Thursday 30 November 2017

Meditation: Breath by Breath (23:02 min.) - Tara Brach


Meditation: Breath by Breath –

Our breath can be a home base that allows us to meet life with a relaxed, wakeful presence. This meditation helps us calm and settle the mind with long deep breathing, and then establishes a mindful presence with our natural breathing. When distracted, we learn to relax back again and again, learning the pathway of homecoming to the aliveness, openness and mystery that is always Here.

photo: kincse_j – pixabay.com

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How to Get Good Pause

As a longtime meditator, I thought I had a pretty good grasp of the value of taking time to pause during a busy day in a formal, intentional way — aka, meditating.

Taking a step back from the rush of activity held demonstrable value giving a bit of breathing room to make more deliberate and well-thought-out choices.  This fit well as a counter to my misguided identification as a busy person when the realities of being constantly on the go had solidified into a self identification I was proud of, and even craved.

It was something I noticed in others, too: with meetings booked back-to-back, four or five in a row, many of my co-workers opened meetings with a statement about having a hard stop or having to leave early for… another meeting. All of this was a clear and present validation of how in demand we were, and that itself encouraged us to remain in a constant state of doing. Pausing provided the necessary break to that unhealthy cycle of rushed activity and failed attempts to multitask.

I was wrong. Not about having a pause, but rather how I was approaching it.

Although formal mindfulness meditation practice can have a profound effect on one’s health, outlook, and performance, it can be tricky to follow through if every time you try to meditate the thought arises: “I should be accomplishing something, right now!”  That can be a quite visceral de-motivator, too, as both physical sensations and emotional states may come along for the ride and build pressure to not meditate unless conditions are just right.

How often do you feel you have plenty of time to “just sit” during your busy day, without a laundry list of tasks to pull you away? If you’re like me, not very often, and you may notice that as you complete three tasks, five more fill the void, making it difficult to defend that time for mindfulness practice you may have carved out from the busyness. Knowing the value it brings often loses out to other demands on our time, and being able to live a life of enrichment.

The Solution? Mindful Moments v. Meditating

My solution had been to introduce a simple pause many times throughout the day. Rather than having an “inflexible” 30 minutes for a formal meditation session — and then not keeping it because of other priorities — just taking a few moments to pause, and liberally sprinkling those moments throughout my day, was the perfect solution.

Until it wasn’t.

Though pausing did stop the flow of busyness, after that pause I jumped right back into the maelstrom. Pausing was like stepping off a moving train for a few moments and then jumping right back on it again. The pause helped in those brief moments after, sometimes just for a few beats of my heart and mindful breaths, before I was lost again to my Busy Person identity. There were some positive effects reverberating from the pause, but much of the stability gained was lost in mere moments.

Rather than inviting pauses into my day to refresh and re-energize what was happening around and inside, I was using them to take a break and distance myself from it. This is completely the opposite of what mindfulness practice is for.

Noticing this was itself a startling realization. It made me question if this was really “working” for me. And that’s when the next more subtle but vastly more profound realization entered the scene: I’d set up a practice of pausing as a stop-gap measure, a trick that I trotted out when stressed or in special circumstances, and as such had confined it to those limited situations. Rather than inviting pauses into my day to refresh and re-energize what was happening around and inside, I was using them to take a break and distance myself from it. This is completely the opposite of what mindfulness practice is for.

So how can you really open up the power of pauses? Here are a few ideas to explore in your own informal practice:

3 Ways to Boost Your Mindful Pauses

  1. Shift Your Focus. Thinking of pause practice as a gimmick, trick, or technique to use only in specific moments is setting up confining boundaries in conflict with how it might help you. When you start an intentional mindful pause, you may want to evoke the companion of curiosity by noticing if this pause is a distancing break, or opens you to the intimacy of presence. Far from closing off, this intimacy is wide and deep, lending a perspective that can be wonderfully and helpfully informative.  Deciding to pause as a separate and additional task to perform is doing a disservice to yourself, like deciding to only breathe in between meetings. Instead, integrate mindful pauses into your day to foster greater presence — as Jon Kabat-Zinn says, “The real practice is your life.”
  2. Get curious. Allowing curiosity to be your companion can counter a tendency to be closed to seeing circumstances with fresh eyes. Invite gentle curiosity with brief, silent questions about your perspective, like: Am I really listening right now? What preconceive notions do I have that might be getting in the way? or one of my favorite questions, What is my intention in this moment? Pausing for reflection with curiosity and kindness toward yourself and others can be challenging, as the answers that echo back to us in the pause may be hard to face – but they are almost always helpful if we can meet those answers honestly and openly.
  3. Manage Expectations. Meditation practice is not a straight line of building calm, it can and does quite often include facing difficulties and hard truths about yourself and the situations you’re in. Each day and sometimes each moment are very different from one another, and setting a bar of perfect performance as a meditator during the chaos of life is setting up for failure. Accepting patience as a friend on the sometimes tumultuous exploration of this moment can help reduce unhelpful judgment about not meeting a meditation goal, and foster resilience during uncomfortable and quick changes to what’s happening in practice.

 

Leadership Burnout: A Simple Way to Re-engage

10 Ways to Be More Mindful at Work

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Monday 27 November 2017

A Meditation for Moving On

Acceptance is not about liking something or agreeing with something—It’s simply about acknowledging what is happening, what is true in this moment. The more we can accept each moment as it is, the less we suffer.

Sometimes there are things in our life that we’re not crazy about, that are quite unpleasant, very distressing even—and yet there’s nothing we can do about it. And in those moments acceptance, acknowledging what is true without adding on layers of “I don’t want this to be true,” “It’s not fair,” “I don’t like this,” “Why did this happen to me,” can help us get through these difficult times with more ease. Importantly, when we settle into acceptance and see the truth of our circumstance in the moment—if there is an opportunity for change, if there is an opportunity to do something different—we have a better chance of seeing it. We have a better chance of developing wisdom about the possibilities in this moment when we see each moment with clarity.

