Mindful Change: Living From the Inside Out
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.”
– Louisa May Alcott
A person came to me recently very frustrated as she was struggling with a difficult situation. She was in lot of emotional pain and she desperately wanted her situation to change; she wanted things to be different than they were right at that moment.
Her circumstances are not different from those many people are facing and hers is likely a situation that is familiar to many of you. If we are honest with ourselves, there are aspects of our lives that feel as if they are out of our control and at times we find ourselves challenged, or even overwhelmed, by this experience. You are not alone if you relate to this. Be assured, this is a common experience, part of the human condition, and often causes us quite a bit of suffering.
Mindfulness is a skillful way to address these feelings of pain and suffering that arise in your day-to-day attempts to survive. It is important to understand, however, that by cultivating mindfulness as a means of addressing the stress in your life, the circumstances of your life are not likely to go away; they may not even change. Instead, changes are happening internally, within yourself; the work you are doing is from the inside out. As you cultivate awareness in the here and now, you have the opportunity to transform the way you relate to the difficulties you encounter. By developing mindfulness, you enable yourself to see what you are experiencing more clearly and become more familiar with your habits of reacting to that. With greater clarity, you may have the possibility of responding more effectively to the challenges in your life rather than reacting automatically, falling into the same in-grown patterns that keep you stuck. Responding with greater awareness, over time, frees you from the maladaptive reactions that otherwise continue to keep you in a cycle of suffering: either reacting as a victim to the circumstances around your, or instead, being caught in denial.
You probably have experienced the futility of changing your circumstances from the outside, without addressing your internal reactions. Some examples are: quitting a job that isn’t working only to find the same problems creep up once you are in a new job, ending a problematic relationship only to find yourself experiencing the same dynamics in the next one, or finding yourself repeating the parenting styles of your parents even though you vowed you would never treat your own children in that manner. Unless you become familiar with your ingrained habitual reactions and gently work with them to explore new ways of responding out of choice, you are destined to stay stuck, a prey to your circumstances, and endure the pain that results.
However, there are options and you do have significant influence in your life, even if control is illusive. As you develop new ways of responding to the challenges in your life with awareness, not only can you minimize your own pain and suffering, but you can also become a role model for others in your life: children, spouses, co-workers and friends. As Gandhi said, “We must be the changes we wish to see in the world.”
When you are feeling the pain of dealing with challenges in life, before you react, see if you can take some time to direct your attention inward, toward your own experience. With continued practice, you may begin to be able to explore new options and respond, with choice, out of your growing awareness.
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
– Viktor E. Frankl
Mindfulness Can Change Your Brain: improvements in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking
Most people come to learn mindfulness meditation with the hopes of improving their well-being and quality of life. However, one of the challenges of undertaking a commitment to mindfulness practice is that the changes you experience may be gradual and subtle. The benefits are not always obvious to the practitioner as they develop over time. Therefore, it can be helpful to receive reinforcement for your on-going practice.
Here’s some reinforcement for you. Encouraging results were released in a study published in the January 30th issue of Psychiatry Research: Imaging. In this study, MRI images were obtained from 16 participants before and after taking an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program and compared with a control group of 17 individuals who did not take the program. The MRI images from those who practiced mindfulness every day found increases in gray matter concentration in the left hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. Increases in other areas of the brain were also identified in the MBSR participants as compared to the control group. “The results suggest that participation in MBSR is associated with changes in gray matter concentration in brain regions involved in learning and memory processes, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and perspective taking.”
Take these affirmative results to heart and have confidence that your mindfulness practice may improve your memory, emotional regulation, empathy and perspective in life. Let this be encouragement for you to continue to practice mindfulness, return to your practice if it has waned, or begin a practice if you have not tried it yet. And as more research is performed, I look forward to sharing more information on the positive effects of your mindfulness practice.
