Shame: A Destructive Emotion

Envy precipitated by a sense of shame can unleash destructive behaviours that flow from feelings of anger, frustration or a desire for revenge. The envy itself may be based on a distorted perception of the relative beauty, worth, capability or desirability of another person.

This distorted self-perception and unrealistic perception of others can lead to psychological harm for the person initially experiencing shame as well as for other people who are the target for their projection of shame and their incited envy.

One has only to look at the level of domestic violence in families to see the destructive force of shame at play. Bullies in the workplace and in schools are attempting to hide the shame experienced because of their low self-esteem, and their impact on their victims is particularly destructive – especially when it leads to suicide such as can happen with cyber-bullying.

The destructive force of shame and envy

The destructive cycle of shame and shame-induced envy is graphically illustrated in John Boyne’s novel, A Ladder to the Sky.  The contagion of shame and the resultant envy is portrayed in the dramatic lives of the primary characters, who are accomplished authors.

Even the subsidiary characters in the novel are controlled by their shame and envy. Aspiring writers, graduates of creative writing courses, serve in the capacity of reviewers for articles submitted to a journal. These interns protect themselves from the shame of not making it in the publishing world by rejecting the manuscripts submitted by “someone they envied or feared”. As there is a limited publishing “pie”, the interns are motivated to stop other writers from gaining the spotlight through publication in the journal. John Boyne describes this intern group as part of a “shared network of covetous hostility” (p.229) – a hostility towards competitors driven by shame and envy.

Dealing with shame requires self-awareness and the development of a balanced perspective. In the final analysis, it requires self-forgiveness. As we grow in mindfulness, through various forms of meditation, we can slowly identify our emotional make-up, address the adverse emotional impact of our accumulated memories and find ways to reduce our shame and its destructive impacts. This is a long, slow process of self-discovery, self-forgiveness and self-regulation that cannot be rushed. As Mary Lamia cautions, “Take it slow”.

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Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Shame: A Contagious Emotion

In an earlier post, I introduced a meditation on shame. The subsequent post focused on shame as a concealed emotion. In this post I want to focus on shame as a contagious emotion. Like the previous post, this discussion will draw on the work of Mary C. Lamia, my own experience and previous blog posts that I have written. In exploring shame contagion, I will discuss its effects on intimate partners, parents, children and peers.

Shame contagion in intimate relationships

Shame becomes contagious when a person in a relationship takes on a sense of diminished self-worth as a result of the projections of their partner who is attempting to deflect attention from their own “devalued sense of self”. If you value your partner and their opinion and are emotionally dependent on their opinion, you can be strongly influenced by their denigrating remarks and disrespectful behaviour. Your own shame response, reflected in a lower sense of self-worth, can reward their projecting behaviour and create a vicious circle of ever-diminishing self-esteem. The partner’s projection of their shame, whether used consciously or unconsciously, constitutes a form of “emotional abuse“.

Shame contagion in children and parents

A child who experiences distress early in life through the divorce of their parents can take on the shame that rightly belongs to one or both parents. The child can view themselves as the cause of the breakup because they have been “bad”. They can develop an ingrained sense of not being loved or lovable.

Children can also experience shame when their parents engage in what they consider to be shameful behaviour; parents, too, can feel ashamed when their child’s behaviour is criticised by others implying that the parents have failed in their parenting role.

Shame contagion from one person to their peers

Parents can engage, consciously or unconsciously, in shame-inducing behaviour towards their children. An example of this parental behaviour came to light in a workshop group I was facilitating. . The workshop group was continually disrupted by the trenchant criticism by one young woman of everything that was said by anyone else. She was highly analytical and considerably articulate.

In the first break at morning tea, I spoke to her privately and asked what was going on for her when she engaged in this destructive behaviour. She explained that her parents were academics and that even when she was a very young child, she was expected to contribute intelligently to the dinner table conversation. If one or other parent considered that she had said something they considered “stupid”, the parent placed a donkey figure in front of her (implying that she was a “dunce”). In the workshop, the young female participant was projecting her shame from her childhood experiences onto others in the group by making demeaning comments about their lack of intelligence and understanding.

Shame as a contagious emotion

It can be seen from the foregoing discussion that shame can spread across interdependent people or even people who have a low level of interdependence (such as peers). Partners can induce shame in their companions through projection, parents can contribute to feelings of shame when they belittle their children (because they do not measure up to the parent’s expectations), and peers can experience denigration from the shame-deflecting behaviour of another.