1) First, find a comfortable seat in a chair or on a cushion. Let your back be tall but not stiff. Hold your head so your ears are above your shoulders with your chin slightly tucked. Drop your shoulders, rest your hands in your lap.

2) Then, notice the feeling of breathing. Become aware of your body breathing, settling your attention on the place in your body where you most easily experience the sensation of the breath flowing in and out. Let your breathing be normal and natural—no need to try and change it or shift it. See if you can let your awareness be open and relaxed. As you watch your breath, you create a sense of spaciousness, not a tight or clamped-down feeling. Spacious awareness: Allowing your breath to come and go.

3) If you’ve noticed your mind has wandered, come back to the breath. When you notice your attention has wandered, bring your attention back to your breath without criticizing yourself or your wandering mind. Accept in the moment that that’s what our minds do: they wander and we can work with that by being willing, without judgment, to simply begin again.

As you sit in meditation, you will likely have some moments where you feel focused, or relaxed, or at ease. It’s easy to accept those moments without trying to struggle with or change them. Other moments may seem unpleasant: you may feel restless, have some discomfort, an itch. See if you can hold those moments with some unpleasantness with the exact same quality of open curiosity as those moments that are more naturally easy. Just allowing each moment to be as it is, developing curiosity about it, watching the changing nature of your experience.

Accept in the moment that that’s minds do: they wander and we can work with that by being willing, without judgment, to simply begin again.

4) Now, shift your attention to any thoughts you are having in this moment. Notice what your thoughts are doing if you’re having thoughts about not liking something, wanting it to be different. Maybe there’s a conversation in your head where you’re trying to convince somebody to think or do something different. See if you can just notice your tendency to try to judge and change these situations.

5) Then, explore if you can let go of those thoughts. See if you can summon the willingness to let it be as it is. Perhaps even saying to yourself: “It is what it is,” and coming back to your breath, noticing that some of our discomfort is related to the way we struggle, the way we fight, and then maybe it’s possible to let at least some small part of that be. Come back to your breath, relaxing into the spaciousness of your present moment experience without judgment, with curiosity, with acceptance.

6) Once you feel ready, allow your eyes to open.

This web extra provides additional information related to an article titled, “Keep on Moving,” which appeared in the December 2017 issue of Mindful magazine.

Three Ways Acceptance Helps You Work with Difficult Emotions

The Science and Practice of Staying Present Through Difficult Times

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Friday 24 November 2017

The Amazing Effects of Gratitude

Gratitude, according to leading researcher Robert Emmons, is a two-way street: we affirm the good things we’ve received, and we also “acknowledge that other people…help us achieve the goodness in our lives.”

It’s only in the past few decades that researchers have started to investigate how we benefit from expressing gratitude and paying it forward. In this animation from the video series Braincraft, science communicator Vanessa Hill looks at research into gratitude — Here are two interesting takeaways:

We can trigger gratitude in the brain: Researchers studied the brains of participants who were asked to respond (in terms of how grateful they’d feel) to hypothetical scenarios where complete strangers saved their lives. From co-author Glen Fox, Phd: “when participants reported those grateful feelings, their brains showed activity in a set of regions located in the medial pre-frontal cortex, an area in the frontal lobes of the brain where the two hemispheres meet. This area of the brain is associated with understanding other people’s perspectives, empathy, and feelings of relief.”

Gratitude journals are worth keeping: In studies where participants regularly wrote down what they were grateful for, they reported improvements in mood, health, and overall outlook in life.

 

What the Brain Reveals about Gratitude

How Gratitude Changes You and Your Brain

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A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart - Tara Brach


A Grateful, Giving, Happy Heart ~

Gratitude is like breathing in – letting ourselves be touched by the goodness in others and in our world. Generosity is like breathing out – sensing our mutual belonging and offering our care. When we are awake and whole, breathing in and out happens naturally. But these beautiful expressions of our heart become blocked when we are dominated by the fear and grasping of our survival brain. This talk explores how we can facilitate the evolution of consciousness with the deliberate cultivation of generosity, and ends with a guided meditation on gratitude and generosity.

For happiness, how little suffices for happiness! … the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard’s rustling, a breath, a whisper, an eye glance-little maketh up the best happiness. Be still.

~ Nietzche ~

from earlier that evening ~ Meditation: Relax into Happiness

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Thursday 23 November 2017

Meditation: Relax into Happiness - Tara Brach


Meditation: Relax Into Happiness ~

Lama Gendun Rinpoche writes, “Happiness cannot be found through great effort and willpower, but it is already there, in relaxation and letting go.” This meditation turns us toward this naturally arising happiness by awakening awareness through the body, and then practicing “relaxing back,” over and over, into the aliveness and presence that is always here.

photo: geralt/pixabay

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7 Reminders for Mindful Eating

Mindful eating isn’t just about sating our appetite, filling ourselves up from the outside. It’s also a gratitude practice: appreciating the delicious sights, tastes, and the people who made it possible for you to enjoy the plate in front of you.

This Thanksgiving, bring all of your senses to the table with these seven mindful reminders:

7 Reminders for Mindful Eating

Let the Fork Linger

Try not to let your fork or spoon become a shovel. Take a pause as you pick up your food, a half-moment to appreciate it before putting it in your mouth.

Use All Your Senses

Eating is not just about taste buds. Fruits and vegetables are natural works of art. There is color, shape, texture, coolness, heat, crunch, and many other facets, to appreciate that make a meal a total sensory experience. If you like, you can take a moment to be thankful for everyone who made it possible for you to be eating this food.

Go for the Yum Factor

Let the taste of the food put the brakes on your speedy, wandering mind. When food tastes good, it can stop you for a second if you’re really paying attention. And if you’re eating something that’s more ordinary than yummy, appreciate the simplicity.

Come Back

Just as in any mindfulness practice, we will find that our mind has wandered off. No big deal. Just as you would use the breath in a formal meditation practice, use the taste and the look of the food as the anchor in the present to come back to. Repeat as needed.

Listen to Your Stomach

It takes a moment for your body to let you know that you’ve become full and satisfied. If you slow down even more as the meal progresses, there’s a better chance you’ll hear it when the bell goes off to signal that you are done. If there’s something left over, you can wrap it up and save it for another time.

