Why Mindfulness?

Most people come to mindfulness because the stress in their lives has become unacceptable. They are looking for relief. Mindfulness is a good solution for many people. It has the same success rate as drugs and psychoanalysis, without the negative aspects of drugs.

Because we are all individuals and respond to different things non of these methods will work for everyone. It's up to us to explore different things and be open to what works for us and what doesn't.

What's the Purpose of Meditation?

Why meditate?

One reason is to create the all day, everyday habit of remembering to notice when your mind wonders away from the present moment. So in meditation, when your mind moves off the breath or whatever sense experience you are focused on, and you become aware of it, you bring your mind back to your focal point and.... Bam! you have just strengthened your mind!!!

 So the next time you hear a song bird singing its’ song and your mind wonders to what you had just read about song birds, you have a better chance of catching yourself and bringing your attention back to the pleasant experience of the song bird’s song.

It’s very similar to lifting weights. One rep of lifting a weight and you have strengthened your muscle a little, one time noticing your mind wondering and bring it back, you have strengthened your mind. WOW!!! What a deal!!!

What is Stress?

Stress is created when there is some stimulus that is perceived as being potentially harmful to ourselves. This stimulus could be something coming to our awareness through our senses at the moment or it could be something that is happening in our lives that we are concerned with and are thinking about. This is a very important thing to know. Obviously anything in our environment that would be harmful to us we need to ramp up to meet the challenge. However, it is not so obvious that thinking about worrisome things can also create stress. This is were where we get into trouble with stress in our everyday lives.

Lets take a look at how the brain works in regard to stress. When we through our senses become aware of danger to ourselves or if we are thinks about things we feel to be dangerous to us. At that point the brain kicks in using hormones that it puts into the blood that do two things. First it shuts down all things in the body that will not contribute to our body physically reacting to things in the best and strongest way. On the other hand using hormones put into the blood amps up every part of our body to be sure it can function at it's highest ability. This has been called the fight or flight response. Being readied for fight or flight is great if there is a danger in the moment that we need to physically deal with. What is not so great when we are thinking of something that we can not deal with at the moment but continually are ruminating on the potential threat to us. The brain does not differentiate between something that is a problem that is in need of immediate action and a problem that might need a response in the future that you are ruminating about. If the stress reaction persists without using all the hormones that have been injected into our bloodstream. Over time that can cause damage to our bodies and certainly does not feel good to be stressed out. This is probably you are reading this blog. Here's how you get out of the fight or flight mode. When your senses focus attention on what's going on in the moment and the information gleaned from that is there is no danger here, you brain switches back to a normal mode of functioning and bring the body back to where it needs to be on a regular basis.

What is Mindfulness?

So what is mindfulness? Mindfulness on one hand is very simple and on the other hand rather complex. It is a non verbal event which it makes hard to pin down verbally. I will give you some definitions by some individuals that have great understanding of what mindfulness is. But first I want to briefly mention how mindfulness helps to relieve stress.

Mindfulness is learning to pay attention to our senses and using our senses more often in a nonjudgmental way. As we get better and better at stepping back and taking a look at what is coming through our senses we can more quickly let our brain know that it's time to get back to normal functioning.

Can we define Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a practice that tends to calm down your mind.

Again Mindfulness is hard to put precisely into words but here are some definitions of Mindfulness that might help you get an idea of what this is all about:

Jon Kabat-Zinn

“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.”

Mindful.org

“Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.”

White Wind Zen Community

“Mindfulness is wordless. Mindfulness is meeting the moment as it is, moment after moment after moment, wordlessly attending to our experiencing as it actually is. It is opening to not just the fragments of our lives that we like or dislike or view as important, but the whole of our experiencing.” 

Mindful Awareness Research Center at the University of California at Los Angeles

“Mindful Awareness is the moment-by-moment process of actively and openly observing one’s physical, mental and emotional experiences.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

“Mindfulness shows us what is happening in our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and in the world. Through mindfulness, we avoid harming ourselves and others.” 

Sharon Salzberg

“Mindfulness isn’t just about knowing that you’re hearing something, seeing something, or even observing that you’re having a particular feeling. It’s about doing so in a certain way – with balance and equanimity, and without judgment. Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention in a way that creates space for insight.” 

Sylvia Boorstein

“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” 

Why Mindfulness?