So, the contagion of shame can spread across multiple people, generate self-defeating cycles of behaviour and be sustained over several generations. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and other mindfulness practices, we can become more conscious of our own shame, how it plays out in our lives and how it impacts others with whom we come into contact. The starting point to eliminating shame contagion is the development of self-awareness through progressive self-exploration. This, however, will require being still and engaging in self-inquiry which is often deferred because of the busyness of our daily lives.

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Image source: courtesy of KFrei on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Shame: A Concealed Emotion

In the previous post, I offered a meditation on shame and in the process, mentioned an article by Dr. Mary C. Lamia with the title, Shame: A Concealed, Contagious and Dangerous Emotion. In the current post, I would like to explore Mary’s ideas about shame as a “concealed emotion” and relate them to my own experience and my earlier blog posts.

Shame: A concealed emotion

Mary explains in her article that shame, unlike guilt, does not differentiate between yourself and your actions. With a sense of guilt, you are more able to separate the wrongful behaviour from you as a person. With shame, however, the tendency is to view your whole self as “bad”, thus leading to a very strong desire to hide yourself through withdrawal or to mask your uncomfortable feelings of unworthiness through addiction to something that you experience as pleasurable.

The shame response can be triggered by many different self-perceptions, e.g. viewing yourself as not “measuring up” in a work or team environment, judging yourself as lacking the intelligence or creativity of your peers or colleagues, considering yourself to have deviated markedly from your “ideal self” or being very conscious that you are overweight and might be judged negatively (when “everyone else” around you is slim and/0r athletic). Your sense of shame can increase as you accumulate adverse experiences and related negative self-evaluations – thus leading to a collection of shameful memories.

Shame can trigger a fight or flight response because you perceive that your sense of self is threatened. You can bury this uncomfortable emotion which may, in turn, becomes manifest in your body in the form of tension or pain (flight). Alternatively, you can hide your own depleted sense of self by projecting your shame onto others (fight). For example, you could manipulate a partner to diminish their self-esteem so that you do not have to face up to your own unwanted sense of unworthiness.

Mary explains, for example, that a narcissist could attack others through blaming and shaming them to conceal their own sense of shame deriving from their “devalued sense of self”. Related to this behaviour, is the narcissist’s tendency to project an inflated view of themselves that they use as a “measuring stick” to devalue the skills, knowledge, feelings and contribution of others.

So, concealment of shame is not only about burying the sense of shame deep within ourselves, but may also involve painstaking attempts to conceal our shame from others through projection.

As we grow in mindfulness through various forms of meditation such as a meditation on shame or a body scan meditation, we can develop self-awareness and identify the things that we feel ashamed about and learn to reduce the negative impact of this concealed emotion on our life and our interactions with others.

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Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

A Meditation Practice for Taming Feelings of Shame

Meditation can help us tame our strong emotions by helping us to isolate the source of the related feelings and identify our automatic response, which is often inappropriate or unhelpful. Shame is one such emotion that generates strong feelings that can lead to anger, envy, devaluing self, depression, passivity or inability to cope.

Mary C. Lamia, a clinical psychologist, explains that shame occurs when we perceive ourselves to be inadequate, unworthy, dishonourable or failing to live up to our own or other’s expectations. For example, shame experienced in not living up to the expectations of others as a new or accomplished author, is a central theme of John Boyne’s book, A Ladder to the Sky. His book also starkly illustrates Mary Lamia’s description of shame as a “concealed, contagious and dangerous emotion“. Mary’s in-depth discussion of shame and how it manifests is illuminating and helps us to understand how shame can induce our own dysfunctional behaviour and that of bullies and narcissistic people.

A meditation to tame feelings of shame

Patricia Rockman provides a meditation designed to tame feelings of shame. Her 10-minute, guided meditation podcast provides a way to uncover this often-concealed emotion, explore its manifestation in bodily sensations and denigrating thoughts, and eventually to get in touch with how we contaminate our relationships through feelings of shame.

The starting point for the meditation is to clearly form the intention to address the feelings of shame, rather than push them away or hide from them. This may take a concerted effort over time with repetition of this guided meditation. Feelings of shame may be deeply embedded in our bodies and minds and we can feel resistance to dealing with these uncomfortable emotions and feelings. Over time, we may have become practised at concealing shame or projecting our sense of shame onto others.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditating on our feelings of shame 
we can learn to tame our shame and its impact by naming our feelings and facing the discomfort that shame elicits in us bodily and mentally. This growth in self-awareness, a progressive unveiling of ourselves, can replace shame with kind attention, and build resilience.

