Finding Stability and Predictability in Times of Uncertainty

In the previous blog post, I discussed a UCLA talk by Bhanu Joy Harrison on the topic of Unpredictability and Adapting.  Bahnu emphasised our constant mind-body search for stability and predictability despite continuously encountering uncertainty in our personal lives as well as the world at large. She maintained that we are constantly seeking “an island of coherence in a sea of chaos”. 

The reference to “islands of coherence” is based on the work of Nobel prize winning chemist, Ilya Prigogine, who stated that when systems move away from equilibrium and create chaos, “small islands of coherence” can “shift the entire system to a higher order”.  When applied to our inner world, this concept relates to our capacity through interconnectedness to develop stability and predictability that, in turn, provides us with “strength, calm and groundedness”.

Bhanu maintained in her UCLA podcast that mindfulness practices are a way for us to create our own “islands of coherence”.   On the InsightTimer website, she offers a range of guided meditations on topics such as slowing down, getting unstuck and managing anxiety.  During her podcast, she also  provided a guided meditation on supporting ourselves by creating “islands of coherence”.

Guided meditation – providing support and groundedness

Throughout the guided meditation, Bhanu encouraged us to trust our support. As a starting point, this trusting involved letting our chair support us by enabling our weight to sink into the chair. While being conscious of this support, we can let our mind focus on the power of gravity to hold our posture in place (not allowing us to fly into the air but to stay grounded on the earth).  We can sense the “grounding effect of gravity” on our body.

While being conscious of this groundedness, we can notice what is happening in our body – a slowing of our breathing, loosening of our muscles and bodily tension.  The aim is to drop from our brain into our bodies like dropping an anchor “into the bottom of a lake”.

If we want to contain ourselves bodily we can give ourselves a hug – placing our left hand on our right shoulder and then reversing the process.  Alternatively, we can “feel the solid edges of our body” by squeezing along the length of our arms.  I often found that joining the fingers of both hands together can have this grounding effect as I feel the sensations pulsing through them.

Bhanu reminded us  that “our body holds so much”, including the visceral imprint of trauma.  She suggested that one way to calm the body and mind is to hold our head with two hands – one holding the base of the skull while the other holds the forehead.   Again, she encouraged us to notice any change in bodily sensations, our emotions and our mental activity. 

Bhanu then suggested that we focus on our legs because our legs help us to carry a lot of weight embedded in our torso from the “intensity of life”.  Our body, especially our torso, is activated by stress and being aware of this activation through our legs can “help spread out that activation”.  In particular, exercises such as pressing our feet into the ground (together or alternating) and squeezing down our legs with our hands, can serve to reduce the activation in our torso by spreading the load.  Squeezing down our arms can have a similar positive effect.

Working with the predictable – breathing

Bhanu suggests that when we are overwhelmed by the unpredictable, in whatever form it takes, we can focus on the “predictable” things in our life.  A key element of this strategy is to focus on our breath because “our body knows how to breathe”, no matter what is going on in our life.  Mindful breathing is an important aspect of mindfulness practice and there are many ways to achieve this re-focusing.  James Nestor, for example, promotes intentional breathing as a path to improved health and longevity.

We can breathe with the earth, engage in lower-belly breathing, or rest in our breathing.  Richard Wolf argues that we can develop deep listening through focusing on our breathing which he calls “the sound of your life”.  He maintains that we can listen to our breath just like a musician listens to music.  He provides a number of ways of doing this including listening to the sound of our breath (the inhalation and exhalation), resting in the silence between breaths and breathing in time.

Mast Cell 360 offers breathing as one of the strategies to de-activate the body’s over-active nervous response to perceived “invaders” (food allergies and, in particular, high histamine foods).  For example, in the masterclass, Mast Cell Nervous System Reboot, the course creator, Beth O’Hara provides examples of  “alternate nostril breathing” as one of the strategies she employed to redress the histamine activation effects of Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS).  “Resonance breathing” also forms part of her holistic approach to MCAS and histamine intolerance.

Working with the predictable – alternative strategies

In addition to breathing practices, Bhanu offers other strategies that we can easily employ on a day-to-day basis to focus on the predictable and work to de-activate our bodies from the stress effects of the “unpredictable”.  These practices include:

  • focusing on the seasons of the year which are predicable, especially winter and summer whose arrival is often celebrated with special rituals
  • consciously viewing the sunrise and sunset occurring each day
  • observing the emergence of flowers in Spring, the fall of leaves in Autumn (Fall), the shortening of the day in winter and their lengthening in summer
  • noticing the sun rising early in summer and later in winter
  • thinking about the way you are greeted by your children and your dog when you return from work each day
  • observing the millions of stars that appear each night.

Bhanu suggests that these grounding practices can help us to find peace and calm in times of turmoil – they can become our “island of coherence” in the advent of chaos.

Reflection

Chronic illness is often unpredictable and can prove to be complex and difficult to resolve.  The uncertainty about its development and resolution and the lack of help from the medical profession can exacerbate the situation.  Chronic illness too is disruptive, impacting quality of life and self-identity.

