Wake up to life and sensory awareness… through the body

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With mindfulness we learn to be awake to life through our senses. The alternative to being awake is to be lost in rumination.

One of the great plays to come out of the Theatre of the Absurd is called Krapp’s Last Tape.  The protagonist spends all his time listening to the tapes he has made of himself, including the ones he has made of himself listening to himself.  This is a nice parody of the human tendency to ruminate endlessly. Ruminating while bored, ruminating while walking, while tooth-brushing, even sometimes while eating our favorite dessert.

The thing about ruminating is that it can feel so critically important while we are lost in it. There’s some gratification to daydream-ruminating while we’re walking a familiar route…. if we stopped we might feel the boredom of walking the same sidewalk for the 1000th time.  If we stopped ruminating we would lose the excitement coming from imagining whatever we are imagining.  There’s some anxiety reduction with worry-ruminating because we can create the belief that by keeping worries in mind we are reducing the risk of their actually happening. After all, as Mark Twain said,  ” I’ve lived through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

In the mindfulness-based therapies we call this tendency to ruminate ‘living on automatic pilot.’ We think of mindfulness as its opposite…. a kind of awareness in which we notice what is going on around us, and in us. Now, until we think about it, most of us would say we already are aware of what is going on.  We notice the Don’t Walk sign as we are walking, for example. Our minds are well trained to notice the essentials. We need to be exposed to the wonder of being aware of experience to really know what we are missing.

Want to try? Pick up a tasty piece of food, and eat it really slowly. Try taking a few breaths while you contemplate taking a bite, another few breaths while you chew it, and a final few after, while you just let yourself be aware of what that was like. Probably you will get the idea. If not, please meet with a trained psychotherapist, because great treasures await you when you discover how much more there is to life than what you are experiencing.

Our bodies

A lot of mindfulness happens in the body first. But we ruminate our way through a lot of life with awareness lost in the mind, living from the neck up, without much body awareness. There are many doors to mindfulness, but some get complicated, pretty quickly. For example, starting to learn mindfulness through the eyes or ears can quickly bring to mind stories and emotions that just return us to rumination. Using the eyes and the ears to learn mindfulness can be helpful, but only after some more basic skills have been learned.  The door that has proven to offer the largest first-time enrichment of experience is the body door…. using the body scan.

There’s a lot of evidence to support this.  Jon Kabat-Zinn’s Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program has been researched for 30 years, and the first building block of all the classes, over all the years, is the body scan.  The body scan is our first-level training in increasing body awareness, and mindfulness…. of taking us outside our heads and into our experience of life.  While MBSR is helpful in many ways, it was the work of Zindel Segal, Mark Williams and John Teasdale published in 2002 that brought these methods directly into the world of mental health, with the publication of their landmark book, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression. They built on the MBSR model and improved it so much that MBCT is now the model on which other mental health treatments are being built.  For our purposes, it is important to note that in MBCT the body scan remains the building block for learning mindfulness, for coming out of rumination or automatic pilot and into direct experience of life as it unfolds.

Body Scan for Psychotherapy Consumers

The body scan is particularly helpful for people who come to psychotherapy. Steven Hayes wrote a seminal article in which he showed that a great amount of mental health struggles come from pushing away experience, the opposite of mindfulness.  Thus mindfulness, the acceptance of experience, is increasingly used in mental health treatments. And the body scan is the door to beginning mindfulness.

Body Scan for Psychotherapists

We psychotherapists do a lot of listening. While listening we like to think over what we’re hearing, to plan a response, even if that is ‘no response.’

We psychotherapists also are human. We tend to listen with our minds. We analyze with our minds, we speak from thoughts that form in our minds. In the process, we often are unaware of our bodies; we might think our bodies are nothing more than a distraction to our listening and understanding the client. So, much of the therapy day is spent in this kind of listening through the mind.

Listening with the mind can get complicated. Even the mind of a highly trained psychotherapist is still the mind of a human being. In our minds we make associations and interpretations, certain thoughts evoke emotions, counter-transference can come to life.

Our minds seems to be pure listening machines, but our minds are continuously impacted by our bodies. If we have indigestion, that has some effect on our listening. If we need a bathroom break…. same thing. If we are worried about something going on in our own lives, that may be reflected in body tension, and that tension may effect the way we hear our clients.   Assuming we are not being conscious of our bodies.

When we psychotherapists do practice the body scan, and increase our ability to be aware of our own bodies, we can notice the kinds of things that come up in our bodies than can interfere with active, neutral listening. We can then adjust our listening to take stock of that. Then we can have a better ability to accurately hear our clients.

In sum, given that our bodies effect our listening, when we have our own body awareness we can filter out the inaccuracies that different body sensations can evoke.

Mindfulness is best learned from experience.