Practicing Mindfulness With Training Wheels On
“Meditation is training for life. If we want to be free, it is important to learn how to directly experience the unbroken chaos and impersonal confusion of our own minds without being disturbed by any of it. Only if we can bear it will we be able to take responsibility for it. If we cannot calmly endure our own minds, others will inevitably suffer the consequences. If we cannot handle our own thoughts and emotions while we are simply being still and paying attention, then how are we ever going to be able to make the appropriate choices when we are walking, talking, and engaging with others? Meditation is training for life.”
Andrew Cohen
Meditation is training for life. And, as one responder to this quote asserted, “Life is training for meditation.” Most of us undertake mindfulness practice with the intention of improving well being in our active day-to-day life. However, to do so, it takes significant effort grounded in a consistent practice, just sitting on a cushion or in a chair with ourselves.
Gil Fronsdal, the primary teacher for the Insight Meditation Center, likens our formal meditation to practicing mindfulness with training wheels on. He suggests that when we carve out this time to practice, we give ourselves the ability to meet experiences in this protected setting that are more challenging for us to address in active daily life. It is a safe place for us to explore complicated feelings, sensations, judgments and reactions that are an essential part of being human.
With training wheels on, in a mindfulness meditation practice session, you can try to reach beyond your current comfort zones and you have the freedom to make mistakes without dire consequences. Here, you have the opportunity to invite and explore your own experiences of pleasure and pain, avoidance and desire. In a meditation practice, you can take risks to see yourself more honestly, to allow yourself to be more vulnerable, and to become more familiar with those things that trigger you along with your habitual reactions to them, gaining insight as to whether they serve you or hinder you.
And then, there is a time when it is valuable to get off of the cushion and extend mindfulness into your active daily life (where the rubber hits the road, where you are likely to get triggered into reaction). Take off the training wheels! Try living your life more mindfully. You may fall down; you may get bumps or bruises. Nevertheless, this is where life becomes training for meditation. This is where we learn to balance better.
Most of us have no other choice than to be engaged in daily life. However, it can be tempting for some people to hide out in their meditation practice, safe from the impacts of daily life until they think they are ready to face it. Yet, as an unknown source pointed out, “If you wait until you are sure you will never take off the training wheels.” The point of our mindfulness practice, ultimately, is to maximize our well-being within the challenges of everyday life; to live fully. If you fall down, or lose balance, you can get up again and know that you can always come back to your cushion and put the training wheels back on.
In the end, with mindfulness practice, it is important to put the training wheels on regularly to cultivate, maintain and maximize equanimity in your day-to-day life. Accordingly, develop your skills and confidence by working with your training wheels on for some time every day!
“The most important part of education is proper training in the nursery.”
Plato
For the Best Results, Start Small
“It is better to take many small steps in the right direction than to make a great leap forward only to stumble backward.”
Chinese Proverb
It is customary at the beginning of a new year to make resolutions, to set new goals. I personally find this tradition problematic and believe that we frequently set ourselves up for disappointment. It is not so much the envisioning of intentions that is the trouble, but in how these objectives are commonly approached where most of us falter. Once a person sets a goal for him or herself, he or she often becomes stuck focusing on the end result rather than paying attention to the process of how to get there. To be more effective, rather than getting preoccupied with and striving to reach goals, my suggestion, instead, is to start by take small steps in the direction you’d like to go. And continue these small steps, one after the other. As Rita Baily said, “Start wherever you are and start small.”
What we are really trying to do when we make any change in our lives is to alter our habits. This is true when learning a new skill, such as mindfulness. For example, the intention when practicing mindfulness is to be present in each moment, to be aware of your experience as it is. However, becoming mindful is not simple journey, as those of you working on this ability know; developing this skill can be very challenging. The best way to cultivate mindfulness is to start small, practicing by noticing when your attention gets pulled by minor preoccupations (slight annoyances, trivial distractions or captivating stories), and bringing your awareness to your breath to return to the here and now. Doing this over and over, whenever you notice you are caught in these types of thoughts, you begin to train your mind to a new habit. With continued practice, eventually, when more challenging fixations arise (set in anger, deep-seated fear, intense rumination or acute pain), you may have the ability to return to the present or even maintain yourself in the here and now regardless of the nature of your experience. But it all starts with one small step and then continuing to take further steps; working with the small challenges, you are building up the skills to address the larger ones. “He who would learn to fly one day,” Nietzsche asserted, “must first learn to stand and walk and run and climb and dance.”