The mindfulness practices proposed by Bhanu can help to manage chronic illness.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can better regulate our emotions, draw inspiration from people who have mastered their debilitating situation, and find creative ways to address our own limitations and constraints.

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Image by Kanenori 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.

Becoming Grounded to Strengthen Your Intention

We have all experienced being “knocked off centre” and becoming “ungrounded” in the challenging times of the past year (2020).  Now, as we look forward to the new year (2021), it might be helpful to restore our groundedness and reset our intentions.  Diana Winston of MARC UCLA offers a meditation podcast to enable us to achieve these goals.  Her guided meditation, Getting Grounded and Setting Intentions, offers a timely process.

Guided meditation for groundedness

Diana suggests that you begin by taking a couple of deep breaths and as you are exhaling to release the tension and anxiety that you have experienced in being able to arrive at this point.  She then focuses heavily on posture as a means to achieve groundedness.  You are encouraged to have your feet flat on the floor; to adopt an upright, relaxed position for your back; to find a comfortable position for your hands; and to either close your eyes or look downwards to reduce distractions.

To begin with, the primary focus is on your feet.  By focusing on your feet, you can feel the bodily sensations of being supported. You might feel the firmness of the floor beneath the softness of the carpet or the hardness of floor tiles.  Diana encourages you too to envisage beyond the floor to the walls supporting the floor and the ground that is always there, in turn, supporting the walls themselves.  As you focus on the sensations in your feet, you may feel a sense of support, strength, and earthly energy.  You might feel as though your feet are becoming thicker and drawing in warmth and energy – a sense that your support base is expanding.

Diana also offers other choices that can supplement or replace the focus on sensations in your feet (as an anchor to return to when distractions inevitably intervene):

  • Breath – you can focus in on your breath in its natural state without any attempt to control it.  You pay attention to wherever you can sense your breathing and become conscious of the rise and fall of your abdomen or chest or, alternatively, the sensation of air passing in and out of your nose. 
  • Room tone/sounds – here you pay attention to sounds in the room firstly and then to external sounds.  This requires you to avoid interpreting the sounds or identifying their origins or your assessment of them as good or bad.  For some people, opening up their attention to sounds can itself be a distraction and may make it very difficult for them to sustain their focus. 
  • Hands – you can join your fingers together and pay attention to the sensations from the connection.  You may feel warmth, tingling, softness or firmness.  If you persist with this focus, you might experience soreness that is present in your wrist or arm – you can be open to this sensation and focus on self-healing.

Diana has an extended session of silence in this meditation to enable you to really focus in on bodily sensations and the feeling of support that is readily available to you at any time – the more you practise this meditation by setting time aside, the easier it will be to access the sense of support in times when you are feeling really challenged by restrictions, loss, isolation, or disconnection.

Setting intentions

Diana further invites you to revisit the past year and all the challenges that it involved – What did you feel? What did you lose? What was most challenging for you?  She suggests applying a “light touch” to these reflections, not getting lost in the challenging emotions involved.

She then suggests that you recall what inspired you during these challenging times – the selflessness of frontline health professionals caring for COVID-19 patients in ICU and elsewhere, the generosity of individuals, the sense of reconnection with loved ones (even though it might have been virtually), the dedication of emergency personnel (ambulance, police, border officers,  paramedics) and the resilience of people who experienced grief and trauma and yet continued to assist others. 

In the light of these latter inspiring and energizing reflections, Diana encourages you to revisit your New Year’s resolutions or to set new resolutions.  She particularly encourages you to draw on the lessons you have learned through experiencing the past year and what they  signal as a way forward for you.  You might envisage a different world where empathy, compassion, kindness, and consideration replace racial discrimination, self-centredness, violence and hatred.

This consideration of what might be could be the catalyst for you to strengthen your intention to make a positive contribution to your family, your community and the world at large.  Through your interconnectedness, how you are in the world influences those around you and beyond.  It might be that you firm up your intention of providing more emotional and practical support to someone close to you who is experiencing difficulties; it could be becoming more patient with someone at your work who is slow and/or annoying;  or resolving to truly listen to people, especially when they are expressing a personal need.

Reflection

We have at our disposal a ready means to feel grounded and deepen our resolve to pursue our best intentions so that they translate into positive actions.  This will enable us to make better choices and not indulge in habituated responses that can have negative impacts.  As we grow in mindfulness, through meditations focused on becoming grounded and setting our intentions, we can be a positive force in the lives of others, both those who are close and others who are distant.  Diana’s meditation podcast is one way to enable us to move from self-absorption to embracing people in need, locally and globally.  

You can change the negative tenor of social media around a topic by adopting a positive approach.  For instance, the arrival in Melbourne of professional tennis players for the Australian Open has created a real stir. On the one hand, some players have complained that they are locked up in a quarantine hotel room for two weeks because someone on their plane has the COVID-19 virus.  Some Australians stuck overseas are expressing bitterness that they are unable to return home because of the global situation while the Australian Open tennis players arrive from all around the world on chartered flights.   People living in Melbourne have expressed the view that the players are “spoilt brats” because they themselves have experienced one of the most stringent lockdowns anywhere in the world and for an extended period.