I urge everyone to learn this from experience, rather than reading this and dropping it. Try doing the body scan daily for a week or two. Then, practice tuning in to your body sensations from time to time, in therapy, out of therapy, during stressed moments, during pleasurable moments. Learn for yourself what it is like to know Your Body better.

There is a CD with a recorded body scan meditation in the back of the book The Mindful Way Through Depression. Or you can write me, and I’ll send you a text to follow.

And get back to me, let me know Your experience with this. What is it like to practice the body scan? What is it like for you to have body awareness while you are eating, or listening, or walking?

‘Not to Miss’ Articles on Mindfulness

Articles on Mindfulness

Read these for yourself, then pass them along to your friends. You’ll be amazed at the clarity of these explanations.

They are the best of journalism, crisp, clear, without a lot of assumptions about what the reader already knows.

FOUNDATION ARTICLES

Accepting Fears, Wall Street Journal, 1/2/11 – Melinda Beck writes about the use of mindfulness and acceptance in mental health and personal growth.

Mastering Your Own Mind, Psychology Today, 9/06 – A nice primer on why meditation and mindfulness matter. Opens with, “Distracted? Angry? Envious? There’s growing evidence that attention, emotion regulation –even love– are skills that can be trained through the practice of meditation. Perhps it’s time for you to become a high-performance user of your own brain.”

Lotus Therapy, New York Times, 5/27/08 – beautiful article on a variety of paths to mindfulness.

The Art of Now, Psychology Today, Nov-Dec, 2008 – starts with this bit of knowledge that often comes with mindfulness: you are not your thoughts.  Offers concrete guidelines on how to use this awareness to better your life.

A Simple Turning in Place, by Joseph Goldstein, Insight Journal, Winter 09 – Goldstein describes his initial (discouraging) attempts at meditating, and his eventual growth in this practice. Even masters have to start somewhere!

Yes I Suck: Self-Help Through Negative Thinking, Time Magazine, 7/9/09 – Many of us have at one time or another believed that it’s better to avoid negative thoughts. Martin Seligman has proposed that people should just think optimistically. But this bit of research refutes that, supporting a major premise of mindfulness, namely that running away from thoughts doesn’t work, that learning to be with them does work.   Comments on this research are also available here, and here.

Sit Every Day, Shambhala Sun, magazine website – graciously examines why it is so hard to sit (meditate) regularly, why it matters that we do, and how do be more effective at having a daily (almost) practice.

Brief Meditative Exercise Helps Cognition, Science Daily, 4/19/10 – “Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well.”

Mind the Grid, New York Times, 8/31/10 – One person’s experience with a meditation retreat.

Regimens: Meditation, for the Mind and the Heart, New York Times, 11/24/09 – cites research that meditation can be heart healthy.

We Don’t Surrender Until We Have To, New York Times, 10/2/09 – the story of a journalist and a quadriplegic. “I went home with nothing particularly resolved, but happier than I’d been in years.”

On Becoming a Person: The Good Life and the Fully Functioning Person, Carl Rogers (1953) – a prescient description of the value of being fully open to experience in order to be a well developed person.

Finding Daylight: Mindful Recovery from Depression, Zindel Segal in Psychotherapy Networker, Jan-Feb 08 – An explanation of mindfulness teaching for therapists. The first paragraph is a gem; read it several times.

How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors, New York Times, 10/15/09 – Doctors, like many of us, have to multi-task. When attention is all over, mistakes can happen.

In the Classroom, A New Focus on Quieting the Mind, New York Times, 6/16/07 – Children learn more when they are calm.

Can You Become a Creature of  New Habits? New York  Times, 5/4/08 – learning mindfulness meditation means learning a new habit. This explores some of  the factors that make change  difficult, and some that make it easier.

CURRENT ARTICLES

At End-Of-The-Line Prison, An Unlikely Escape, NPR, 2/8/11, by Debbie  Elliott – In a prison for the most hardened criminals,  mindfulness  meditation is taught, and – amazingly – prisoners are responding.

Hazy Recall as a Signal Foretelling Depression, New York Times, 5/9/11 by Alastair Gee – Describes research by MBCT co-creator Mark Williams. Over-general memory, a clinical name for hazy recall, looks like this. If you ask a person for a specific memory (something less than a day, say) about going out for dinner, and the person responds, “Dinners always bore me,” that may be an over-general memory.  The article is a bit heady, but makes an interesting connection between this and how mindfulness can help.

Go Easy on Yourself, a New Wave of Research Urges, New York Times, 2/28/11 by Tara Parker-Pope – discussion of the importance of compassion for the self. Compassion is increasingly part of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and other mindfulness-based trainings.

And a few books…

There are also several key books I recommend.

