Grow Mindfulness – Page 22 – By Dr. Ron Passfield

Change Your Perspective and Change Your Life

Foundational to Hugh Van Cuylenburg’ Resilience Project is a change in perspective and in his book on the topic he provides evidence of people who have turned their lives around through a change in their perspective. He urges us strongly to focus on what we have, not what we lack. He maintains that this change develops the positive emotions of appreciation and gratitude that replace the negative emotions of envy and resentment. He points out too that it replaces depression about the past and/or anxiety about the future with the capacity to live the present moment more fully.

Underpinning the gratitude perspective is a change in our point of reference – from comparing ourselves to those who have more, to making the comparison with others who have considerably less. His story of the Indian boy, Stanzin, highlights the impact of this different way of looking at things. Stanzin was one of the most destitute children he met in India but the happiest person he had ever met – he appreciated everything in his life (no matter how old, broken, or impoverished).

Hugh worked with elite sportspeople including NRL and ARL football players. He mentions that at least five elite athletes changed their lives dramatically by implementing a daily gratitude journal – going from suicidal thoughts to appreciating the richness of their lives.

From loss and failure to learning and understanding

Hugh suggests that loss and failure can be seen in a very different light if we change our perspective. If we view them as opportunities and lessons to be learned and realise that they are often the result of our own unmet expectations, we can move away from depression and anxiety to understanding and valuing the experience. In each of life’s experiences, there is something to learn. If we always experience “success” we can harbour false assumptions about what “made” our success, not realising our underlying deficiencies (often propped up by others).

Associated with this change in perspective is moving from self-absorption and self-congratulation to acknowledging the very rich contribution of the many people who have had a positive influence on our life (including our parents who provided our “gene pool”). This latter thought came to me this morning when I was making an entry in my gratitude journal. I was able to write, “I appreciate my genetic legacy from my father – athleticism, resilience and stamina, and from my mother – kindness, compassion, understanding and patience.”

It also means moving away from the perspective of “better than” to realistically appreciating our strengths and limitations – a change in perspective from “superior conceit” to a “healthy confidence”. This change can result in improved behaviour together with happiness and contentment.

From “clients” to “friends”

Hugh mentions that at some stage in introducing students, elite sportspeople, and businesspeople to his GEM pathway, he started to view them as “friends”, instead of “clients” who paid for his services. He viewed his role as helping people and building relationships, not engaging in a money-making venture. This made the experience richer for himself and others he interacted with. He gained many friends and was better able to help them as a result. It also meant that sometimes he offered his services for free to people or organisations that had limited resources.

From “outcomes” to “process”

Both Louie Schwartzberg and Lindsey Stirling, award-winning creative producers of film and music, stress the importance of focusing on the process, not the final outcomes. This involves enjoying the moment and fully experiencing making film or making music or engaging in any other creative endeavour. In our organisational consulting work, my colleague and I have moved from a focus on outcomes to designing a process that enables people to “have the conversations that they need to have”. This reduces the stress of process design because there are so many factors that influence the outcomes over which you have no control – what you can control is how well you design the intervention process. This shift in perspective from outcomes to process provides the freedom to explore innovative and creative ways to work with people, music, or photography.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more aware of the perspectives and expectations that create our self-sabotaging behaviours and limit our options. Changing our perspectives can significantly change our lives for the better, increase our happiness and strengthen our resilience in the face of setbacks and failures. Perspective change can open the way for the exploration of creative options in all our endeavours – family, work, and sport.

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Image by Renan Brun from 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.

Mindfulness and Self-Sabotage through Social Media

Hugh Van Cuylenburg has developed the GEM pathway to happiness which entails three core elements – gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness. In his book, The Resilience Project, he describes the origins of his approach, the impact of practising GEM and its effectiveness in helping people to move from depression about the past or anxiety about the future. He has found that his approach has been effective for school children, elite sportspeople, and businesspeople in small and large organisations. At the heart of his approach, is the tenet that happiness lies in “being” and appreciating what we have, not in “having” and resenting what we do not have. Hugh gives concrete examples of where practising the simple process of a gratitude journal has enabled people to overcome suicidal thoughts and find happiness in their life, their relationships, their business accomplishments and/or their sporting endeavours.

Developing mindfulness practices

Hugh described how his school children in India looked forward to their daily 30-minute meditation each morning at school. In Australia, he had his students take a mindful walk around an oval before school started and observe and record “five things they heard, saw and felt” on their walks each day. He basically encouraged them to pay attention to their senses so that they could live their day more fully, with increased awareness. Hugh highlighted the studies that demonstrate the positive impact of mindfulness practices (e.g., meditation, body scan, mindful breathing) on adolescent stress, depression, and anxiety. These impacts have explained the global development of mindfulness in schools, including the MindUP Program developed by Goldie Hawn and her foundation.

I have written earlier about the benefits of mindfulness meditation for adults, including the development of wisdom, calmness, clarity, and self-awareness. Mindfulness practices can also help to “mind your brain”, an otherwise neglected resource. The challenge is to find a way to practise mindfulness daily in whatever form suits us personally. Regularity, repetition, and practice build capability, provide constant positive reinforcement, and develop “unconscious competence”. Hugh demonstrated through his real-life stories how we become what we focus on – the simple act of a daily gratitude journal leads to gratitude-in-the moment; practising loving-kindness meditation develops kindness and compassionate action; and regular reflection-on-action enables the capacity for reflection-in-action.

Self-sabotage in the pursuit of mindfulness

Despite our best intentions in practising mindfulness, we can easily sabotage our own efforts. Self-sabotage can take many forms, including obsession with the news, overuse of our mobile phones or addiction to social media. We can grab for our phones when we are waiting for something or someone, instead of using the opportunity to develop awareness.

