy it. Everyone can meditate. It is however hard to commit to a practice, to let go of expectations and to break the habit of looking outside of ourselves to find distractions for self-regulation, happiness and temporary addictive feel good moments. Going inside with ourselves is not our social norm, it can be uncomfortable at first. However, it is a very short space of time before we start questioning all our unconscious behaviours, addictive short-term fixes and socially normal lifestyles, its difficult not to, once we feel the meditative centeredness, peace, calm, safety, a sense of this is how we are meant to really be.
Practicing:
Using meditation to develop the self.
There are various points in our lives where we face adversity, burnout, become ill, experience grief or just experience severe inner conflict and we are forced to question ourselves, our lives and everything we thought we knew, who we are and where we are going?
These moments allow us to reassess identities, opinions, scripts, and reasons behind our automatic/unconscious behaviours. In Tibet symbolic statues and deities are grotesque demonic beings meant to represent different psyches within us which needs to be faced, honored and worked with in order to develop depth of character and our full potential. Mediation is a path / roadmap to our whole self.
Top Eight Tibetan Buddhist Demons (tibettravel.org)
Meditation commitment takes courage, a willingness to face whatever comes up. The darkness and despair over and over, if necessary, without using behaviours to escape and run away. Much like bodywork; fascia a network of fluid and connective tissue which covers the entire matrix of the body, communicating with all organs, and tissues, holds memories, emotions, good and bad, creating tension, flexibility, fibrous and taut bands of tissues constantly responding to our-lifestyles, adapting to our unconscious demands, fears, and perceptions. When can have dormant myofascial spots (trigger points) when pressed release pain which we were unaware of. The pain feels therapeutic / cathartic and leaves behind space, a feeling of lightness, improved mobility and a sense of feeling aligned and balanced. During breathwork and meditation feelings rise, teers flow, toxins and hormones released and emotional balance is restored.
Tips to practice (How do we bring our attention to the now?)
How do we switch from doing to being?
Ask yourself- what can hear, what can I see, what can I feel?
Notice your breath……don’t try to change anything, just notice.
Let go for 5 mins, or even 1 min and build it up.
A great analogy is to view meditation like a waterfall.
The thoughts will inevitably cascade down, our aim is to go beyond the thinking mind and stand behind the waterfall, merely witnessing the thoughts, without engaging or labelling good or bad, just allowing them to come and go. Not engaging in our minds automatic dialogues allows new information to come in, which is often more balanced, allowing space for compassion and a change in perception
Body position:
Sitting (embodying a mountain, wakefulness, peaceful, majestic) creates a sense of stability, focus, dignity, and strength. Enabling you to pay attention on purpose. Use your breath as an anchor and think of yourself as a mountain, slumping reflects passivity, low energy, and lack of clarity. Sitting with dignity denotes sitting tall, but relaxed (body scan meditation at the start can help with this), dignified, deserving and worthy. We were born deserving, it is unlikely we came to feel undeserving on our own, we would have been helped to feel this way. Sitting in dignity allows us to come back to our original worthiness. Posture proprioception demonstrates how the feedback loop of posture and emotions circulate. When we smile, this creates feelings of happiness, and when we witness or relive memories of angry situations this creates jaw clenching, frowning and muscle tension. When we feel apathetic, depressed, and burdened, sitting in a dignified posture can affirm the strength and value of the present moment, your life in this moment. Meditation is acceptance and a willingness to face old memories, pain, trauma, and our own past behaviours, sitting in a strong pose signifies unwavering presence, stability and non-attachment, like a clear mirror, only reflecting itself, empty, receptive and open.
The position of your hands effects the aims of the meditation. Palms facing down on the knees denotes self-containment, a posture that speaks of not looking for anything else, just simply observing. Palms facing up embodies openness, receptivity to information from the universe. Mudras – hand postures used by yogis throughout history to project energetic statements. Hand gestures are used all the time such as waving the hand to connect with people, wagging a finger or shaking a clenched fist to express an angry warning to others. Here are some mudras you can practice using to bring intention into your formal meditations. Awareness of our emotions outside of practice, paying attention to body postures our hands in particular will give insight into emotional and postural feedback loops, of our unconscious emotional behaviour patterns.
Ending meditation often has a very strong pull, the mind is incredibly powerful when we don’t want to do something. The feeling of this is enough grows in intensity. Meditation teachers suggest breathing through those thoughts and ask…” who has had enough? What’s behind it? Boredom, fatigue, pain, impatience”? Suggesting you spend another few minutes before quitting, ensuring we transition with full awareness, rather than rushing back to life in an unconscious manner.
The research has brought me to the conclusion that meditation much like other religions, spiritual practices and therapies has its core principles and values rooted in self-awareness, personal growth and being the best possible version of yourself and that there are no shortcuts. A mindful way of life is a commitment to a path of learning loving kindness, community giving, self-development and a way to declutter the past and live a simpler life.