The Mindful Way Through Depression, Mark Williams et al – The definitive text on the content of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy. While it was developed for prevention of recurring depression, I have found the book very helpful for those with anxiety and negative thinking, as well.

Peace is Every Step, Thich Nhat Hanh – a short, easy read. Really lucid. Basic mindfulness in life presented by a great teacher.

And sources for dharma talks (teachings)

Dharma Seed and Audio Dharma Talks You can choose from many talks here, and listen to them on your computer, free of charge.

Rethinking Happiness – This Emotional Life on PBS

This is a groundbreaking exploration of happiness. hosted by Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness. He provides the latest wisdom on sources of happiness and  on finding happiness, based on common sense and research.

Daniel Gilbert brilliantly illlustrates two common threads: the importance of human connection, and the importance of how we approach things.

I teach mindfulness meditation for people with long struggles with depression. Many people I see aren’t seeking happiness so much as wishing to reduce the depression, or keep it from coming back. Yet the show sheds much light on this work, to, covering important research on the effects of  meditation on brain waves, research that is encouraged by the Dalai Lama.   How we focus our attention, and how we relate to our thoughts and feelings really matter.

Meditation and mindfulness are among the tools that help people get to happiness, along with good health ,exercise, and…. human connection.

Thank you Daniel Gilbert, the  people who inspired you, the people who funded you, and the many scientists and wise people who did the hard work of really looking deeply into happiness.

I offer a 4-week workshop teaching mindfulness for happiness. It begins November 2, 2011.  You can learn more by pressing here.

Mindful Parenting

 

(I wrote this is response to a question from a member of my meditation group about parenting.)
He had referenced a New York Times article ( http://www.nytimes. com/2009/ 09/15/health/ 15mind.html? _r=1&scp= 2&sq=parenting& st=cse) that suggested unconditional parenting was a better thing than parenting involving withdrawing and giving love according to the child’s behavior. While we might at first say that’s a slam dunk, because withdrawing love would harm any child, the article makes a case that even time-outs and using positive rewards verge on giving and withdrawing love. I recommend the article because it is very thoughtful.
Dear Friends,
This is a subject close to my heart. My children are all raised, pretty much in their 30′s. I can look back at many things I would have done differently in parenting them.  Important things. Yet, they have come out wonderfully. I am so proud of them. Two teachers and a social worker. All with close friends and important relationships. All living responsibly, caring about  the future of themselves, their friends, and the earth.  Actively engaging in good works… the kinds of good works that require immense personal sacrifice.
So, first, when I look at the research and its measures of ‘success’ it seems to measure none of the above. My children are normally neurotic, which is to say they’re not perfectly happy. How could they be? They are fully engaged in life, and in wanting the earth to be better cared for, for example, and it would take a boddhisatva to want that change and also not to feel frustration at the indifference often found in society.  Also, I know they love me and their mother, and also that they have criticisms of us. That seems to me healthy and normal.  Measuring success of parenting based on attitudes to the parents seems somewhat imperfect, yet that is how the parenting researched was evaluated.
So, second, I don ‘t believe there’s a perfect way to raise anyone. Conflict is normal.  Learning from experience, even mistakes, is normal. Even in a healthy sangha there is discussion, there are differing views. If not, there would be no need for planning meetings!  Or for our teacher to give us all those books to read!
Third, I believe that raising a child depends a lot on the child. When I started learning the craft of therapy I often blamed parents for faulty parenting. Only after some years of experience and wonderful supervision did I better understand that children are born different from one another, even siblings with so much shared heritage and genetics. Just look to your own siblings, or those of your friends. As children are different, so are their needs. To take an easy example, a child tending towards hyperactivity might need a firmer approach, with more clear boundaries, than another child. And  a child fully hyperactive, who perhaps starts fights, or pushes his or her younger sibling around, needs even firmer guidelines. That child might need a lot of positive reinforcement to learn, more than another child.  So, I tend to ask people with ‘universal’ sounding approaches involving human behavior to look deeply at different sorts of people, and attempt to understand how each different person might respond, and to include comments on applying their method to different sorts of people.
Finally, there is the issue that parents ourselves vary enormously. The research looked at mothers who themselves were raised with conditional love, weren’t too happy with it, then did the same thing with their children.  In learning theory this might be called over-determined, where something is so imprinted it is kept despite the problems.  I have led a number of parenting groups, and have found again and again that parents tend to parent as they were parented. Creating change on the surface isn’t too hard, but sticking to it is something else altogether. To have lasting change, parents tend to need to change how they relate to themselves and their pasts, something that can take a lot of sitting, learning, understanding.
Rasing my children, one of many things I learned from their mother the importance of being who you are. The opposite would be reading a parenting book and deciding to be someone else. Children are quite perceptive, and a parent whose natural inclination would be to use method A, but who slips into method B whenever Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired (HALT– is that familiar to anyone?) is in itself very upsetting to a child.  It is important that our children have a solid base of who we are to grow around.  Eric Erickson talks about the first basic task being to learn if the world is a safe place or not. It is definitely not safe if a parent is acting out a role inconsistently.
So……. the best parent, as Thich Nhat Hanh has written, needs to breathe deeply, be really present, listen deeply, speak after realizing deep understanding.  In other words, becoming a great parent is as much about developing the self (of the parent) as it is about using technique with a child.
I hope that this might be helpful.
donald

