Tag: mindfulness practices

Happiness and Fulfillment in Retirement

In the previous post I explored aging and retirement planning.  In that post I drew on the work of Bec Wilson, creator of the Epic Retirement Flagship Course and the author of the book, How to have an Epic Retirement.  In the current post, I want to focus on Bec’s discussion of happiness and fulfillment in retirement while drawing on the writings on the topic by other authors.  At the outset, Bec debunks the image of a retired person who is spending their days in a lazy chair on the beach while drinking wine – research highlights the fact that this portrayal is a recipe for boredom and a shortened life span.

Ways to achieve happiness and fulfillment in retirement

Bec offers a series of suggestions for how we might go about achieving these retirement goals:

Examining your personal stories for sources of happiness and fulfillment

In her Epic Retirement Workbook (that accompanies the Course), Bec offers a way to examine our personal stories including recording our key experiences and challenges, triumphs and passions.  She also offers some probing questions to identify themes in our responses such as resilience, creativity, and sources of happiness.  This approach to recording personal stories is consistent with the research supporting the use of storytelling to manage life transitions.  Such storytelling is often described as narrative therapy – an emerging area for university-level study.

Identifying your purpose and source of happiness by exploring your curiosity

Bec’s Workbook has a series of questions designed to elicit your level of curiosity about your future options, friendships, challenging pursuits, and what you might do with your time in retirement.  She maintains that without a degree of curiosity in your retirement years, “you might find yourself isolated, bored and even becoming stale”.    Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, encourages us to cultivate openness and curiosity to achieve intimacy with ourselves, live life fully, develop self-forgiveness and “a deep sense of belonging”.

Creating meaning in your life as a retiree

Bec discusses various ways to create meaning because research confirms that a meaningful life can lead to happiness and a sense of fulfillment.  She encourages retirees to volunteer to contribute to a cause beyond ourselves and lists multiple arenas in which to volunteer, including volunteering for charity shops, aged care residents and sporting clubs.  A psychologically-rich life can generate a meaningful life and a sense of fulfillment. Pursuits such as the following can create meaning in our retirement years:

  • Collaborating with others in learning
  • Exploring part-time work options
  • Pursuing new sporting challenges and social relationships
  • Expressing gratitude and kindness which are contagious and cultivate health and happiness in others and ourselves.
Identifying your skills and strengths to develop your sense of purpose

Bec suggests that developing a happy and fulfilling life as a retiree depends largely on having a sense of purpose.  She draws on the work of Richard Leider and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to maintain that developing a sense of purpose involves employing your skills and strengths in areas that you are passionate about, are congruent with your values and contribute to something beyond yourself (such as a charity or other  organisation pursuing social goals).  In her Workbook, Bec offers a columnar chart to assist us to identify the relationships amongst our skills, passions, values and purpose.

Exploring your courage

Bec points out that it takes courage to move beyond our comfort zone, to pursue “endings” to the way we do things and to try new things that are challenging.  She encourages us to tell ourselves the truth about our life, our happiness and sense of fulfillment; to make difficult decisions that will present challenges to our self-concept and our comfort zone; to make mistakes as we try out new things; to dream big; and to say ‘no” or “yes” when it is appropriate for self-preservation or to achieve our potential.

Engaging in epic pursuits

Bec draws on research to show that to achieve an “engaged, curious and happy life” as a retiree we need to adopt three or more pursuits  that we enjoy and that ideally engage us physically, cognitively and socially.  To this end, she lists (on pages 280-281 of her 2025 Book) epic pursuits that “active and engaged retirees” have adopted to pursue their passions.  This can serve as a  stimulus and checklist to help us to identify epic pursuits that might interest us.  Home swapping can also bring excitement and a change of location (either domestically or overseas).

Exploring different types of work that may be compatible with semi-retirement

Bec suggests that this work could provide supplementary income and draw on existing knowledge and skills (such as lecturing, tutoring, consulting or training) or , alternatively, provide the opportunity to learn new skills (such as starting a small business built on a hobby or a special interest area).   Her other suggestions include roles such as driving for rideshare services such as Uber, baby-sitting, pet-sitting, carer/helper, or landlord.  The opportunities are numerous and include having a hobby farm, house-sitting, or developing bed and breakfast accommodation. 

Developing a new daily routine

It is important that this is developed over time as you become more accustomed to life beyond full-time work or being a home-parent.  Research in this area suggests that a daily routine enhances longevity and meaningful living.  A retirement routine is very individual and takes some planning and acknowledgement of your own “circadian rhythms”.  Bec offers suggestions for rebuilding our morning routine and creating purposeful evenings.  Penny Pennington Weeks shares her comprehensive retirement routine to encourage us to plan our own “to enjoy a retired life”.

Practising mindfulness for a happy and fulfilling retirement

Throughout her Epic Retirement Book and Course, Bec strongly encourages cultivating  openness, curiosity and reflection – key components of mindfulness practices.  Research and personal experience confirm the multiple benefits of mindfulness that accrue from regular mindfulness practices such as Tai Chi, mindful eating, and engaging with nature.  Mindfulness practice has been shown to enhance happiness, improve health, strengthen our sense of self-efficacy and enable fulfillment by helping us to realise our potential.

Reflection

I identify as a Morning Person, so in retirement I tend to do creative pursuits such as writing in the mornings and the more routine activities in the afternoons or evenings.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can increase our self-awareness, self-compassion, and perception of options.  We can also reduce negativity and self-limiting beliefs to enable us to achieve happiness and fulfillment in retirement.

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Image by Ahmet Yüksek 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.

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.

