We all speak about stress.  But what is it? What do we mean when we say we are stressed?  Stress is the nervous system response to what we PERCEIVE as a stressor.

The key point here is that our perception has a lot to do with what we find stressful and how stressed we feel about something.  Stressors can be life experiences but also our own thoughts can trigger stress.

So the first lesson in learning to reduce stress is to begin to pay attention to how we perceive or interpret the things we feel are stressful.  So why not start by saying: this is how I see and interpret this situation, person, etc. and it is one way of seeing it, there are likely other ways to see it.

THE MIND: The anxious mind.   

As I said in the previous post, the mind is like a factory of thoughts.  It just releases thought after thought after thought.  Some of these thoughts are just benign like what you are going to have for dinner or how the weather sucks.  However, the habits of the mind that create suffering are torturous at times and can lead people to feel debilitated by their fears and anxiety.

The mind can torture us with awful thoughts of a dangerous future that, almost always, does not materialize. “What if I am rejected?” “What if I fail?” “What if I end up alone?” “What if, what if, what if….?”

Mark Twain once said: “I went through a lot of awful things in my life and the majority didn’t happen.” This is the anxious mind. The part of our mind that anticipates pain, rejection, loss, failure, judgment, and it tortures us with the fear that if these things happen, we will be destroyed.

Mindfulness invites us to witness our thoughts and learn that they are just “puffy” things that are there one minute and gone the next. It is only our mind that feeds them and makes them appear as truths, as solid entities that generate anxiety and panic.

Mindfulness allows us to cultivate the ability to observe our thoughts and to disentangle from them. Tell yourself: Thoughts are just thoughts. Observe them as “puffy” things that just pass like clouds in the sky.

Practice observing the mind with curiosity and with interest. Become an ongoing witness to the habits of your mind. This is the first step to gaining mastery over it.

So each time you have a fearful “what if” kind of thought, just say: “oh there is that thought” and bring your attention back to the present moment by taking 3 deep breaths, and taking in all the information available through your senses: what are you seeing? what are you hearing? What are you touching? what are you smelling?

There is much less suffering in the present moment. Even if there is pain in the present moment, when you don’t let the mind engage in creating stories about the pain, you can be with the essence of the pain each moment by just noticing your breath and the presence of whatever you are aware of.

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THE MIND: Reflections on the mind and suffering 

I will be writing a series of posts in the next few weeks about the workings of the mind and its impact on our wellbeing.

In the traditions that teach us mindfulness, the mind is like a factory of thoughts. It just releases thought after thought after thoughts. Many of these thoughts are benign but others are hurtful and torturous.

There is something very illogical about how our own minds torture us. Should our mind be our best friend? Our best advocate? It should but in practice it seems to be our worst enemy.

The mind can be filled with thoughts of self-doubt, of self-loathing, of self-hatred even. It can spend a lot of time anticipating pain, rejection, failure, judgement. It can scare us to death with thoughts of horrible things that could happen (and most times don’t). It can dwell on the past and make us feel depressed and worthless.

There is also a part of the mind that is unknown to us: the contents of the unconscious. As we have travelled throughout our lives we have buried some memories and conclusions we have drawn about ourselves and the world in the unconscious.

Most of what informs how each of us interacts with our world and with others is found in our mind in the form of perceptions, interpretations, core beliefs, conclusions we have drawn, and so on.  The problem is that we identify with these thoughts and beliefs.  We have convinced ourselves that they are true and that they are the only way to view things.

Culltivating Mindfulness is a wonderful way to get to know our minds and to learn to gain mastery over our minds. Not to control our minds but to gain mastery. In other words, to feel at the wheel rather than at the mercy of our torturous thoughts.  To learn to have more flexibility in the way we see things and how we interpret ourselves and the world.

Begin by sitting down in a wakeful, upright position and bring awareness to your breath. Then just follow the breath; the in-breath and the out-breath. And watch what happens with the mind. Each time you are no longer on the breath because the mind has wandered into thoughts, just note where your mind went, what was it thinking about, and then come back to the breath. Set a timer for 10 or 15 minutes.

This gives you an opportunity to begin to observe the habits of your mind.

It is so refreshing to see how many people are realizing the power of learning to live mindfully.  My MBSR class that started few weeks ago filled up quickly.  Participants who signed up found my class on line as they were searching where they could go to learn more mindfulness.

Every day I see the benefits of mindfulness in the lives of people around me.  For example, a young woman who was quite impacted by her panic disorder took the MBSR class twice, and at the end of the last class, she said to me that her last panic attach occurred on the day of her first MBSR class.  She never had another panic attack!