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Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Overcoming Agitation – A Calming Meditation

It’s so easy to become agitated in this fast-paced and demanding world. The environment we live in with its constant changes – economic, social, financial, climate, legal, electronic and political – demand incessant adaption. We can become so easily agitated by our daily experiences – our expectations not being met, having an unproductive day, managing ever-increasing costs and bureaucracy, being caught in endless traffic, managing a teenager who is pushing the boundaries in the search for self-identity and independence. Any one of these, a combination of them or other sources of agitation, can lead us to feel overwhelmed and “stressed out of our minds”.

Mindfulness meditation can help bring calm and clarity to our daily existence and reduce the level of stress we experience when things do not seem to go our way or frustrate our best intentions. There are an endless range of meditations that can help here – ranging from gratitude meditations to open awareness. The Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute (SIYLI) provides one such meditation designed to restore calm at a time when we are really agitated.

Overcoming agitation through a calming meditation

Rich Fernandez, CEO of SIYLI, provides a meditation podcast designed to focus attention and restore equilibrium and equanimity. The meditation employs what Rich calls “focused attention” – where the focus is on your breathing.

The 9-minute, focused attention meditation employs several steps:

  1. Making yourself comfortable in your chair, being conscious of your posture (releasing any tightness reflected in slouching)
  2. Notice your body’s sensations precipitated by your interaction with your external environment – the pressure of your body against the chair and your feet touching the ground.
  3. Bring your attention to your breathing, what Rich describes as the “circle of breathing” – the in-breath, pause and out-breath.
  4. Notice if your mind wanders from the focus on your breath and bring your attention back to your breath (the meditation develops the art of focused attention by training yourself to return to your focus).
  5. Treat yourself with loving kindness if you become distracted frequently – (scientific research informs us that we are normally distracted 50% of the time).
  6. Close the meditation with three deep breaths – this time controlling your breath (whereas in the earlier steps, you are just noticing your breathing, not attempting to control the process).

The focused attention meditation can be done anywhere, at any time. If you are really agitated before you start, you can extend the meditation, repeat it (at the time or sometime later) or supplement it with another form of meditation such as a body scan. Once again it is regular practice that develops the art of focused attention – maintaining your meditation practice is critical to restoring your equilibrium and equanimity. Without the calming effects of such a meditation, you can end up aggravating your situation by doing or saying something inappropriate.

As we grow in mindfulness through focused attention meditation, we can develop the capacity to calm ourselves when we become agitated. Regular practice of this meditation will enable us to restore our equilibrium and equanimity.

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Image source: courtesy of Skitterphoto on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Parallel Conversations: Hidden Assumptions, Thoughts and Feelings

So often we end up engaging in conversations that are based on assumptions that are never made explicit. Each party to the conversation assumes they know what the other person is thinking and feeling but does not make this assumption known to the other person. The result is a parallel conversation – a conversation lacking touchpoints, where both parties are on the same track, talking about the same things with open awareness about what they and the other person is thinking and feeling.

The catalyst for this reflection is a conversation between Paulo and Karla, his female companion, reported in Hippie, a biographical journey written by Paulo Coelho. The book is a fascinating revelation of Paulo’s early days before he became a famous writer (today he is the “most translated living author”, having sold in excess of 300 million books). In the reported conversation (pp. 178-181), Paulo and Karla each assume they know what the other is thinking and feeling and each withholds information that they could have shared to reach a common understanding (the withheld information is provided in italics as the hidden conversation going on inside each person). The net result of this parallel conversation is reported by Paulo in the following words:

They were, yet again, travelling in opposite directions, no matter how hard they tried to reach one another.

Being aware of your assumptions, thoughts and feelings

I find so often, that I am working off assumptions that subsequently prove to be wrong or, at least, inaccurate. This seems to become a more regular habit the longer you are in a relationship – you tend to assume that you already know what the other person is thinking and feeling, because much of your conversation is based on intuition and a lot of communication is unspoken – a nod, a smile, a shake of the head, a wave of the arms.

The starting point for avoiding parallel conversations is to become more aware of what is going on for you in the process of the conversation – becoming aware of your assumptions, thoughts and feelings. Assumptions can create a divide and unspoken thoughts and unexpressed feelings tend to precipitate assumptions by the other person who is a party to the conversation.