Hugh warns about the negative impacts of social media and its harmful effects on our minds. He explains how social media giants like Facebook, Google, and Twitter use “persuasive technologies” to distract us and capture our attention – because “eyes-on-a-page” readily translates to revenue dollars through advertising. Your likes and dislikes are tracked continuously so that you can be fed advertisements for what you most likely desire and are willing to buy. The benefits of any particular product or service are embellished – you do not buy a car, you buy “envy”, “status”, “luxury” or “visibility”.

Hugh points out that social media and constant, easy access via mobile phones have become integral to the “attention economy” that feeds off our tendency for distractedness – distraction from ourselves, our pressures. and relationships. Disruptive marketing through “pop-ups” and “behavioural retargeting” are designed to pull your attention away to what social media advertisers want you to pay attention to. By engaging endlessly in consuming social media, we are self-sabotaging our mindfulness – our capacity to pay attention on purpose in the present moment with wonder and awe and an openness to what is real and meaningful in our life.

Hugh recommends several strategies to reclaim “what the attention economy has taken from you”:

Delete Facebook from your phones
Turn off notifications on your phones
Rearrange your home screen to display what you want to focus on and delete what you are unhealthily addicted to
Leave home without your phone (at least occasionally when it is not necessary to have it with you).

Our level of resistance to any or all of these recommendations reflects our level of capture by the psychological manipulation of the attention economy.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can access a wide array of benefits that enable us to live more happily and aware. However, if we obsess over the news or social media and become captured by our mobile phones, we will sabotage our efforts to mind our brains, build emotional resilience and achieve tranquility and ease.

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Image by Thomas Ulrich from 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 Pathway to Resilience and Happiness

Hugh Van Cuylenburg has written a life-changing book which Missy Higgins describes as “hilarious, inspiring and heartbreakingly vulnerable”. Hugh is a great storyteller and his stories, provided both verbally and in writing, have changed the lives of thousands of people, from school children to elite sportspeople. His book, The Resilience Project: Finding Happiness through Gratitude, Empathy & Mindfulness, provides a very clear pathway to resilience and happiness. It is admirably digestible and eminently practical – which partly explains its amazing influence on so many lives.

Hugh summarises his pathway in the mnemonic, GEM, and the three powerful words that these letters represent – Gratitude, Empathy and Mindfulness. He developed his approach while in India working as a volunteer teacher in an incredibly poor village – where children often could not go to school, had no shoes, little food and no electricity or sanitation. He could not work out why the children at the school were so unbelievably happy despite their destitute conditions. He found the answer by observing the children and their practices closely and discovered that their resilience and happiness had its foundation in gratitude (appreciating what they do have), empathy (showing care and concern for others) and mindfulness (being mindful and developing this through meditation).

His message has been taken up not only by schools throughout Australia but also by elite sporting clubs such as the NRL team, Melbourne Storm and the AFL team, Collingwood. He tells the story, for example, of a Collingwood player who wrote a three-letter word on his wrist to remind himself during a game of the things that he is grateful for so that he could push aside negative thoughts and anxiety that arise when engaged in a highly competitive match.

Hugh’s pathway to happiness and resilience applies to each of us in our everyday life. The three elements of his approach are not new – we have covered many aspects of these in this blog as the result of the work of many other people. What Hugh presents in simple, digestible language and illustrative stories, is a very clear pathway integrating the three GEM elements that can be practised daily and that are mutually reinforcing – just like exercising, appropriate nutrition and yoga/ Tai Chi are mutually reinforcing, with each of these elements building on, and assisting us to achieve, the others.

The GEM pathway to happiness and resilience

Hugh refined his approach when he completed a Master of Education by focusing all his study and assignments on the mental health and wellness of adolescents. He was also able to learn about the neuroscience that underpinned his approach (he provides references to the scientific papers in his “Notes” at the end of the book).

What was a catalyst for Hugh’s passionate pursuit of the issue of resilience was his own traumatic experience as a teenager trying to cope with his younger sister’s anorexia nervosa. At the time, he did not understand what was happening to her and why she behaved the way she did, and did not show empathy for her plight. He failed to realise that she was mentally ill, not just suffering a physical malady, malnutrition, that could be overcome just by eating more. He became acutely aware as an adult of the “concentric circles of suffering” (for siblings, parents, friends, and teachers) that mental illness can create.

I will discuss each of the elements of GEM below:

Gratitude – Hugh suggests that this means appreciating what we have rather than focusing on what we lack. He tells the story of Stanzin, one of his students in India, who despite his impoverished circumstances was grateful for everything in his life – his gratitude was pervasive and continuous. Stanzin often pointed out to Hugh things that he was grateful for – his friends, being able to go to school, having shoes to wear and even receiving a plain bowl of rice for lunch. He was incredibly grateful for his rusted, broken-down play equipment (such as a swing) – something that in our Western society would initiate a complaint. Stanzin focused on what he had, not what he did not possess – avoiding negative emotions of discontent, resentment, or anger, and developing a positive mindset.

Hugh recommends a daily gratitude journal as a way to build resilience and happiness. This is a recommendation and practice of many people. In the previous post, I spoke of the twice-daily practice of gratitude journalling of Lindsey Stirling, the hugely successful songwriter, violinist, and dancer. Gwen Cherne, the first Commissioner for Veteran Family Advocacy, who agitates for veterans and their families battling mental stress, stated that she writes a gratitude journal every night (her story is featured in the Weekend Australian Magazine, March 6-7, 2021, pp.13-16). Hugh, Lindsey, and Gwen have each experienced considerable trauma in their lives and each has shown the resilience to be able to “bounce back” and experience happiness in pursuing their life purpose in contributing to the welfare and joy of others.

