Mindfulness workshop¶
These are notes gleaned from a mindfulness workshop.
Day 1: Calm, clarity and focus¶
Stress and the role of meditation (theory)¶
Stress increases the level of cortisol in our body (a hormone that causes a number of unhealthy consequences when we don’t take steps to reduce it).
When we are faced with large amounts of stress our brain will sometimes go into amygdala hijack, which means that our rational brain shuts down and we act out of fear (fight or flight). Meditation can help to re-engage the prefrontal cortex and bring us out of amygdala hijack again.
Ideas:
- Run / exercise after work to burn off cortisol.
- Meditate after work: on the train home, or before bed in order to sleep better.
Thinking vs sensing (theory)¶
We spend the vast majority of our day thinking. We spend little time merely sensing or feeling.
Ideas:
- Practice sensing when walking (eg. to the office).
- Practice feeling when drinking something (eg. the morning coffee).
Breathing (practice and workarounds)¶
A common meditation is to focus on your breathing. The goal is to be in the moment and to avoid thinking about other things. Breathing is used here, because it’s easier for the mind to maintain focus on something dynamic. If you were to instead stare at the unchanging wall your mind would be more likely to wander.
Common problems that arise:
- Focussing on the breath (esp. on making deep breaths) can turn into trying to control the breath instead and try to force the breath to follow a certain rhythm.
Ways to avoid this:
- Focus on the sounds in the room instead, instead of on the breath. Listen intently for all sounds, whatever they may be. They can even be the sounds of your own body (if the room is quiet enough).
- Trace your fingers. Use the index finger of one hand to trace around the fingers of the other hand. This touch creates a sensation that the mind can perceive and therefore pay attention to, making it less likely to wander.
Avoid assessing how well your meditation session is going, and how well it’s going compared to other sessions. The mind is ever changing, and your sessions will differ too. Meditation is about practice, not about doing “well” or “not well”.
7/11 breathing and anchoring to calm down (practice)¶
We often feel stress physically in the upper part of the body (eg. the chest).
This is a good practice to do when you feel stressed in a heated moment.
Instructions:
- Do this standing up.
- Breathe in slowly (7 seconds). Breathe out even more slowly (11 seconds). The out-breath should be longer than the in-breath.
- Focus your attention on the lower part of your body (your legs, your feet). Feel the weight of your body on your feet.
Day 2: Leaning into uncertainty¶
Rational thinking (theory)¶
We spend the vast majority of our day thinking rationally. We leave only a small proportion of time letting the mind wander.
Even so:
- 90% of the thoughts we think are the same from day to day.
- We know that intuition and creativity comes from an unfocused mind, a mind left free to wander.
Ideas:
- Plan time in the day to intentionally let the mind wander. Practice sensing, instead of thinking. To stimulate creativity.
Emotions and the rational mind (theory)¶
As much as we like to think that we are rational, we know that emotions impact our thinking very strongly.
What’s surprising is that:
- An emotion lasts only 90 seconds. It is our thoughts (the habit of rumination) that sometimes keeps the emotion alive for hours or days!
- Mindfulness allows us to notice what is triggering the emotion in us. Without we don’t understand why we feel how we feel (eg. angry).
Thought buses (practice)¶
Picture your mind being like a bus terminal. Buses arrive all the time, ready to pick up passengers. In your mind, thought buses arrive, ready to take you away for a ride.
The nature of the mind is such that thoughts arrive endlessly, but you are not obligated to pursue each thought. You can decide not to get on the bus.
Instructions:
- Take six long breaths, inhaling and exhaling.
- Observe your thought as they come and go. Notice the thoughts as they appear, but without getting on the bus. Simply watch them disappear again.
Day 3: Responding to reacting¶
Being present in the moment (theory)¶
Because we spend so much of our day thinking rationally, we are often not present in the moment, and we miss the good things that happen in life. Instead, we reflect endlessly about the bad things that have happened in the past, and we (unintentionally) increase their importance.
We can learn to appreciate life more if we learn to savor the details of our experience: the foods we eat, the moments we experience, the happy memories we have from past times.
Ideas for being in the moment:
- Read a book.
- Play a game.
- Try a new food.
- Watch tv/a movie.
- Study a language.
Understanding our own reactions (theory)¶
The way we react to a situation begins with sensations in our body. We can try to pinpoint where it is we feel the emotion: in the head, in the chest? etc
Next, we should try to understand the emotion. An emotion we feel is like a phone call that we should respond to, so we need to “answer the phone”. Once we can perceive the emotion there are several things we can do:
- Label the emotion to understand what it’s really about.
- Distract yourself from it.
- Make it non-threatening by understanding what we’re really at risk of, without blowing it out of proportion.
Dealing with fear (theory)¶
The reason we often struggle to deal with fear is because we tend to turn away from it and are unwilling to face it.
What we should do instead is let it run its course, so:
- Observe the fear.
- Allow the fear.
- Don’t resist the fear.
All of this makes the fear less dominating.
…
Here is a practical exercise to demonstrate: eating a chilli.
Instructions:
- Prepare a chilli to eat, all on its own.
- Take small bites out of it. Chew slowly.
- Let the sensation of pain slowly spread in your mouth.
- While this is happening you will begin to experience fear.
- Practice breathing slowly as you eat the chilli.
- Focus your attention on your feet.
Accepting discontinuity (theory)¶
Often in life we have a goal in mind, but for whatever reason things happen that make achieving the goal more difficult, despite our best efforts.
This is a case of discontinuity: we make a certain amount of progress towards the goal, and when we go off to do something else we expect that when we return we’ll be able to pick up right where we left off. Instead we realize that a setback has occurred.
Examples:
- Training towards a fitness goal, then getting injured and having to re-do some of what we did.
- Making a schedule for the day, but then a train is late/cancelled and makes you late for what you were going to do.
- Getting done cleaning the house and expecting to have a clean house, but then someone else makes a mess.
- Falling ill or feeling tired, thus being unable to do or participate in whatever you had planned.
When the unplanned happens, we find it very upsetting (and often unjust). A setback like this can actually set us back much more than the incident itself, because we go on to ruminate about it for a long time.
Instead, we should try to accept the unexpected and move on from there. Here is a story to illustrate this better:
Once upon a time in India some people were playing golf on a golf course that was also frequented by monkeys. Quite often the players would experience that a monkey would pick up the golf ball and run off with it, eventually drop it somewhere other than where the golfer did. This obviously violated the rules of the game, and meant they could not play as normal.
Initially they tried various ways of keeping the monkeys out, but found out that none of them really helped.
So instead they decided to introduce a new rule: keep playing the ball from wherever the monkey dropped it. Pretend that was just part of the game.
From this we get the phrase: where the monkey dropped the ball.