Posts tagged ‘Mindfulness’
Breaking the Stress Habit
“Harmful habits can be broken. You can break a bad habit of thought, just as you can break a bad habit of action. And you can develop new habits that are more helpful and healthful for you. ”
— Dr. Aruthur Freeman and Rose Dewolf
Without awareness, it is all too easy to fall into habits that heighten your stress arousal and ultimately exhaust your physical, emotional and mental resources. Do not despair, there is an alternative, and it is never too late to start; however, there is no time like the present! By recognizing the signs that you are over extended or stuck on the proverbial gerbil wheel – mindlessly running without an end in sight – you can apply these six suggestions to reclaim your well-being:
- Turn off your electronic devices when they are not required. Being available 24×7 is an unrealistic expectation and is sure to drain your internal resources. Just because you have the technology doesn’t mean that you need to be using it indiscriminately; otherwise, you may find yourself at the end of an electronic leash. Consciously choose times when you are available to others and times when you are not.
- Carve out 10-30 minutes each day to do nothing but sit in the present moment. Bring your awareness to your breath or another aspect of your moment-to-moment experience (sound, sensation, etc.) provides you with the opportunity to let your mind settle. Doing so allows you to see your moment-to-moment life more clearly so that you can make better choices for yourself rather than getting caught in reactive patterns.
- Say “No” to engagements or commitments you do not really choose to participate in or when you just don’t have the energy to do so. Make sure to reserve energy to take care of yourself. Selectively saying “No” is not selfish; instead, by preventing yourself from becoming depleted you may have the resources to be useful when you do engage.
- Connect with nature on occasion. Being in natural settings can provide a sense of renewal that enables you to reset yourself back into a balanced state.
- Pet an animal or play with a young child. Petting an animal has been shown to decrease blood pressure. In addition, domesticated animals provide unconditional acceptance that is rare to experience from other people. Similarly, engaging with young children can be very freeing since they live in the present moment and may help to bring you there, too.
- When you find yourself in states of heightened stress, anxiety, or anger, stop for a moment to take several deep breaths. The easiest way to do this is to exhale completely. Once all of the breath has exited your body, allow the next inhalation to enter naturally, from your abdomen. Repeat this three times in a row. Taking a few deep breaths will bring your mind and body out of stress arousal, back towards a balanced state.
“Cultivate only the habits that you are willing should master you”
— Elbert Hubbard
Going Home
“The ache for home lives in all of us, the safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.”
— Maya Angelou
A common saying states that “you can never go home again.” The truth of this statement depends, however, on your perspective of where home resides.
In this journey that we call life, early stages of development tend to be outwardly focused: finding one’s place in society, cultivating a career, creating a family, and perhaps acquiring material belongings. The trials and tribulations of this outward path provide for experience that is essential to one’s growth. From this viewpoint, home is considered to be an external place and one tends to seek outside oneself for comfort and answers. And as a person grows and changes, one can never go home again as the same person one used to be; therefore, one can never go home again.
It is not uncommon at some point in life for one’s path to take a turn inward, often when one’s suffering becomes great enough to motivate this reversal: one is finally willing to stop looking outward and to take the courage to look inward. “No longer does ‘being at home’ have to depend on an external requirement. You can live from the inside out – rather than the outside in.”1 This is the recognition that we can tap into the wisdom that is part of us and no longer need to seek outside ourselves for comfort or answers; instead, to be always at home. As Sharon Salzberg suggests:
“Sometimes we take quite a journey – physically or mentally or emotionally – when the very love and happiness we want so much can be found by just sitting down. We spend our lives searching for something we think we don’t have, something that will make us happy. But the key to our deepest happiness lies in changing our vision of where to seek it. As the great Japanese poet and Zen master Hakuin said, ‘Not knowing how near the Truth is, people seek it far away. What a pity! They are like one who, in the midst of water, cries out in thirst so imploringly.’ “2
Just as in the game of baseball, perhaps coming home is one’s true objective throughout life’s journey.
