paying attention

Paying Attention to the Spaces Between

Chris Willard provided a 12-Minute Meditation podcast on the 15 August this year on the theme, A Meditation to Notice What’s Present and What Isn’t. He noted that spaces are everywhere if we look and by paying attention to the “spaces between” we can grow in awareness of what is around us as well as what is missing. Focusing on the spaces between grounds us in the present, enables us to see the potentiality in spaces and heightens out powers of concentration. Bringing our awareness to these spaces enriches our creativity and deepens our appreciation of the magnitude of our world, the beauty of nature and the uniqueness of the people who are around us.

Chris Willard has a Doctorate in Psychology focusing on neuroscience and positive psychology. He is an author, practising psychologist and consultant, a trainer and faculty member of the Harvard Medical School. He specialises in teaching mindfulness to adolescents and young adults. Chris’ books are readily available on Bookshop.org and his online courses can be accessed on his website. He is the co-author with Olivier Weisser of The In-Between Book – designed as an interactive resource for children to develop mindfulness. Chris is also a public speaker and videos of his talks can be found on YouTube.

Guided mediation

Throughout the podcast, Chris guides us in a meditation process designed to increase our ability to pay attention to the “space between”, both internally and externally. At the outset he suggests that, after adopting a comfortable position, we focus on our breathing. This initial process involves concentrating not only on our in-breath and out-breath but also on the spaces between these – learning to rest in our breathing space between our inhale and exhale.

Spaces between objects in a room

As we progress with this meditation, Chris turns our attention to the spaces between objects in our room:

the shape of objects
the form of spaces between objects
the dimensions of those spaces
how frequently the spaces occur
the patterns of spaces – small, large, irregular
intentional or unintentional spaces
the sense of openness or closure
the visual impression of clarity or clutter.

Spaces between thoughts and emotions

Viktor Frankl reminds us that there is a space between a stimulus and our response and in that space lies our freedom – we can choose how we respond. Chris encourages us to explore this inner space:

what emotion arises with a thought?
what events have given rise to the link between the thought and the emotion?
how often do we employ the S.T.O.P. process to create space before we respond?
are we carrying resentment and its attendant adverse behaviours?
does our inner landscape reflect a stance of “victim or freedom”?
do we have space within for creativity, alternative actions/responses and creating meaning in our lives?

Spaces in nature

Chris is very conscious of the natural world and the spaces within. He encourages us to explore our external world by observing the spaces in nature:

between plants
between trees
between leaves
between gardens and lawns
between water and land
between clouds.

Associated with this noticing is paying attention to:

the shape and colours of clouds
the merging of colours in the sky – yellow into green, red into purple, light into dark
the changing shape and spaces on the horizon
the crowded space of a worm farm
the flight of birds and formations
the sounds of nature and the gaps between
the bird calls and delayed responses
the movement of the wind and the spaces it creates.

Spaces in our interactions with others

Everyday we are in interaction with people close to us, our colleagues, associates and strangers. We can become more conscious of the spaces between us and others by noticing:

how our assumptions and stereotypes leave no room for sustained engagement
how we listen by creating space for others to talk
the pace of our thoughts leaving no gap for deep listening
the absence of spaces in our interactions to truly get to know someone, their life history and their feelings.

Reflection

We can extend our focus on the “spaces between” by reviewing our day:

have we created space for reflection and review?
have we taken the opportunity to pause?
has there been time set aside for walking and/or exercise, adequate sleep and rest?
have we made time for a life review to protect our attention?

Our awareness of space can be shaped by cultural influences and environmental conditions. Often, we need to experience another culture/country to appreciate how we view the “space between”. Following a trip to France, I became so much more aware of my own spatial environment in Brisbane – the space between cars, buildings, people and cities, the openness compared to the “constriction”.

Shelley Davidow in her memoir, Whisperings in the Blood, describes how her grandmother found the environmental shift from America to South Africa disarming – “At night, Africa closes in around the house and bathes it in its foreignness”. Associated with this sense of restriction are the shrieks of nightbirds, grunting of hippos, and the “distant drumming and singing”. Her grandmother was overcome by the open spaces and the loss of “signs of human habitation and civilisation” – the city comforts, landmarks and buildings of various sizes and shapes.

As we grow in mindfulness by paying attention to the “space between’, we can enrich our lives and interactions, enhance our awareness of possibilities, and make room for innovation and creativity. Consciousness of space can improve both our mental and physical health – we can avoid being consumed by the busyness of our life and the endless negative pattern of our thoughts.

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Image by Albrecht Fietz 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.

Life After Death and Spirit Communication

Mark Anthony, JD, has written a landmark book covering life after death and spirit communication. The book draws on his research, personal experience, stories of other people and quantum physics. The stories that Mark reports in detail are drawn from people who recount their Near death Experience (NDE) or their Shared Death Experience (SDE) as well as the stories that arise in his work as a “spirit medium”. Mark is described as a “psychic explorer” and is known as the Psychic Lawyer®, being an experienced, Oxford-educated trial lawyer.

He conducts “spirit communication sessions” face-to-face around the world and live on television and radio. His goal is to enable people who have lost a loved one to better manage their grief through receiving assurances from the person’s spirit on the Other Side. Mark’s book incorporating the latest science and illustrative stories is titled, The Afterlife Frequency: The Scientific Proof of Spiritual Contact and How That Awareness Will Change Your Life.