John Wooden described the process in this way: “When you improve a little each day, eventually big things occur. When you improve conditioning a little each day, eventually you have a big improvement in conditioning. Not tomorrow, not the next day, but eventually a big gain is made. Don’t look for the big, quick improvement. Seek the small improvement one day at a time. That’s the only way it happens – and when it happens, it lasts.“
The process of making changes in our lives takes patience and persistence. It requires us to continue taking one step at a time when we would prefer to see some substantial results, already! But don’t despair; if you happen to find you have fallen off of your intended path at any point, you can get back on by taking one small step in that direction.
Ask yourself, right now, what small step you can take to continue in the direction you want to head.
“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Taming the Monsters
“In facing these monsters lurking inside us with the courage of a warrior, we find that they are not as horrible as we had thought. As Rilke put it:
‘Perhaps the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything terrible is, in its deepest essence, something that feels helpless and needs our love.’
Our monsters are only masks worn by those parts of us that feel powerless or unlovable. They want, most of all, to be met and seen through.”
– John Welwood, Ph.D.
Journey of the Heart
In a previous post, I suggested that there is nowhere to run; nowhere to hide from the fear that resides deep within each of us. So how, then, can we work with challenging states of mind that arise which may sabotage us, many of these manifestations of the deeper fear that resides beneath them, such as wanting what we don’t have; anger and hatred; laziness and lethargy; restlessness and anxiety; and doubt?
Most peoples’ first reaction to challenging states of mind is to distract themselves. Keeping busy “doing” by working, shopping, watching TV, engaging on the computer, etc., is a common strategy, as is numbing oneself with substances or sleep. Anything that keeps a person from having to actually “be” with their self and the truth of what they are experiencing during these difficult states. Somehow we often believe if we don’t see and feel something, it doesn’t have an impact upon us. Unfortunately, that is far from the reality – the difficulty is usually still there taking its toll. As the title of a book by Karol Truman points out, “Feelings buried alive never die.”
In actuality, the most skillful way to respond to these challenging states is to use them wisely and take the opportunity to learn from them. Here are some suggestions for working with difficult states of mind when they arise1:
Observe to understand and develop a new releationship
Rather than suppressing or hiding from difficult states, see if you can observe them when they are present. See if you can notice, with a sense of curiosity and inquiry, how you are reacting to these difficult states and, perhaps, getting caught up in them them. Just this insight alone is valuable; by understanding better how you relate to a difficult state, from there, you may have the opportunity to develop a new relationship with it, one that serves you better. As a metaphor, Gurdjieff, a 20th Century spiritual teacher who based his work on self-awareness, was known to hold mindful work retreats for students. During one of these retreats a participant was ousted by the others because he was very difficult and generally disliked. After this participant left the site, Gurdjieff actually found this man and paid him to return to the retreat to give the other participants the ability to work with this challenge. Gurdjieff recognized that if he allowed the students to eliminate this thorny issue during their retreat, they would avoid addressing the difficulty and thus would miss the opportunity to learn to relate to it in a more effective way.
Promote the opposite state
If a difficult state of mind is overwhelming, try promoting an opposite state to combat the grip the difficult state has on you. If you can weaken its hold, you then may be able to attend to it more effectively. For example, it is told that the Buddha first taught loving-kindness to monks who had been dwelling and meditating in the forest. These monks were fearful of being attacked by spirits in the forest that didn’t want them there and came to the Buddha to seek his advice. In response, the Buddha taught the monks the practice of loving-kindness, cultivating intentions of kindness and well-being, as an antidote to their fear. The monks returned to the forest and as they chanted phrases of loving-kindness, such as, “may I be peaceful, may I be happy, may I be safe, may I be free of suffering,” they began to feel safe and see their environment as friendly. By practicing loving-kindness, the opposite of fear and anger, the monks were able to quell their fear of the spirits in the forest. Another example from day-to-day life: during those times when you feel lazy or lethargic, by having the will to energize yourself into some more active state (going for a walk, for example), you may be able to weaken the lethargy and, from there, take a closer look at it and your reaction to it.