Another participant who struggled with bi-polar disorder was emotional at the end of the last class because she said that she would not have not been able to finish graduate school if it wasn’t for MBSR.

In my personal life, I find that being able to tolerate distress and still feel some sense of calm can be what allows me to get through difficult times.

As every day goes by, I feel more and more committed to this practice.

I will be starting a fee meditation class soon, so keep checking for more information!

Mindful awareness is cultivated by the formal practice of meditation.  Sitting or walking with focused awareness usually on one object of attention at a time.  For many, this formal practice is difficult to establish so they give up.  Here are some tips to keep you moving in the direction of a daily practice:

1. Start with doing some practice every day.  This may involve sitting or walking meditation for 5 minutes.  But it may also include informal practices such as washing the dishes mindfully every day; or having a mindful shower or walking to work mindfully, and so on.
2. These informal practices help cultivate mindfulness in our daily life.  In order to do an activity mindfully, you invite your awareness to notice what you are aware of in that present experience.  For example, if you are washing the dishes, notice the sensations of the water, the soap, the smell of the soap, the sensations of standing, the sound of the water, etc.  The same for the mindful shower, and so on.  If you commit to doing one informal practice a day, you are on your way.
3. Another tip is that because we all lie down to go to sleep every day, we can end our day in mindful meditation every day.  Come to your breath; notice the sensations of the bed holding your body, of the warm blankets, of your head resting on the pillow, and then go to the breath, and stay there.  When you become aware that your mind has wandered off into thoughts, note briefly where it went (planning, worrying, remembering, analyzing, etc.) and then gently escort it back to the breath.  You may fall asleep right away or you may be in meditation for a while. It doesn’t matter as long as you do it.
4. Do the same when you wake up.  Take a few mindful breaths before getting out of bed.
5. Lastly, chose one thing that you do many times a day to remind yourself to come to the present.  Maybe every time you wash your hands or every time the phone rings.  Take 3 breaths and become aware of your present experience.

I hope these little tips are helpful to keep  you in the path to a formal practice.  Don’t give up!

Mindfulness is more than a meditation  It is a set of instructions for living.  The mind is very involved in how much we experience stress and suffering.  Mindfulness helps us to bring clarity to our thoughts and reactive patterns.  When you are in a state of distress, follow these steps, RAIN:

RECOGNIZE: Mindfully Recognize what is going on.  Pay attention to how you feel, what your thoughts are, what you are feeling, the sensations in your body, and what is your impulse.  Just take a few breaths and observe.

ALLOW: Allow the experience to be as it is.  When we resist things as they are, we tend to aggravate our suffering.  Allow the feelings, thoughts, emotions, sensations to be as they are and observe with focused attention. So again, take a few breaths and allow yourself to experience things as they are.

INVESTIGATE: Investigate your experience by asking yourself, what am I feeling? What wants the most attention?  What am I believing? Activate your own curiosity about what is going on inside.  This will help you bring to awareness what is really going on for you.

NATURAL LOVING AWARENESS: In this step, you bring a spirit of kindness to your experience.  A softening of rigidity by just imagining you wrap your experience with warmth, like a warm cloth of caring for your experience.  This allows you to sit with the experience, and with practice you become more and more connected with your true nature and the core of your essence, which not the part of yourself that stresses and worries, but the part of yourself that can trust and be resilient.

Taking time to practice RAIN will assist you to gain insight into your experience and to reach deep insight so that you can then discern now to respond (rather than react on automatic pilot).

If you would like to practice this and other mindfulness tools, join me in my next MBSR class. September 22nd.  Click here for more information and here to register.

• “I’m not going to get it all done!”
• “What if _______ (worst case scenario) happens?!!!!”
• “I’m not good enough…”

The mind is like a factory of thoughts.  It just doesn’t stop.  When you begin to practice Mindfulness, you begin to realize how the mind just won’t stop.

The problem with stress and anxiety is that the mind doesn’t stop generating torturous thoughts about what might go wrong, what is wrong, how we are not good enough or how we won’t be able to handle one thing or another.  Most of these thoughts are unhelpful and useless.

Mindfulness helps us become aware of our thoughts but more importantly it allows us to decrease the power of thoughts, and therefore, our stress and anxiety.

Tip#1: When you become aware that your mind is engaged in torturous, unhelpful thinking, bring your awareness to the present moment by finding 5 things with each of your senses (except taste).  As you find each thing, spend a few seconds paying attention to each:

• 5 things you see
• 5 things you touch
• 5 things you hear
• 5 things you smell

Doing this each time you feel stressed, anxious, worried, caught in negative thinking, you will weaken the power of the thoughts, gain mastery over your mind, and feel empowered.