Adapting to Unpredictability

Bhanu Joy Harrison provided a meditation podcast  on Unpredictability and Adapting in September this year.  Her session was one of the weekly meditations and talks offered by UCLA Health.  Bhanu is an accredited meditation teacher and clinical social worker specialising in the resolution of trauma.  She integrates neuroscience with mindfulness practices to enable people to achieve greater joy, balance and resilience.  Bhanu provides classes, workshops and resources to assist people to manage the daily challengers of unpredictability.  Her website provides a series of guided meditations and she offers access to an app that serves as a journalling guide. 

Impact of unpredictability

Drawing on neuroscience, Bhanu maintains that our brain and nervous system is forever seeking stability and predictability as this provides us with an abiding sense of control and safety.  In our daily life, however, we have to deal with the unpredictability of our own health, our workplaces and interactions, our shopping and entertainment environments and our social and family encounters.  The unpredictability and challenge to our stability of these daily events can lead to stress, overwhelm and inability to cope.

In her talk, Bhanu pointed out how much we rely on past experience to predict what will happen in the future as a result of current events.  We look for reliability and steadiness in our life.  She contends that our past experience provides us with some form of scaffolding or framework that influences our perceptions and our predictions.  

Mindfulness as a toolbox for managing unpredictability

Bhanu contends that mindfulness practices progressively build our personal resources and provide us with a toolbox to draw on to manage unpredictable situations.  In contrast, mindless absorption of news and replaying of adverse events serves only to destabilise us and reactivate our stress response.

Bhanu argues that we often look to the past to seek out ways to achieve steadiness, comfort or groundedness.  Unfortunately, our past solutions typically involve short-term solutions which prove to be maladaptive in the medium to long term – solutions such as overeating, drinking excessive alcohol to numb the pain or discomfort, “seeking illicit pleasure”, increasing caffeine consumption or scrolling endlessly through social media to distract us from the challenge of the present moment.  

Drawing on her extensive experience with clients and the increasing body of research on mindfulness, Bhanu asserts that mindfulness practices undertaken with clear intention and self-kindness effectively create “a different input” for our nervous system than that created by our maladaptive solutions.  In her words, mindfulness is capable of enabling us to “generate a different kind of sensory, emotional and mental response” to unpredictability and the related stimuli such as fear, anxiety and sense of loss of control.

Bhanu argues for creating an “ever-growing toolbox of ever-adaptive and helpful skills” through mindfulness practices. She encourages us to develop a “big variety of options” so that we can resource ourself effectively when we encounter the  diverse challenges associated with unpredictability. Her suggestions for mindfulness practices include:

Bhanu argues that by developing a mindfulness toolbox, we are resourcing ourself for times when we are overwhelmed by the unpredictable such as a chronic illness diagnosis or the death of a loved one.  She provides the example of one of her clients who experienced a “tsunami of grief” to illustrate this point.  As Bhanu explains, when we experience grief our rational, analytical brain is hijacked by the amygdala and our lower brain. This shuts down our capacity to engage in logical thinking and solution generation.  We then need “an escape hatch out of lower brain structures” (limbic system and brainstem). 

Bhanu’s client developed an “escape hatch” in the form of a Mason jar where she stored pieces of paper recording “things that I can do in the moment” – simple things such as drink water, pat an animal, call a friend or relative or breathe deeply and slowly.  On the jar she placed a picture of a life-jacket to remind herself “to put her life-jacket on” by accessing her jar and the suggestions within that could help her “settle herself, come back to the present moment and ground herself”.

The jar proved to be a ready resource that was both physical and accessible and provided a choice of pathways back to mindfulness and groundedness.  It meant that she did not have to think in the moment about what resources she had available to her to access the stability and control provided by mindfulness.

Awareness of our “Circle of Influence”

Bhanu suggests that we think about our Circle of Influence – identifying the things that we can control and those that are outside our control. This then involves letting go of what we can’t control.

By way of example, Bhanu suggested that the things you can’t control include:

  • the weather
  • events beyond our country
  • the emotions or opinions of other people
  • traffic flow
  • natural disasters.

Unfortunately, we can spend a lot of time going over events beyond our control through obsession with the news, over-concern with other people’s views of us, and anxiety about potential natural disasters.

Bhanu indicated that one thing we do have control over is our choices.  For example, we can choose to be continually disrupted by “external noise” or we can spend time with relaxing music, enjoying nature or just being quiet.  We can choose to avoid foods that create a “flare-up” for us or indulge at our own expense. We can also choose how we respond to stimuli – recognising that there is a gap between stimulus and response.

We can choose to listen to our internal critic telling us that “we are not good enough” or “consciously shift to something else” that is positive and helpful.  Our choices extend to controlling our words and tone of voice – we can reaffirm that “I can control what comes out of my mouth”.  Our boundaries are also under our control if we choose –  for example, deciding when to say “yes” or “no”.  We can develop a mindset consistent with an “internal locus of control”– where we are not totally controlled by external events but believe that we have some influence on our environment, are willing to take responsibility for our actions and respond proactively to unpredictable events in our life such as chronic illness.

Reflection

In seeking to manage the unpredictable in our life we can learn from people like Jean-Dominique Bauby.  Despite suffering a massive stroke that left him unable to talk or move, he was able to create his memoir by blinking one eye to let his specialist nurse know word by word what he wanted to say.  His other strategies for gaining stability and control included humour and virtual travel.

As we grow in mindfulness through a range of mindfulness practices, we can enhance our personal resources and develop a readymade toolbox to achieve stability and control in times of unpredictability such as chronic illness or the death of a loved one.

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Image by Martine Auvray 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.

Exercising Agency When Living with a Chronic Illness

There is a story in chronic illness – it’s evolution, it’s manifestation, our proactive attempts to manage it and its resolution (whatever form that takes).  Managing chronic illness invariably involves the three “As” – acceptance, accommodation and agency. 

Agency refers to our capacity to have some control over our internal and/or external environment.  Typically, chronic illness reduces our agency in various areas of our life because it creates some form of disability which can be far reaching or limited in its manifestation in our day-to-day lives.  The challenge for people with chronic illness is to limit the loss of agency where possible and increase its presence in other areas of our life.