Life after death – the survival of consciousness

Quantum physics has demonstrated that everything in our world, including our blood cells and beach sand, are made up of quanta, “subatomic particles of electromagnetic energy”. Einstein maintained that “everything is energy”. The Law of the Conservation of Energy states that “energy can neither be created or destroyed”. Since everything is made up of quanta, Mark contends that “everything is energetically connected”.

Consciousness, often referred to as the “soul” (our individuality shaped by our experiences, personality, knowledge and other attributes) is described by physicists as “the quantum electromagnetic field within the brain”. In his Afterlife Frequency book, Mark explains how he developed the concept of the electromagnetic soul, drawing on history ranging from 4,000 years old Hindu beliefs, through Leonardo Da Vinci’s scientific research, Buddhism beliefs, the work of Sir Isaac Newton and the present-day research of Dr. Gary Schwartz of the University of Arizona.

Given that energy cannot be destroyed but only “transformed from one form to another”, Mark and world leading scientists, contend that as we are energetic beings, “the energy of life transcends physical death”. The electromagnetic soul thus lives on after death and exists in another dimension at a higher energy frequency, no longer constrained by the limitations of the human body. Mark affirms that the electromagnetic soul is neither created by the brain nor extinguished on its death. He draws on an analogy developed by Professor Hans-Peter Durr of Germany’s Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics to argue that “at death the electromagnetic soul is uploaded to a higher frequency” and joins what he terms “collective consciousness”.

Spirit Communication

Mark makes the significant point that spirit communication does not come in a direct form like text messaging. Sometimes the message is received in the form of metaphors, feelings, images or symbols. This means that interpretation of the message may not be immediately available to the medium or to the person for whom the message is intended. Mark explains that the understanding of the message by the intended recipient may take hours, days or even years. Eventually, at an appropriate time, the meaning in the message becomes clear as the associations connected to the message are identified and understood. Mark gives examples of this time lapse in understanding by people for whom he has performed “readings”.

Mark contends that despite the fact that we are not all mediums like him (who is a fourth-generation medium), we are each able to communicate with spirits. He explains that the pineal gland in the body, also called the “psychic gland”, enables us to receive higher frequency transmissions. As Mark explains because we all have the same “physical apparatus”, “everybody has the ability to have a psychic experience”.

Barriers to spirit communication

In a chapter titled The No, No, No, Syndrome, Mark identifies a number of barriers that people create that effectively block spirit communication. He draws on many examples experienced during his spirit communication workshops or phone calls to explain the nature and impact of these barriers. For example, people may be so anxious or fearful that their thinking becomes clouded; they may be so emotive (wanting a communication desperately and subsumed by grief) that their emotional state acts as a “deflector” of the spirit communication; or they may overthink or “hyper-analyse” the message during the communication. Mark argues that feeling should predominate during the communication, analysis should come after the message is received. He suggests that inviting not demanding, and feeling not analysing, is the way to effectively receive spirit communication. Spirit communication also requires patience because messages received can have multiple levels of meaning.

How to become receptive to spirit communication

Mark maintains that we can each develop what he calls spiritual situation awareness so that we are “capable of getting in sync with afterlife frequency”. This awareness enables us to detect spirit communication in the form of “signs” and be able to interpret and act on them.

He suggests that one of the easiest ways to develop the requisite awareness is to begin by paying attention to our immediate world through our senses, what Jon Zabat-Kinn calls Coming to Our Senses. We can start by listening to sounds in our immediate environment and then expand our attention to take in sights, smells, tastes and touch. Through this process we can eventually develop natural awareness and what Mark calls situation awareness, a trait highly developed by emergency services personnel.

Mark contends that we can take our awareness to a higher level moving beyond awareness of our physical environment to awareness of “what is happening around us energetically”, what he terms spirit situational awareness. He proposes a 4-part technique that builds spiritual situational awareness over time. The technique he describes in his Afterlife Frequency book is called the RAFT Technique:

Recognize
Accept
Feel
Trust

Mark maintains that with practice we can develop unconscious competence in recognizing, accepting, feeling and trusting the signs and messages received through spirit communication. We can also progressively remove the blockages that would otherwise interfere with the communication and our understanding of what is being communicated. Mark explains that practice is necessary because we can unwittingly block the “energetic impulse” communicated by a spirit which would, without the blockage, create a connection to the electromagnetic field of our brain.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop our natural awareness, our spirit situational awareness and our receptivity to spirit communication if we choose to do so. Mindfulness with its focus on paying attention purposefully, can enrich our lives on many dimensions – physical, psychological and spiritual. The benefits of mindfulness are far-reaching and encompass the totality of human experience.

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Image by Đức Tình Ngô 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.

Living at the Edge: Empathy

Joan Halifax author, Buddhist teacher, anthropologist and Zen priest has written a profound book on what she calls the “Edge States” – “five internal and interpersonal states” that she maintains are the foundation of compassionate action and living a courageous life. They are described by her as “Edge States” because they can lead to positive living and constructive social contribution or become harmful and cause damage to others. Joan describes the Edge States in her book, Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Where Fear and Courage Meet. Her book covers each of the five edge states in detail – altruism, respect, integrity, engagement and empathy. In this blog post, I will address Joan’s views on empathy as an Edge State.

Empathy vs Compassion

Joan contends that empathy is not compassion. In her words, empathy is “feeling into” another – experiencing their pain and suffering. Compassion, on the other hand, is not only “feeling for” another but aspiring to take some form of action that will be of benefit to the person you are feeling for – this can be any form of compassionate action. Empathy underpins compassion and is a necessary internal state if we are to avoid becoming totally self-absorbed, small-minded or even narcissistic.