Let go
With growing awareness, you may develop the ability to let go of the difficult states when you notice they are present, let them pass. However, the ability to let go requires that you first acknowledge the feelings honestly, without engaging in them, without being seduced into a reaction to them. If you, instead, evade acknowledging them honestly, you can slip into a state of denial or avoidance, which are common ways of reacting. Therefore, it is not effective to bypass step 1) of these suggestions; observing and understanding your reactions to these difficult states must first be mastered before you can truly let go of them.
None of these ways of working with challenging states of mind are easy; however, the payoff for the effort is worthwhile. Try these approaches for yourself and let me know how they work for you.
1. Seeking the Heart of Wisdom: The Path of Insight Meditation, Joseph Goldstein and Jack Kornfield, Shambhala (2001)
“The best way out of a difficulty is through it. “
– Robert Frost
Nowhere to Run; Nowhere to Hide
“Nowhere to run
Nowhere to hide
From you, baby
Just can’t get away
No matter how I try
I know you’re no good for me
But free of you I’ll never be”
– Martha and the Vandellas
Recently, I attended a retreat led by a Tibetan Buddhist nun named Pema Chödrön entitled, Smile at Fear. The primary questions she raised for the participants during the weekend were, “What is it that scares you?” and “How will you work with that?” As we approach Halloween, these seem like very appropriate questions to pose.
During the weekend retreat, Pema Chödrön continued by inviting participants to consider the possibility that everything we do, the way we interact, the way we react out of habits, etc., is all related to not wanting to feel our fear – it all arises from our attempts to run away from fear. As human beings, we are stuck in an unconscious reaction of trying to run and hide from our fear.
However, there is another option. Awareness practices, such as mindfulness, are a method of being with yourself completely and taking the time to see the underlying challenges, including fear, with kindness and honesty. As Pema Chödrön explained, this path takes bravery to see yourself completely and not run away. If you touch into the fear rather than turn away, you find tenderness, vulnerability. While, instead, running away from fear causes a hardness; we become out of touch with ourselves and the world. Touching into the fear softens and opens us. It results in greater appreciation, gratitude and compassion. So the question really becomes, “How can I open to life?”1
What if we use Halloween as a metaphor for meeting the fear that resides within us and make the attempt to open more to life? For example, when we open the door to greet trick or treaters on Halloween, we meet ghouls and goblins, devils, ghosts, vampires, witches and skeletons in addition to the super heroes, cartoon and Disney characters. Yet we open the door and we do greet them, whatever they may represent or whoever they may be underneath. For all of the masks and costumes they are wearing, covering up who they really are, they aren’t all that scary when we actually meet them at the door.
Perhaps we can learn to greet our own inner fears in this manner? What if we were to open our doors to meet our fears? We might actually meet the disappointment that is hiding under the anger, or the sense of unworthiness hiding under the lethargy, or the pain hiding beneath the restlessness. All of these, too, are masks or costumes covering up our genuine nature.
Pema Chödrön told a related story about a friend of hers who was having a series of bad dreams. Pema’s friend spoke about being disturbed by dreams in which she was being chased by monsters. Pema asked her friend, merely out of curiosity, “What did these monsters look like?” Her friend paused and responded that she had never turned to look at them. This question, however, sunk into her psyche and when she had another similar dream, this time she turned around to look at the monsters that were chasing her. What she found was that the monsters she was fleeing from weren’t really very scary; instead they more like two-dimensional cartoon characters. After turning to see the “monsters” in this manner, the power they seemed to have over her diminished.