How to develop agency as a writer with a chronic illness

In a previous post, I discussed ways to develop agency when we are trying to write while having a chronic illness.  In that post, I discussed specific strategies relating to writing such as setting your own pace, finding a comfortable location for writing, writing a reflective poem and starting small.

I have developed agency in my own writing despite having MCAS, a chronic disease affecting the immune system.  One form of accommodation I have adopted is to reduce my expectations about the frequency with which I produce a blog post.  I have also written a series of reflective poems to help me manage the symptoms and feelings associated with MCAS.  I have also started a new writing enterprise in the form of a co-authored book on management (now in its first draft stage).  I have had to exercise self-compassion with this project because of the setbacks I have experienced during my writing efforts – setbacks such as the bankruptcy of our contracted publisher, the loss of data, the serious illness of my coauthor, and a week-long cyclone and associated anxiety and disruptions.

Developing agency through research and education

In an earlier post when I discussed a holistic approach to MCAS and histamine intolerance, I mentioned the work of Beth O’Hara, FN, a sufferer from multiple chronic illnesses.  Beth used her illness to motivate herself to research her own health solutions and to create the Mast Cell 360 facility which offers paid, holistic health interventions as well as  free resources.  Her research and her own clinical practice highlighted the role of the nervous system in the development and expansion of MCAS. 

Beth’s proactive approach to understanding the role of the nervous system in MCAS was to provide a specialised, online course to help MCAS sufferers gain control of their nervous system which is variously dysregulated with MCAS.  Her self-help program, Master Class to Reboot the Mast Cell Nervous System, gives sufferers some degree of agency over their own health improvement.

Through this Reboot Course I came to better understand the components of the nervous system and how the nervous system interacts with other systems of the body (e.g. the digestive system).  The Roadmap incorporated in the course gave me insight into the vagal nervous system, factors impacting it and manifestations of damage to the vagal nerves.  More importantly, the Roadmap provides strategies to address vagal nerve excitation based on the level involved.  In other words, through this Reboot Course I have a way of exercising agency over my own nervous system and its level of excitation.  This provides a proactive way of managing the nervous system element of MCAS which according to Beth represents 50% of the recovery protocol.

Typically, a chronic illness will have a pattern – good days, bad days; good periods, bad periods (of variable duration).  Once we understand the pattern of our chronic illness (how it manifests itself from day to day), we can exercise agency by utilising the “good” times to undertake what we consider to be important and productive.  This can involve writing prose or poetry, engaging in social work or undertaking part-time employment as Jennifer Crystal did with her part-time teaching while she experienced the difficult aspects of Lyme Disease.

Exercising agency in our recreational activity

Agency can also extend to our recreational activity – we can shape our activities to fit our physical, emotional and/or mental ups and downs.  I play social tennis despite having MCAS which often means that my ankles and legs are swollen and I have arthritis in one of the fingers I use to hold a tennis racquet. 

I have found that swelling in my ankles reduces my mobility.  I find that the lack of mobility is very frustrating as this used to be a strength of my tennis game (I was a champion sprinter during secondary school).   Now with the swelling I feel anchored on the spot, not able to accelerate forward.

As the inflammation is caused by sensitivity to some foods and drinks, it is within my control to limit these to reduce the swelling and improve my mobility.  This, however, is easier said than done as it severely restricts what I can eat and drink.

Another related area of agency with regard to the quality and enjoyment of my tennis game is undertaking exercise on a daily basis – including walking, a daily exercise routine (designed by my exercise physiologist) and my Tai Chi routine.

I re-learnt recently that most of the power of a tennis shot comes from your legs, not your arms or hands. I was getting very frustrated with the arthritic pain in my fingers which caused me to lose power in my arms and hands.  However, I have found that by bending my knees with each shot (as I used to do), I can restrict the pain in my fingers and hands and increase the accuracy and power of my tennis shot.

An added benefit of this form of agency is that by bending my knees I unconsciously activate my body memory so that I can access a wider range of tennis shots than I would normally play without the knee-bending. You only have to watch Grand Slam tennis to see how much players, both male and female, rely on bending their knees to gain power and to play a wide range of tennis shots (some even kneel at times to absorb the power of an opponent’s shot).  So the simple act of knee-bending gives me a form of agency that increases both the quality and enjoyment of my social tennis.

Reflection

The challenge with chronic illness is to identify areas for increased agency and to experiment with particular strategies to activate whatever agency we can find in whatever window of opportunity reveals itself.  Mindfulness practices such as meditation, conscious breathing, reflection and Tai Chi can help us to be open to opportunities for agency and to act on them.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can gain insight, heighten creativity and develop the courage to act on our increased self-awareness.

The story of Lucy, a 13 year old blind girl who is also neurodiverse, is an outstanding example of what is possible when we focus on our strengths rather than our deficits. Lucy is a prodigal pianist who has wowed audiences in places such as Leeds Train Station with her rendition of the extremely complex Chopin piece “Nocturne in B-flat Minor Op.9 No.1”.  She competed in a public piano competition with three other gifted pianists who were selected by Lang Lang, world famous pianist who was “speechless” with her performance and chose Lucy as the best of the four pianists. 

Lucy achieved agency in the form of her creativity and musicality, playing complex classical pieces for audiences, by utilising her strengths despite her obvious disabilities.  She has highly developed hearing and an incredible sense of touch – she learned to play the piano by placing her fingers under the fingers of her piano teacher as he depressed each key.  Her sensitivity in playing the classical pieces astounded Lang Lang.  She played at the Coronation Concert at Windsor Castle on 7 May 2023.  Lucy has since produced a classical piano CD, simply called Lucy – The Album.  Lucy’s story and her training through the Amber Trust and her teacher, Daniel, is available on video.

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Image by yoshitaka2 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.