Three forms of empathy – somatic, emotional and cognitive

Joan describes three forms of empathy and illustrates them from her own life experience. The first of these is somatic empathy – where resonance with another’s suffering or pain is felt in some form of bodily manifestation. It can take the form of a strong physical sensation such as feeling punched in the stomach, feeling faint or being unsteady. Joan mentions that somatic empathy can occur on a regular basis between people who are close or in frequent contact. She mentions, for example, the uncanny ability of her mountain guide/minder in the Himalayas who became so “physically attuned” to her that he could sense if she was about to fall over and catch her to prevent it happening. Joan indicated that some people are hypersensitive to the somatic experience of others and she mentioned Dr. Joel Salinas who has what is called “mirror-touch synesthesia” – an extreme form of somatic identification that he has to consciously manage for his own preservation and the benefit of his patients.

Emotional empathy, the second form of empathy described by Joan, involves sharing the emotions being experienced by another person – becoming “inhabited by another’s feelings”. When emotional empathy is at a healthy level, it can help us to be more caring, more conscious of connectedness to others and more willing to take compassionate action. However, if we become too closely identified with the emotions of others we can tip over the edge into personal distress, burnout and “blunting” (a state where we no longer “feel for” others as a way to protect ourselves).

The third form of empathy described by Joan is cognitive empathy. This is explained in terms of “perspective taking” – in other words inhabiting the mindset or mind view of another, often described as “standing in another’s shoes”. Again this form of empathy can be enabling for ourselves as well as others or lead to our being captured by another’s way of seeing the world (as in cults or the experience of the German people at the time of Hitler). People’s propensity to adopt another’s world view can be used as a form of manipulation. However, when employed positively it involves attunement to another leading to a form of resonance. Joan illustrates this in describing an experience of being confronted by an angry Algerian soldier at the Algeria-Mali border when she was on an archaeological trip by herself. Her ability to take on his perspective, instead of “othering” him and viewing herself as a victim, enabled her to gain safe passage. Joan also recounts the story of Lieutenant Colonel Hughes and his instructions to his troops in Iraq near the holy Imam Ali Mosque to “take a knee” (and point their rifles to the ground) as a form of successful perspective taking that saved many lives when the troops were confronted by an angry crowd (who misunderstood the American’s intentions).

Over the edge – empathic distress

Empathic distress occurs when we become too identified – somatically, emotionally and/or cognitively – with another person’s suffering or pain. We lose the capacity to separate ourselves from the other person’s experience and in the process become disoriented and unbalanced. Joan describes a number of situations where she was on the edge of empathic distress but was able to recognise her response for what it was and pull back from the edge.

In one situation, involving a young girl with severe burns who had been carried by her father to the Upaya Nomads Medical Clinic in Nepal, Joan found that her own heart rate was racing and dropping, her breath was “shallow and rapid” and her skin became “cold and clammy”. She was momentarily overwhelmed with her perception of the little girl’s suffering and pain. Joan indicated that at the time her “hyper-attunement ” with the child was causing her to spiral out of control and into deep distress physically (almost fainting) and emotionally. Fortunately, through her social engagement activities (including being with the dying), she was able to draw on a process to help her restore her balance and control.

Moving away from the empathic edge – overcoming empathic distress

Joan was able to draw on a process she had developed to help people move from empathy to compassion, to move away from the edge represented by empathic distress. Her process involves the mnemonic, GRACE. This stands for:

G – gathering our attention by refocusing on our breath or our feet on the ground (restoring our groundedness)
R – recalling (bringing to mind again) our intention for being with the other person in their situation
A – attuning to ourself and the other – being fully aware of our own bodily sensations and what the other person is demonstrating (in the case of the little girl, this was resilience).
C – considering how we can serve in the situation without taking control over others or pursuing our own needs
E – engagement and disengagement –adopting an appropriate means of engagement (e.g. engaging in a loving-kindness meditation focused on the other’s wellbeing) and being able to end the interaction when desirable to do so.

Joan makes the point that if we learn to identify empathic distress, we will be better able to manage our responses and restore our balance instead of experiencing burnout, with its physical, emotional and moral degradation. She likens empathic distress to vicarious suffering and highlights the fact that people in the helping professions and caregivers are prone to experiencing this depleted state.

Developing empathy

Joan describes four practices that support the development of empathy – attuning to our bodily sensations, (e.g., body scan), deep listening, stewarding empathy and “rehumanization”. Her description of deep listening is especially insightful and demonstrates her willingness to be with another person fully. She maintains that “really hearing another person requires us to listen with body, heart and mind” while being aware of how our personal experiences and recollections can act as filters, thus distorting the message of the other person. By stewarding empathy, Joan means that we have to be able to cope with the dilemma of our life – that we are both connected to everyone and, at the same time, separate – we cannot become totally identified with the other or we lose ourselves in the process. This requires practice and the GRACE approach is one way to develop this capacity. Lastly, rehumanization according to the work of John Paul Lederach, involves adopting a moral stance “to see the other as a person first, to see ourselves in others, and to recognise our common humanity”.

Reflection

I have experienced empathic distress on a number of occasions. In one particular instance, I was driving across the Story Bridge in Brisbane when I heard a woman on the radio talking about her suffering and grief. I can’t recall the detail of the story but I became more and more strongly identified with her emotions. I can clearly recall my somatic empathy in the form of a sense of dizziness and disorientation while driving. Fortunately, I intuitively knew to turn off the radio and refocus my attention on the act of driving the car and paying attention to the road and traffic.