Empathy – being able to feel for others by consciously thinking about what they might be experiencing intellectually and emotionally. Hugh points to the neuroscience that reinforces the fact that practising empathy develops kindness and motivates compassionate action. Simon Sinek suggests that in a work situation an empathetic leader is “more concerned about the human being not their output”. The young boy Stanzin, who made a lasting impression on Hugh, was continuously empathetic – going out of his way to help others in need, e.g., sitting with children who were alone during the lunch hour. Hugh recalled that in contrast, he himself was not empathetic to his young sister as a teenager and was not able understand her suffering and feel with and for her. A key component of empathy is deep listening – openness to other’s stories and their perspectives.

Mindfulness – being present in the moment while adopting an open, curious, accepting, and non-judgmental attitude. Hugh learned through his experience in India that practising mindfulness through meditation was a way of “taking greater control of your mind and, therefore, of your life”. The children in the village school where he taught began each day with a 30-minute meditation, At first, he was sceptical about the practice but soon found that he could focus so much more on the present moment, and not become absorbed by anxiety about the future or depression about the past. He found that Stanzin was a living example of the benefits of mindfulness meditation. The young boy would be constantly mindful of what where the positive things in his village life. Mindfulness develops both gratitude and empathy.

Developing the GEM pathway to happiness and resilience

In his book, The Resilience Project, Hugh provides a section at the back where he offers some exercises that can help us to develop gratitude, empathy, and mindfulness – some of which he has used in schools throughout Australia. The Coles Group have implemented a range of practices drawn from The Resilience Project.

Simon Sinek suggests that a simple way to practise empathy in everyday life is to let the person into traffic ahead of you if they are stuck in a side street or are attempting to cut in front of you. He argues that you never know why they are trying to enter the traffic or are in a hurry to get somewhere. They could, for example, be dealing with an emergency – a sick parent/child, an accident at home, someone dying in hospital, or anxiety about a child stranded at night at a lonely, dark railway station.

Reflection

Taken together the elements of the GEM pathway can lead to happiness and resilience. The stories Hugh tells, and the research he draws on, reinforce the benefits of his approach. The widespread adoption of the principles of The Resilience Project attests to its effectiveness.

Hugh also stresses the importance of connection and has exercises that can help us renew our connections given that they have been eroded through social media and the distancing created by the pandemic. He stresses that practising GEM is even more urgent in these challenging times. He maintains too that we must go beyond connection itself and take wise and compassionate action to redress the suffering and pain of others, e.g., asking “R U OK?”

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and practising gratitude and empathy, we can develop self-awareness, self-regulation and compassionate action and gain increasing insight into our life purpose. As Hugh observes, every challenge is an opportunity to realise our potential and our capacity to contribute positively to the lives of others.

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Image by billy cedeno from 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.

Exploring Healing and Creativity through Music and Nature Imagery

Louie Schwartzberg, time-lapse photographer and filmmaker, in a recent Wonder and Awe podcast, interviewed Lindsey Stirling, internationally famous songwriter, violinist and dancer. They explored the role of music and nature imagery in self-healing and in stimulating energy and creativity. Louie and Lindsey have collaborated on a number of projects, including The Big Sur – shown during the podcast interview and featured in Louie’s Moving Art video on Netflix. They identified one key aspect that their individual artistry has in common – Lindsey’s classical music and videos and Louie’s nature photography and videos – both have no words. They pointed out that in a world of information overload they offer inspiration, a personal emotional journey, self-awareness, and self-healing. Lyrics, in contrast, can take us down the track of the thoughts and emotions portrayed by the creator.

Healing from grief through music

Lindsey spoke of her grief with the loss of her father and her best friend in the one year, and how she turned to music as a form of self-therapy to deal with her sense of loss and associated grief. Her album, Brave Enough, enabled her to pour out her grief and to be “brave enough” to feel the intensity of her difficult emotions. She said that every song on the album was inspired by her feelings of grief and loss. In her reflection on the loss through Lymphoma, of her keyboard player and best friend, Jason Gaviati, she indicated that the true path to success is being able to “rise from failure”, time and time again. She stated that her album and related Brave enough tour were about “the courage to feel, to feel everything”.

She wrote the instrumental song Guardian which highlights the way her own grief became transformed into connection. Working with Mako, she was able to hear the words that expressed her grief in a song called, Lose You Now. She wanted this music to be light and conducive to reminiscing (e.g., the Monarch butterfly represented her friend Jason) while building hope for the future, despite the sadness of the past. Louie commended her for her inner strength and ability to manage the challenges of “the journey of life” with all its waves and vicissitudes.

Bouncing back from setbacks and failure

Lindsey Stirling was buzzed off by Piers Morgan during the quarter-finals of America’s Got Talent and was rejected by the judges who variously said she was “not good enough”, “would not fill a concert hall in Las Vegas” and was “not a world-class violinist”. All of which made her work harder at both her music and her dancing. Lindsey’s accomplishments since then are mind-boggling. By 2017, she had 600 Million views of her music/dance videos on her YouTube Channel and, at time of writing, this number has grown to 3 Billion views of her 100 videos. She made history with her 5 top-selling albums and filled concert halls everywhere (her “Brave Enough tour” involved 83 concerts in 20 countries). Also, Lindsey and her dancing partner were second on Season 25 (2017) of Dancing With The Stars (DWTS). As she has proven in her own life, “bouncing back” from setbacks is an essential element in her success.