Here is breathing exercise offered by Thich Nhat Hanh to assist you in coming home:
“When you notice your mind wandering, often the judging mind becomes activated – subtly, or not so subtly, reprimanding you for not being in the present. Instead, when you notice your mind has wandered, you can welcome it home to your breath. Welcome home, I missed you! Your breath can serve as your home base. It is always there, no mater where you go. If you are at home with your own breath, you can be at home wherever you go.
Breathing in, arriving (right here, in the present moment)
Breathing out, being at home (wherever you are)
Your breath can provide you with the familiarity, the security that represents home.”1
“Go where he will, the wise man is at home.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
http://www.shambhalasun.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=1979
2. LovingKindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness by Sharon Salzberg
Vacation
1: a respite or a time of respite from something : intermission
2: a scheduled period during which activity (as of a court or school) is suspended
3: a period spent away from home or business in travel or recreation <had a restful vacation at the beach>
— Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The kids are out of school. The weather is warm. It is summertime and a common season of the year during which to take a vacation. All too often, however, the vacation that ensues has the same quality of busyness and demands that people are intending to escape. People often joke that upon their return, they really need a vacation to recover from their “vacation.”
Instead of choosing travel or highly active recreation for your vacation, in a manner that continues the busyness reflected in your day-to-day life, consider truly taking some time off. If your life is filled with a demanding schedule, the most effective vacation may be one in which activity is suspended for a period of time. Taking time for reflection, rest, and relaxation may be called for. Rather than adding stimulation to an overextended lifestyle, this kind of “down-time” can be rejuvenating and nourishing for your body and mind. In addition, you don’t have to wait until you’ve accrued a week or more of vacation to take this kind of “down-time” for yourself – even a quiet three day weekend from time-to-time spent in the presence of nature can be a breath of fresh air as a break from the non-stop activity of everyday life.
Henry David Thoreau (from Walden, Chapter 4) can serve as a role model for recharging your batteries with a vacation of suspended activity:
“I did not read books the first summer; I hoed beans. Nay, I often did better than this. There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a reverie, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness, while the birds sing around or flitted noiseless through the house, until by the sun falling in at my west window, or the noise of some traveller’s wagon on the distant highway, I was reminded of the lapse of time. I grew in those seasons like corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals mean by contemplation and the forsaking of works. For the most part, I minded not how the hours went. The day advanced as if to light some work of mine; it was morning, and lo, now it is evening, and nothing memorable is accomplished. Instead of singing like the birds, I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune. As the sparrow had its trill, sitting on the hickory before my door, so had I my chuckle or suppressed warble which he might hear out of my nest. My days were not days of the week, bearing the stamp of any heathen deity, nor were they minced into hours and fretted by the ticking of a clock; for I lived like the Puri Indians, of whom it is said that “for yesterday, today, and tomorrow they have only one word, and they express the variety of meaning by pointing backward for yesterday forward for tomorrow, and overhead for the passing day.” This was sheer idleness to my fellow-townsmen, no doubt; but if the birds and flowers had tried me by their standard, I should not have been found wanting. A man must find his occasions in himself, it is true. The natural day is very calm, and will hardly reprove his indolence.”
Seeing More Clearly
“If you let cloudy water settle, it will become clear. If you let your upset mind settle, your course will also become clear.”
— From Buddha’s Little Instruction Book
(Kornfield: Bantum Books, 1994)
The word “Mindfulness” comes from the Pali word “Vipassana,” which, if translated directly into English, means “to see clearly.” Accordingly, the practice of Mindfulness consists of cultivating the ability to see our experience more clearly. As we develop Mindfulness, we become aware of our patterns of reaction, which are otherwise unconscious or automatic. Instead of getting caught in these automatic patterns of reacting, from this place of clear seeing, we can make choices that are more effective – that serve us better. By reducing our tendency to get caught in the automatic reactions of pushing away what we don’t want or holding onto what we do want (in other words: wanting things to be different), and instead seeing what is true and responding to that, we can minimize the stress and maximize the well-being in our lives. This is the possibility that developing greater awareness provides us.