Expressing Gratitude Daily

Kim Armstrong provides a meditation on the theme of Cultivating Gratitude Daily.  In the 12-Minute Meditation podcast on 21 March 2024, she takes us through a process of reviewing our day (or the previous day) at micro-points to reflect on instances, interactions or events that brought us joy, happiness or contentment.  She encourages us to reflect on these moments to express appreciation for them.  They don’t have to be big happenings, but by reflecting on the small positive moments in our life, we can cultivate gratitude on a daily basis.

Kim is co-founder and facilitator of Space Between, a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to bringing the benefits of mindfulness to teachers and school-aged youth.  She has a Master’s Degree in Child and Adolescent Psychology and is a certified meditation and yoga teacher.  Fun-loving Kim is a strong advocate and practitioner of deep listening and draws inspiration from Thich Nhat Hanh’s quote, “Live the actual moment. Only this actual moment is life”.   

Space Between draws its name from Viktor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, and his observation that:

Between stimulus and response, there is a space.  In that space lives our freedom and our power to choose our response.  In our response lies our greatest happiness.

Guided meditation process

In her guided meditation, Kim helps us to explore the minutia of daily life and to learn to savour each moment that has enriched our lives in small and significant ways.  Her process begins with encouraging us to take two deep breaths, inhaling through our nose and exhaling through our mouth, as a way to become grounded for the meditation practice.  This initial breathing process could be accentuated by vagal toning.  She then leads us to reflect on different stages in our day.  The reflections below are my own recollections of moments I appreciated as I progressed through her “Cultivating Gratitude Daily” practice:

  • Waking up –  the warm morning hug from my partner; the sound of birds greeting the morning light (especially the Kookaburras and their raucous “laughter”); the red and yellow glow of the sunrise spreading across the horizon and being reflected in the waters of Moreton Bay; the view of Green Island and its sandy beach from my lounge room and deck; the sand dunes of Moreton island providing a very white backdrop; the early morning silence punctuated by the calls of birds and the sea breeze.
  • Moving from the bedroom – appreciating having the water and toothpaste to brush my teeth; the opportunity to shower and freshen up for the day in a bathroom (instead of in a lake or river); observing the sunlight spreading throughout the rooms of the house I share with my partner and one of my sons; having a house to live in that is spacious and open to views of the Bay.
  • Beginning the day – being able to make a cup of coffee on our Expresso machine; having access to Almond Milk (to avoid dairy milk intolerance);  savouring the foam and taste of the cappuccino I made; providing a coffee for my partner; having distilled water and vitamins to energise my day; enjoying gluten-free toast and avocado for breakfast; watching the birds feeding off the nectar from our native Bottlebrush trees; enjoying the colour and shape of the Bottlebrushes.
  • Transition to work, play, or  exercise – having a focus and a purposeful task such as my blog and book; being able to write well; having a talent for integrating ideas, concepts and practices from multiple sources; having focus and clarity (not encumbered by “brain fog”); being able to form an intention and pursue it; being able to create poems to reflect my thoughts and emotions.
  • Transition to home life – being able to walk on the Esplanade beside the Moreton Bay;  seeing pelicans gliding gracefully across the water at the creek’s edge and resting contentedly on rocks beside the seagulls as they survey the surrounding Bay waters glistening with sunlight; having access to shops to buy a wide assortment of foods; having food to prepare for dinner; preparing the dinner meal for my partner and son;  the pleasure of eating and sharing; the taste of food and drink (peppermint herb tea).
  • After dinner – sharing a favourite TV show with my partner; being able to watch the Olympics and European soccer (having the resources to fund streaming services such as Stan and Kayo).
  • Sleeping – being able to sleep (not suffering from insomnia); having a comfortable and warm  bed to sleep in (not sleeping in the street on our Winter nights); the stillness of the night.

Kim points out that the “cultivating gratitude practice” has many benefits.  She maintains that it offsets the negative bias of our brains and the tendency to focus on what is unpleasant or dissatisfying.  Kim argues that gratitude builds resilience, displaces envy and resentment and builds a positive mindset. In her mindfulness training with teachers and school-aged youth, she aims to help them to achieve “integration and wholeness”.  Cultivating gratitude helps us to get in touch with ourselves.

Kim and her colleagues at Space Between employ trauma-informed mindfulness training to help members of the school community to use the space between stimulus and response to make better choices for the benefit of themselves and their community.   Research supports the organisation’s observation that undertaking mindfulness practices intentionally provides “systemic support for the mental health and well-being of students, teachers and families”.

Reflection

The “Cultivating Gratitude Daily” practice helps us to grow in mindfulness and experience the benefits of heightened creativity, greater calm and clarity, and improved focus and productivity.   It assists us to see more clearly what we have in life – the things that bring us happiness and joy and builds positivity that contributes to increased resilience.

It also helps me to appreciate the opportunity to pursue a purpose, the creation of this blog, that is helpful for other people as I contribute to awareness of what resources are available to develop mindfulness and the multiple benefits that can accrue from pursuing mindfulness intentionally.

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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.

Meditation for Clarity and Calm at Work

Neuroscience has highlighted the multiple benefits of mindfulness practice.  These include the capacity to pay attention, sustain task-focus and regulate our emotions.  Mindfulness can contribute to our overall happiness by enabling us to be in the present moment (rather than the past or future), to sustain positive emotions and recover from perceived adverse events.  Mindfulness enhances our capacity in a work situation by  enabling us to handle abstract ideas, to be reflective and to strengthen the communication between the hemispheres of the brain.  Nadine Cherry who teaches meditation and other mindfulness practices to corporate organisations around the world, maintains that meditation can also develop clarity and calm.

