Deepak Chopra – Grow Mindfulness

The Inner Challenge in Aging

The interviewees involved in the Radically Reframing Aging Summit highlighted the inner challenge involved in aging and the need to mind your brain. Emily Arnhalt, clinical psychologist, focused on mental health and emotional fitness and encouraged the use of “emotional pushups”. Uma Naidoo, Psychiatrist and specialist in nutrition, highlighted how food affects our mental health and cognition. Uma is the author of The Food Mood Connection.

In her Summit interview, Goldie Hawn demonstrated the passion for creativity and the enthusiasm for life that has permeated the comments of all contributors during the Summit. Like Tina Turner, Goldie has found mindfulness practices to be a way to overcome her difficulties and mental challenges as she negotiated her life transitions (including aging) and sought purpose in her life. Goldie has moved beyond her acting career and become an author, director, producer and a dedicated advocate for mindfulness for children. I have previously written about Goldie’s work in creating MindUP – a developmental program for children built on a solid research foundation incorporating neuroscience, mindfulness, positive psychology and social emotional learning.

In his Summit interview, Deepak Chopra, author of more than 90 books including Grow Younger, Live Longer, reiterated the importance of looking after your brain as you age. He suggested that one of the major challenges in aging is to overcome “the hypnosis of social conditioning” which prevents us from realising our potential and living the life we truly desire. Deepak has established The Longevity Experiment through his Chopra Foundation.

Two very stimulating interviewees were Dr. Martha Beck and Jim Kwik who highlighted the role of play and creativity in developing, sustaining and enriching the mind (at any age). Martha was described by the host, Maria Shriver, as the most creative person she knows. She is the author of The Way of Integrity: Finding the Path to Your True Self and provides practical steps and exercises to achieve this goal. In the Summit interview, Martha provided ideas and processes for “reverse aging” and demonstrated the energy and positive mindset that comes from viewing aging with anticipation and readiness to explore new boundaries. She offers a free, pre-recorded Masterclass on The Five Paths to Your Purpose.

During his Summit interview, Jim Kwik was incredibly enlightening and engaging as his #1 training podcast, Kwik Brain, with 728,000 subscribers, attests. His articulate and incisive comments displayed his passion for brain development and ongoing brain health throughout life. Jim is the founder of Kwik Learning which specialises in accelerated reading and learning and enhancing memory and brain performance. He is the author of Limitless: Upgrade Your Brain, Learn Anything Faster and Unlock Your Exceptional Life.

Reflection

There is a lot written about diet and exercise for a healthy body as we age. Little attention is given to our mind and what we need to do to sustain and develop our mental capacities. The interviewees in this segment of the Summit really brought the mind into focus as a primary area impacting our quality of life as we age. There is a strong emphasis on the mind-body connection and a constant encouragement to engage in some form of creativity and/or play every day.

Engaging in mindfulness practices is one way to care for our mind as we age. As we grow in mindfulness through processes such as Tai Chi, mantra meditations, chanting, reflecting or meditating, we can enhance our attention, develop our brain physically, heighten our capacity for introspection and abstract thought, and gain greater access to our creativity.

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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 Well-Being

Deepak Chopra lays out a pathway to well-being in his multiple books (80 in total), his online courses and his many videos on Chopra’s YouTube Channel. Chopra also provides a podcast focused on meditation and well-being with daily meditations grouped by weeks. His approach is backed by current research and neuroscience – he is an active researcher and publishes research results with his colleagues on the Chopra Foundation website. The information that Deepak offers is comprehensive, combines the practical with the theoretical and is inspirational. However, the vastness of this information can be overwhelming. One way forward is his Radical Well-Being online course which integrates a lot of this material and provides meditations, practical exercises and a clear pathway to well-being.

Foundational to Deepak’s approach is the science-based recognition that our genes account for only 5% of our overall well-being – the remaining 95% is governed by lifestyle. Hence Deepak states that “genes are not our future”. Underpinning this recognition is the knowledge that our body while seemingly remaining the same is undergoing continuous change, e.g. our skin is replaced once a month, our skeleton once every three months and, over a year, 98% of the atoms in our body are replaced. Deepak concludes “our suitcase has a longer shelf-life than our body”.

Deepak maintains that our “soul”, our core consciousness, creates our body. While the soul is invisible it can be experienced through our memories, thoughts, feelings, sensations, and images. While stress is often considered to be a perception of threat of some kind (physical, emotional or psychological), Deepak argues that a wisdom perspective sees stress as “interference with the soul’s spontaneous expression” thus impeding creativity and generativity.