Parents as models and inspiration

When asked by Louie how she had developed her passion for music, dance and storytelling in song, Lindsey maintained that her earliest influences were her parents who exposed her to the arts, especially classical music. Her mother was creative in her sewing endeavours, a skill that Lindsey also shared, while her father’s creativity was expressed through writing stories that he often read to her. Lindsey identified her storytelling as her “greatest gift”.

Gratitude in the midst of loss and pain

Lindsey tells the story of how painful it was to be at the bedside as she and her sister watched her father die of cancer. In those moments of extreme sadness, they found the inspiration and energy to tell each other stories of their childhood memories of being with their father. Amidst the tears and pain, she felt an intense sense of gratitude for having had such a life together and a rich store of wonderful memories.

This experience was replicated when she took on the challenging task of dancing and playing the violin while hanging from her hair to create the video for the song, Crystallize. The excruciatingly painful training over three months for this achievement has been recorded in her Hair Hanging Vlog. Despite the pain, Lindsey was able to feel gratitude for the feelings of beauty and power that the final performance engendered in her. Her basic message is that we are all capable of what at first seems impossible because we have achieved hard things before. She reiterated that “courage and faith can be found through the fear” and that “gratitude can be discovered by our losses”.

Developing resilience through gratitude

Louie observed that research has demonstrated that gratitude develops resilience. He maintained that if your mind is filled with thoughts of gratitude, there is no room for negative thoughts. Both Lindsey and Louie agreed that if you focus on what you have, rather than what you do not have, you are healing yourself, building your energy and opening yourself to creativity. As Louie stated, “If every experience is a gift, then your only attitude is gratitude”. As Jon Kabat-Zinn points out, “we become what we focus on”. Lindsey illustrates this idea through her practice of writing in a gratitude journal each morning and night. She maintained that this practice that started as a chore is now something she looks forward to and enables her to frequently be grateful in the moment.

Lindsey noted that while being able to play the violin, write songs and dance are gifts in themselves, her special gift that she realizes when performing is an “intense connection” with people in her audience as she looks into their eyes while performing. For her, this is a special place where she sees the beauty in everyone and is consumed with love.

Lindsey has established the Upside Fund to provide financial assistance to people experiencing financial difficulties as a result of the pandemic. She started this fund, which accepts donations, after her father died in hospital and she began each Christmas to pay the hospital medical bills of 10 people. The name of the fund is based on the idea that we can each “lift where stand” – we are each in a unique position to contribute to the welfare of others based on our life circumstances, location, and the gifts that we are grateful for. Lindsey particularly works through her fan base to build the fund and support people in need.

Mindfulness, music, nature, and dance

I have previously explored the relationship between mindfulness and playing a musical instrument. Lindsey stated that when she plays the violin for herself (not for her work) she finds it meditative. She is completely in the moment when she dances and particularly when she is doing so in nature.

Louie as an “action man” is not a practitioner of formal meditation – he experiences his mindfulness through immersion in nature which he contends increases his capacity for “courage, creativity, kindness and compassion”.

Both Louie and Lindsey suggest that to be more mindful and focused on the moment that we should not be obsessed with the end goal but experience the process fully, whether it is playing an instrument, learning a dance, taking time-lapse photography, or developing a video. Louie stated that after 40 years of time-lapse photography, he has only a total of 16 hours of high-quality film – he indicated that a day’s work would typically produce 2 seconds of useful film. To him the process of observing and photographing the beauty of nature is what brings him joy, healing, and happiness. He can walk in nature when not filming and notice the quality of light and how it reflects on plants and flowers. He can walk mindfully in nature, engaging all his senses.

Louie articulated his belief that nature cultivates gratitude and mindfulness when he presented a Ted Talk on the theme, Nature, Beauty, and Gratitude, which featured his movie titled Gratitude that incorporated his time-lapse photography and his fundamental belief about the need to be grateful for everything in life.

Reflection

Nature stimulates reflection, healing, energy, gratitude, and creativity. Music and dance, in their many forms, can have similar outcomes. We have a choice in terms of how we spend our time and what we consume mentally and emotionally. We can grow in mindfulness and enjoy all its benefits through exposure to nature, music and dance or we can become overwhelmed by information and the news and the negativity that they often engender.

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Image by sun liming from 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.

Developing Awareness to Live More Fully

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education, at MARC, UCLA offers a meditation podcast where she introduces a range of meditation practices. Her guided meditation covers The Spectrum of Awareness Practices. During the meditation, Diana likens the different practices to changing the lens and focus of a camera – from narrow to broad to panoramic. Her aim is to open us up to the possibilities inherent in meditation practice so that we can choose a preferred awareness focus as a regular practice or seek variety by consciously “changing our lens”. It is not her intention to provide an exhaustive list of meditation practices but to show that there is a broad spectrum in terms of what we can pay attention to and the resultant focus of our awareness.

The telephoto lens – narrow focus

The first meditation practice Diana introduces is what she describes as using a telephoto lens – homing in on a specific object of awareness and leaving awareness of other things in the background (as you would when you focus your camera on a bird in a tree in a distant location). The focus can be your breath (the rise and fall of your abdomen), specific body sensation or a noise within your room. As your mind wanders from this chosen anchor, you can bring it back into focus (as you would when adjusting a lens for greater clarity of an image). This form of awareness meditation develops concentration, calmness, and clarity.