On other occasions, I have experienced hyper-attunement to someone who is suffering extreme stress from working for a narcissistic manager. Because I have been involved in directly helping a manager and their unit in such a situation, I have great difficulty stopping myself from taking on another’s distress and suffering when they are in a similar situation.

Joan’s GRACE model will be particularly helpful for me in the future. As I grow in mindfulness through mindfulness meditation, reflection and mantra meditations, I can increase my self-awareness of when I am experiencing empathic distress and have the insight and courage to adopt the GRACE model so that I do not fall over the empathic edge.

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Image by Mirosław i Joanna Bucholc 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.

Feeling Free through Mindfulness

Allyson Pimentel recently facilitated a guided meditation podcast on the theme, Mindfulness and Feeling Free – one of the many weekly Hammer meditations offered through MARC. Allyson is a very experienced meditation teacher and is highly qualified in Human Development and Psychology. Her interests include helping people to achieve positive mental health and social justice activism.

Allyson explains at the outset that mindfulness involves paying attention purposefully on the present moment (not on the future or the past as these can lead to anxiety or depression). This paying attention is done with kindness towards ourselves and others and with an openness that enables us to accept what is, while having the courage and compassion to address toxic situations.

Allyson reminds us that mindfulness now represents the intersection of ancient traditions (such as Buddhism) with the new (e.g. neuroscience investigations such as those undertaken by MARC, the Mindful Awareness Research Center). These two macro streams of thinking and practice have merged to enable us to explore our inner landscape, improve our quality of life and assist us to show up in our life and our everyday context.

Achieving freedom through mindfulness

Allyson contends that mindfulness can liberate us from ways of seeing the world, ourselves and others that are self-limiting and potentially injurious. Our reality is very much influenced by our thoughts which can constrain us and leave us stuck in habituated patterns of behaviour. We can become immersed in negative thoughts and be captured by the “inner critic” that devalues who we are and what we have achieved.

Through mindfulness we can increase our awareness of negative and disabling self-beliefs and free ourselves from the chains of “victimhood”. As Dr. Edith Eger points out, we can choose freedom over victimhood. Mindfulness enables us to become aware of how our victim mentality is shaping our worldview, our interpersonal relationships and our mental health. Increasingly, research into the benefits of mindfulness reinforce the view that gratitude, savouring what we are and have through mindful awareness, can serve as an antidote to negativity and challenging emotions such as anger, resentment and envy.

Guided meditation

In guiding our approach to developing freedom through mindfulness, Allyson suggests that we identify a firmly held belief that is holding us back (it does not have to be something of massive import, but a simple belief that negatively impacts in some way where we are at in this moment). She leads us through a meditation process that enables us to identify the way this belief constrains our view of ourselves, our interactions with others and our options for addressing our current dissatisfaction, delusion or distress.

During the meditation, I found that I wanted to focus on my recurring belief that my recently diagnosed “multi-level spinal degeneration” cannot be redressed thus impacting my willingness to undertake a range of healing modalities. Associated with this is the belief that I will never be able play tennis again, despite assurances to the contrary from a number of my healing practitioners. The guided meditation helped me to restore my belief in the body’s capacity to heal itself and to strengthen my motivation to earnestly undertake a range of alternative healing modalities that have proven successful in the past in reversing the disabling impact of spinal degeneration.

Reflection

In introducing her guided meditation, Allyson reminds us that as we grow in mindfulness we are building our resilience and renewing our commitment to persist with mindfulness practices (a commitment that works very much through the power of the psychological principle of “self-efficacy”).

Resilience is important when we encounter challenging situations that stretch our capacity to deal with the potentially negative outcomes of the situation. Mindfulness helps us to change our perspective on obstacles to personal growth and health and to view them as a means to grow in insight and wisdom. Allyson quotes the following saying that invites us to view our everyday experiences as opportunities for growth:

“Grow through what we go through.”

Mindfulness practices deepen our self-awareness, enhance our curiosity about ourselves and others, opens up the window of opportunity, heightens our ability to shape our intentions and strengthens our resolve to make a difference in our own lives and that of others.

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Image by holdosi from Pixabay

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

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

Mindfulness Meditation – Being With Things As They Are

Allyson Pimentel presented a guided meditation on “Mindfulness” for the MARC, UCLA meditation podcast series. In the meditation, she described mindfulness as paying attention in the present moment with an attitude of acceptance and kindness and a “willingness to be with things as they are”. She suggested that mindfulness can be either formal (as with the UCLA guided meditations) or informal (occurring throughout our day as we focus on the present moment).

Mindfulness then entails paying attention in a kind way to things as they are occurring in our life in the present moment – not wishing them to be different or to go away. In this regard, Allyson maintained that mindfulness meditation can serve as a refuge – a safe place to nourish, restore and renew ourselves in challenging times. We can feel overwhelmed by external events (such as storms and severe weather events) or internal experiences (such as challenging emotions, deprecating thoughts or painful bodily sensations). Mindfulness meditation offers the opportunity to regain our equilibrium when faced with these challenges.

Allyson likens mindfulness meditation to a “wildlife reserve” where our own “animal bodies” are protected, kept safe and nurtured so that we can cultivate the “beauty” of kindness, gratitude, generosity and wisdom. Mindfulness meditation, then, can be a place of quiet restoration, renewal of our sense of wonder and gratitude and a means to mind-body balance.