Practical steps on the pathway to well-being

Deepak’s resources are replete with practical advice and tips for well-being, so I can only hope to cover a sample here and link them to resources that he provides:

Meditation – Deepak draws on extensive research that confirms the benefits of meditation. In particular, he notes that meditation positively impacts our entire genome – the complete set of instructions/information found in the cells of our body. Also, because of his abiding interest in aging and the impact of stress, he stresses that meditation increases the protection for, and length of, telomeres – leading to increased well-being and improved biological aging. A core meditation that he proposes for inner peace is a form of meditation that explores the fundamental question, “Who am I”, and progresses through the various levels of consciousness that he identifies. Deepak suggests that we can gain the benefits of meditation even by spending just 10 minutes a day in meditating, e.g. through focusing on our breathing. Throughout this blog, I provide multiple meditation methods and links to sources of meditation processes.
Sleep – a minimum of 7 hours a night, ideally 8 hours. Deepak draws on the science of sleep to reassert its beneficial effects, including its capacity to “restore, repair and conserve energy”. He also reinforces the power of deep sleep to consolidate our long-term and short-term memories and to connect us more fully with the natural rhythms of the universe. Sleep facilitates the operation of our subconscious mind and its information processing capacity. Deepak stresses the negative impacts of sleep deprivation, including confusion,, inability to concentrate and irritability. He describes his daily process of aiding his sleep through “recapitulation” – by reviewing his day as if watching a video and then letting it go while saying to himself, “I don’t hold onto anything”. He states that this process of daily reflection and review develops emotional freedom and well-being. The day has become a dream and it is in our dreams that we process our daily emotions. Deepak stresses the Buddhist principle of the impermanence of everything, including our experiences – a principle that is reflected in the fact that we cannot hang onto a single breath, we have to let it go to live.
Movement – movement generates energy and activates our brain. Here Deepak is not just talking about exercise in all its forms but also yoga, Tai Chi and breathing techniques. Movement leads to attunement with our body, self-awareness and overall well-being (both physical, mental and psychological). The benefits of Tai Chi, for example, have been well researched and documented by the Harvard Medical School. Locating movement in nature provides added benefits.
Managing emotions and stress – take responsibility for our emotions and proactively deal with the stressors in our life. Daily we have choices about what we will watch and/or read – we can feast on the news with deleterious effects or do the things that engender happiness or a sense of satisfaction and achievement. We can wallow in anger or resentment or develop our sense of appreciation and gratitude. If work is a source of stress, we can explore our work stressors and develop strategies to address them or seek to change our job.
Earthing – involves grounding through direct contact with the electromechanical field in the earth. Earthing can be achieved by walking barefoot on the ground and/or sitting down with hands or feet on the ground. Deepak has reported the research that shows the benefits of earthing including better balance, reduced tension and being more centred. The Earthing Institute emphasises the capacity of earthing to reduce inflammation, the major source of many illnesses. Forest Bathing is another form of earthing that can enable us to access the healing power of nature.

Reflection

One thing that Deepak stresses throughout his resources is the power of intention. Through intention, we can shape our perception and our reality. To achieve overall well-being it helps to form the intention to develop a “joyful, energetic body”, ‘a loving compassionate heart” and a “reflective, alert mind”. The practical steps that Deepak identifies can put us on the pathway to overall well-being.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, earthing and reflection, we can identify the obstacles to our well-being, form positive intentions to take practical steps and progressively review our processes while maintaining patience and self-compassion (not beating up on ourselves for self-generated setbacks). We cannot do it all at once, but we can work progressively on one thing each day that will contribute to our overall well-being.

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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.

Benefits of Body Scan Meditations

Body Scan meditations take many forms but typically involve a process of progressive noticing of parts of the body, usually beginning with the feet. A body scan meditation can be undertaken anywhere or at any time and can be brief or extended. One of its advantages is that it can be easily integrated into other forms of mindfulness practices such as gratitude meditation or loving-kindness meditation. It can also be undertaken while lying down or sitting on a chair (e.g. in a workplace). A powerful example of the benefits of this form of meditation is provided by Tara Healey who offers a guided meditation incorporating a 10-minute full body scan.

What are the benefits of body scan meditations?