In a 12-Minute Meditation podcast  (25 April 2024), Nadine facilitated a session on the theme, Meditation to Cultivate Calm and Clarity.  In that session, she introduced two mindfulness practices that she contends can be used in the workplace or when working at home.  They are short and can be undertaken anywhere:

1. H.A.L.T. Practice

In this process we can explore the bodily sensations and our thoughts  associated with hunger, agitation, loneliness and tiredness. It involves stopping for a brief period to focus on each of these states and how they are affecting us in the present moment.  It requires tuning into our bodies and our thoughts to assess where we are at in terms of these four human conditions.  It also involves reorienting ourselves when we find that we are being impeded by what is going on both in our bodies and our minds. Nadine maintains that this mindfulness practice can contribute “to inner peace and outer performance at work”.  It can be very useful as a prelude to a potentially tense meeting, a formal presentation or a challenging conversation. 

2. Vagal Toning

Vagus nerves are a critical component of our parasympathetic nervous system and are responsible for creating signals between our brain, heart and digestive systems.  Before challenging activities at work, we can experience tightening of our throat or chest.  Vagal Toning involves deep breathing and exhaling with a particular sound that relaxes the vagal nerves.  The process requires deep inhaling through the nose and then exhaling while making a “v” sound.  This action expands the chest and calms the body, enabling clarity of thought and decision-making. Vagal toning helps us to become more grounded and connected to ourselves, enabling us to relax and to achieve optimal performance in the moment.

Nadine asserts that these two mindfulness practices facilitate “authentic expression” and enable us to overcome “overwhelm” when working.  By helping us to become more connected to ourselves, they assist us to become clear about what we want to do and say in a work situation.

Reflection

While listening to Nadine’s podcast and participating in the mindfulness practices she described, I recalled another calming benefit of mindfulness that has personal relevance to my health situation.  I had been watching Dr. Darin Ingles’ Q & A video presentation on the Inflammatory Auto-Immune Response where he mentioned strategies to manage Mast Cell Activation Syndrome (MCAS) – a condition that I am currently experiencing.

Mast cells release chemicals that produce an inflammatory response to a “perceived invader” – something the body may misperceive as harmful (e.g. a particular protein found in gluten or milk).  The activation of the mast cells can range on a spectrum from mild to severe.  Darin maintains that in addition to medication, natural processes such as bodywork “can be helpful in resetting your autonomous nervous system and getting it back under control”.  He mentions explicitly bodywork such as meditation, Tai Chi, acupuncture, vagal toning, yoga and deep breathing as being especially helpful in toning down the body’s “hyper-active” immune response.

The calming influence of Tai Chi on MCAS provides an added motivation for me to practise Tai Chi regularly.  I have previously developed a mnemonic, FRAICHE, to remind me of other potential benefits of this mindfulness practice – flexibility, reflexes, awareness, intention, concentration and coordination, heart health and energy.  So, as we grow in mindfulness through practices such as H.A.L.T. , vagal toning and Tai Chi we can calm our body and mind and develop clarity in our thinking and decision-making.

Darin is the author of The Lyme Solution: A 5-Part Plan to Fight the Inflammatory Auto-Immune Response and Beat Lyme and provides a regular podcast on health issues, Resilient Health Radio.

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This post is provided for information purposes only and is not intended to replace personal medical advice provided by a trained medical practitioner.  Please seek advice from a qualified professional before deciding on treatments for yourself or other members of your family.

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Image by Fabiana pfernandes 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.

The Benefits of Positive Beliefs About Aging

In a previous post, I discussed the pervasive impact of negative beliefs about aging.  Highlighted in that discussion is the research evidence that negative age beliefs can impact every aspect of our aging process and our quality of life.  In that discussion, I drew on the work of Dr. Becca Levy, a pioneer in the area of successful aging and a world-renowned researcher and Yale Professor.  In her book, Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will Determine How Long and Well You Live, she contends that it is critical that we address ageism in our society both as individuals and as a collective.  

Becca has a section in the book where she identifies the widespread influence of ageism and calls for “an end to structural ageism” in education, Governmental systems, medicine, mental health, advertising and media, science and the arts.  Ageism prevents people from effectively adapting to the aging process, from taking proactive action to maintain their quality of life, from achieving their potential both mentally and physically, and from realising the benefits that can accrue with age.

The benefits of positive beliefs about aging

In her book, Becca draws on her own research and that of researchers worldwide to demonstrate the numerous benefits of positive age beliefs and illustrates these benefits with stories of outstanding achievements by numerous people in multiple fields of endeavour.  Ageism is based on the assumption that all people who are old experience decline in mental and physical capacity at the same rate and that this decline is inevitable.  Becca’s research and stories of individual achievements demonstrate that each of us can arrest decline, or at least reduce the rate of decline, in our capabilities as we age.  Our beliefs about aging are a key determinant of the choices we make and how long and well we live.

In providing research-based claims about the benefits of positive age beliefs, Becca identifies a number of findings that challenge prevailing myths about the aging process.  Her research demonstrates the following benefits of this positivity:

  • Pattern recognition improves with age so much so that neuroscientist, Daniel Levitin, suggests that radiologists past 60-years old should be preferred to younger people for reading and interpreting X-Rays.  Daniel is the author of the book, Successful Aging: A Neuroscientist Explores the Power and Potential of Our Lives. 
  • Indigenous knowledge and memories held by elders in Indigenous communities that have been passed down in communities around the world to ensure the health and continuity of these communities such as in the Indigenous Australian culture.  This aspect of Indigenous aging was documented by anthropologist Margaret Mead in her book, Culture and Commitment: A Study of the Generation Gap.
  • Functional health is enhanced by positive aging beliefs.  Becca demonstrates that her research and that of her colleagues disprove the assumption of the “stereotype of debility and decline” as the natural outcome of the aging process.  She draws on the example of Sister Madonna Buder, who at the age of 52 undertook her first triathlon with borrowed running shoes – now, at over 90 years old, she continues to compete and has completed in excess of 350 triathlons.  Sister Madonna’s view of aging is that it represents “wisdom and grace” and “opportunity”.
  • Irreplaceable knowledge and understanding can accrue to anyone in a specialised field with experience developed as they age.  Becca illustrates this by discussing the experience of a 75-year-old paediatrician called Jonas who had retired from clinical practice “when he was most skilled”.   A young colleague asked him for his opinion on what was ailing a baby because he could not work it out.  Jonas figured it out “right away”.  His young colleague had an instant insight and asked, “Teach me Doc, how’d you do that?”  Jonas now teaches “medical diagnosis” at a university and participates in group diagnoses of patients in a teaching hospital.  Jonas’s career transition highlights the opportunity for older people to make a significant contribution to society even after retirement – all that it requires is a positive view of aging and a willingness to make adaptions in their career role. Jonas has also acquired new interests and hobbies such as cultivating rare orchards, French cooking, close-up photography and amateur aviation. 
  • Mental health growth – during a placement at a psychiatric hospital, Becca found (contrary to her expectations) that more younger, adult patients suffered from mental illness than older patients and that the latter “can be successfully treated”.  Her own research, confirmed by others around the world, also showed that age beliefs heavily impact the nature and quantity of stressors experienced psychosomatically.  She found that positive age beliefs helped to mitigate the impact of stressors (even in PTSD cases), while negative age beliefs acted as a “barrier to mental health”.
  • Longevity – in a significant research study, Becca found that participants who held positive age beliefs “lived an average of 7.5 years longer” than those who held negative age beliefs. ` Other research has demonstrated that non-biological factors such as age beliefs (and social/cultural environments) “determine as much as 75% of our longevity”.
  • Creativity – contrary to the prevailing stereotype, “creativity often continues and even increases in later life”.  Throughout the book, Becca mentions people who achieved “their most creative work at an older age”, e.g., Matisse, Hitchcock, Einstein, Picasso, Bernstein, Lerman and Dickens.  She also noted that 65 is the average age of a Nobel Prize winner.  Becca also reported the comment of actress Doris Roberts that actresses/actors “get better and better in their craft as they get older”.  Michael Caine CBE is just one example.  Starring in 160 films over 8 decades, he produced an outstanding performance at age 90 in his last film before retirement, The Great Escaper.

In the above discussion of the benefits of positive beliefs about aging, I have only “scratched the surface” of Becca’s research and findings.  However, it is very clear that positive age beliefs can impact us in multiple, beneficial ways – opening up opportunity and the realisation of our true potential.

Reflection

I can relate to Jonas’s experience (recounted above) when applied to a recreational context rather than a professional one.  I have continued to play social tennis in my late seventies and recently I played a half-volley, drop shot that left my much younger partner “gobsmacked”.  He responded, “Wow, how did you do that? Can you teach me to do that shot?”  At the time, I just shrugged but felt like saying:

I can’t teach you as I have never learnt to do that shot – it was purely instinctive, as I was caught “in no man’s land”.  When you have achieved in tennis what I have done – played 10,000 sets of tennis over more than 60 years, practised Tai Chi for years (for balance and coordination), and spent numerous hours doing tennis drills – you, too, will be able to do instinctive tennis shots that surprise others (as well as yourself).

Becca’s comment that creativity can increase in later years also resonates strongly with me.  I started this blog in 2016 (at the age of 70) and have now written more than 740 posts on this blog alone (my fifth blog).  I have reduced my output from three posts per week to one post to enable space and time to conduct manager development workshops (hybrid mode) and to co-author a book with my colleague of 16 years (as our legacy to younger managers and organisational consultants).  I am finding that connections and patterns come to me more rapidly and profusely  as I read and write and I now write an average of 1,000 words per post (compared to the 300 words per post, I started with in 2016).

In her book, Becca recounts the comments of 69 year old creative dancer Liz Lerman who observed that as we grow old we “don’t need  to make major life change to activate creativity’.  In her view, “expanding our connections to people” can create life changes for us and spark renewed creativity.  I have certainly found this with my active participation in the Creative Meetups hosted by the Health Story Collaborative.  

Additionally, I am finding (in terms of creativity) that, as I age and reflect, I am writing more poems that are longer and more complex in structure and scope.  In three days, inspired by Kim Rosen’s book Saved by a Poem,  I have written three poems – previously I wrote four short poems over five years.   One of my recent poems relates to the theme of this blog post and its predecessor about negative age beliefs:

Beliefs About Aging

To be positive, is to see opportunities

To be negative, is to deny potentiality.

Positive age beliefs open new horizons

Negative beliefs hold us captive and inert.

Positivity is openness to reality

Negativity is a closed mindset.

In being positive

Our full potential is possible.

With a grateful heart

I live my positive beliefs.

Reflecting and writing poetry enables us to grow in mindfulness. We come to realise that negative beliefs hold us back.  Through mindfulness practices, we can grow in self-awareness, concentration, creativity and resourcefulness – we can become increasingly aware of what is around us each day and what it is possible to achieve.

Photo Credit: The photo incorporated in this post was by Steve Buissinne, aged 74, from South Africa.  He joined Pixabay in 2014 and has had 556 photos accepted, 148 of which have been singled out as “Editor’s Choice” – a sign of excellence.  His photos have been viewed 32.83 million times, resulting in 19.39 million downloads. Steve’s comment on his Pixabay site demonstrates his mindful awareness of the beauty that surrounds us:

Everything has beauty – photography teaches you to see it

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Image by Steve Buissinne 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 and the resources to support the blog.

