mindfulness practice – Page 9

Manage Your Morning Panic Attacks

If you experience a panic attack when you wake in the morning, it is extremely difficult to manage your reaction.

Deep breathing may be virtually impossible because you are so agitated. Trying to reframe the situation – think differently about the cause of the anxiety and resultant panic – is impossible because you do not know what set off the panic attack. The anxiety that set off the panic attack is the result of something you experienced in your sub-conscious while you were asleep.

Normally when we are awake, we can isolate a thought or event that generated fear and anxiety in us. When you awake with a panic attack, you are incapable of isolating the cause.

Mel Robbins suggests an approach which could help you manage a morning panic attack. The steps she suggests are:

get out of bed (the physical act of moving will help your body experience a “moving away” from the cause of the anxiety).
Think of something – an event/location/person – that generates pleasure and enjoyment for you (e.g. you might visualize a relaxing beach scene)
Stay with this vision as you count backwards from five – then say to yourself that you are excited to be at the beach (you are giving your mind a reason for the positive arousal that you feel – a way of replacing the fear reaction that caused the panic attack).

Mel Robbins explains the steps in detail in the following four minute video:

As you develop your mindful practice in other times and arenas of your life, you will grow in mindfulness and spend less time being anxious about the future because you will be more grounded in the present. Daily mindfulness practice will gradually erode the root cause of your anxiety and panic attacks.

Image Source: Courtesy of geralt on Pixabay

Singing: A Pathway to Mindfulness

Chris James, internationally acclaimed singer, musician and voice teacher, believes that we all have a natural, beautiful voice. Having been a Buddhist monk, he is also very aware of the power of mindfulness and is firmly convinced that singing is a pathway to mindfulness. He teaches singing around the world at events large and small, as well as provides one-on-one coaching.

Chris reminds us that our bodies are a natural resonator and all we have to do is to relax and breathe naturally and we can learn to find our natural voice. Expression is so much a part of our daily lives – we talk to our family and friends, attend meetings, present information and interact with our colleagues at work.

Through singing we can learn to express ourselves truthfully – to get in touch with our real selves, our natural expression. In this way, we “find our voice” and open our hearts to beauty, nature and connectedness.

Unfortunately, we all have to manage the “chatter” in our heads – the negative thoughts that we tell ourselves about our ability to sing. Some of these originate within ourselves, others from our pareants, siblings or our friends who remind us that we cannot sing. We have to let go of this chatter and the “narrative” that constrains our thinking, our lives and our true potential.

Chris James believes, like Jon Kabat-Zinn, that we have to learn to get out of our heads, our endless cycle of thoughts, and learn to “inhabit our bodies”. When we become grounded in our bodies through voice, we are able to realise more of our potential and experience calm, clarity and creativity.

Over the past fifteen years, I have attended many singing workshops conducted by Chris James – ranging from half-day workshops to a two week residential in Lismore. I am continually amazed at what happens when people learn to be still, to “let go of what they are not” and to relax into their voice – what happens to the quality of their voice and the way they express themselves with new confidence and excitement is truly amazing.

You can see from the following YouTube video of Chris James leading a “Big Sing” in Byron Bay, that people start off singing very tentatively and as they relax, they begin to open their mouths and sing freely. The result is a beautiful natural choir of people, many of whom had never met each other before this event.

Chris James has developed a community choir in Lismore that anyone can join, singers and non-singers alike. There are no auditions and no set vocal parts. Choir members are encouraged to harmonise spontaneously at different times. The opportunity is there to find your own beautiful voice, to become grounded in your voice and grow in mindfulness in your expression.

Image source: www.chrisjames.net

Reflection and the Art of Solving Jigsaw Puzzles

Our family has had a long-standing tradition of solving a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle whenever we go away on holidays for more than a week.

The collaborative endeavour of solving the jigsaw puzzle has a relaxing effect, builds relationships and facilitates conversation.

Recently, my wife and I went on a holiday and in line with our family tradition purchased a 1,000 word WASJIG? jigsaw puzzle. These puzzles are particularly difficult because the image on the box depicts the present scenario – the jigsaw puzzle itself reflects the same scenario at some future time. So the image you are provided with is just a guide – and sometimes intentionally misleading.