Here is a suggestion to help you face the monsters that reside within you rather than unconsciously running or hiding from them:
1. Slow down, maybe even stop, when you notice that you are reacting out of fear.
2. Instead of keeping busy or falling asleep or distracting yourself so that you can avoid what frightens you, can you instead, take a look at it, very gently and truly see it, acknowledge its presence?
3. Taking the effort to meet your discomfort and fear in this way, over time, although it isn’t likely to go away, its power over you may diminish. Out of this effort, you may gradually find more effective ways to respond to these challenges.
As Rumi says in his poem, The Guest House, “This being human is a guest house, every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. He may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.”
“Someone’s knockin’ at the door
Somebody’s ringin’ the bell
Someone’s knockin’ at the door
Somebody’s ringin’ the bell
Do me a favor,
Open the door and let ‘em in”
– Paul McCartney
1. Smile at Fear: Finding a True Heart of Bravery, October 15, 16, and 17, 2010, a benefit for the Northern California Shambhala meditation centers and the Pema Chödrön Foundation
The Secret to Healthy Blood Pressure
“For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.”
– Sanskrit Proverb
Well, it’s not accurate to say that what I am sharing is a secret. In fact, most people are familiar with the expression, “Take a deep breath.” The problem is that very few of us have been taught how to take a deep breath in a way that really serves the purpose of bringing us back to balance.
Fortunately, if the skill of taking a deep breath to engage in its health benefits was a secret, it is less so now since it was recently broadcast on the national evening news. ABC World News aired a segment, Just Breathe? The Secret to Lowering Blood Pressure, in which a cardiologist, John Kennedy, described how using the breath can reduce blood pressure. Nothing is new about this information – for thousands of years, people have understood the power of the breath for health (see my blog entry: The Power of the Breath from August 2002) – this physician adds value by accompanying this claim with supporting data from his patients.
You can take advantage of this “secret” for yourself. First, you can learn how to breathe in a way that benefits your health. Secondly, you can understand how breathing this way works to balance your body. Finally, you can even measure the personal effects of this practice.
How to breathe in a way that benefits your health:
1. Emphasize your exhalation! Breathe in normally and as you exhale, make sure to push all of the breath out of your body completely, until there is nothing left to release. (If you can, exhale out of your mouth.)
2. Let the next breath enter your body naturally, there’s no need to force it. The breath will likely come in deeper and more fully than it had at first. (If you can, inhale through your nose.)
3. Repeat this at least three times in a row. If you feel light-headed at any point, allow your breath to normalize and that feeling will subside. As you become used to this way of breathing, you can add additional breaths to the sequence.
4. Practice this method of breathing deliberately three times each day, whether you need it or not. (This will help bring your body back to balance when you didn’t even notice that you were in stress arousal; In addition, it will help you ingrain a new habit so that this way of breathing will be more accessible to you when you need it.) Also try to practice this method of breathing when you feel stressed or triggered by a strong emotion.
How this method of breathing works to balance your body:
Survival is the strongest unconscious motivation for all beings on this planet, including us humans. To support your survival, your body is designed to protect you against any treats to your life. At the core of your survival mechanism are the most ancient parts of your brain, including the amygdala and hypothalamus. The role of the amygdala is to signal your body if a stimulus may indicate some kind of threat. If a threat is indicated your hypothalamus releases stress hormones (including adrenaline, cortisol, testosterone in men and prolactin in women) and the sympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system activates your “fight-or-flight” responses: adrenaline increases your heart rate to pump more blood as the arterial contraction gets blood your major muscles (a corresponding increase of blood pressure and pulse occurs); muscle contraction takes place in your major muscle groups, enabling you to flee or fight; and cortisol shuts down non-essential activity, including your reproductive system, digestion (metabolism is reduced), and your immune system (while adding an anti-inflammatory effect in case you are wounded). Cortisol also lowers serotonin levels in the brain. This is what is happening when you are in stress arousal and I’m sure you are very familiar with what this feels like.