Applying an analogy may help to understand this dynamic better. Imagine that your mind is like a pond full of water. If you stir up the water in a pond, it becomes muddy, cloudy and opaque; likewise, your constantly agitated mind becomes busy and murky. However, if you stop stirring up the water in the pond and let it sit idle, the sediment will sink to the bottom, leaving the water clear. Through this clear water, you can begin to see what is actually in the pond: rocks, fish, plants, etc. In the same way, if you sit for a period without agitating your mind, your thoughts will settle down, allowing you to see more clearly what your experience truly is. You will have the opportunity to notice what is underneath all of the busyness of your life so that you can respond to it more effectively.
In order to make positive changes in your life towards improved well-being, you first need to recognize what is keeping you stuck where you are; then you can make new, constructive choices. Taking time each day to practice Mindfulness, cultivating awareness of the present moment, is a process that can take you in this direction. At risk of quoting Dr. Phil, “You can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.”
Turn Into The Skid
“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’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be cleaning 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.”
— Rumi
Many of you who learned to drive in winter conditions will be familiar with the expression “turn into the skid.” More specifically, the instructions for recovering from an oversteer skid with the rear of the car sliding out from behind you is to steer into the slide. By turning into the skid, a driver is able to maintain control of the direction of their vehicle when the rear of the car begins to fishtail. The reason this technique needs to be explicitly taught to drivers is that it does not come naturally. Our intuitive or automatic survival reaction is to turn away from the direction of the skid. That is why this new pattern of response needs to be learned and conditioned so that it becomes the new response when a skid occurs while driving in snow or on ice.
These same instructions are helpful for working with our inner experience. Although our natural reaction may be to push away what we don’t want to see or address, the most effective way to respond to what ever our experience may be is to allow ourselves to become aware of it and move in towards it, to take a closer look at its nature. Only this way can we respond effectively to our experience rather than get caught in automatic reactions that often do not serve us over time. Coming back to the advice for driving in winter conditions, the experts say when you’re in a slide, look in the direction you want to go rather than the direction you are headed: look toward the solution, don’t look toward the problem.
Acknowledging Your Experience
“I cannot be awake for nothing looks to me as it did before, Or else I am awake for the first time, and all before has been a mean sleep.”
— Walt Whitman
Acknowledging your experience from moment to moment is one of the most successful ways to reduce your stress while also gaining insight in your life.
One aspect of acknowledging your experience is to become aware of its feeling state. The feeling state of an experience can most simply be described as one of the following three: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral (neither pleasant nor unpleasant).
Why is this important to your state of stress? When you have an experience that you interpret as pleasant, your unconscious tendency is to want it to persist. Whereas when you have an experience that you interpret to be unpleasant, your unconscious tendency is to want it to go away. If you interpret your experience as neutral, you may ignore it.
When you unconsciously attempt to hold onto the things you interpret as pleasant or push away those things you interpret as unpleasant, you are creating a subtle or not so subtle suffering in your life – only adding to your stress. Unknowingly, you fall into the ineffective trap of “wanting things to be different than they are.” This is because pleasant experiences are ephemeral; they are bound to change, no matter how much you try to make them persist. Likewise, unpleasant things happen to be part of your existence, no matter how much you try to deny their presence. They too will tend to shift or change if you allow them to do so.
The best strategy for reducing stress is to accept whatever experience you have without trying to hold onto it or trying to push it away – simply acknowledging what is present, as it is, in each moment. By noticing the feeling state of each experience, you can acknowledge the experience without having to react to it; you can notice whether it is pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral without holding onto what is pleasant or pushing away what is unpleasant. By objectively observing the feeling state of your experiences, you have the opportunity to gain insight into their existence and their impermanent nature.
