October 2016 – Grow Mindfulness

Being Still

I suppose like everyone else you find it hard in your busy life to be still and yet being still is a gateway to happiness, creativity and calm.

Isabel Allende once wrote that “life is nothing but noise between two unfathomable silences”. In explaining these words, she went on to say:

We have very busy lives – or we make them very busy. There is noise and activity everywhere. Few people know how to be still and find a quiet place inside themselves. From that place of silence and stillness the creative forces emerge; there we find faith, hope, strength, and wisdom. However, since childhood we are taught to do things. Our heads are full of noise. Silence and solitude scare us most. (About the author, “The Sum of Our Days”, p. 4.)

As Allende explains, being still is about “being” rather than compulsive “doing”.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, in discussing his Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, describes how participants stand and do nothing, sit and do nothing, lie and do nothing – they clear their thoughts and just focus on being. The MBSR Program has proven over more than 30 years to be very successful in helping people deal with chronic stress, panic and many forms of mental illness that are often precipitated by busyness. Kabat-Zinn discusses the program and its origins in his book, Full Catastrophe Living.

Andy Puddicombe suggests that “all it takes is 10 mindful minutes” per day to achieve an increased sense of calm, clarity ad focus. He reminds us that we spend more time looking after our clothes, our hair and how we look, than in caring for our brain – the centre of creativity, energy and happiness. Puddicombe demonstrates how our lives have become an endless juggling act, not only juggling things-to-do but also our self-defeating thoughts:

There are many resources available to motivate you to be still or to show you how to achieve this. RMIT, for example, provides an audio resource on “sitting still” to help students cope with study and life stress. This is part of an online resource that covers “mindfulness and being present“.

Being still and doing nothing is a real challenge, but if you take the time out from your busy life to actually do nothing, for however long each day, you will experience real benefits for your health, well-being and happiness.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

3 Minute Journaling

One of the most powerful things that we did during the two days of the Search Inside Yourself public program in Sydney was a process described as 3 Minute Journaling.

The basic idea is to write your responses to a number of stimulus questions without lifting your pen from the paper. Often there are three questions. These penetrating questions are combined with the three minute time limit to reduce the likelihood of “editing” – to get past your rational mind and allow your thoughts and feelings to flow unimpeded by self-censorship or the felt need for grammatical editing.

Given the time limit, you do not have time to form proper sentences or to worry about logical flow – you just write in a free form manner, akin to “speed writing”. Often this quick approach to journaling, involving a “stream of consciousness“, is used within the context of more formal daily journaling.

The surprise comes when you read what you have written. The process of 3 Minute Journaling invariably turns up some remarkable insights into your own motivations and behaviours and opens the way for greater self-knowledge, awareness of your environment and the feelings of others. In lots of ways it is a journey into yourself.

Some of my posts on this blog have flowed from using the process of 3 Minute Journaling before I sat down to write the actual blog post. You can use a simple idea or insight to start the process or alternatively write responses to two or three questions that have some relevance to you and that encourage you to explore some unexplored terrain or to go deeper into familiar terrain.

Below is an example of three stimulus questions used during the Search Inside Yourself Program in one of a series of three minute journaling sessions:

When I feel understood, I…
When I’m at my best, I…
What I really care about is…

These are penetrative questions that get to the heart of what motivates you and what you really enjoy doing and care about.

I have often used 3 Minute journaling within the context of a manager development program. One of the sets of questions I ask relates to the role of the manager in creating the culture of their workplace:

What kind of culture are you trying to create in your workplace?
How congruent is your own behaviour with that culture?
What kinds of messages are your words and actions giving?

3 Minute Journaling is a powerful process that takes so little time but provides rich results in terms of self-awareness. If you undertake it on a consistent basis, you are well on the way to growing the habit of mindfulness.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Mindful Walking

So often we walk from place to place, lost in our thoughts, unaware of what surrounds us and the response of our own bodies.

Mindful walking is the practice of bringing our attention, in the moment, to some aspect of our walking experience – and doing so for a purpose.

This approach to developing mindfulness is designed to enhance our awareness and clear our minds of clutter, self-defeating thoughts and anxiety.

You can practise mindful walking anywhere, anytime – walking during the lunch break, taking a walk on a beach or through a rainforest, walking to the train or shops.

There are many variations you can adopt for mindful walking. You can adopt an open awareness approach taking in the sights, sounds, taste, smells and touch that surround you.

Alternatively, you can focus on some aspect of your present experience when walking, e.g. the sensation of your feet on the ground.

The Internet provides numerous resources – text, audios and videos – on mindful walking. Here is one approach by Simon Paul Harrison that combines mindful walking and mindful breathing:

Mindful walking is often recommended for people suffering stress, trauma or anxiety. RMIT, for example, through their online counselling services provides a range of online resources, including an exercise sheet and audio for mindful walking, to help students deal with the stress of study and exams.

Isabel Allende, in her book, The Sum of Our Days, describes how she frequently lost herself and found contentment on a tranquil walk in a forest:

These walks are very good for me, and at the end I feel invincible and grateful for the overwhelming abundance of my life: love, family, work, health – a great contentment. (p.299)

Another approach to mindful walking is discussed and illustrated by Chuck Hall:

You can walk anywhere mindfully if you are conscious of the opportunity. You should find an approach, timing and location that suits you so that it can be a pathway to a sustained habit of mindfulness. Once you establish the habit of mindful walking using one approach consistently, you will find that you will automatically adopt mindful walking in other situations as your consciousness of the opportunities grows.

After learning about mindful walking, I decided to use a personal approach that suited me to grow my own mindfulness. On my morning walks around the tree-lined streets and along the river, I would tune into the sounds of the birds that surrounded me. This required turning off my thoughts, tuning out other sounds and paying attention solely to the sound of the birds. I became more aware of birds above and below me, in front and behind and on my left and right side.

Invariably, as I walked, the sound of the birds seemed to stop at some point. The reality was that my thoughts had come back into my head and I had tuned out from the sounds of the birds – I had lost focus. Once I cleared my thoughts and re-focused, the sound of the birds came flooding back into my awareness again, a concert surrounding me as the birds fed off each other’s sounds.

Mindful walking induces peace, calm, clarity and contentment and helps you grow in mindfulness.