When solving the jigsaw puzzle, it was particularly important to challenge your own assumptions – to change your assumptions about shape, colour or location of a puzzle piece (or sometimes, all three aspects). Often when you got stuck, the way forward was to challenge one or more of your assumptions. This challenge to assumptions was particularly aided by the reflections of the other person, e.g.”Could that piece go at the top, rather than the bottom”; “This looks like becoming a car, not a shop”; “There seems to be a crowd outside the train, have you thought of that to explain the missing pieces?; “Could those two connected pieces be placed vertically rather than horizontally?; “I think that we should sort the last 100 pieces by shape rather than by colour as we have them now.”

The reality is that we have limited perception – we often see what we want to see and often fail to see what is in front of us. We also experience perceptual bias based on our own life experiences. So it is important to reflect with others, to be open to perceptions and perspectives of other people, if we are going to move forward in whatever endeavour we are undertaking.

How often have you worked on a jigsaw puzzle and been unable to find a particular piece and someone walks past and says “this piece looks like it should fill the gap” (and they may have had no prior involvement in the puzzle solving process). They are able to see the puzzle with fresh eyes and have no preconceived ideas or assumptions.

I was reflecting on our processes for solving this jigsaw puzzle and was reminded of the words of Reg Revans, the father of action learning, who suggested that really effective reflection requires challenging our own assumptions. He also maintained that this challenge to our assumptions was achieved more often by reflecting with one or more others. He suggests that when we reflect alone we can often reinforce our existing assumptions – when we reflect with others our assumptions can be open to the challenge of others.

The process of reflection has a strong relationship to mindfulness. As we build our ability to reflect, we become more aware of the need to be mindful in the situation as an aid to reflection (e.g. “If only I had really noticed her reaction at the time, I could have done something about it!”). It is difficult to reflect on what you have said or done, if you lack awareness at the time. In a similar way, when we become more mindful through mindfulness practices, we are better able to reflect-in-action, to reflect on our own words and actions while we are in the process of saying and doing. So, in the final analysis, reflection and mindfulness are mutually reinforcing.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Maintaining Motivation for Practicing Mindfulness

Maintaining motivation to practice mindfulness is a Catch-22 situation: to experience the benefits of mindfulness, you have to practice it; to maintain motivation for your mindfulness practice, you need to experience the benefits. As you practise, you become more aware of the benefits and the benefits themselves increase.

However, the starting point is to believe that practising mindfulness will give you benefits that you value. Having started your practice then, you are able to experience the benefits and to use these to motivate yourself to continue.

I found it hard to maintain my attendance at Taoist Tai Chi classes because of work commitments but I had experienced enough of the benefits of Tai Chi to find a way to maintain the practice.

As I persisted with the practice of Tai Chi, I started to experience an increasing number of benefits that now form the motivation for me to continue the practice. These benefits that I value are:

Focus and concentration – these are essential skills for my work as a consultant and for my writing; they also help with playing tennis (my sporting passion)

Balance and coordination – this is a strong motivator for me because I have found over the years that there is a very clear link between my Tai Chi practice and how well I play during my weekly social tennis; I have written about this link elsewhere

Creativity – I noticed this benefit through my experience of greater creativity when designing workshop processes as part of my consulting practice; Google clearly values this benefit as it developed the Search Inside Yourself (SIY) mindfulness program which has been experienced by more than 4,500 members of their staff- the SIY program is now available to the public on a global basis.

Lower blood pressure – I inherited high blood pressure so anything that helps me maintain a lower blood pressure has many positive side effects

Flexibility – as I grow older, I find that my flexibility suffers. However, Tai Chi clearly improves my flexibility and I experience this on the tennis court and elsewhere; many older people throughout the world (e.g. in China) practise Tai Chi to gain this benefit, among others.

Calmness and clarity – mindfulness and Tai Chi, specifically, develop calmness and clarity and help me to manage stress

Reducing the symptoms of arthritis – this is a claimed benefit of Tai Chi which I had some skepticism about until I experienced reduced pain from arthritis in one of the fingers on my right hand when playing tennis; now I can play two hours of solid tennis without the pain recurring or impeding my capacity to play well

Reflective listening – Tai Chi and mindfulness practice generally are improving my capacity to listen reflectively, an important means of improving my valued relationships.