Enjoy the Pause

Our days are often so filled with rushing from one thing to the next, or constantly relating to something on a screen. A meal can provide a complete break from that. Find a nice spot, settle in, and take your time with it. If you’re with others, savor the conversation, but don’t let it carry you completely away from the sensory delights of your meal.

If you’re second guessing yourself while you’re eating, it just stirs up anxiety, which is not great for digestion and habit-building. Take half a slice of pumpkin pie and commit to totally enjoying it.

Commit!

Try when you can to decide about how much to take and which foods to eat before you start to eat. If you’re second guessing yourself while you’re eating, it just stirs up anxiety, which is not great for digestion and habit-building. Take half a slice of pumpkin pie and commit to totally enjoying it.

 

5 Ways to Thrive at Thanksgiving

Train Your Brain to Tame Holiday Stress and Anxiety

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Tuesday 21 November 2017

A Heart That Is Ready for Anything - Tara Brach


A Heart That Is Ready for Anything ~

When the Buddha was dying, he gave a final message to his beloved attendant Ananda, and to generations to come: “Be a lamp unto yourself, be a refuge to yourself. Take yourself to no external refuge.”

In his last words, the Buddha was urging us to see this truth: although you may search the world over trying to find it, your ultimate refuge is none other than your own being.

There’s a bright light of awareness that shines through each of us and guides us home, and we’re never separated from this luminous awareness, any more than waves are separated from ocean. Even when we feel most ashamed or lonely, reactive or confused, we’re never actually apart from the awakened state of our heart-mind.

This is a powerful and beautiful teaching. The Buddha was essentially saying: I’m not the only one with this light; all ordinary humans have this essential wakefulness, too. In fact, this open, loving awareness is our deepest nature. We don’t need to get somewhere or change ourselves: our true refuge is what we are. Trusting this opens us to the blessings of freedom.

Buddhist monk, Sayadaw U. Pandita describes these blessings in a wonderful way: A heart that is ready for anything. When we trust that we are the ocean, we are not afraid of the waves. We have confidence that whatever arises is workable. We don’t have to lose our life in preparation. We don’t have to defend against what’s next. We are free to live fully with what is here, and to respond wisely.

You might ask yourself: “Can I imagine what it would be like, in this moment, to have a heart that is ready for anything?”

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses, and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life. As we bring a courageous presence to the truth of loss, we stay available to the immeasurable ways that love springs forth in our life.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we will spontaneously reach out when others are hurting. Living in an ethical way can attune us to the pain and needs of others, but when our hearts are open and awake, we care instinctively. This caring is unconditional—it extends outward and inward wherever there is fear and suffering.

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are free to be ourselves. There’s room for the wildness of our animal selves, for passion and play. There’s room for our human selves, for intimacy and understanding, creativity and productivity. There’s room for spirit, for the light of awareness to suffuse our moments. The Tibetans describe this confidence to be who we are as “the lion’s roar.”

If our hearts are ready for anything, we are touched by the beauty and poetry and mystery that fill our world.

When Munindraji, a vipassana meditation teacher, was asked why he practiced, his response was, “So I will see the tiny purple flowers by the side of the road as I walk to town each day.”

With an undefended heart, we can fall in love with life over and over every day. We can become children of wonder, grateful to be walking on earth, grateful to belong with each other and to all of creation. We can find our true refuge in every moment, in every breath.

Adapted from True Refuge.

© Tara Brach

Enjoy this audio talk: Spiritual Empowerment ~ “A Heart That is Ready for Anything”

Join my email list: http://eepurl.com/6YfI

Photo credit: Pixabay.com

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Monday 20 November 2017

Mindfulness Feeds the Roots

I heard a very helpful analogy recently when attending a meeting of civic leaders in Louisville, Kentucky, who are bringing mindfulness and compassion into their schools.

Using the image of caring for trees, the speaker argued that the education field tends to focus too much on the tree’s fruit (outcomes like test scores) while ignoring the roots. If you ignore the roots for too long, he continued, you don’t get any fruit at all. The takeaway: mindfulness and compassion feed the roots.

I heard this analogy when I was lucky enough to witness the mid-term review of Louisville’s “audacious” 7-year Compassionate Schools Project (CSP) serving over 10,000 K-5 students at 45 schools. The University of Virginia’s Department of Education and its Contemplative Sciences Center have teamed up with the Louisville public schools on a randomized control study of a compassion, mindfulness and movement curriculum. In addition to being the largest and most innovative study of its kind, the curriculum will be free when it’s completed for any school that wants to use it.

This determined crowd of impassioned project leaders included every part of “the system:” the Mayor, the local school district superintendent, a city councilperson, principals and teachers, community leaders, local and national funders, and project leaders from UVA. I was moved to witness leaders from all these sectors championing the benefits of mindfulness.

The highlight was my visit to a grade 1 class to watch the CSP curriculum taught first hand. I saw six year olds using “finding your anchor” and “calming” practices to regain their focus after it had been stolen away by the “visit” of an emotion, and with effectiveness that I rarely see in adults (or myself!). Infectious narratives, replacing the Dick and Jane that I grew up with, gave life to practical breathing and movement exercises.

The Compassionate Schools Project is teaching strengths and skills for inner resilience, for both students and teachers, that are transforming lives inside and outside of class. And, as the city councillor reminded everyone, this is not just a “soft skill,” quoting recent research that points to social emotional learning skills as responsible for “50% of future economic and workplace success.”

I saw six year olds using “finding your anchor” and “calming” practices to regain their focus after it had been stolen away by the “visit” of an emotion, and with effectiveness that I rarely see in adults (or myself!).

Louisville is but one inspiring example of civic leaders and local schools joining forces to feed the roots; Flint, Michigan, is another. I was grateful to attend a recent fundraiser in LA to support the important work of our friends at the Crim Fitness Foundation who are presenting mindfulness and yoga in Flint public schools. Hosted at the beautiful home of Peter and Tara Guber, Hollywood movie producers and professional sports team owners, the gathering was highlighted by inspiring remarks from Crim Executive Director Gerry Myers, Jon Kabat-Zinn, and Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha who all detailed the ravages and trauma visited upon the lives of the children in Flint, and how the mindfulness and yoga programs were rebuilding resilience and strength.