Wide lens – broader focus

We can broaden our focus beyond our breathing to a particular body sensation or a difficult emotion that draws our attention away from our breath. We could pay attention, for instance, to the sense of groundedness in our feet, the warm tingling in our fingers or the tightness in our shoulders. With a difficult emotion, such as resentment, we could focus not only on the nature and intensity of the emotion but also its bodily manifestation, e.g., tightness in the chest, stiffness in the jaw or pain in the neck. We can name the emotion and describe its intensity to better tame it and bring it under control. This broader form of awareness practice can help us to understand our emotions and our triggers, develop emotional regulation, build body awareness and increase our awareness of our mind-body-emotion connection.

Panoramic lens – being conscious of awareness itself

Here we broaden our attention beyond a chosen focus to what exists both within and without us. It involves tapping into our natural awareness – a consciousness of what is going on inside us as well as around us, without any specific focus. It requires opening up fully to our inner landscape and our external environment – taking in the sights, sounds, smells, touch, and taste of what we experience. This is the spaciousness in which we become conscious of awareness itself. Natural awareness helps us to cultivate openness and acceptance, curiosity and appreciation and a sense of wonder and awe.

Reflection

Diana introduces the spectrum of awareness as a way to broaden and enrich our meditation practice, increase our understanding of the nature of awareness and its pervasiveness, and enrich our daily life so that we can live more fully, engaging with ourselves and the world with heightened awareness and gratitude. David Sinclair in his book, Lifespan, describes something of the richness of openness to natural awareness when he describes the experience of bushwalking with his family as “Searching for serenity. Hearing stories. Finding Beauty. Making memories. Sharing wisdom.”

Diana describes natural awareness and other mindfulness practices in more detail in her book, The Little Book of Being. As we grow in mindfulness through different forms of meditation, we can experience life more fully and enrich the lives of others from the fullness of our own life.

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Image by Manfred Antranias Zimmer from 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.

Befriending Yourself and Others through Mindfulness

Allyson Pimentel in a recent MARC weekly podcast spoke about the power of meditation to enable us to befriend ourselves and others. Her guided meditation is titled, Meditation as a Path of Friendship. The meditation does not focus on self-improvement per se but on how to improve our relationship with ourselves, a relationship which impacts on our interactions with others. If we are down on ourselves, for instance, it is difficult to be open and accepting of others. When we are not at ease with ourselves, it is easy to be envious of others and resentful towards them.

Befriending yourself in meditation

Being kind to yourself in meditation begins with such simple things as ensuring that you adopt a comfortable position during the meditation, whether lying down, sitting, or standing. It also involves undertaking a body scan to identify tense points in your body and to relax them.

Allyson suggests that you begin initially with a slow deep breath to help relax your body and open yourself to relaxing breath meditation. This form of meditation entails focusing on your in-breath and your out-breath without any attempt to control them – just letting them be, while observing how they feel in your body with the rise and fall of your abdomen or chest or the smooth passage of air in your nose. It involves appreciating that no matter what is going on around you or where you are, your breathing-on-auto is keeping you alive.

Jon Kabat-Zinn stresses the need to be non-judgmental when we are purposely in the present moment while meditating. He suggests that self-acceptance begins with acknowledging that as human beings, we are constantly engaged in thinking – whether planning, analysing, criticising, judging, or evaluating. The act of thinking is perfectly human, and we can befriend ourselves by accepting that we will have distracting thoughts when we are trying to focus during meditation. However, by constantly returning to our meditation focus, our anchor, we can progressively build up our attention muscle.

This refocusing requires us to notice that we are planning or evaluating, to name what is happening (“I’m evaluating again”) and to observe our thoughts as passing clouds, not entertaining them or dwelling on them. This simple process of refocusing (that is hard to do) is a way to befriend ourselves through self-acceptance, to value ourselves enough to want to increase our capacity to pay attention and concentrate (to activate our highest potential) and to free ourselves from negative self-judgment.

Allyson suggests that you can befriend yourself by choosing an anchor that is comfortable for you and that does not trigger any negative physical or emotional reactions. Each one of us has our own preference for an anchor – whether it is our breathing; sounds within our room or externally; or some form of bodily sensation such as the sensation of warmth and tingling as our fingers are touching or the feeling of being supported as our feet are firmly on the ground or floor.

Our anchor helps us to develop the capacity to be in the present moment, appreciate what is good in our life and grow in mindfulness – being increasingly self-aware, better able to manage our difficult emotions, becoming more patient and tolerant, and learning to accept what is. As we develop self-forgiveness and self-care, we can experience ease and tranquillity and become more sensitive to the needs of others.

Befriending others

The more we can befriend ourselves through meditation, the better we are able to befriend others. We will be more aware of our own limitations and more accepting of those of other people, better able to control our reactions to the words and actions of others, more willing to listen and build relationships and more able to find joy in the achievement of others (rather than envy).

Through meditation we develop a deeper sense of our connectedness, of our common humanity. We also begin to appreciate the importance of connectedness for our mental health and wellbeing, as well as for that of others. We can see in others what we value in ourselves – including our common appreciation of nature and all it has to offer for our well-being.

Reflection

As we develop self-compassion, our compassion for others also grows and we become more willing to take compassionate action, including deep listening in times of another’s need. Self-understanding and self-acceptance, developed through meditation and other mindfulness practices, are foundational to befriending ourselves and others.

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Image by Michael Gaida from 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.

Self-Forgiveness and Self-Care for Health and Happiness

There is a growing consensus around what we need for self-healing and this convergence is supported by neuroscience and scientific research into the process of aging. In a recent HEAL Summit, international holistic health expert Danette May presented her insights gained through her traumatic life experiences and her journey to international success – a journey she has mapped through her book, The Rise: An Unforgettable Journey of Self-Love, Forgiveness and Transformation.