Guided mindfulness meditation

Allyson progresses through the meditation by focusing in turn on bodily sensations, challenging emotions, disturbing thoughts and the ease and calmness of our breath:

Bodily sensations – we are asked to focus on a part of our body where we feel tightness and to be with this bodily sensation in all its dimensions (such as soreness, pain, tension). Allyson invites us to soften this part of our body and allow some degree of ease to permeate our bodily sensation. This involves a process of recognition and acceptance of what we are experiencing in the moment, rather than rejection or fighting against the sensations. After focusing on a particular bodily part and accompanying tight sensation, we are encouraged to undertake a process of progressive body scan and relaxation.
Challenging emotions – we now focus on any challenging emotion such as resentment, anger, frustration or annoyance. This involves being with the emotion, not attempting to deny it. It requires an openness to what is – in all its amplitude and disturbance. Again the process involves recognition and softening towards what we are experiencing, not hardening our hearts.
Disturbing thoughts – we might be simultaneously experiencing disturbing thoughts such as negative self-evaluation and self-censure. As we get in touch with these thoughts and their impacts on our body and emotions, we can learn to diffuse them by accepting their presence and being with their intensity, while acknowledging that “we are not our thoughts”.
Breathing – finally, we can take refuge in our breath which is ever present to us. We can focus on our breath wherever we experience it in our body, e.g., our chest, abdomen or nose. This involves acceptance of the nature of our breath, not trying to control it. As we tune into and listen to our breath, we can experience ease and freedom.

Reflection

At the end of the guided meditation, Allyson invited us to observe any aspect of our body that still feels tense or tight and to be with the sensation. At the time, I had a tightness in my right ankle from a bit of swelling there. The act of focusing and softening eased the sensation of tightness and pain.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and informal mindfulness practices throughout our day, we can access the well of ease, experience a refuge from challenges we are encountering and restore our equilibrium and sense of balance.

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Image by Dominik Rheinheimer 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.

Meditating on Nature and Gratitude

Mark Coleman provides a guided meditation podcast on nature and gratitude that reinforces the theme of his work which is to “bring awareness to every aspect of our experience”. He maintains that this form of meditation is designed to cultivate “a grateful heart and appreciative mind”. He argues that appreciation of nature is not just an intellectual exercise but involves a heartfelt engagement with nature and its beauty, variety and expansiveness. In the meditation, he steps us through various ways of focusing on elements of nature so that we can express our gratitude and appreciation for all that exists around us.

Paying attention to the elements of nature

As he progresses through the guided meditation, Mark draws our attention to different elements of nature that are readily accessible to us but often overlooked or cursorily observed. Below are some of the elements that he encourages us to pay closer attention to, with a grateful heart and appreciative mind:

Sunrise – we can look at a sunrise and marvel at its magnitude, the endless changing patterns and shapes of clouds and colour of the sky. In my location, near the bay and a large marina, I have the additional opportunity to observe the outlines of boats and sails reflected in the water as the sun rises of a morning – something that is a continuous source of amazement. The presence of photographers lining the foreshore with their tripods attests to the beauty of the morning sunrise over the water and its power to attract attention. The sunrise heralds a day of potential and promise.
Sounds– we often experience the sounds of birds as background noise rather than something that we notice and consciously pay attention to. We can distinguish the cooing of doves nestling and nesting in trees, the squawking of rainbow lorikeets, the enthusiastic sound of kookaburras welcoming the morning’s light and the penetrating call of the curlew piercing the stillness and silence of the night. The eerie curlew’s call and its hypnotic effect are exquisitely captured by Karen Manton in her novel, The Curlew’s Eye.
Flight patterns of birds – we can learn to pay attention to the flight patterns of different birds. We can come to appreciate the speedy swooping and swerving of swallows as they skim across the water or fly rapidly around building structures, the quiet flight and landing of pairs of rosellas or the raucous, flighty behaviour of large flocks of lorikeets, especially at dusk near the seaside (or bayside, in my location). We can also notice the tentative steps and flight of baby birds and their incessant cries for food.
Rain – we can pay attention to the sounds of rain and appreciate its role in invigorating plants, filling depleted dams and providing life-giving resources to communities of people and animals devastated by fire or drought. In another podcast, Mark reminds us of the capacity of rain to increase our awareness of the interconnectedness of nature. Rainbows that accompany rain are a continuous source of wonder.
Our own body – Mark reminds us to notice and admire the miracle of our own body – its complexity, utility, inner connectedness and interconnectedness with nature. He suggests that we pay attention (with appreciation) to the oxygen that we absorb from trees and plants, while acknowledging how valuable and mysterious is this interplay between humans and nature. The recent research on the role of our microbiome and its connection to illness, inflammation and eyesight, reminds us that, despite the wealth of knowledge, scientific methods and technology, our experts are still trying to fathom the depths of the mystery of our bodies and minds and their interconnectedness. We are just beginning to learn about the intelligence of the heart and of the gut. The HeartMath Institute helps us to understand heart-brain science and to access “the heart’s intuitive guidance” through achieving “coherent alignment” of our physical, emotional and mental systems. We can learn to appreciate and value our brain and our own special capabilities such as analytical skills, capacity to see patterns, attention to detail, creativity and/or strategic thinking. Through appreciating these capacities, we will savour our subconscious mind and readily “mind our brain”.
Our breath – the breath reinforces the miracle of life. We know that people who experienced the COVID19 virus often had severe difficulties breathing. Our breath is normally so automatic (luckily!) that we take it for granted. Mindful breathing can enable us to be grateful for each breath, to develop our self-awareness and access calmness and equanimity. Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as the Bridge to Mindfulness, encourages us to listen to the “sonic qualities” of our breath and offers ways to tune our breath to music beats – what he calls “breathing in time”

Reflection

Meditating on nature and gratitude encourages us to open up our senses and consciously pay attention to the world around us. It makes us appreciate that we can hear, smell, see, touch and taste (if these senses are intact). Many things we take for granted such as smell and taste were lost to people suffering from the COVID19 virus. It’s often through the temporary loss of things that we learn to appreciate them. Ideally our sense of gratitude is always present and often expressed even through micro-gestures.