Perhaps most inspiring were the opening comments of host Tara Guber, who pioneered the Yoga ed program that’s being presented in Flint schools. She reminded everyone that, in today’s interconnected world, Flint is not only the heartland of America, that it’s “every town,” and it could be “any town.” Bringing mindfulness to help heal Flint is “healing our towns, our society, and ourselves.”

Here at the Foundation for a Mindful Society, we are greatly inspired by the work of our friends at the Crim Foundation in Flint and Compassionate Schools in Louisville. And it connects up beautifully with the leading work of our friends at the Holistic Life Foundation in Baltimore, the Momentous School in Dallas, and the emerging Jackson Whole project in Jackson, WY. That’s the start of quite a robust root system.

Seeing these benefits first-hand drives home why it’s so important for Mindful to support the work of these organizations, which we do in a variety of ways. From reporting in Mindful magazine and Mindful.org, our support extends to advocacy and making connections, to our Mindful Cities initiative, to our recent Mindful30 meditation challenge, and most recently to publication of our free content to support mindfulness in schools. We are working every day to galvanize the mindfulness momentum in order to bring the benefits of well-being, resilience, kindness, and compassion into our world.

And thank you all for being part of this grand adventure with us. Thank you for reading our magazine, website, newsletters, and this blog, as well as for supporting so many worthy initiatives that we haven’t touch on yet.

There is much to do, there are roots crying out for nourishment. Let’s keep up the momentum so that mindfulness feeding these roots can bear fruit for all.

To help Mindful “feed the roots,” please donate to our year-end funding campaign here.

 

Why There’s No “Mindfulness Movement”

Don’t follow the traffic. Follow the signs.

 

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Friday 17 November 2017

The Gift of Silence: Quieting the Mind - Tara Brach


The Gift of Silence: Quieting the Mind –

Through all spiritual traditions, there is a valuing of silence and stillness. When the mind has quieted, it becomes possible to see into the truth of what we are. Yet quieting can turn into a battle with the process of the thinking mind. This talk explores practices that allow us to settle in a natural way, the presence which is silence itself, and the wisdom and love that flows freely when we live from that silence.

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4 Strategies for Mindful Parenting

Every parent knows that having children is a field ripe with emotions. Frustration, anger, boredom, joy, love, or fear—name an emotion, and it’s probably there on the wild ride of parenting. But this can also feel like the tipping point into insanity. When parenting becomes difficult, it is important to see that these challenges can be turned into opportunities for working with your inner reactivity. As your child (or you) begin to slip into the fifth meltdown of the day, or as you watch your mind check-out from reading the same book for the millionth time, mindfulness can help bring you back to a more spacious and vital sense of the present. In this interview from 10% Happier, mindfulness teacher Alexis Santos offers four tips to cultivate a practice of mindful parenting.

Breathe Interest into Your Routine

Our attention is habitually attracted to “peak moments,” moments that seem pleasant, fun, or exciting. You’ll certainty be in the moment when your kid falls and scuffs her knee, but what about the times things are less attention-grabbing and more routine? In instances where you want to zone out, bring mindfulness to the breath. The breath is a reliable companion, and it’s also always fresh. When you use attention to experience each breath as a unique and interesting event, you can ripen seemingly repetitive moments of parenting into ones that bring your attention fully back to the present-moment interactions you’re having with your kids.

You’ll certainty be in the moment when your kid falls and scuffs her knee, but what about the times things are less attention-grabbing and more routine?

Be Bored

When breath practice is not riveting and you find yourself 100% bored, simply commit to the experience of being bored.  Boredom can be a fascinating exploration when you are willing to feel it. How does the texture of your boredom feel? Where does it arise in your body? Using boredom as an exploration of present experience can add more zest to those moments, while simultaneously strengthening your mindfulness practice. Mundane moments can be useful times to step back and find a sense of ease, regardless of the monotonous circumstances.

Feel When You’ve Lost Your Cool

If you find yourself at the brink of unproductive anger, you are not a bad parent for losing your patience. This is a perfect time to check back with your internal experience and not act out. Don’t get lost in the drama in front of you—instead, pause and feel into your body’s reactions. Even if the pause is only a millisecond long, giving yourself space is a chance to see the emotion bubbling up and work with it with more awareness. Seeing and feeling the emotion helps avoid the situation from escalating, and it will support you to stay composed in challenging times.

Relax into the Imperfection

Most people feel that their sphere of responsibility has grown exponentially upon becoming a parent. You are the lifeline for the health and well-being of your child. While making sure they are safe, secure, and loved is absolutely paramount, it is also important to know your limits. Ultimately, there are many things that you won’t be able to control, no matter how hard you try. It is important to remember that life is not always predictable. Plates will break, tears will be shed, and difficulties will inevitably occur—this is the reality of being a parent and being alive. In these situations, don’t overextend your responsibility. When appropriate, practice letting go, and relax into the imperfection. You can find satisfaction and even gratitude in those moments if you give yourself a break to embrace life as it unfolds.

 

For more from Alexis Santos  and Dan Harris, check out some free guided meditations from 10% Happier.

 

Let Go of Being the Ideal Role Model

Raising the Mindful Family

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Thursday 16 November 2017

Meditation: The Silence That is Listening (14 min) - Tara Brach

Meditation: The Silence That is Listening ~

Listening to sounds is a powerful way to quiet the thinking mind and connect with the natural openness of awareness. This meditation emphasizes the anchor of listening, and guides us to relax through our bodies and let sounds wash through us. In this receptivity we find a homecoming to full presence and peace.

photo: pixabay

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How Labels Help: Tame Reactive Emotions by Naming Them

It was a particularly difficult day. My then nine-month-old daughter had a terrible night and left my wife and I with only a handful hours’ sleep. Needless to say, we were slow getting up and out the door that morning.  Before we left, my wife and I “discussed” who should’ve gotten up with Celia during the night (we’d been down this road before—these back-and-forths never help solve this issue, and somehow, we yet again veered this way). We barely spoke in the car the rest of the way to work after we dropped our daughter off at daycare.