The HEAL Summit is produced by Hay House and the free presentations and resources are offered over one week by more than 30 experts in holistic health. The presentation by Danette May covered the topic, Self-Love Rituals to be Happier and Healthier Now. Her recipe for success in life involves healing foods, healing movements and a healing mindset. Fundamentally, it entails self-love expressed through self-caring activities undertaken regularly to achieve wellness.

The rise from depression

Danette suffered severe depression and grief following her failed marriage and the death of her infant son. Her story is one of achieving transformation in mind, body, and heart. She became a best-selling author, leading expert in developing a healthy lifestyle, creator of a highly successful international business and a significant influencer through her social media presence and speaker engagements. She was featured in the life-affirming documentary, WeRiseUP, which exhorts people to connect and take action to make a difference in their sphere of influence, whether in education, work, or the community. Danette’s suggested approach represents an integrated, holistic way to achieve self-healing.

Healing foods

One of the world’s leading experts on aging and healthy living, David Sinclair, who is author of Lifespan, confirms through his research and that of his colleagues that what we eat, as well as how much we eat, has a major influence on our quality of life and longevity. Danette contends that if we remove certain foods from our diet and include other more beneficial foods, the “wiring in our brain will change”.

Danette’s recommendations re healing foods include the following things to avoid:

White sugar – because of its toxicity for mind and body.
Gluten – causes inflammation in the whole-body system, including the brain (individuals may have more visible symptoms than others from these inflammatory effects, e.g., skin problems, headaches and/or digestive issues).
Oils such as canola or vegetable oils (olive oil is widely recommended as a substitute).

Her recommendations re what to eat include:

Avocados – identified by the Mayo Clinic as the superfood of the month.
Blueberries
Leafy green vegetables
Fish
Nuts

It is interesting that these latter foods are among the 10 superfoods identified by the Harvard Medical School as sources of a healthy diet. Danette elaborates on her healing foods recommendations in her abovementioned book. She has also published another book focused on recipes that are gluten-free and vegan friendly and provide a welcome resource for those who are trying to move away from mainstream consumption to a more healthy diet. In essence, she encourages us to be more mindful of what we eat and knowledgeable about its effects on our body and mind.

Healing movements

Danette identified inertia as one of the problems associated with depression and grief. She strongly encourages movement particularly walking and maintains that movement is the quickest way to change your mental state. Walking releases emotions and assists clarity in your thinking. Danette especially advocates walking bare feet in nat u re as this enables you to become grounded.

Healing mindset

Neuroscience research supports the view that positive thinking leads to better health outcomes, both bodily and mentally. In line with her philosophy of small movements towards a goal, Danette recommends the use of personally appropriate affirmations for thirty seconds to one minute, at least each day. Affirmations reinforce what is good in ourselves and helps to supplant “unconscious negative beliefs”. What we focus on mentally becomes our new reality, our new mindset and perspective on the world.

Daily rituals of self-love and self-care

Danette suggested a wide range of daily practices that if maintained can create a ritual – a regular practice of a particular group of activities . Here are some of them:

Spend time in nature
Write a gratitude journal – writing can release self-limiting beliefs/negative self-stories, increase our self-awareness, and build a positive outlook through appreciating what we have. You can reflect on where you are with your partner, family, career, life purpose or finances and appreciate the positive influences and influencers in your life.
Eat something green and leafy
Practise meditation, however briefly – even, for example, taking a few mindful, deep breaths.
Read inspiring success stories that provide the motivation to realise, and exercise, your own power to make a difference in your arena of influence.
Walk for health and wellness.

Overcoming procrastination

We can be full of good intentions to develop a daily ritual or to undertake something significant. If we delay through procrastination, we enable our negatively biased brain to think up all the reasons why we should not proceed. Danette suggests that we have 17 seconds to take action before our self-sabotaging thoughts take over. Like Seth Godin, she suggests that you start small – begin with some step towards your goal, however small.

Self-forgiveness and forgiving others

Anger and resentment over our sense of personal hurt by another can only consume us and damage us physically, mentally, and emotionally – we can experience physical pain, unhealthy self-absorption, and emotional stunting. Danette suggests that self-forgiveness and forgiving others is like “cutting the rope” – releasing yourself from negative emotions that hold you back. She herself had developed a daily ritual of saying, “I forgive you, I love you”, to overcome her resentment towards her former partner – the process took five years! Louise Hay offers a very pertinent affirmation for forgiveness, “As I forgive myself, it becomes easier to forgive others”.

Professional support

Sometimes our self-sabotaging behaviour becomes entrenched and difficult to shift. It is times like these that professional help can provide the impetus to move forward. Danette provides a range of services to assist anyone to make the necessary shift to achieve overall wellness and happiness:

3-day emotional detox – to work with people where they are currently at.
30 days challenge
6 weeks premium coaching to identify self-sabotaging behaviour, develop a positive mindset and take the first steps towards personal recovery and making a difference in the world.

Reflection

There can be a lot of things and experiences holding us back from realising our true potential. The starting point is awareness – followed by deciding what we want to be different in our lives. Daily rituals including meditation can help us to move forward and actively engage with what is holding us back. As we grow in mindfulness through our rituals and daily mindfulness practices, we can develop profound self-awareness, a strong motivation to make a shift and the courage and creativity to realise our life purpose.

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Image by dae jeung kim from 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.

Self-Healing and the Healing Power of Nature

In a previous post I discussed Amy Scher’s book, How to Heal Yourself from Depression When No One Else Can, where the focus is on the use of energy techniques for self-healing. In this post, I want to explore further the concept of self-healing and the power of visual media and nature to empower people to explore the many dimensions of self-healing.