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Radical acceptance of the good, and the not so good

Tara Brach lays out a way to deal with painful feelings, and to live life more fully. Her book Radical Acceptance, Embracing Your Life with the Heart of A Buddha, lays out her thinking.

Tara Brach is a clinical psycholotist, meaning she practices psychotherapy. She’s also a student of Buddhism, including mindfulness meditation. She has a lot to contribute to mindful psychotherapy.

The idea here is to embrace all of life, the good, the bad, and the boring. Want to eliminate suffering in your life? Forget it. Want to only experience joy? Forget it.   The way of mindfulness is to be with all experience, not to chase it away, even if it is unpleasant.  It just takes too much energy to chase away experience.   Avoiding knowing experience is a little like living in delusion.

The book’s title, Radical Acceptance, comes from the idea that it’s radical to accept negative experience, radical because in this society we’re brought up to minimize the bad and maximize the good. It really is radical to say that when we’re experiencing something unpleasant, we should allow ourselves to ‘be’ fully in that experience.  This doesn’t mean going out looking for unpleasant experience; just being with it when it comes.  Why practice this radical acceptance?  Because it works.

The Buddha was raised in luxury, his father a King, yet he wasn’t happy. He wanted to find enlightenment, and like many Hindus of his day began by depriving himself of all comfort: nearly starving himself, living the life of a homeless person. That didn’t work either, he nearly died, not at all the better of having lived in suffering.  Living in luxury hadn’t worked; living in suffering hadn’t worked, either.   He struggled to make sense of life, finally resolving to sit under the Boddhi tree until he understood things more deeply.  He realized the idea of embracing whatever experience came to him, the pleasant, the unpleasant, and the neutral (boring).  Life always included elements of happiness and elements of sadness. Enlightment meant accepting all of experience,  even as a child does, without preference.

This is a rather large teaching moment in Buddhism, and also for Tara Brach. She sees how we lead so much of our lives trying to avoid pain and suffereing, seeking after comfort, to no avail. The difficulties just keep on coming.

The change she teaches involves accepting all of experience, as the Buddha did.

It plays out like this:  The prime dissatisfaction for many of us is the sense that we are unworthy. We aren’t enough, we don’t do enough, we don’t have enough.  We live in a trance of unworthiness. It’s a trance because the pain of KNOWING the unworthy feelings is rather deep. So we keep really busy, so there’s no time to sit and feel. We embark on self-improvement projects to try to be good enough. We avoid risks to avoid more pain. We withdraw from knowing our current experience.  We become self-critics. And like most self critics, we also become critical of others.  Doing all this activity just to live in the delusion that everything should be pleasant. And to avoid knowing what’s life is really like.

Being caught in the trance  means losing sight of the self who’s connected, whole, in the ‘fullness of being.’ Breaking the trance of unworthiness involves being in close touch with the self that’s fearful, wanting, feeling alone and separate.

Brach’s way out?  “When we learn to face and feel the fear and shame we habitually avoid, we begin to awaken from the trance.” (p. 57)

A principal way for the beginner to do this is with the sacred pause. It’s a way to stop running from experience. Brach lays out in clear detail how to learn the sacred pause, although for many it is better learned with the aid of a professional helper, as the feelings that come out can be strong.  The sacred pause is sort of like saying, “Here I am, (name your experience)…. let me feel it fully, let me be with it, regardless of how I feel about it.”

Having learned the pause, readers are encouraged to practice it often. The book introduces vipassana or mindfulness meditation to come into contact with experience, and metta or loving-kindness meditation to develop compassion for the deeper self that comes clearly into view.

People of all walks of life can gain from this book. Each chapter ends with the text of a guided meditation to practice and directly experience her teachings.

For professionals: In the process of describing Radical Acceptance Brach lays out an approach to mindful therapy that reveals itself only through the accumulation of examples she uses. But revealing it is, and worthy of study by the psychotherapist.  For the professional psychotherapist who wants to learn more, Dr. Brach has also taught workshops on Radical Acceptance for professionals. I studied this with her, and found it most helpful.  With some of my psychotherapy clients it becomes the focus of our work.

A helpful interview with Tara Brach occured in Elisha Goldstein’s blog at PsychCenral, 9/4/09.