And then I was hit by one issue after another once I walked into my office. An upset parent who’d left a voicemail who urgently needed to talk to me.  A clinician who needed help dealing with a student in crisis.  An important meeting I needed to chair that I’d forgotten to put in my calendar. And worst of all, I must have used a ladle to scoop my sugar into my coffee travel mug that morning.

I sat with my face in my hands at my desk for a moment.  I was seething with what life had deposited on top of me. My temples were pulsing, and my clock said it was only 9:30. Somehow, I remembered what I’d recommended to clients many times, but usually forgot to do myself.  It was a nice therapeutic “nugget” that made sense, but seemed like it should be innate to me, an experienced therapist: “Name it”—or as I’ve heard psychiatrist and mindfulness expert Dan Siegel say—“Name it to tame it.” In other words, say to yourself, out loud, what negative emotion you’re experiencing, as you’re experiencing it, in order to get some distance from it. As the clinical wisdom goes, simply labeling a difficult emotional experience allows you to take the reins back, if only briefly.

I was a therapist—this simple labeling practice was for my child clients to use. I was far beyond such “basic” strategies. I was wrong. I needed to return to the basics.

I’d recommended this emotional labeling to clients for years, but I’m fairly certain I’d never tried it myself.  Again, I was a therapist—this simple labeling practice was for my child clients to use. It was “Self-Management 101.” I was far beyond such “basic” strategies. I was wrong, because I sat at my desk with distress rippling through me. My mind was electric with ranting, and I was on track for a less than effective, connected, and creative day. I needed to return to the “basics.”

Labels Help Us Move On

The recommendation comes from a solid foundation. Research has shown that mere verbal labeling of negative emotions can help people recover control.[i] UCLA’s Matthew Lieberman refers to this as “affect labeling” and his fMRI brain scan research shows that this labeling of emotion appears to decrease activity in the brain’s emotional centers, including the amygdala. This dampening of the emotional brain allows its frontal lobe (reasoning and thinking center) to have greater sway over solving the problem du jour.

And this is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness gives us that moment of space as reactive emotions (like anger) are rising up. If we can see the anger, then we don’t have to be it—we can mindfully notice the body and mind crackling with reactivity, and acknowledge (or “name”) our emotions as we’re having them. Doing so seems to help us disengage from them. We can see them, and then we can begin to choose how to react instead of reacting under the sway of intoxicatingly strong emotions. We can choose to act to open ourselves and connect with others, rather than be carried away in a flood of emotional neurochemicals that wash us over the cliff.

If we can see the anger, then we don’t have to be it—we can mindfully notice the body and mind crackling with reactivity, and acknowledge (or “name”) our emotions as we’re having them.

Mindfulness Practice: Managing Strong Emotions in the Moment

In the coming days, when you find your body and mind getting tense with upset (and the more you’re aware of exactly how this manifests in you, the better), encourage yourself to attach words to your experience.

Often, thinking in terms of the metaphor of your hand in front of your face can be helpful.  When you start, you ARE your anger, sadness, fear, etc. It is your hand over your face. Can’t see anything, can you?  The emotion is attached to you—it IS you.

As you progressively label your emotion, creating more and more “distance” between the raw emotion and “you,” the observer (sparking awake in your frontal lobe), begins to see things more clearly: the emotional “hand” moves farther away from your thinking and reasoning mind’s eye.

Here’s a possible domino effect of reactive thoughts that might show up for you:

*  Event occurs . . .

*  Body stiffens, clenches . . .

*  “I can’t believe this!” / “They are so wrong!” / “This shouldn’t be!” . . .

*  “I am angry / sad / frustrated / humiliated / etc.”

*  Body stiffens, clenches more

* “I’m going to let them have it!”

 

And now, naming the emotion right AFTER the body first stiffens, surges, or in some way alerts you that upset is here:

 

*  “My body is telling me I’m angry, sad, etc.” (deep, slow breath in)

* “I’m having thoughts that this is upsetting.” (slow exhale out)

* “Anger . . . anger . . . anger . . .” (deep, slow breath in)

* Body slows down (slow exhale out)

* “Sad . . . sad . . . sad . . .” (deep, slow breath in)

What do you notice?

You may notice a “distance” that develops as you label your thoughts and emotions after the initial event. Instead of reacting and either lashing out or shutting down, you (in a matter of seconds) can ignite your frontal lobe, slow your body and mind, and choose your response. You can connect with your experience, as well as the possibilities around you. Instead of digging a deeper hole, you can climb out of the episode.

Practice this labeling whenever you can. Don’t be discouraged when you find yourself swept away in emotional currents. Our emotional reflexes run deep (inside the brain), and change comes only with significant practice and patience.  The practice is awareness: to get better at catching yourself.  Labeling an emotion helps you create distance from it. From there, we can choose how to respond instead of being led by our triggers.

I still argue with my wife about who should go pick up my crying kids. I catch my rigid, “she’s so out of line” thinking more than before, and I put it out at arm’s length.  More than ever before, I can choose to do something that binds us together instead of blasting us apart.

And if mindful labeling doesn’t work, as a husband, I’ve learned to simply stop talking and go clean something.

References

[i] 1. Putting Feelings Into Words: Affect Labeling Disrupts Amygdala Activity in Response to Affective Stimuli. Matthew D. Lieberman, Naomi I. Eisenberger, Molly J. Crockett, Sabrina M. Tom, Jennifer H. Pfeifer, and Baldwin M. Way. Psychological Science 2007;18(5):421-428.

 

  1. Subjective Responses to Emotional Stimuli During Labeling, Reappraisal, and Distraction. Matthew D. Lieberman, Tristen K. Inagaki, Golnaz Tabibnia, and Molly J. Crockett. Emotion 2011;11(3):468-480.