This exploration will take us to Louie Schwartzberg’s podcast interview with the creators of the Heal Documentary – Kelly Noonan Gores (Director and Executive Producer) and Adam Schomer (Producer). Interestingly, both Kelly and Adam have been practising yoga and meditation for many years. Each of them brings to the interview lives rich with insight and experience.

Kelly is the author of the book, Heal: Discover your unlimited potential and awaken the powerful healer within, on which the documentary is based. She has worked as an actress, director, producer, and writer and established Elevative Entertainment, an independent production company designed to raise awareness, inspire, and empower people to enrich their lives and that of others they interact with. A recent interview with Kelly conducted by Brianne Hogan gives some insight into her passion for self-healing and her own wellness routine.

Adam is an intrepid explorer of human capacity and nature’s richness. He produced the documentary, The Road to Dharma – a Docuseries recounting his participation in a group undertaking a motorcycle exploration of the Himalayas in their search for freedom from fear and self-limiting beliefs. Adam is a producer and director of documentaries, including the award-winning The Highest Pass (2012).

Self-healing and healing through nature

Fundamental to the Heal book and documentary is the concept of self-healing – the belief that your body can heal itself. Our body maintains our human functioning through its autonomous systems such as breathing, digestion and circulation, all without our direct intervention. In Louie’s podcast interview, Kelly and Adam strongly advocate that we explore the terrain of self-healing and empower ourselves to enrich our lives by taking back control over our health and well-being.

Kelly and Adam stressed the need to overcome fear which leads to dis-ease and to become co-creators of our own lives and wellness. They agreed that the “emotional inflammation” surrounding the global COVID-19 pandemic was disabling people and that we have to find a way to overcome habituated ways of responding and seek out ways to restore our energy and power. They suggest that obsession with the news and social media is having a negative effect on people’s health as is “nature deficit disorder” resulting from a loss of connection with nature and its healing power.

All three participants in the podcast interview highlighted the mind-body connection and maintained that our “mindframe” (worldview) determines our perspective on our life experiences and the “waves” (challenges and disturbances) we encounter in daily life. Both Kelly and Adam see visual media as a way to enable people to experience emotion, challenge their mindframe, realise mind healing, and engage in more healthful behaviours. Kelly suggested that adverse life events such as illness serve as a “wake-up call” and a way of nudging us towards becoming the best we can be and empowered to pursue our life purpose. She drew on the work of Bruce Lupton to reinforce the disabling effects of our negative beliefs.

Kelly stressed the role of nature as “a healing modality”. She reinforced the value of nature in “earthing” (becoming grounded) and the healing power of “forest bathing” (lowers blood pressure and activates the parasympathetic nervous system). Louie expressed the view that nature imagery too is a healing modality and his view has been supported by the numerous positive health benefits identified by people who have watched his film, Fantastic Fungi. He mentioned that, based on the research supporting the health benefits of visceral nature imagery, some hospitals are employing this as a healing modality for illnesses such as alcohol addiction.

Reflection

Louie’s interview podcast with Kelly and Adam provided more exposure for their incredible commitment to promoting self-healing and their passion for, and expertise in, consciousness-raising documentary films. They collectively stressed that as we grow in mindfulness and awareness through meditation and absorption in nature, we can empower ourselves to heal our own bodies and minds and develop genuine wellness and ease.

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Image by Nikolaus Bader from 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.

Developing Wonder and Awe through Nature and Music

Louie Schwartzberg – author, time-lapse photographer, cinematographer, producer, and director – has developed a series of podcasts that bring science and nature together in a very personal way and opens our minds and hearts to nature’s beauty and power. His podcast series titled Wonder and Awe is available on his website, Spotify, and iTunes.

I first came across Louie Schwartzberg in 2016 when I heard his stunning TED Talk on Nature, Beauty, and Gratitude which featured his movie Gratitude. I was inspired by Louie’s capacity to engender wonder and awe through time-lapse photography of nature. He maintained that nature cultivates gratitude and mindfulness. Louie’s website, Moving Art, has a collection of his movies, mindfulness-based blog posts and other resources designed to develop appreciation of the beauty and invaluable resource that nature provides. You can view his videos that depict emotional states that are developed as we grow in mindfulness, e.g., courage, forgiveness, connection, patience, creativity, happiness, and gratitude. Louie argues that being fully present in nature can be healing and life changing.

Music and nature – developing wonder, awe, healing, and creativity

In a recent Wonder and Awe podcast Louie interviewed Lisbeth Scott – singer, composer, and songwriter – who is famous for her musical scores for movies such as Avatar and The Chronicles of Narnia as well as her singing and song writing featured on Spotify. In the far-ranging and enlightening interview Louie explored Lisbeth’s musical inspiration, her composition techniques and the exceptional breadth and depth of her musical knowledge, awareness, and sensitivity.

During the interview, Louie shared snippets of music compositions by Lisbeth, including music that they collaborated on such as the soundtrack for his film on Machu Picchu, one of his many films featured on the Netflix series, Moving Art, which is now in Season 3.

They discussed the healing power of music and its ability to release emotions and transport people into a world of wonder, awe, and joy. Lisbeth mentioned that she is inspired not only by nature itself, but also by images of nature, other images, and conversations – as she hears it all as music playing it in her head. In her compositions she attempts to track the visuals with matching music “to take people on a journey”. Both Lisbeth and Louie agreed that the creative process at some stage involves “letting go” – letting inspiration and intuition take over.

Lisbeth thought as a child that she could not sing – in fact, she used to hide in a cupboard to sing. Her rich and adaptive vocal capacity was discovered by a friend and was influential in her being engaged By Hans Zimmer to provide the vocals for a movie – and her music career and her association with movies began at that point. As Chris James points out we are all born with a musical instrument – our bodies as natural resonators – and a beautiful voice that needs to be uncovered and discovered.