There are many benefits that accrue from this form of meditation and these benefits are typically mutually reinforcing. I will discuss several of the benefits here, but the real test is to try different forms of body scan and select one that is appropriate for the time you have available and your needs at the time. A daily practice will be habit forming so that in times of stress you can automatically drop into a body scan.

Relaxation: the body scan is often described as a form of progressive relaxation as you consciously progress from your feet to your head paying attention to parts of your body, e.g. your toes on your left foot. The very act of noticing serves to relax the different parts of the body as you progress. Michelle Maldonado, when discussing self-care, suggests that a body scan can be used by people who have difficulty going to sleep in these challenging times.
Tension release: some forms of body scan involve identifying different parts of the body where tension is being experienced in the form of tightness, ache, pain, or soreness. This approach involves noticing these specific physical tension points so that you can consciously release them. Because of the close mind-body connection, the release of physical tension can also serve to lessen sources of mental tension such as anxiety, fear or worry. Deepak Chopra maintains that “there is no mental event that doesn’t have a biological correlate” – in other words, our thoughts and feelings are automatically manifested in our body.
Body awareness: as you develop the habit of a body scan, you increase your body awareness. Some forms of this meditation focus on body sensations as you progress through the scan. In this way, you become more conscious of how your body is reacting to your daily experiences – often an aspect of your daily living that is outside conscious awareness. Thus, the body scan is a route to developing mindfulness through heightening awareness of your body and its various sensations.
Being present: body scan helps you to be in-the-moment, not distracted by thoughts of the past or anxiety about the future. Focusing on body sensations such as heat or energy in various parts of your body (such as when your fingers touch), can enable you to become really grounded in the present moment.
Building capacity to focus: the act of conscious noticing of parts of the body, builds the capacity to focus – a key component of achieving excellence in any endeavour. Learning to pay attention to what is going on in your body builds your awareness muscle and can help to reduce debilitating habits such as procrastination.
Developing self-awareness: this is a key element in the process of developing self-regulation. As you develop self-awareness, you become more conscious of what triggers negative emotions for you and are better able to build your response-ability, thus controlling how you respond in specific situations. You can become aware, for example, that particular situations make you “uptight” and learn what it is about those situations that contribute to your body and mental stress.
Dealing with trauma: body scan is a form of somatic meditation that is often employed in helping people who have suffered trauma or adverse childhood experiences. Trauma and associated experiences leave deep imprints on your body, and mindfulness activities such as body scan can help to reduce this scarring and release harmful emotions.

Reflection

There are many benefits that accrue from the use of body scan meditations. However, the benefits are intensified with daily practice. As we grow in mindfulness through body scan meditations, we can develop self-awareness, release tension, improve self-regulation, build our body awareness, and heighten our capacity to be in the present moment. In this way, we can learn to focus our mind and energy and overcome the dissipating effects of distractions and challenging emotions.

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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.

Living in the Light of the Lessons from Death and Dying

Frank Ostaseski in an interview with Rheanna Hoffmann about death and the process of dying, mentioned his book based on his experiences of being with a thousand people as they died. His book, The Five Invitations: Discover What Death Can Teach Us About Living Life Fully, provides five principles or guides for living life with integrity, meaningfully and in alignment with our true purpose. Frank was the co-founder and director of a thousand-bed hospice, so his book is based on lived experiences and real stories of how people faced death, as well as the distillation of the “wisdom of death” from these deeply personal and moving experiences.

Frank maintains that death is the “silent teacher”, imparting understanding and wisdom about how we should live. He expounds his ideas and principles in a number of recorded podcast interviews, including What Can Death Teach Us About Living Mindfully. His recoded talk at Google focused on his book through the theme, Inviting the Wisdom of Death Into Life. A succinct explanation of the principles in his book, which he describes as “invitations to living”, is provided in his 26-minute edited interview with Steve Heilig of Palouse Mindfulness.