As we grow in mindfulness, through meditation, observation and reflection, we can more readily develop a grateful heart and appreciative mind, enhance our sense of wonder and awe, and savour what we have in our everyday lives. Mantra meditations can be very helpful in enabling us to appreciate nature, our mind-body connection and the interconnection of everything. Lulu & Mischka’s mantra meditation, Stillness in Motion, performed while sailing and singing with whales, reminds us of our connection with the earth, the stars, the waves and the light in other people’s eyes.

Environmental educator, Costa Georgiadis, maintains that our connection to nature and appreciation of all that it offers begins with gardening in our own “backyard”. He offers multiple ways to get closer to nature and appreciate what it has to offer in his new book, Costa’s World: Gardening for the SOIL, the SOUL and the SUBURBS.

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Image by Anh Lê khắc 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.

Compassionate Inquiry as a Healing Mode for Trauma and Addiction

Compassionate Inquiry is a psychotherapy method developed by Dr. Gabor Maté to help people suffering from the effects of trauma and addiction to experience “deep healing and transformation”. Gabor is a world authority on trauma and addiction and has developed his method after many years in family medical practice, covering the whole range of human experience from obstetrics to palliative care. He found through his counselling sessions conducted each day after his clinic hours that trauma underlay many of the numerous physical and mental illnesses he encountered in his medical consultations. Gabor intensified his research in related fields and explored his own addictive behaviour and its trauma-induced origins.

Gabor acknowledges that his early efforts at therapy were inadequate because he had not been trained in the area. However, he persisted because there were very few people offering a psychotherapy approach to addiction and trauma – even psychologists, in the main, trained in the medical model, adopted a symptomatic approach and related medication treatment. They did not explore the root cause of the addictive behaviour or the distorting impacts of various traumas experienced by people, especially in early childhood.

Compassionate inquiry to heal addiction and trauma

Gabor learned through his early experience that healing lay in enabling the client “to experience the truth of themselves within themselves”. So what he attempts to achieve is not just an intellectual exercise – it involves engaging the whole person, their distorted perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. He maintains that his approach is compassionate even though he interrupts people, challenges assumptions, and explores aspects that are painful for the client. He believes that it is not his role to make the person feel good but to help them to genuinely face their pain and the truth about themselves.

Gabor stated that often therapists are dealing with their own trauma and addiction issues (as he was in his early stages) and are not able to be totally present to the client nor able to control their responses to what the person is saying or doing – their help is not offered unconditionally. He suggests that therapists need to work on themselves to ensure that they do not contaminate their interaction with their client/patient because of their own unresolved issues. He stated that therapists who display anger or other challenging emotions undermine the healing process for the other person.

Paying attention to the cues

There is one very important aspect to paying attention to the cues provided by the client’s words, actions and non-verbals – and that is the issue of consent. Gabor seeks consent to explore behaviour in-depth with the person he is working with but he also checks that he has consent to continue when the going becomes challenging. He argues that the person will give some cues if they are too uncomfortable and these should be used to confirm ongoing consent. In a podcast conversation for Banyen Books, Gabor said that he exceeded the consent boundaries in his earlier days as a therapist when he would drop into therapy mode with his family members – who outright rejected his approach given that they had not given consent. He soon realised that they wanted him as a spouse, parent, friend or supporter – not as their therapist.

The other key aspect of paying attention to cues is that they give the therapist insight into what is really going on for the client. Gabor illustrates how “unconscious metaphors” (such as the sun revolving around the moon) can indicate that the balance of dependence and inter-dependence is distorted in a relationship between daughter and mother. The daughter might be “carrying” the mother, thus creating a traumatic experience of missing out on maternal support in the early stages of development. Gabor maintains that metaphors a person uses are instructive, even if employed unconsciously. He uses this cue to explore the meaning of the metaphor for the client and the underlying thought processes and emotional component.

His compassionate inquiry approach is designed to get at the “basic human need” that lies unfulfilled in the person he is working with. He argues that no matter what the words or behaviour of the individual (e.g. aggressive or obnoxious) there is a ‘real human being underneath”. He uses the words of Marshall Rosenberg when he describes addiction as “the tragic communication of a need”. The challenge is to enable the client/patient to go inside themselves and confront the uncomfortable and painful truth that they are futilely pursuing an unmet, and unacknowledged, need deriving from adverse childhood experiences or adult traumatic events. Gabor spontaneously illustrates his compassionate inquiry approach in a podcast interview with Tim Ferriss.

Gabor makes the point that his approach does not involve having people tell detailed stories about their traumatic events or adverse childhood experiences, he consciously chooses to focus instead on the impacts of these events/experiences in terms of the person’s distorted perceptions, false self-beliefs and/or addictive behaviour. He sees his task as staying present to the person and their “here and now” experience so that he can “mirror back to them their true selves”. Gabor’s compassionate inquiry approach is supported by Bessel van der Kolk, a global authority on trauma, who has used attachment research and neuroscience to develop innovative treatments for adults and children who have suffered from traumatic events. Bessel contends that his research demonstrates that to change the way we feel we need “to become aware of our inner experience” and then learn to “befriend what is going on inside ourselves”.