The brain is just like a muscle. If you exersise it it will get stronger. If you repeat things you will create habits. Mindfulness makes you brain stronger and creates the habit of experiencing the moment. This will not make things that are stressing you out go away but it will change the way your body reacts to them is you choose to face your stressors and move you attention to the things your senses are telling you about this moment. That's what tells you brain I'm not in immediate danger, all is well. Which in turn turns off your flight or fight mode. It should be noted that if you choose to go right back to thinking about things that are bothering you, you will be right back were you started in the flight or fight mode. That's part of being the warrior.

Stress is not in it's self a bad thing unless it goes on too long. We need a little push sometimes to dol the work to solve problems, but as we have said, there is a point were you just start thinking the same things over and over with no new ideas of solutions coming. That's when we need to put it away and let our uncounsious mind work out some new solutions.

Doing Mindfulness

There are three ways to practice mindfulness. One is formal practice - Sitting for a time. Everyday mindfulness -Where you try to bring mindfulness in your everyday life. This can have great benifits to your life. And the last is going to a retreat for an extended length of time. We will be focusing on the first two practices.

It should be noted that not all of the practices work for everyone or every situation. You should approach these practices with that in mind and be open to what works moment by moment.

Sitting Meditation

The Breath -

This is one of the mainstays of meditation techniques. We always have the breath with us. It happens whether we think about it or not, which is lucky for us, if we had to think about it we all would be dead. In any case this is NOT just thinking about breathing but a FEELING thing. You need to experience the feelings of breathing whether it be in the belly, at the nose, or where ever the breath feels the strongest to you. Then the drill is to keep you focus of attention on how the breath feels as long and you can. When you notice a thought or something disturbs your concentration or you find you have been off on a thought for awhile and didn't notice, all you need to do is simply give recognition to what ever distracted you and direct you focus of attention back to the breath. Can't be easier than that. However this might not be your cup of tea. The breath is not my favorite meditation focus. But that's ok. Things change and there may be times when you welcome the breath meditation. That's part of living your best life, being aware and open to things in the present moment without a lot of judgment.

To Begin

Sit on a cusion or streight back chair with a sense of dignity with your head, neck, and back erect but not ridgid. Relax you shoulders and place you hands in your lap or on your knees. Close your eyes if it feels okay to you or pick a place on the floor in front of you or a wall and unfocus your eyes.

When you feel comfortable take a three deep breaths being consious of the feeling of that experience. As you breath become aware of what feelings are the strongest for you. That may be in the nostrals where the air is passing through or the feelings of your stomach moving in and out or anywhere else that the breadth feels strongest to you.

Follow the feeling of the breadth moment by momnet going in and going out. When you notice that your attention has wondered away from the breadth, without judging yourself, gently bring your attention back to the moment by moment feeling of the breadth. If this occurs a thousand time you bring your attention back a thousand times. This is the practice of mindfulness. Observing your senses, noticing when your mind has wondered and without judgement bring you attention back to your senses.

This may seem easy until you realize just how active your mind is and how easy it is to wonder off of the present moment consciousness. But this is just like lifting weights in the gym. You lift the weights over and over building up you musles over time. The process of paying attention to when your mind wanders and bring it back to the experience of your senses in this moment is like one retitition of lifting a weight. Your brian becomes stronger each time you do this simple act, building the habit of being in the moment and experiencing the moment through your senses.

Take a few minutes and try out this out.

Below is a link to a guided meditation using the breath.

The Body Scan

This is generally done lying on your back on the floor. You can do this on a bed as well but you do have to watch out that you don't doze off. In this meditiation you focus on the toes of your left foot and feel what there is to feel without judgment. The move to the top of your foot, then to the bottom of your foot, and continue up the body until you have visited every part of your body. You can do this any way you like grouping larger areas or dividing up areas into however many parts you are comfortable with or have time for. Here is a Body Scan Meditation on the web you might like to try:

Eating a Raisin

Mindfulness eating can be applied to anything we eat, any time. You can find a walkthought on how to go about the eating of a raisin mindfully.

Walking Meditation

There are many ways of doing walking meditations. Some are very focused and repetitive and others are more free. The thing that unites them is that you are very focused on the movements and feelings of your body as you walk. If you would like to know more and hear a audio you can click on the link below:

Empathy Meditation

• Empathizing with something in your visual field or with someone can be a powerful way to help us to be more grounded. Empathy is "To Feel the way it feels to feel that way".

• Check out these Empathy exersises.

Meditation

There are many places online that you can find free guided meditations. If the breadth is not a comfortable thing to focus on or if you just want to explore the other ways of meditating click on this link.