Reflecting on a conversation after it occurs can help to increase your awareness of your assumptions, thoughts and feelings, together with the impact they have on your relationship. Reflecting in the process of communicating (reflection-in-action), is more powerful but is an acquired skill and demands that you are fully present in the moment of the conversation.

In Western society, we have developed our thinking capacity to a very high degree, and we are continuously consumed by our thoughts – engaging in planning, analysing, evaluating, critiquing, justifying, summarising, synthesizing and comparing. The cost of spending so much time in thinking, is that we lose touch with our present reality or as Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, we lose the art of “being present”.

Sharing your assumptions, thoughts and feelings

While we continue to withhold our assumptions, thoughts and feelings, we are opening ourselves to the potential negative effects of parallel conversations – misunderstandings, resentment, time-wasting, energy-sapping interactions, disconnection and depression.

Through reflection on a conversation, we can become more aware of what was occurring for us in the conversation – what assumptions, thoughts and feelings we brought to the conversation. This growing awareness increases our capacity to share what is occurring for us and thus build the relationship rather than damage it. By practising this reflection-on-action (the conversation), we can progressively develop reflection-in-action (during the conversation), enabling us to share on-the-spot, our assumptions, thoughts and feelings.

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and meditation, we can increase our awareness of our assumptions, thoughts and feelings and their impacts on our conversations and relationships. We can develop the capacity to be more fully present in a conversation and share what is going on for us rather than withholding information about our assumptions, thoughts and feelings.

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Image source: courtesy of MabelAmber on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Body Scan Meditation

Body scan meditation is a quick and easy way to access your relaxation response, an effective counter to stress and your automatic fight or flight response. Body scan meditation has the advantage of being flexible – you can use it anywhere at any time. You don’t have to undertake an extended body scan to realise its benefits.

Different purposes for the body scan

Olivier Devroede, author of the Mindfulness Based Happiness blog, explains that body scan in the yoga tradition is used for relaxation, whereas in some mindfulness traditions, the purpose is the development of acceptance. Jon Kabat-Zinn also provides a “bodyscape meditation“, incorporating a body scan, that is designed to enable you to become more aware of your body and its sensations and, through this meditation practice, become grounded in the present more readily.

Diana Winston, Director of Education at the Mindful Awareness Research Centre (MARC) offers a brief, 3-minute body scan that can enable you to quickly wind back your disabling response to a stressful situation. It can serve as a regular practice, too, that can progressively build automatic awareness of body sensations and emotional responses. Diana also offers a 13-minute body scan meditation for sleep when you are going to bed. At other times, you might actually be trying to avoid sleeping during meditation.

The basics of a body scan

Body scan is something that can be short or extended, incorporated into other forms of meditation and used flexibly for different purposes. While the intention of body scan meditations may vary, they have several basic elements in common. These relate to being grounded bodily and mentally, noticing your breathing and paying attention to your body and its sensations.

  1. Being grounded bodily – often this is achieved by paying attention to your posture, ensuring you are comfortable and relaxed, and upright if seated in a chair. There may be many times when you are unaware of your posture which can be a form of slouch, whether you are sitting or standing. Focusing on becoming grounded bodily, can help rectify this tendency to slouch throughout the day.
  2. Being grounded mentally – this basically involves bringing your full attention to the process of a body scan and your specific intention in undertaking it.
  3. Noticing your breathing – this can be a simple act of being aware of your breath and its characteristics (such as slow or fast, deep or shallow), without any effort to control your breathing. It can also be a more conscious approach where you take a couple of deep breaths to aid the process of relaxation and being grounded in the present. A deeper breathing approach is lower-belly breathing which can be incorporated into your body scan.
  4. Paying attention to the pressure on your body – this initial approach to increasing bodily awareness, involves noticing the pressure from the floor or your chair on your body at different points, e.g. on your back, feet, buttocks, shoulders. This is a form of conscious grounding – noticing the impact of your immediate physical environment on your body.
  5. Paying attention to your bodily sensations – this is the core activity in a body scan, the other activities serves as a warm-up or preparatory exercise. Here you are exploring your body, looking for any points of tightness, tension, pain or contraction. The aim is to progressively release or soften these points to free your body from its stress response. Developing your awareness about these points of tension, can help you to more quickly become aware of a negative emotional reaction to a stressful situation.
  6. Paying attention to your feelings – becoming aware of your bodily sensations can give you insight into how you are feeling about a situation or interaction. Often, we hide negative emotions, which further exacerbates the tension in our bodies. If you can get in touch with your negative feelings through a body scan, you can name these feelings and, over time, successfully control them. This last step represents the deepest approach to body scan meditation and the most time consuming method, as you need to undertake the precursor activities to get in touch with your bodily sensations and be in an open frame of mind to name those feelings.