Training in compassionate inquiry

Gabor maintains that compassionate inquiry requires an “unconditional determination to understand a person”. He offers several training courses for people who want to develop the requisite skills and personal wholeness to be able to offer compassionate inquiry in their therapeutic/consulting practice. He indicated that experience with these courses shows that participants gain insight into themselves as much as learning about the compassionate inquiry method. Gabor often uses inquiry into the experiences of individual participants themselves to illustrate his perspective and process. He offers a one year, online course in compassionate inquiry over 12 months, as well as an add-on certification process for those who want more advanced training.

An alternative to the online training is paid access over a 1-year period to Gabor’s recorded seminars based on a weekend workshop conducted in Vancouver in 2018. The four videos involved cover more than 9 hours of training by Gabor. Free access to Gabor’s perspective and methodology can also be gained by exploring his YouTube Channel, which includes his interviews and his TED Talk. Gabor’s website also provides additional resources.

Reflection

With his compassionate inquiry approach, Gabor provides a methodology that a skilled facilitator with adequate training and immersion in his approach, could employ to help people who seek assistance with addiction and/or the effects of trauma. Compassionate inquiry practitioners are available in multiple locations around the world. Gabor also offers CI Circles facilitated by a certified CI practitioner for anyone who wants to learn more about CI concepts and practices and to engage in self-inquiry. The Circles involve self-reflective journalling and a willingness to share insights and disclose present moment experiences, somatic and otherwise.

As we grow in mindfulness and associated self-awareness through reflection, meditation and guided inquiry methods, we are better placed to help ourselves deal with the impact of traumatic events from our past life and to assist others with similar needs.

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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 as a Process

Marvin Belzer, meditation teacher and faculty member of the UCLA Department of Psychiatry, offers a guided meditation, Mindful Monday, as part of the regular guided meditation sessions provided by the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), UCLA. In a recent Mindful Monday podcast, he focused on the process of meditation and as well as offering a guided silent meditation.

Marvin stressed that the process of meditation does not involve rush to get somewhere and is not about “doing” which is typical of our daily life as we seek to achieve things in family life, work and recreation. While meditation does require “effort” it is a subtle process, unlike our exertions to achieve things in life. To be effective in meditation we have to give ourselves permission not to aim for “getting things done”.

Marvin explained that the process of meditation involves directing attention to something specific that is occurring in our everyday life. It can involve the sounds that surround us, our breath or our bodily sensations. Marvin maintains that meditation cultivates concentration – a skill that can flow over to every area of our life and enhance our relationships, e.g. through deep listening. Focusing on something that is neutral can be calming and provide clarity.

Marvin’s guided meditation process

Marvin’s process began with several deep breaths to relax your body and ground yourself in the present moment. It also helps at this stage to reaffirm your intention in meditating. He followed this up with a focus on ambient sounds – the sounds that enter your awareness from outside your immediate location. This can be difficult for some people because our natural tendency is to analyse sounds, identify their source and categorise them as good or bad, intrusive or relaxing, harmful or helpful. In focusing on sounds, it is important to suspend intellectual activity and just experience the sounds as they are in the present moment.

Distractions such as planning the day’s activities or worrying about some future event are a natural part of the process. Marvin stresses that the experience of meditation is a very personal thing that can be impacted by our emotions at the time, our intellectual preoccupations and our life conditioning. There is no right way or perfect end result – there is a continuous process of focusing, being distracted, and returning to our focus – a cycle that builds our awareness muscle. Jon Kabat-Zinn maintains that while mindfulness meditation involves “paying attention on purpose”, it also requires a non-judgmental frame of mind – not evaluating ourselves against some perfect model, process or way of “doing meditation”.

Marvin suggests that you do a light body scan at the outset to ascertain any points of tension and to notice your posture which should be relaxed but enable you to be alert to what is happening for you. An alternative at this stage, particularly if you are feeling stressed, is to do a full body scan which can enable you to progressively release tension wherever it is experienced in your body. Your body and specific bodily sensations can become the focus of your meditation, e.g. paying attention to the vibrations in your joined fingers or your feet on the floor or ground. You can also tune into the physical sensation of experiencing fear, anxiety or sorrow – noticing where in your body a strong emotion is being manifested. Marvin points out that this process of paying attention to the embodiment of an emotion can serve as a refuge from the disturbance of challenging emotions.

Another source of achieving calm that Marvin identifies is your breath. He suggests that you can rest in your breathing – paying attention to where in your body you can experience your breath in the moment, e.g. the movement of your chest or abdomen or the flow of air through your nose. This process does not involve controlling your breath but experiencing it as it is – slow or fast, light or deep, even or uneven. We are always breathing as a natural process of being alive, so resting in your breath can serve as a refuge at any time throughout your day. Through meditation practice, you can drop automatically into the calming influence of your breath – just as performers and elite athletes do when they are about to perform or compete. If you associate breath awareness with a bodily sensation such as vibrations when your fingers are joined during regular meditation practice, then the act of bringing your fingers together (e.g., when waiting for something or somebody) can activate breath consciousness and the calming influence of breathing.