To put this into practice in your life, each time you become aware of an experience you are having, see if you can notice the feeling state. You can even silently say to yourself one of the three feeling states that most reflects the quality of your experience: pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral. Once you are aware of the experience and its associated feeling state, you can consciously make a choice about how you can respond most effectively, if necessary, to that experience.
Independence Day
Unconditional
Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I gain the embrace of the universe;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.
Each condition I flee from pursues me,
Each condition I welcome transforms me.
— Jennifer Paine Welwood
In the United States, Independence Day commemorates the day the Declaration of Independence was first adopted by the Continental Congress – declaring independence of the United States from the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1776. This was the day our democracy was born. This legacy of freedom has had a major impact on the manner in which citizens of this country live our lives, our values, and our responsibilities.
In spite of the external independence that a democracy provides us, most of us are not truly liberated. Instead, we have become imprisoned by patterns of unconscious reactions that have become habituated and, although at some point earlier in our lives they worked to help us survive, they are no longer serving us well.
To put these unconscious habituated patterns in context, first it is important to acknowledge that there is inevitable pain (an affliction) that comes with being alive. It is not possible to be born, to live, and to die without experiencing a variety of pain.
Additionally, and even more impactful, there is often an enormous amount of optional suffering that accompanies the core pain – it is related to our experience of the pain itself. This option suffering arises when we react to the pain either with aversion (pushing away what we don’t want) or attachment (holding on to what we want to maintain). We are frequently unaware of these reactions of aversion and attachment that are the source of our suffering; they are part of the automatic patterns we’ve internalized. Although we cannot avoid the affliction of pain that arises in life, we do have the ability to free ourselves from the optional suffering that results from our reactions to this pain.
The key to freedom from optional suffering is to develop greater awareness of our automatic patterns of reaction. In seeing these reactions with our own eyes, we develop the skill to respond with choice rather than to be stuck, reacting out of habit. Ultimately, we have the capability of relating differently to the pain in our lives – the potential to meet it directly, without adding optional suffering – letting go of the habitual reactions that have kept us trapped. Freeing ourselves from this optional suffering, to whatever extent we can, we can approach true independence.
“Freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.”
— Jean-Paul Sartre
Secure Your Oxygen Mask Before Assisting Others
“Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin as self- neglect.”
— William Shakespeare
As one of your flight attendants on this journey of life, I am reminding you that in case of a change of cabin pressure, the oxygen masks will drop down from the compartment above your head. If this should happen, secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others.
No matter how many times you may have heard this advice you may not have applied it to your day-to-day life, where it is very relevant. In our 21st-century life-style, there are so many demands upon our time and energy: family responsibilities (spouses, children, pets, parents, siblings, grandchildren), work requirements, household tasks, financial activities, friendship commitments, to mention a few. Amidst the attempts to meet these ongoing demands, it is not uncommon for us to become depleted, burned-out, exhausted. When the cabin pressure changes in your day-to-day life, what can you turn to as your oxygen mask? And do you secure it for yourself before assisting others?
The first step in taking care of yourself is to learn to recognize when you are feeling depleted and acknowledge that fact.
The second step is to notice what nourishes you in your life. Are there activities you can participate in that restore your energy? Or, do you need to find ways to take time by yourself, and if so, what are the conditions that suit you for alone time?
The third step is to explicitly carve out time in your daily life to make sure you are meeting your needs for renewal. Often this requires creating a routine in your weekly schedule and sticking to it regardless of how you are feeling.
If you get stuck because you feel guilty taking time for yourself when there are other demands that require your attention, understand that none of those demands will be met adequately, or at all, if you are not OK first and foremost. The truth is that taking care of yourself first is the best way to meet all of the other demands in your life.
“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere.”
— The Buddha
When Less Is More Than Enough
“There is not enough time to do all the nothing we want to do.”
— Bill Watterson
Intuitively, most people recognize that the nature of our 21st-century lives presents us with an abundance of stimulation, including information overload via email, voice-mail and cell phones; TV, radio, and the internet; driving in heavy traffic on a daily basis; work and family – to mention a few. As a result, most of us are in a state of heightened stress arousal throughout our waking days – perhaps even during our sleep.