The five invitations to living learned from the dying

Frank emphasises that these invitations to living have been taught to him by the dying and by compassionately helping many hundreds of people with the process of dying. Understanding the following five principles and putting them into practice enables us to live life fully and mindfully:

Don’t wait – we assume that life will go on as it always has, that our health, wealth and relationships will persist into the future. If nothing else, the Coronavirus should disabuse us of this belief and the associated perceptions. There is a tendency to put off changing the way we live because of this belief in continuity. However, living is precarious, nothing is certain. We can become absorbed in the busyness of life and put off any change – avoiding the need to slow down and really experience life and relationships. We can spend so much of the day planning our next activity or sequence of events. Frank maintains that we are reticent to fully “step into life” – “waiting for the next moment in life, we miss the present”. Frank urges us not to wait till our death to find out the lessons of dying.
Welcome everything, push nothing away – whether it’s grief, loneliness, boredom or suffering, there is a lesson to learn if we don’t push away the feelings, emotions and thoughts that pervade our life. Frank suggests that we should welcome grief and fear and difficult feelings because these “moments” of discomfort are pivotal in our life for developing sustainable personal change, if we fully face them. He spoke of the grief he experienced working with the dying and how he adopted meditation, bodywork (the touch of a practitioner on a source of physical pain in his body) and holding and rocking newly born babies (a life-affirming activity) as a way to face the full emotional, physical and mental experience of grief – it’s as if he ritually experienced the life cycle of birth, living and dying as a way to manage his overwhelming grief.
Bring your whole self to the experience – Frank made the point that in his work with the dying, the part of him that was most helpful was his vulnerability and helplessness because it acted as an “empathetic bridge to their experience”. These “weaknesses” became his strengths and enabled him to be fully present to them, to be-with-them. He has stated previously that authentic presence and compassionate listening are healing and supportive of people’s transition in both the challenges of living and of the dying process. He asserts that none of us is perfect but that we can bring our whole self to whatever we are experiencing – leaving no part of our self out of the interaction.
Find a place of rest in the middle of things – we can find a place to rest amidst the turmoil and tenuousness of life and despite overwhelming emotions that beset us. The “place of rest” could be a breathing exercise, a ritual, mindfulness practice or reconnecting with nature. Finding such a “place” is critical as a self-care approach for healthcare professional, particularly in these challenging times. Rheanna Hoffmann, who volunteered to work in the Emergency Department of a New York Hospital during the height of the Coronavirus, stated that this principle, explained in Franks’ book, helped her deal with the exhaustion, grief and overwhelm she experienced in helping suffering and dying patients while working under unimaginably difficult conditions. Frank also recounts the story of how he helped a woman to find a place of rest who was dying and experiencing extreme difficulty breathing, a struggle to breathe exacerbated by fear. He asked her, “Would you like to struggle a little less?” He then helped her to put her attention to the gap/pause in her breathing and began to pace her by breathing in and out with her. He reports that “fear left her face” and she died peacefully. Frank pointed out that none of the conditions had changed for her (including difficulty with breathing), only her relationship to her experience of dying.
Cultivate a don’t know mind – this is not designed to encourage ignorance. Frank quoted a Zen saying, “Ignorance is not just ‘not knowing something’ but the right thing”. Ignorance is knowing the wrong thing and insisting on its truth and universality. The principle is not about accumulating information (the “what”) but cultivating a mind that is “open, receptive and full of wonder” – a mind that is curious and pursues the truth and understanding in everything. Frank suggested that we should talk with our children about death and, in the process, learn from them (not tell them). He recounts his experience as a Director of a pre-school when he organised for the children involved to go and collect dead things in the woods nearby. He marvels at the insight of the children and their perceptiveness. They had been discussing the theme of endings becoming beginnings, e.g. a caterpillar becoming a butterfly, when a four-year old girl said, “I think the leaves on the trees are very, very generous – they fall and make room for new leaves”. Frank maintains that a “don’t know mind” is fluid and flexible and “infused with a deep interest to know” and to know what is true right now.

Reflection

Frank’s approach to fully facing all that life presents (both discomfort and joy) is in alignment with Jon Kabat-Zinn’s concept of Full Catastrophe Living and Frank’s personal process for handling his grief accords with Deepak Chopra’s recommendation that we adopt a ritual to symbolise our release from the stranglehold of grief.

Frank epitomises in his life and work what he advocates through his talks and video podcasts. He pursues a life that is meaningful and purposeful. For example, in addition to his book and public presentations sharing his knowledge and experience of the dying process and its lessons, he has established a creative approach to educating end-of-life carers through the Metta Institute. His words and actions manifest a life of integrity, compassion and wisdom.