However, when you emphasize the exhalation in your breath, as you force the breath out of your body, your diaphragm eventually contracts. As your diaphragm contracts, it stimulates the vagus nerve, which extends from your brain stem down to your stomach. The vagus nerve is involved with the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system. When stimulated in this way, the vagus nerve helps to bring your body back to homeostasis or balance: specifically, it activates the parasympathetic branch of your autonomic nervous system to reduce your heart rate and blood pressure. Your muscles relax and your hypothalamus inhibits the release of stress hormones. Therefore, when you breathe by emphasizing the exhalation, you can counter the effects of stress arousal. See if you can feel the difference when you breathe in this manner.
Measure the effects of this method of breathing:
The simplest way to measure the effects of emphasizing the exhalation in your breath, beyond subjective measures, is to track your blood pressure. Take a base-line measure of your blood pressure when you are at rest. Then practice this method of breathing every day, several times each day. Take your blood pressure, on a weekly basis at the same time, under the same conditions each week. Notice if there are any positive changes in your blood pressure over time.
“Smile, breathe and go slowly.”
– Thich Nhat Hanh
Set a Distance to Remain Mindful
“Direction is more important than speed. We are so busy looking at our speedometers that we forget the milestone.”
– Author Unknown
The wandering mind is so commonly dominant and pervasive that even setting an intention to be present often isn’t enough to bring your awareness into the moment, especially during practice in everyday life activities. It helps to have ways to encourage the mind to stay in the present moment; and, it helps to keep those methods bounded. Expecting your awareness to remain in the present moment without fail during daily activities just isn’t realistic, particularly given the design of our brains, which are tuned to be on high alert for any potential threats to our survival.
Kirk, a student in one of my mindfulness classes, shared the following helpful way of encouraging more mindful moments during motion-driven activities. Try it out and tell me how it works for you:
“As I was riding my bike the other day, attempting to be present, I noticed that my mind quickly wandered. It was an exquisite day, and I really wanted to be in the moment. My mind kept wandering, and it seemed hard to keep it from wandering. I then had an idea to set a certain distance, rather than time, to remain present. I tried it on a short, quiet, beautiful stretch of road, and found it to be much more effective to set a distance to be mindful, rather than just trying to be present constantly. [Being mindful] constantly may work eventually, but not yet for me.
“The same may be true for other motion driven activities that cover space: walking, hiking, driving, biking, swimming, things that you cover ground, set a goal in the distance, and keep focused on that distance, rather than the time.”
What methods work well for you to maintain your mindful awareness in the midst of everyday activities?
Using Your Senses to Calm an Agitated Mind
“When you start using senses you’ve neglected, your reward is to see the world with completely fresh eyes.”
– Barbara Sher
We have a handful of senses built into our human experience that provide us with information about our environment. A common aspect of each of our senses is that they are occurring right now; they are part of our direct experience, not an abstract concept directed to the past or future. Thus, they have the power, when we are aware of them, to redirect our attention to our direct experience when we become preoccupied or agitated by thoughts. And, they are always available to us.
One of my students, Maryanne, shared a method she uses to bring herself back to the present moment using her senses when she finds herself preoccupied in thoughts; it is a way she extends mindfulness into her everyday life to free herself from the impact of an agitated mind. Whenever she notices that her mind has wandered in the midst of an activity or when lying in bed, she uses her senses to bring her awareness back into the here and now. More specifically, she asks herself, “what are five things that I hear, what are five things that I see, and what are five things that I feel?” (The number five is arbitrary, of course.) Maryanne finds that she can use this practice at any time: when she is on a walk, when she first wakes up in the morning, or when she is trying to fall asleep and worrisome thoughts make sleep seem impossible. It has been extremely helpful for Maryanne, and she hopes that by sharing it, it will be helpful for others, too.
As an example, Maryanne describes how she uses this mindfulness practice when she notices that her mind has wandered while she is walking her dog:
- “First, what are five things that I can hear? When I am walking my dog, I almost always hear her feet clicking on the pavement, the sound of traffic, and birds singing. One thing I can always hear is my breath!”
- “Second, what are five things I can feel on my body? The leash in my hand, the breeze on my cheeks, my feet in my shoes, and always, again, my breath going in and out.”