 

  1. Neural Correlates of Dispositional Mindfulness During Affect Labeling. J. David Creswell, Baldwin M. Way, Naomi I. Eisenberger, and Matthew D. Lieberman. Psychosomatic Medicine 2007;69(6):560-565.

 

A Meditation for Moving On

Meditators Under the Microscope

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Wednesday 15 November 2017

What to Do When Things Fall Apart

Drip. Drip-drip-drip-drip. I was putting the finishing touches on dinner. It had been a long day and I was idly leaning on the kitchen counter, enjoying a micro-moment of peace when something splashed onto my head. DRIP DRIP DRIP. “What in God’s name was that?” I looked up and saw water dripping from the ceiling onto my stovetop. Then I heard the upstairs toilet flush. And the drip became a stream. And the truth was revoltingly clear: Ready or not, a literal and figurative fecal hurricane had hit the fan. Serenity now.

It takes practice to be able to take things less personally. It takes practice to see the delicious-looking worm hiding the hook and choose not to bite.

Some days, it seems pretty obvious the world is out to get you (even without a major plumbing disaster like mine). The coffee pot just knew you were late for an important meeting when it jumped out of your hands and leapt to its death on the tiled floor, didn’t it? Whaddyagonnado? Stuff happens.

But the next time you feel harassed by kamikaze kitchen appliances or any of life’s large and small indignities, take a breath. Feel your feet making contact with the ground and bring your full attention to your body right there in the midst of the chaos. This almost ridiculously simple way to interrupt a volcanic moment could be the difference between trapping yourself in an emotional nightmare and finding humor in the midst of life’s unsavory moments.

Still, if your habit is to go all Tony Soprano when someone cuts you off in traffic, you’ll probably find it challenging to instantly change your behavior. We humans can be emotional firecrackers. Your most powerful ally will be your ability to accept yourself in all your gory glory. Sometimes rage, sadness, and a myriad of other strong emotions will be part of your experience, too.

We can learn to accept the whole shebang. We can find peace in the eye of the hurricane, but it takes practice.

Why? Because just when you think you’ve gotten out, the habit of overreacting drags you back in. That’s what habits do. When you can remember that, you can be crafty: Try making a list of your usual triggers and reactions. Carry it in your wallet. Come to know your list intimately. You might discover yourself biting the same hooks over and over—and when you can see that, you are better equipped to make a fresh choice.

It takes time to retrain a lifelong habit—even when you can see yourself teetering on the brink of giving in to it. A student at a mindfulness workshop came to me discouraged, saying, “I got angry at my boss, again. And even though I was able to see myself about to blow my top…I exploded anyway.”

When you are able to stay with whatever shows up—including the repulsive, the disruptive, and more than likely a heap of unfairness—you may find new ways to work skillfully with what’s beyond your control.

This was music to my ears. I was thrilled to hear he had noticed what was happening as it was happening—even if, that time, he still reacted. If you approach your practice with the expectation that it will make you as calm as a plastic novelty Buddha, you may become disheartened when you still feel unruly and aggravated—in other words, when you are still you. A perfectly fine you.

Take a broad view for a moment. If you can break out of the bubble of your personal experience, you’ll notice that you are part of humanity, essentially no different from anybody else. You will have to deal with life’s difficulties, no matter where you live, who you know, or what you have. When you are able to stay with whatever shows up—including the repulsive, the disruptive, and more than likely a heap of unfairness—you may find new ways to work skillfully with what’s beyond your control.

It takes practice to be able to take things less personally. It takes practice to see the delicious-looking worm hiding the hook and choose not to bite. And most of all, it takes practice to be kind to ourselves throughout, staying present to the entire unfolding show: one breath, one thought, one choice at a time.

This article appeared in the October 2017 issue of Mindful magazine.

 

What to Do When You Feel Stuck in Negative Emotions

A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit

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Tuesday 14 November 2017

What is Your Phone Doing to Your Relationships?

Phubbing is the practice of snubbing others in favor of our mobile phones. We’ve all been there, as either victim or perpetrator. We may no longer even notice when we’ve been phubbed (or are phubbing), it has become such a normal part of life. However, research studies are revealing the profound impact phubbing can have on our relationships and well-being.

There’s an irony in phubbing. When we’re staring at our phones, we’re often connecting with someone on social media or through texting. Sometimes, we’re flipping through our pictures the way we once turned the pages of photo albums, remembering moments with people we love. Unfortunately, however, this can severely disrupt our actual, present-moment, in-person relationships, which also tend to be our most important ones.

The research shows that phubbing isn’t harmless—but the studies to date also point the way to a healthier relationship with our phones and with each other.

What phubbing does to us

According to their study of 145 adults, phubbing decreases marital satisfaction, in part because it leads to conflict over phone use. The scientists found that phubbing, by lowering marital satisfaction, affected a partner’s depression and satisfaction with life. A follow-up study by Chinese scientists assessed 243 married adults with similar results: Partner phubbing, because it was associated with lower marital satisfaction, contributed to greater feelings of depression. In a study poignantly titled, “My life has become a major distraction from my cell phone,” Meredith David and James Roberts suggest that phubbing can lead to a decline in one of the most important relationships we can have as an adult: the one with our life partner.

Phubbing also shapes our casual friendships. Not surprisingly to anyone who has been phubbed, phone users are generally seen as less polite and attentive. Let’s not forget that we are extremely attuned to people. When someone’s eyes wander, we intuitively know what brain studies also show: The mind is wandering. We feel unheard, disrespected, disregarded.

A set of studies actually showed that just having a phone out and present during a conversation (say, on the table between you) interferes with your sense of connection to the other person, the feelings of closeness experienced, and the quality of the conversation. This phenomenon is especially the case during meaningful conversations—you lose the opportunity for true and authentic connection to another person, the core tenet of any friendship or relationship.

In fact, many of the problems with mobile interaction relate to distraction from the physical presence of other people. According to these studies, conversations with no smartphones present are rated as significantly higher-quality than those with smartphones around, regardless of people’s age, ethnicity, gender, or mood. We feel more empathy when smartphones are put away.