The Pervasive Impact of Negative Beliefs About Aging

Dr. Becca Levy, Yale professor and world leader in the psychology of aging successfully, has written a groundbreaking book that is brilliant in its conception and exhaustive in its research foundation.  The book is titled Breaking the Age Code: How Your Beliefs About Aging Will Determine How Long and Well You Live.   Becca draws on global research, undertaken by herself and colleagues in the field, to demonstrate that our age beliefs impact positively or negatively not only our physiology but also our mental health.  Negative age belief, perpetuated through the media and our social environment, can lead to mental and physical ill-health and a diminished quality of life.  In contrast, positive age beliefs can enable us to transcend the limitations of aging in terms of mental acuity, physical strength, flexibility and longevity.  Becca draws on numerous stories of people from all walks of life – artists, musicians, actors, athletes, carers, and health professionals – to illustrate the very real impact of beliefs about aging.

How our negative aging beliefs are formed

Becca demonstrates the impact of nursery rhymes and cartoons on the early formation of our age beliefs.  These typically negative portrayals of aging are further reinforced by social media, films, newspapers and everyday social conversations.  The pervasive marketing of a desirable body image and associated cosmetic propaganda (a Trillion-Dollar industry), have served to embed a negative image of aging in our psyche.   We now have “age-defying” skin treatments that remove wrinkles and make our skin glow, along with a pervasive negative stereotyping of menopause (loss of youthfulness, sexual drive, physical prowess and energy).

The impacts of negative age beliefs on institutions and individuals

The resultant negative age beliefs underpin the growth of ageism – “discrimination against older people because of negative and inaccurate stereotypes”.  This discrimination is reflected in institutional bias, in interpersonal communications and relationships, and self-talk/limiting behaviours.  Becca gives examples of institutional discrimination in employment, the acting and legal professions and hospital protocols.  She explains that her research confirms that many health professionals have negative age beliefs and act on them.  Our language in conversations can betray an ageist mindset, for example, when we talk about “having a senior moment” (Becca devotes a chapter to this phenomenon and highlights the amazing memory of deaf people and the role of memory in the oral transmission of indigenous knowledge).

The last mentioned arena of negative age beliefs, the intrapersonal, is difficult for an individual to realise and acknowledge.  Becca surprised herself by her ageist mindset when she suffered an injury while running in a charity event.  Despite her professional knowledge of aging, she immediately attributed the injury to her middle-aged body “succumbing – all too early – to the ravages of age”.  She assumed that her running days had come to a “premature end”.  It was only when her husband, a doctor, explained that she only had a “badly pulled muscle” that she was able to recognise and acknowledge the personal impact of her negative mindset about aging.  Like many people, Becca was shocked that ageism was influencing her own thinking.

I can relate to Becca’s personal injury story.  I was diagnosed with multilevel spinal degeneration, in part, as a result of playing tennis for more than 60 years, including many years at a competitive level.  My doctor told me that I would have to give up tennis because the injury was the result of “wear and tear”.  Initially, I put the degeneration down to aging (I was 76 years old at the time) and decided that my body was no longer able to cope with the rigours of tennis.  For some reason, unknown to me, I decided to seek a second opinion.  The second medical practitioner gave me a referral to an exercise physiologist who provided me with a series of progressively more challenging exercises over a period of six weeks.  By the end of this period, I was able to return to playing tennis and have been doing so for six months (I play social tennis weekly at night).  This brought home to me that a negative mindset about aging can actually prevent us from exploring and undertaking remedies for health issues. We can adopt a helpless frame of mind that impedes our chances of improving our health, physically and/or mentally. 

Reflection

Becca reveals through her research and storytelling that our negative age beliefs can influence our behaviours, our ability to recover from illness and injury, our quality of life, and life span.  It behoves us to become aware of the influence of ageism on us, to become conscious of our negative thought patterns and to be aware of our resultant limiting behaviours (including our willingness to seek ways of healing).

As we grow in mindfulness through reflection and mindfulness practices such as meditation, we can become more aware of our thought processes and their impact and develop increased self-awareness, including knowledge of our habituated behaviours.   Tara Brach and Jack Kornfield teach us about The Power of Awareness developed through mindfulness meditation.

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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 and the resources to support the blog.

Tina Turner’s Approach to Mindfulness

Allyson Pimentel, psychologist and meditation practitioner/teacher,  fittingly provides a meditation podcast titled, The Mindfulness Teachings of Tina Turner.   Allyson describes mindfulness as “a way of attending to your life as it unfolds” while bringing to this awareness an attitude of “openness, friendliness, and kindness” without judgment.  Associated with this, is a willingness “to be with things as they are”.

She maintains that the goal in practising meditation is not to master the art of meditation itself but to lead better lives day-to-day though our groundedness, compassion and wisdom.  We do this so that we can become “a force for good” in our family, in our work, in our community and in our daily interactions.  Allyson maintains that Tina Turner, who died at the age of 83 in May 2023, exemplified this broader goal and drew on mindfulness practices to be a positive influence in people’s lives.  Allyson viewed Tina as a personal hero who, in her view, embodied kindness, love, wisdom, resilience and creative talent.

Tina’s approach to personal transformation

In her book, Happiness Becomes You: A Guide to Changing Your Life for Good, Tina explains her Buddhist approach and how she turned her life around after multiple “lifequakes” that threatened to derail her singing career and harm her mental wellbeing.  She explains in-depth that chanting enabled her to overcome adversity, develop resilience and realise happiness in her life.  Her ability to commune with nature from an early age enabled her to find her true home within, despite the turbulence and torment of her outer world.  Besides the vibrational energy and groundedness of chanting, Tina drew on the teachings of Nichiren Buddhism to transform and reframe her life.

Tina explains that this Buddhist approach, that places emphasis on engagement and social activism helped her to move beyond her comfort zone, to appreciate the connectedness of everything, to value diversity in nature and cultures and participate actively in the Beyond Music Project designed to use music as a way to respect and celebrate cultural diversity.