I think the moral of this story is that if you persist in the practise of mindfulness you will experience benefits that you personally value. Both the choice of mindfulness practice and the valued benefits will be influenced by your own lifestyle and personal preferences.

Image source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Building Mindfulness through Open Awareness

Open awareness is something that you can practice anywhere. It is basically being fully present through your senses.

From my lounge room and deck I can see Moreton Bay with Stradbroke Island in the background. I used to wake up of a morning and note the sunrise across the bay on my way to making a cup of tea in the kitchen. I would walk past what is an ever-changing view.

Now I am developing the habit of standing still and taking in the view for the few minutes while the water in the jug is boiling.

In this way I can practice open awareness – listening to the sounds of birds waking, watching the changing hues as the sun comes up, observing the breeze in the trees and sensing the weather.

I find that my body immediately relaxes and I am able to quickly drop into mindful breathing as a matter of course. So one mindfulness practice leads onto the next.

What you can do to develop open awareness is to link it to something that you do on a daily basis – a morning walk, the morning cuppa or coffee, the early morning bike ride. If you structure open awareness into your day, you will be more likely to persist with the habit and progressively build mindfulness. You will also find that you will more frequently stop what you are doing and become openly aware of your surroundings.

Image source: Copyright R. Passfield

Grow the Habit of Mindfulness

“Practice makes perfect” – a truism but particularly relevant to developing mindfulness.

People who know about habit forming suggest three basic steps to develop a habit:

focus on one small and simple behaviour
build the habit into your daily routine/structure of your day
frequently revisit your motivation (s) for growing the habit of mindfulness.

Start simple and develop more complex behaviours as you master an initial starting point. If you are trying to do something complex at the outset and trying to maintain the behaviour, you can easily become discouraged. However, if you start simply and achieve mastery, this will add to your motivation. You will avoid discouragement and frustration this way.

If you structure the new behaviour into you daily routine, you are more likely to be able to sustain the mindfulness practice. So if it is something you do first thing in the morning, then each time you wake up you are reminded to undertake the behaviour. One of the participants in the Search Inside Yourself leadership program decided to do mindful breathing whenever he put the jug on for a cup of coffee. I have started the practice of using open awareness first thing in the morning when I make my first cup of tea. Providing an inbuilt structure (timing & location) to a mindfulness practice helps to embed it into your daily life.

It is important to maintain your motivation when the going gets tough or there are things that distract you from your practice. One way to do this is to write down the reasons why you want to engage in the mindfulness practice. As you begin to practice, you will find that you will be able to add to your motivation list because you have experienced some positive benefits that you had not alluded to earlier in the practice cycle. Some people even develop a personal mantra to help their motivation, e.g. “be mindful, be my best”.

Mindfulness is within everyone’s reach but each person is different. So a particular mindfulness practice may appeal to one person and not another. You need to find somewhere to start (or extend) that suits your personal preference and lifestyle.

There are many pathways to mindfulness – mindful breathing, mindful eating, meditation, open awareness, reflective listening, yoga, and Tai Chi – to name a few. Start somewhere and grow mindfulness from that point.

Image Source: Courtesy of Pixabay.com

Opening Our Eyes – Growing Awareness

So often you look without seeing. It’s as if your eyes are turned inward rather than outward – you are consumed in thought, not absorbed in what is before you.

Sometimes if you are open to experience, and present to what lies before you, it is possible to experience an awakening awareness of the beauty that surrounds you.

M.L. Stedman illustrates this exquisitely in their best-selling novel, “The Light Between the Oceans”. The light refers to a lighthouse off the coast of Western Australia which is positioned between the intersection of two oceans, The Indian Ocean and The Great Southern Ocean. In describing a particular location, one of the book’s characters recalls how they “had been struck by the emptiness of this place, like a blank canvas, when they arrived”.

However as awareness gradually dawned, they came to see the place through the eyes of others, “attuning to the subtle changes”:

The clouds, as they formed and grouped and wandered the sky; the shape of the waves, which would take their cue from the wind and the season and could, if you knew how to read them, tell you the next day’s weather.

This is the power of skilled novelists and people like Louie Schwartzberg, the time lapse photographer, who enable us to look at nature through their lens and see it as they see it.

So it is often possible to just stop what you are doing, however briefly, to take in the beauty that surrounds you. In this way, you begin to build mindfulness practice.