Steve Heilig, the person who interviewed Frank in one of the video podcasts mentioned above, has also found a way to live a life full of meaning and purpose. One of his many mindfulness endeavours has been to collect resources and permissions from leading mindfulness practitioners, including Jon Kabat-Zinn, to enable him to provide a free, 8-week, online course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

As we grow in mindfulness, by employing the five principles that Frank espouses, we can live our lives more fully and expansively and truly aligned to our energy and purpose. We can find our expansiveness and spaciousness which Frank evidenced with people who were dying – their capacity to find the personal resources to face their fear and death despite their belief that the challenge was beyond them. We can also become a calming presence to others who are experiencing difficulties as we progressively overcome our own reactivity. If we develop the discipline of the daily practice of meditation, we can live in the light of the lessons of dying and death.

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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.

How to Release Pain and Reduce Difficult Emotions

Deepak Chopra on discussing how to release pain and difficult emotions stressed the connection between our physical bodies and our emotions and also the interconnectedness of all living things. He maintained that “there is no mental event that doesn’t have a biological correlate” – that is to say, that our every thought and related emotion finds expression in some form in our body. He stressed that our brain serves to integrate everything we experience – our thoughts, feelings, emotions, social interactions and the ecosystems that surround us. Deepak talked too of our entanglement with each other – how we influence each other energetically and emotionally through “limbic resonance”.

In speaking of ways to reduce physical pain in another video presentation, Deepak strongly supported the idea of regular exercise to release endorphins, meditation to take us beyond our limiting perceptions, music to reduce stress and pain and social connection and interactions to provide support. He maintained that, contrary to popular belief, alcohol and smoking increase pain rather than reduce it. He also highlighted the powerful role of biofeedback, employed by various health professionals including the Chopra Center for Wellbeing.

A seven-step process for physical healing and emotional release

In his presentation for the You Can Heal Your Life Summit, Deepak offered a seven-step process for physical healing and emotional wellbeing. The seven steps serve as an integrated approach to individual mindfulness practices that we have previously discussed on this blog.

You begin by reflecting on an interaction that made you upset or left you having to deal with difficult emotions. Then you follow the following seven steps:

Accept responsibility: accept what you are feeling as your own, not blaming others for the way you are feeling. Without accepting responsibility, you cannot gain control over your feelings, nor can you wait for the other person to change so that you can be released from your feelings, because this will not happen.
Feel the feeling in your body: Deepak maintains that any feeling relates to one of the energetic centres of your body, one of the seven Chakras. The location of your pain is an indicator of the Chakra involved and the unfulfilled need finding expression in that Chakra, e.g. pain around the heart region (the Heart Chakra) can signal a need for love and belongingness, while pain in the stomach region (Solar Plexus Chakra) can indicate an unmet need for stability and strength. To feel the feeling you can close your eyes and focus on the area of your body where you feel pain – and bring your awareness to it without doing anything other than being with the pain wherever it is being felt in your body.
Name your feeling: Deepak describes this step as “labelling your feelings”. By naming your feelings accurately, you can learn to tame them. He calls accurate naming “labelling intelligently” – the more specific you can be about what you are feeling, e.g. resentment, anger, shame, the better you are able to deal with it.
Write it down – here the aim is to express what happened from three different perspectives – your own, the other person’s perspective and a third person’s perspective – the independent observer. Deepak maintains that using this 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd person approach reduces the emotional energy you have invested in the conflict, improves your immune system, and lightens your emotional load because “you are not weighed down by the emotion”.
Share it with someone: here you share both the process you used and the outcome for you with someone that you trust. It is important to accurately share the three perspectives that you have developed – avoid excusing your own behaviour and blaming the other person.
Use a ritual release: Deepak suggests that a ritual activity that symbolises “release” reinforces your new state of equilibrium and equanimity. It can take many forms but needs to be a personal way of expressing release, e.g. using a mantra meditation, scrunching up the paper you have written on or throwing it in the river.
Celebrate the release: again using something that is meaningful to you, e.g. a long forest walk, or mindful walking by the bay – some activity that manifests your joy and the realisation that you are moving on, no longer trapped physically or emotionally.

Reflection

The wisdom of this approach is the recognition throughout of the profound mind-body connection – In releasing our emotions, we can release pain in our bodies. It takes time to develop the self-intimacy and honesty required to defuse these emotions and the related physical pain. Persistence brings its own rewards in this endeavour as in many other endeavours. As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices, meditation and reflection, we can achieve a level of consciousness that creates emotional freedom and physical ease. Deepak maintains that “all healing is consciousness”. To deepen our level of consciousness, we can make a habit of self-observation, naming our feelings and related unmet needs, and exploring creative ways to respond.

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Image by Nika Akin 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.