This makes sense. When we are on our phones, we are not looking at other people and not reading their facial expressions (tears in their eyes, frowns, smiles). We don’t hear the nuances in their tone of voice (was it shaky with anxiety?), or notice their body posture (slumped and sad? or excited and enthusiastic?).

No wonder phubbing harms relationships.

The way of the phubbed

What do “phubbed” people tend do?

According to a study published in March of this year, they themselves start to turn to social media. Presumably, they do so to seek inclusion. They may turn to their cell phone to distract themselves from the very painful feelings of being socially neglected. We know from brain-imaging research that being excluded registers as actual physical pain in the brain. Phubbed people in turn become more likely to attach themselves to their phones in unhealthy ways, thereby increasing their own feelings of stress and depression.

A Facebook study shows that how we interact on Facebook affects whether it makes us feel good or bad. When we use social media just to passively view others’ posts, our happiness decreases. Another study showed that social media actually makes us more lonely.

“It is ironic that cell phones, originally designed as a communication tool, may actually hinder rather than foster interpersonal connectedness,” write David and Roberts in their study “Phubbed and Alone.” Their results suggest the creation of a vicious circle: A phubbed individual turns to social media and their compulsive behavior presumably leads them to phub others—perpetuating and normalizing the practice and problem of “phubbing.”

“It is ironic that cell phones, originally designed as a communication tool, may actually hinder rather than foster interpersonal connectedness”

―Meredith David and James Roberts

Why do people get into the phubbing habit in the first place? Not surprisingly, fear of missing out and lack of self-control predict phubbing. However, the most important predictor is addiction—to social media, to the cell phone, and to the Internet. Internet addiction has similar brain correlates to physiological forms like addiction to heroine and other recreational drugs. The impact of this addiction is particularly worrisome for children whose brain and social skills are still under development.

Nicholas Kardaras, former Stony Brook Medicine clinical professor and author of Glow Kids, goes so far as to liken screen time to digital cocaine. Consider this: The urge to check social media is stronger than the urge for sex, according to research by Chicago University’s Wilhelm Hoffman.

These findings come as no surprise—decades of research have shown that our greatest need after food and shelter is for positive social connections with other people. We are profoundly social people for whom connection and a sense of belonging are crucial for health and happiness. (In fact, lack thereof is worse for you than smoking, high blood pressure, and obesity.) So, we err sometimes. We look for connection on social media at the cost of face-to-face opportunities for true intimacy.

The urge to check social media might be stronger than the urge for sex.

How to stop phubbing people

To prevent phubbing, awareness is the only solution. Know that what drives you and others is to connect and to belong. While you may not be able to control the behavior of others, you yourself have opportunities to model something different.

Research by Barbara Fredrickson, beautifully described in her book Love 2.0, suggests that intimacy happens in micro-moments: talking over breakfast, the exchange with the UPS guy, the smile of a child. The key is to be present and mindful. A revealing study showed that we are happiest when we are present, no matter what we are doing. Can we be present with the person in front of us right now, no matter who it is?

Studies by Paula Niedenthal reveal that the most essential and intimate form of connection is eye contact. Yet social media is primarily verbal. Research conducted by scientists like the GGSC’s Dacher Keltner and others have shown that posture and the most minute facial expressions (the tightening of our lips, the crow’s feet of smiling eyes, upturned eyebrows in sympathy or apology) communicate more than our words.

Most importantly, they are at the root of empathy—the ability to sense what another person is feeling—which is so critical to authentic human connection. Research shows that altruism and compassion also make us happier and healthier, and can even lengthen our lives. True connection thrives on presence, openness, observation, compassion, and, as BrenĂ© Brown has so beautifully shared in her TED talk and her bestselling book Daring Greatly, vulnerability. It takes courage to connect with another person authentically, yet it is also the key to fulfillment.

What to do if you are phubbed

What if you are phubbed? Patience and compassion are key here. Understand that the phubber is probably not doing it with malicious intent, but rather is following an impulse (sometimes irresistible) to connect. Just like you or I, their goal is not to exclude. To the contrary, they are looking for a feeling of inclusion. After all, a telling sociological study shows that loneliness is rising at an alarming rate in our society.

What’s more, age and gender play a role in people’s reactions to phubbing. According to studies, older participants and women advocate for more restricted phone use in most social situations. Men differ from women in that they viewed phone calls as more appropriate in virtually all environments including—and this is quite shocking—intimate settings. Similarly, in classrooms, male students find phubbing far less disturbing than their female counterparts.

Perhaps even worse than disconnecting from others, however, Internet addiction and phubbing disconnect us from ourselves. Plunged into a virtual world, we hunch over a screen, strain our eyes unnecessarily, and tune out completely from our own needs—for sleep, exercise, even food. A disturbing study indicates that for every minute we spend online for leisure, we’re not just compromising our relationships, we are also losing precious self-care time (e.g., sleep, household activities) and productivity.

So, the next time you’re with another human and you feel tempted to pull out your phone—stop. Put it away. Look them in the eyes, and listen to what they have to say. Do it for them, do it for yourself, do it to make the world a better place.

 

This article was adapted from Greater Good, the online magazine of UC Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, one of Mindful’s partners. View the original article.

 

Be Smarter than Your Phone

The Hidden Cost of Phone Addiction

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Friday 10 November 2017

Power of Prayer: From Longing to Belonging - Tara Brach


Power of Prayer: From Longing to Belonging ~

When we bring a full presence to prayer, it becomes a powerful pathway of homecoming. This talk explores how prayer heals the pain of separation, and offers practical guidance in what poet John O’Donohue calls “unearthing our ancient belonging.”

“What’s it like if you bow your head and whisper and call on something larger?”

from earlier that evening: Meditation: Relaxed Attentiveness

photo: pixabay.com

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A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit

Dr. Judson Brewer MD, PhD, is a thought leader in the “science of self-mastery,” and an associate professor of psychiatry and medicine at University of Massachusetts School of Medicine, where he is director of research at the Center for Mindfulness. In this TEDMED, he talks about using mindfulness to tame cravings of all kinds.