As we grow in mindfulness through the different forms of body scan meditation, we increase our capacity to focus, enhance our self-awareness, develop our relaxation response, improve our self-regulation and increase our capacity to be in the moment.

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Image source: courtesy of Ataner007 on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Re-energise through Meditation

In this day and age of hectic living, people are constantly tired or exhausted – basically drained of energy. In the absence of a conscious effort to re-energise ourselves, we can become prone to all kinds of physical and mental illness. Meditation provides multiple ways to re-energise and restore physical and mental balance.

The daily pressures at home and work can leave us drained. Added to this are increasing financial demands, adverse environmental conditions (e.g. extreme weather reflected in floods, cyclones and bushfires), increasing violence in communities and the growth of terrorism.

The human impact of these multiple pressures is reflected in constant tiredness and fatigue experienced by people of all ages, even children who are experiencing the demands of exams, parental expectations and university entry requirements. This constant energy drain can be reflected in many illnesses, not the least of these being chronic fatigue syndrome. Alan Jansson, Japanese acupuncturist with more than 30 years experience, has noted that chronic fatigue syndrome, which used to be the province of elite athletes, is now being experienced by managers in large organisations and people of all ages, including teenagers.

Re-energising through meditation

It seems contradictory that meditation, noted for its focus on stillness and silence, should be a source of energy. In fact, there are specific guided meditations that focus on re-energising the body and mind. One such 10-minute guided meditation offers an approach designed to boost energy and build positivity.

Other forms of meditation help us to release tension and trauma, e.g. somatic meditation, remove the energy draining effects of negative thoughts, build positive energy through appreciation and expression of gratitude, and access the energy in the natural world around us through open awareness. Even mindful listening, being fully present and attuned to another person, can energise us through openness to their ideas and passionate pursuits and through the power of connection.

Reasons why meditation re-energises

The Exploration of Consciousness Research Institute (EOC), drawing on the latest resesearch, advances five reasons why meditation increases energy. These reasons are summarised below:

  1. Meditation changes the way we respond to stress: replacing energy-sapping fear and anxiety with resilience through a reduction in the “energy-zapping” chemical, cortisol.
  2. Boosts endorphins thus increasing calm and focus and reducing the need for energy-depleting, temporary stimulants such as “energy drinks” and coffee.
  3. Induces deeper sleep and energy restoration through increased awareness of the present moment (not locked into the past or the future) and through an increase in the sleep-enhancing hormone, melatonin.
  4. Boosts two key chemicals DHEA (develops overall sense of well-being) and Growth Hormone (GH) which increases our strength and energy storage. The overall effect of these two chemicals is a reduction in fatigue and an increase in the energy of motivation.
  5. Upgrades our personal battery and recharges it – by enhancing our emotional control centre (the pre-frontal cortex) and reducing our fear centre (the amygdala).

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, we can re-energise our personal batteries when they run low, build resilience, reduce energy-sapping emotions and chemicals, and increase chemicals that have a positive effect on our overall strength, the restorative quality of our sleep and our sense of well-being.

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Image source: courtesy of ColiN00B on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Meditation For Increased Energy: How & Why it Works – 5 Reasons

Reprioritising Your Mindfulness Practice

In my previous post, I identified five strategies I could use to establish and maintain a daily practice of Tai Chi. The strategies can be applied to any form of mindfulness practice, whether some form of meditation or a practice such as mindful walking, mindful eating or open awareness. In reflecting on these strategies, I realised that underpinning them was the need to reprioritise my mindfulness practice according to its level of importance to various aspects of my life. Reprioritising means
to arrange things in a new order of importance.

Identifying the importance of your mindfulness practice

A starting point for reprioritising your mindfulness practice is to identify what it brings to your life, how it improves your life in its various aspects and what its importance is to your overall quality of life.

You can ask yourself a series of questions that will serve to highlight the importance of your mindfulness practice:

  • does it give you clarity, confidence and creativity in your daily work?
  • how does it help you to manage your stress at work and home?
  • in what way does it improve your significant relationships, e.g. with your partner, your children or your work colleagues?
  • what does it bring to your favourite sporting activity? (e.g. my practice of Tai Chi develops balance, coordination, timing and control in my tennis game)
  • does it help you to appreciate your life more and build a positive outlook?
  • what does it do for your physical health?
  • how does it improve your mental health and sense of equanimity?