- “Third, what five things can I see? Sometimes I make it ‘what five things can I see that are yellow,’ maybe ‘five types of leaf shapes,’ ‘five different flowers’, ‘how many colors blue or gray in the sky?’ And if it’s really cold, there it is again, my breath!
Maryanne notices that the breath is one of the common experiences in her awareness, no matter which of the senses she is attending to.
“What I found,” Maryanne explains, was that I was often walking my dog and paying no attention to my surroundings. Meanwhile, my head was spinning with worry and anxiety.” She continues, “Now, I take a deep breath, listen, look and feel. Sometimes my mind wanders, but when it does, I bring it back to what is happening right now, right here. I have found it very helpful in reducing worry and to be more mindful in anything I do.”
I’m sharing this practice with you in the hopes that it will be useful as you attempt to bring mindfulness into your everyday life. Try it out. And, if you have a practice that helps you be mindful and reduce stress during your daily life, please pass it on to me so that I share it with others.
“ Each day I live in a glass room unless I break it with the thrusting of my senses and pass through the splintered walls to the great landscape.”
– Mervyn Peake
Recognizing & Reducing Stress “Creep”
“For many men that stumble at the threshod are well foretold that the danger lurks within.”
– William Shakespeare
In engineering, creep is the tendency of a solid material to slowly move or deform permanently under the influence of stresses. It occurs as a result of long term exposure to levels of stress that are below the yield strength of the material.1 The yield strength of a material is defined as the stress at which a material begins to deform non-reversibly. It generally represents an upper limit to the load that can be applied. Prior to the yield point the material will deform elastically and will return to its original shape when the applied stress is removed.2
As human beings, we experience a similar phenomenon. Often stress in our lives is not acute; rather, it is a slow accumulation of stress without release. When we don’t recognizing this accumulation of stress, eventually it may build up to a breaking point where the consequences of the stress are more severe for us. It is possible, however, to dissipate the stress that has accumulated, if you recognize its presence, and, in this way, minimize the emotional and physical wear and tear that you ultimately experience. Awareness is the key to this process. Recognizing that stress has been accumulating requires that you periodically check in with your body and mind to notice your state. If you can identify tension in your body, or an uneasy mind, then you have the opportunity to address it before it reaches a threshold.
Bryan’s story reflects this process. He first started becoming aware of residual tension in his body when he would lie down to being his yoga practice or sit down to start mediating. Even though he believed he was relaxing in a comfortable position, Bryan noticed that his shoulders, in particular, were tense. When he paid close attention, he could feel that his shoulders were creeping up approximately two inches toward his ears. Once he noticed this tension, he could let it go.
After this experience, Bryan started to consciously check in with his body periodically throughout the day. When he checked in, he, again, discovered tension in his shoulders that he was not aware of. Bringing his attention to his shoulders, Bryan found that he could drop them down about two inches as he released the tension in that region of his body.
Moreover, Bryan discovered that his body was reflecting the state of his mind. He noticed that when his shoulders were holding tension, his thoughts were also agitated. Accordingly, Bryan found he could use his body as a measure of his actual stress level, like a thermometer. When he found tension in his body, he recognized that he was stressed. And by releasing the physical tension in his body, he realized that he could positively impact his mental and emotional state.
You, too, can reduce the accumulation of stress in your body and mind. Here are a few ways you can release some stress when you take the time to check in with yourself:
- Take several deep breaths (see The Power of the Breath in my blog postings)
- Do some mindful shoulder rolls and/or neck rolls to release the stress in your shoulders and neck.
- Remove yourself from the stressor, or environment, and go for a walk.
- Engage in some postures to stretch out your body or do a balance posture.
The key is to find triggers or methods of checking in with your experience even when you don’t know that you are stressed, rather than waiting until you hit a point of breakdown!
“Men who know themselves are no longer fools. They stand on the threshold of the door of Wisdom.”
– Henry Ellis
References:
1 Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creep_(deformation)
2 Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yield_strength