On the other hand, friends of mine recently spent a week on an island resort in Fiji. At the resort, there was no TV, no radio, no cell signals, no internet, no newspapers, no bars, and no stores. Outside of their dwelling were lounge chairs and a private hammock on the beach and, of course, access to the ocean. The little 18-hut resort did offer some activities, but you could do absolutely nothing if you chose to. The motto at this resort is “Where less is more than enough.” 1
Not all of us have the near-term opportunity to travel to a place that eliminates the excess of activity we are exposed to on a daily basis, and even that would only be temporary. Still we can minimize the stimulation we are dealing with in small ways in our day-to-day lives. Without escaping to a remote island, you, too, can become aware of and manifest how less can be more than enough!
The key to having this be successful for you is to take on small lifestyle changes, one at a time. First, recognize what is causing you to feel over-stimulated or what is usurping your attention the most. Then challenge yourself to determine a way to reduce that in a small, doable manner for one week; set yourself up for success. After attempting the lifestyle change you identified for one week, check in with your experience to acknowledge whether or not it has made a positive impact for you. If it has, consciously continue that small lifestyle change for another two months to encourage it to become more of a habit. Otherwise, make a modification to the lifestyle change you attempted, or choose another that might work better for you.
A few examples:
- Turn off all of the optional sound (radio, CD, phone) while driving in your car; there is an excess of stimulation and information to attend to without adding any of your own.
- Take a break from reading the newspaper, watching the news on TV, or listening to the news on the radio for a week. Be selective in terms of the source and type of information you are taking in. Often, watching, listening to or reading news becomes a habit – a repetition of, or unnecessary, content day after day – rather than a source of new and useful information.
- Next time you have a gift-exchange with a friend or family member with whom you would like to spend more time, instead of using time to shop for a gift, consider using that time in a way you can spend together: by having a meal at a restaurant you’ve been wanting to try, getting tickets to a performance you’d both enjoy, or doing something related to an interest that you share.
References:
1. Yasawa Island Resort, Fiji
The Challenge of Impermanence
“A breeze does not last the whole morning.
A shower does not go on for the whole day.
Natural occurrences do not last forever;
Nor does a man”
— Tao Te Ching
Impermanence is an overriding characteristic of life – it is a universal law. Big or small, everything in our life is constantly changing. Whether it is a sound that comes and goes, the loss of something or someone, or even our own body aging, each thing in life is fleeting.
In contradiction, as human beings, we have the tendency to seek security. We try to make things in our life stable and solid – even if this is an illusion. We find it hard to accept the actual nature of our lives, the truth of impermanence. And yet, we cannot stop things from changing.
Failure to acknowledge the truth of change is a source of suffering in our lives, a source of conflict. Essentially, when things in our life change we often want things to be different than they are, and this causes frustration, at best, even depression. Over time, physical wear and tear on our body and/or emotional breakdown may occur due to the habitual ways we react in attempt to avoid dealing with this discomfort.
If this is our tendency as human beings, what is the alternative? Instead of trying to deny change by attempting to create an unchanging world to hold on to (ultimately living in conflict), we can acknowledge the truth of each changing moment. We can live in harmony with, and try to understand more deeply, the impermanence in life. This is what Alan Watts called, “the wisdom of insecurity.” It entails a practice of letting go when we feel the need to grasp and hold on. Coming to terms with change is not an easy task but a worthwhile one, and for some, a necessity for well-being. It is an on-going process.
To reinforce the truth of impermanence, the following phrase can be a helpful tool:
“May I experience peace amid the changes in my life, and may I experience peace amid the changes in others’ lives.”
References:
The Beginner’s Guide to Insight Meditation, Arinna Weisman and Jean Smith, Bell Tower: New York (2001)
Seeking the Heart of Wisdom, Joseph Goldstein & Jack Kornfield, Shambhala Publications: Boston (1987)
Minding Your Stress 