Tina saw experiencing adversity as a way to shape ourselves and build our resilience – in her words, adversity is not a bad thing in itself, it is how we use it that really matters.  She contended that adversity could build character, self-awareness, insight and a stronger sense of connection.  This perception aligns with the tenets of mindfulness that reinforce the view that while we have little in our life that we can control, we can control our response to what happens to us as well as around us.  Mitra Manesh in her podcast on responsibility contends that mindfulness builds our ability to respond to adversity and setbacks – she describes this outcome of mindfulness practice as developing our “response-ability”.

Tina explained in her book that all of life shapes us – the good, the bad and the ugly.  We become our transformed selves through the richness and diversity of our life experiences and by developing a constructive, creative and energetic response to whatever occurs.  She maintained in her eighties that she had no regrets – she had lived her life to the full, positively impacted numerous people all over the world and experienced deep happiness.

Reflection

Tina demonstrated in her life, music and her writing that as we grow in mindfulness we can overcome adversity, develop resilience, enrich our creativity and build the courage and sense of connectedness to take compassionate action.  Her life and music provide an invaluable legacy and a “ripple effect” that has the power to inspire others  to work to create a better world.

In her guided meditation podcast, Allyson draws on Tina’s core teachings to help us explore our connection with nature, the influence of our ancestors, our own legacy, and our present moment awareness.

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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.

Managing Transitions with Mindfulness

In a previous post I explored the use of storytelling as a way to manage life transitions.  In this post I want to discuss a story of personal transition shared by Peggy Farah, mindfulness teacher and licensed physiotherapist.   Peggy was interviewed by Jon Waal on his Life Through Transitions podcast (Episode 48).  Her focus in the interview is tuning into your body using mindfulness as a way to manage life transitions.  She initially started her more than 20 years working with emotional and mental health by supporting children and youth who were dealing with grief, loss or critical illness – all extreme life transitions that are described by Bruce Feiler as “lifequakes”. 

Beneath Peggy’s competence as a therapist was a private struggle with “body image” – she was disgusted with her body (despite dieting) and had a “difficult relationship with food”.  It was as if she disowned her body and continuously retreated into her thoughts, becoming lost in cognitive processes – avoiding having to confront her challenging relationship with her body.  It was during her Masters study of Psychotherapy and Spirituality that she was able to use mindfulness to “reclaim her body”.

As part of her postgraduate studies, Peggy had explored the concept of “presence” and discovered the merits of Eastern religions, especially Buddhism.  She was also introduced to the numerous documented benefits of mindfulness which she describes as “deep noticing” in a way that is non-judgmental.  This opened up the possibility of overcoming her own negative self-evaluation and time spent in her “monkey brain” – in Buddhist philosophy, the concept of “monkey mind” relates to restlessness, disorder and lack of control.

Mindfulness to manage transitions

From her reading, Peggy came to understand that mindfulness could provide her with an “emotional breather”, could actually enable her to “press pause” in her debilitating negative thinking pattern.   She decided to re-focus her Masters thesis on herself undertaking a heuristic study (where she was both the researcher and subject of her research).  Her aim was to apply the principles of mindfulness and presence to her negative relationship with her own body and food so that she could gain “self-acceptance” – a fundamental outcome of mindfulness.

Interestingly, Peggy’s route to mindfulness was through her body – being present in the moment through her body (our body is always in the moment, in the “here and now” – it’s our minds that persist in exploring the past or the future).  She was able to become grounded by focusing on her feet on the floor, her body on the chair, and getting in touch with the physical sensations of her body (a process that involves a “body scan”).  She adopted “mindful eating” practices – the opposite to her previous behaviour.  She expanded her mindfulness practices to daily observation and journalling and engaging in “micro-practices”.   She became aware that the more you practise mindfulness, the more often “spontaneous mindfulness’ occurs in your daily life – you suddenly feel more present in everyday events, such as when observing a flower or leaf.

As she continued her mindfulness practise and her Master’s research on what was happening for her, she began to experience the documented benefits of mindfulness – increased joy and compassion, greater awareness (of self, others and nature), and “deepened relationships”.   She changed from being a “wound-up” Type A senior manager caught up in endless daily tasks to someone who became “anchored in the moment”.   She was able to spontaneously appreciate the shape and beauty of a leaf, to achieve real “presence” when doing yoga, and be really present to her family at the dinner table.   Previously, yoga became a catalyst for negative  self-comparison – comparing her body to that of others participating in practice on the mat.

Penny graduated with her Master’s degree in 2012 and it was not long after this achievement that she moved into her private psychotherapy practice, where, among other services she shares her own experience and learning to enable clients to heal their relationship with their body and food (thus overcoming “emotional and binge eating, chronic dieting, negative body image”).  Peggy also offers anyone a free 12-session, self-help course that she describes as the Deeper Cravings Path™ – a path to achieving a “true connection with your body and develop a peaceful relationship with food”.

Reflection

Peggy has achieved a number of significant life transitions including moving from a person who disowned her own body (despite externally recognised therapeutic competence) to “body reclamation” and self-acceptance; from an overworked and highly stressed senior manager to a calming influence in her private practice helping others achieve creative life transitions.  Peggy now sees her body as “an avenue to return to myself”.  She is living evidence of the transformative effect of mindfulness practice.

Peggy asserts that her achievements to date do not mean that she no longer encounters personal challenges or that she will be free from “lifequakes” in the future.  What it does mean is that she now has the ability to drop into her body when feeling stressed and to take an “emotional breather” and “press pause” in her negative thinking pattern.  Her interviewer, Jon De Waal, reminds us that “every thought we have carries an emotional charge”.  Thus mindfulness practice by suspending or reducing our thinking provides us with a refuge from life’s challenges.

In my current life transition from a competent and active tennis player to a person in rehabilitation for spinal degeneration, I can take inspiration from Peggy’s journey and storytelling.  As I grow in mindfulness, I can experience gratitude for the many positives in my life, persist in the process of rehabilitation and creatively develop a new identity and life story. 

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Image by smellypumpy 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.