The voice of reason and compassion in all this turmoil was that of Australian Olympic swimmer, Cate Campbell.  She suggested publicly that expressing bitterness, envy and resentment is only making a difficult situation worse.  She encouraged all Australians to show empathy towards the tennis players and to truly understand what loss they are experiencing by their enforced confinement before one of the world’s major tennis tournaments.  As an elite sports person, she knows only too well what deprivation of practice before a very significant event means for other professionals.

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Image by marijana1 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.

Aligning with What is Good and Healthy in Our Lives through Mindfulness

Allyson Pimentel, meditation teacher with MARC, provided a recent meditation podcast on the topic, Mindfulness as Alignment with the Good.  The catalyst for her online session was a walk with her dog in the bright morning sun, surrounded by the sound of birds, the beauty of flowers and trees, and the kind acknowledgement of neighbours.  What particularly came home to her was the  heightened receptivity that comes with mindfulness practice along with what is good in our life.

When we practice mindfulness in these challenging times we are returning to stillness amongst the turbulence of a pandemic and political unrest, seeking groundedness in the face of disturbing and disorienting news, exploring harmony in a world torn by racial hatred and the income divide, finding silence amidst the noise of a busy life, and resting in peace and tranquility.  As we deepen our practice, we become more connected to nature and to each other – we can picture other people around the world engaged like us in meditation, Tai Chi, yoga, or the singing of mantras.   We can sense the collectivity of everything, the growing alignment with what is good not only in our own lives but also in  the lives of others worldwide.

Allyson stressed that what we have in mindfulness is totally portable – we can take it with us wherever we go.  We have our breath, widening awareness of our senses and the capacity to feel warmth towards others with a kind heart.  Mindfulness engenders gratitude, wisdom, generosity, and compassion towards ourselves and others.  We can be mindful for others because of our calmness, self-regulation, openness, and willingness to listen for understanding.  We can bring to our daily interactions a healthy mind free from self-absorption, negative self-talk, resentment, or anger, so that we not only improve our own mental health but also impact positively the mental health of others.

Guided meditation for developing mindfulness and alignment with what is good

Allyson’s guided meditation during the podcast focused initially on our breath and achieving groundedness by sensing how we are supported by our chair and our feet on the ground.  She suggested that we take a collective, deep inhalation and exhalation and then rest in the natural movement of our breathing, focusing on the expansion of our chest or abdomen or the movement of the air through our nose.

She then encouraged us to focus on the sounds that surround us – room tone, sounds in nature or traffic on our roads.  Once we had been able to pay attention purposely and non-judgmentally to external sounds, she encouraged us to shift our attention to internal sounds – the sounds of our own breath, sighing, rumbling, clicking.

In the final stages of the meditation, Allyson suggested we focus in turn on two key questions:

  1. What is it I need now – what kind of support do I want?
  2. What can I do to provide support to others?

Support for others could be the simple act of ringing someone to see how they are going, connecting on Zoom, or meeting up in person with someone who you have not seen for a while or who is experiencing some difficulty. 

Reflection

It is easy to be thrown off balance or to become disoriented and anxious in these challenging times.  Mindfulness offers the chance to seek refuge in stillness and silence and to appreciate what is good in our life.  Allyson maintains that as we grow in mindfulness, we are contributing to what is good and wholesome in our own lives and the lives of others we interact with – whether face-to-face or virtually.  By reminding ourselves of this contribution of mindfulness, we can better sustain our practice and realise its benefits for ourselves and others.

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Image by John Hain 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.

Being Grounded

So often we can be off-balance, caught up in concerns about the future or worry about the past.  Alternatively, our minds can be racing from one thought to another.

If we lack awareness in the present moment, we will miss opportunities, make poor decisions, create work and  stress for ourselves and find that our productivity, either at work or at home, suffers.

If we are grounded, small annoyances and setbacks do not disturb our equanimity and we can manage larger challenges more effectively because we are able to choose an appropriate response, rather than be caught up in the whirlwind of our thoughts and activities.

Ways to develop groundedness

Being gounded is important and underpins mindful living.  We need to stop our frenetic activity and  take time to get connected with nature or tuned into our body.  Another form of groundedness is to engage in mindful walking where we get in touch with the ground, or the floor if we are walking inside our house.

We can tune into our body through mindful breathing, a body scan or other form of somatic meditation.  Breathing is so fundamental to living that most mindfulness experts praise the benefits of mindful breathing – it has a calming effect, can be undertaken any where and is  a good way to begin most meditations.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Another form of meditation that enables you to become really grounded focuses on the energy that surrounds us – in the air, in nature, with people and animals.      Through this approach,  you are able to get in touch with the energy of the universe and experience the connectedness this entails.

As we grow in mindfulness through regular practice of different forms of meditation, we can become grounded more easily when we are in a stressful situation, or exposed to a negative trigger, or are becoming nervous when we have to perform.

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

Image source: courtesy of MichaelGaida on Pixabay

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