If you can truly and comprehensively identify the ways in which your mindfulness practice contributes to your quality of life, you will build the motivation to reprioritise your mindfulness practice so that it assumes a regularity and consistency that reflects its importance to you.

Reprioritising your mindfulness practice

If you want to reprioritise your mindfulness practice, it means that you have to create space in your life to enable this to happen. This means that you have to give up something else if you have a life characterised by busyness. Again, you can ask yourself a series of questions and be honest with yourself:

  • do you really need to spend the time getting and drinking the extra cup(s) of coffee or tea?
  • do you feast on the news, forever checking what is happening in the world around you and beyond?
  • how often do you access email and divert your attention from your task at hand?
  • are you wasting time by multitasking?
  • how much time do you devote to watching television shows, movies or sports events?
  • how much time do you spend on social media and what does this activity add to your quality of life?

If you review how you spend your time, you can invariably find a way to reprioritise your mindfulness activity so that it assumes a priority that reflects its importance to your quality of life.

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more aware of the importance of our mindfulness practice for our quality of life, identify how we spend our time and learn to accord our mindfulness practice the priority it deserves. This is, undoubtedly, an ongoing learning process.

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Image source: courtesy of Alexandra_Koch on Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

Maintaining the Daily Practice of Tai Chi

Despite my very best intentions, I find it difficult to maintain the daily practice of Tai Chi. There are always other things that I have to do and physical impediments that provide excuses (legitimate and otherwise) that I use to avoid the practice of Tai Chi.

In reflecting on my current lack of consistency, I have identified some strategies that I will put into place to increase the regularity of my practice:

Review my daily schedule

I find I become locked into habits (such as the timing of my morning cup of coffee) that make it difficult for me to fit in a Tai Chi practice. I also find that I am more likely to practice in the morning when I am fresh, rather than the afternoon when I am tired. What I have to do is establish a fixed time each morning when I undertake my Tai Chi practice. As my early morning has an established routine that operates on most days, I have to find space within that routine to ensure that I can practise. When the routine is broken, e.g. on days when I am facilitating a workshop or attending a meeting, I need to mentally lock in another practice time for that day.

Revisit the benefits of Tai Chi

I have previously written about Tai Chi in terms of the physical and mental health benefits and the benefits for the mind and the mind-body connection. Mentally revisiting these benefits on a regular basis can enhance my motivation to undertake the daily practice of Tai Chi. I find, too, that there are very clear benefits for my tennis that result from Tai Chi. I am very motivated to practice this meditation-in-motion on the days that I play tennis. Recently, I noticed difficulty in maintaining my balance on the court and this has encouraged me to increase my practice. So, it seems if you can relate the benefits of regular practice to some specific activity or outcome you already have a high motivation for, it is a lot easier to maintain your practice.

Reading about Tai Chi and its benefits

If I read about Tai Chi and its benefits, I am more motivated to undertake my routine practice. There are numerous articles, books, blogs and research reports about the benefits that can help me to keep the benefits front-of-mind. There are also videos that reinforce people’s positive experience and the research findings. Building in the habit to access these resources on a regular basis, particularly when my motivation is flagging, is a good way to strengthen my resolve to keep up my practice.

Reflecting on the benefits experienced

If I reflect on how Tai Chi has benefited me in a particular situation such as after a game of tennis, I am better able to cement the benefits in my mind and strengthen my motivation. For example, there have been times when I was regularly practising Tai Chi that I noticed that I could play a good tennis shot even when off-balance. Reflecting on this specific benefit reinforces the value for me of maintaining my practice.

Revising my expectations

I regularly have some form of surgery to identify (biopsy) or remove (excision) a skin cancer (the result of playing daytime tennis over several decades in Queensland). My tendency is to stop Tai Chi altogether to prevent aggravating the resulting wound (this could be for a period of four weeks). What would be a better process would be to at least undertake the warm-up exercises (basically involving the hands and arms) at the time when I would normally do my regular practice. This reduced level of activity still maintains the habit of regular practice and keeps Tai Chi top-of-mind. By reducing my practice expectations in line with my physical capacity at the time, I will be able to further embed my practice, rather than break my practice habit.

As we grow in mindfulness through the daily practice of Tai Chi or other mindfulness practice such as meditation, we can experience the pervasive benefits of such practices that, in turn, reinforce our motivation – thus creating a “virtuous circle”.

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By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Image source: courtesy of Alexandra_Koch on Pixabay

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.