A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit

When I was first learning to meditate the instruction was to simply pay attention to my breath, and when my mind wandered, to bring it back. Sounded simple enough, yet I’d sit on these silent retreats sweating through t-shirts in the middle of winter. I take naps every chance I got because it was really hard work. Actually it was exhausting. The instruction was simple enough but I was missing something really important.

So why is it so hard to pay attention? Studies show that even when we’re really trying to pay attention to something—like maybe this talk—at some point, about half of us will drift off into a daydream or have this urge to check our Twitter feed. What’s going on here? It turns out that we’re fighting one of the most evolutionarily conserved learning processes currently known in science, one that’s conserved back to the most basic nervous systems known to man.

The Habit-Forming Brain

This reward based learning process is called positive and negative reinforcement and basically goes like this: We see some food that looks good, our brain says, “Calories! Survival!” We eat the food: We taste it, it tastes good. Especially with sugar, our bodies send the signal to our brain that says: “Remember what you’re eating and where you found it.” We lay down this context-dependent memory and learn to repeat the process next time: see food, eat food, feel good. Repeat.

Trigger, behavior, reward.

Simple right? Well after a while our creative brains say, “You know what? You can use this for more than just remembering where food is. Next time you feel bad, why don’t you try eating something good so you’ll feel better?” We thank our brains for the great idea, try this, and quickly learn that if we eat chocolate or ice cream when we’re mad or sad, we feel better. Same process, just a different trigger. Instead of this hunger signal coming from our stomach this emotional signal—feeling sad—triggers that urge to eat.

Each time we do this, we learn to repeat the process and it becomes a habit.

Curiosity Killed the Cravings

So back to my breath. What if instead of fighting our brains or trying to force ourselves to pay attention, we instead tapped into this natural reward based learning process—but added a twist. What if instead we just got really curious about what was happening in our momentary experience.

I’ll give you an example. In my lab we studied whether mindfulness training could help people quit smoking. Just like trying to force myself to pay attention to my breath, they could try to force themselves to quit smoking. And the majority of them had tried this before and failed. On average, six times. Now with mindfulness training we dropped the bit about forcing and instead focused on being curious. In fact we even told them to smoke. We even said go ahead and smoke just be really curious about what it’s like when you do.

And what did they notice? Here’s an example from one of our smokers: She said mindful smoking “Smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals. Yuck.”

Now she knew cognitively that smoking was bad for her. That’s why she joined our program. What she discovered just by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like shit.

Now she move from knowledge to wisdom. She moved from knowing in her head that smoking is bad for her too knowing it in her bones and the spell of smoking was broken. She started to become disenchanted with her behavior.

Now the prefrontal cortex, that youngest part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective, it understands on an intellectual level that we shouldn’t smoke and it tries its hardest to help us change our behavior, to help us stop smoking, to help us stop eating that second, that third, that fourth cookie—we call this cognitive control, we’re using cognition to control our behavior. Unfortunately this is also the first part of our brain that goes offline when we get stressed out which, isn’t that helpful.

Now we can all relate to this in our own experience. We’re much more likely to do things like yell at our spouse or kids when we’re stressed out or tired even though we know it’s not going to be helpful. We just can’t help ourselves. Now when the prefrontal cortex goes offline we fall back into our old habits, which is why this disenchantment is so important. Seeing what we get from our habits helps us understand them in a deeper level to know in our bones so we don’t have to force ourselves to hold back or restrain ourselves from behavior. We’re just less interested in doing it in the first place. And this is what mindfulness is all about: Seeing really clearly what we get when we get caught up in our behaviors, becoming disenchanted, on a visceral level; and from this disenchanted stance, naturally letting go.

When we get curious, we step out of our old, fear-based reactive habit patterns. We become this inner scientist where we’re eagerly awaiting that next data point.

This isn’t to say that, poof, magically we quit smoking but over time as we learn to see more and more clearly the results of our actions we let go of old habits and form new ones. The paradox here is that mindfulness is just about being really interested in getting close and personal with what’s actually happening in our bodies and minds from moment to moment. This willingness to turn toward our experience rather than trying to make unpleasant cravings go away as quickly as possible. And this willingness to turn toward her experience is supported by curiosity which is naturally rewarding. What does curiosity feel like? It feels good. And what happens when we get curious? We start to notice that cravings are simply made up of body sensations: there’s tightness, there’s tension, there’s restlessness, and these body sensations come and go.

These are bite-sized pieces of experiences that we can manage from moment to moment rather than getting clobbered by this huge, scary craving that we choke on. In other words, when we get curious, we step out of our old, fear-based reactive habit patterns and we step into being. We become this inner scientist where we’re eagerly awaiting that next data point.

This might sound too simplistic to affect behavior, but in one study we found that mindfulness training was twice as good as gold standard therapy at helping people quit smoking. So it actually works. And when we studied the brains of experienced meditators we found that parts of a neural network of self-referential processing called the default mode network were at play. Now one current hypothesis is that a region of this network called the posterior cingulate cortex is activated not necessarily by craving itself but when we get caught up in it, when we get sucked in and it takes us for a ride. In contrast, when we let go, step out of the process just by being curiously aware of what’s happening, the same brain region quiets down.

These are bite-sized pieces of experiences that we can manage from moment to moment rather than getting clobbered by this huge, scary craving that we choke on.

So if you don’t smoke or stress eat maybe the next time you feel this urge to check your email when you’re bored or you’re trying to distract yourself from work or maybe to compulsively respond to that text message when you’re driving, see if you can tap into this natural capacity. Just be curiously aware of what’s happening in your body and mind in that moment. It will just be another chance to perpetuate one of our endless and exhaustive habit loops or step out of it instead of “see text message, compulsively text back, feel a little bit better.” Notice the urge. Get curious. Feel the joy of letting go, and repeat.

 

Adapted from: A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit, Judson Brewer MD, Ph.D. at TEDMED, Palm Springs, CA

 

Beware the Habit-Forming Brain!

5 Ways to Kick Bad Habits

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