Reflection

The power of nature and music to generate wonder and awe is enhanced when two people of the calibre of Lisbeth and Louie collaborate – a world famous composer and musician collaborating with the creative genius of an outstanding time-lapse photographer and filmmaker. Both sought out nature and its unique sounds, such as the sounds of river water, as children. Louie contends that his own intimacy with nature has convinced him that “immersion in nature increases our capacity for courage, creativity, kindness and compassion”.

Nature and music can enable us to grow in mindfulness and enrich our lives in every dimension. Lisbeth and Louie provide the medium for us to experience nature and music in a uniquely integrated way.

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Image by Susann Mielke from 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.

Self-Healing through Energy Techniques

Tami Simon of Sounds True provides a podcast of her interview with Amy Scher, energy therapist and author of How to Heal Yourself from Depression When No one Else Can. The interview is part of the podcast series titled, Insights at the Edge.

In the conversation with Amy, Tami explores the origins of her interest in “energy psychology”, experiences a number of energy techniques, and discuses the implications and efficacy of the energy processes.

Amy’s interest in energy psychology

Amy was motivated to explore the whole field of energy psychology when she found that nothing worked in terms of being able to treat her own severe illness, including chronic Lyme disease. She experienced all kinds of debilitating and energy-draining symptoms, including difficulty with walking, being bedridden and suffering from headaches, nausea, and other severe symptoms. Amy even tried the risky procedure of an “experimental stem cell transplant”, which required her to travel to India. While this latter treatment worked for a while, her symptoms started to reappear, albeit with less severity. This symptomatic recurrence and the fear that her condition would worsen again provided the motivation to explore self-healing as an alternative to doctor-controlled treatments.

The mind-body-energy-emotion connection

Energy psychology recognises that throughs, emotions, and beliefs impact the physical systems of the body, e.g., the digestive system and nervous system. Our emotions and thoughts can create ill-health and physical dysfunction. So, the associated process of “energy therapy” works with the body’s own self-healing processes by stimulating the internal energy system of the body – an approach that is consistent with that of other healing modalities such as acupuncture, Reiki, acupressure, and Japanese Seitai Massage. While the latter treatment modality focuses on the musculoskeletal system to remove physical blockages to energy flow, energy psychology involves “working with the emotional landscape” and its connection to the energy system of the body, thus helping to “heal body, mind and spirit”.

Energy techniques

Fundamental to a wide range of energy techniques provided by Amy in her book is a recognition that our thoughts, emotions and beliefs impact our body’s welfare, e.g., we might say, “I’m feeling really uptight just thinking about what might happen”. Negative self-stories about self-worth, how others view us and what we are capable of, all add to the stress experienced by the body and manifest in different ways depending on the emotions involved. The challenge is accepting that we play a significant part, consciously or unconsciously, in our physical health. This is a difficult concept to swallow and even Amy talks about the strength of her own resistance to this idea of personal contribution to her own ill-health. The techniques she discusses primarily involve listening to your own body.

Listening to your own body

Amy indicated that the real breakthrough for her occurred when she started to be still and quiet and to listen to her own body and what it was telling her. She maintains that physical symptoms are the “body’s communication system” and that emotions convey a message. We just need to listen with openness and curiosity to begin the process of self-healing. In her book mentioned above, she identifies the “most common subconscious blocks” to energy flow in the body, exploring the body’s messages, symptom by symptom.

Practising energy techniques

One of Amy’s own foundational energy blocks was the belief that “If I express my true self, I’ll be unlovable” – a damaging belief that had its genesis in her Jewish origins and the generational trauma passed down through her grandfather and father who lived through the Holocaust. Both Amy and her father experienced deep depression – hence, the motivation for her recent book.

Amy provided a sample of energy techniques during the podcast and enabled podcast listeners to experience three techniques:

The Sweep – a particular narrative that is spoken or read to “sweep” unconscious, harmful beliefs from the mind. Amy maintains that this process can lead to a shift, however small, in perspective or belief.
Tapping – this is an increasingly recognised healing technique that is part of the repertoire of energy therapists and is described by Amy as one of her “micro-movements” – a recognition that a shift happens in small steps, especially for someone experiencing depression. Amy provides a specific tapping technique that involves focusing on the emotion that you are experiencing in the present moment while tapping on your chest. She suggests that you can strengthen the freeing effect of tapping by saying over and over, “let go, let go, let go”.
Accepting yourself – Amy suggests that an approach you can use when you are tending to “beat up on yourself” is to challenge the thought that generated the emotion by saying something like, “Was I really that bad or unforgivable?” She maintains that a shift can happen if you focus instead on “the next less shitty thing that you can think about yourself”. Again, this practice constitutes a micro-movement.

Amy explained that her book provides a wide range of energy techniques that readers can practice to help them achieve their own energy shifts and self-healing.

Reflection

Research confirms the negative impact of stress and trauma on our immune system and the tendency of the body to experience various forms of inflammation. The current challenging environment is contributing to “emotional inflammation” as well. Amy highlights the impact of these stressors as causing “energy suppression”. Her energy techniques are designed to release the trapped energy and enable the body to heal itself. The process of self-healing generates a sense of agency for the person engaged in the relevant energy practices. Some people have found that the vibrations involved in singing too can be a form of self-healing along with the positive emotions expressed in sung mantra meditations.

As we grow in mindfulness through energy techniques, meditation, and other mindfulness practices we can develop openness and curiosity, deepen self-awareness, and learn to heal our self. Movement towards healing is possible if we sustain our practices.

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Image by Antonio López from 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.