Reflection

Meditation is a process, not a goal post. Regular practice enables us to find calm in the midst of the waves of life. It is important to remain non-judgmental. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation in whatever form we choose, we can develop calmness and tranquility and have a genuine source of refuge when times become challenging or we begin to become overwhelmed by emotions. Our constant focus during meditation serves as an anchor in life when we encounter the turbulence of challenging times.

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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.

Body Scan Meditation – Being Present to Yourself

Gloria Kamler, stress-reduction expert and meditation teacher, provides a body scan meditation as one of the many UCLA weekly meditation podcasts. Gloria has been a meditation practitioner for more than 30 years and talks enthusiastically about the many benefits of mindfulness meditation. In the introduction to this guided meditation, she maintains that a body scan meditation can help us slow down, wake up to life and gain clarity about our purpose. She suggests that instead of floating like a balloon on the winds of life, we can choose how we want to live and be able to “show up for your life”.

Gloria argues that focusing on the body via a scan helps you to develop “moment by moment awareness” that can lead to equanimity. She maintains that our minds can lead us astray and delude us, while our body “always speaks the truth” if only we tap into it and pay attention to what we are sensing. Through a body scan, we can access a different part of our brain, develop self-caring and caring for others and build emotional regulation.

Body scan meditation

In her guided body scan meditation Gloria helps us to work progressively from our head to our feet dwelling on different parts of the body as we scan for tension, e.g. tightness in our neck, pain in our back, a tight furrowed brow, aching ankles or soreness in our knees. Recognising these sensations puts us in touch with our own bodies – it makes us present to ourselves and grounds us in the present moment as we experience it. Progressive releasing of tension as we bring our attention to different parts of our body, can create a sense of calmness and control. It can lift our spirits and help us to be ready for the day’s challenges and opportunities.

Awareness of positive sensations as we undertake the body scan can heighten our mood, develop confidence to move forward and strengthen our resolve. We could feel the firmness and solidity of our feet on the ground, energetic tingling in our fingers and arms and a calmness in our breathing – all of which portend and support our ability to surf the waves of life and make a real contribution to the lives of others, whether that is a simple smile, a random act of kindness, or compassionate action. In caring for ourselves through our body scan, we can be open to caring about, and caring for, others.

We can begin to realise that everyone is at some time experiencing some form of pain – mental and/or physical. We can feel connected to others just as we sense the deep interconnectedness of the parts of our body. The process of the body scan, like that of Tai Chi, helps us to appreciate the mind-body connection – if we are not at one with our body, we can be “all at sea” with our thoughts and emotions.

Reflection

A body scan meditation can really help us if our mind is racing or we are distracted by anxious thoughts. Becoming grounded in our body is the fastest route to being grounded in the present because our body is always present to us at every moment of every day – we just have to tune into it. As we grow in mindfulness through body scan meditations, we can access our capacity for conscious choice, emotional regulation and equanimity. We can approach life’s challenges with calmness, insight and openness to what is.

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Image by Dimitris Vetsikas 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.

Playing Canasta: An Analogy for Mindfulness

I was recently playing Canasta with my wife during a trip to Stradbroke Island to attend the Stradbroke Chamber Music Festival (SCMF). It occurred to me that playing Canasta was an analogy for mindfulness – there were significant aspects of playing Canasta well that reminded me of being mindful. I don’t want to trivialise mindfulness or overextend the analogy, but there are times when the ordinary seems to assume extraordinary dimensions. Rachel Joyce captures this phenomenon in her book, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry – where a walking trip from the south of England to the north becomes a journey into Harold’s “inner landscape”. It seems to me that to play Canasta well you have to pay attention in the moment and, above all, “play the best game you can with the cards you’re dealt”.

Paying attention on purpose is fundamental to the development of mindfulness. It builds concentration, self-awareness, awareness of the other and creative solutions to challenging problems. In Canasta, you need to pay attention to what is happening in the game, notice the micro-behaviour of the other player(s), observe the choices they make about “taking up” or “putting down”, notice what cards they ignore and what they table. You also have to be aware of what is going on in your own hand, test out your own assumptions and hypotheses about the other player’s strategy, correct any mistakes you make and “go with the flow” of the game.

Play with the cards you are dealt

According to the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), acceptance is integral to mindfulness – “accepting what is”. Diana Winston, mindfulness educator with MARC, reminds us that this acceptance entails self-acceptance, breaking the complaining cycle, overcoming disappointments, being in touch with our feelings and keeping things in perspective.

In Canasta, there is no point in complaining about the cards you have been dealt or wishing that your mix of cards were better (e.g., more wild cards and jokers or multiple cards of the same number/rank). You have to play with the cards you’re dealt and develop strategies to make the most of those cards and the cards you are offered/acquire as the game progresses. You have to continue to pay attention as the game unfolds because you will begin to see opportunities that were not available or obvious at the start of the game. And so it is with mindful living.

Reflection

There are many things in life that can be enriched by being mindful – whether it is being in nature, playing tennis, driving your car, listening to music, developing inclusive leadership or just waiting for something to happen. For example, “killing time” while waiting can become an opportunity to tune your awareness, playing tennis and making mistakes can develop your self-awareness, self-regulation and resilience when played mindfully (and accepting what is!).

As we grow in mindfulness, we can enrich every aspect of our life because mindfulness is a portable state – it is not just grounded in a meditative practice or stance. It shapes who you are and how you respond to life and its many challenges. It impacts what you see and how you perceive it. It helps you to develop deep listening in relationships. Mindfulness can go with you wherever you go but it requires a concerted effort, a commitment to practice and activities that enable you to transition from meditation to living life fully and with purpose.

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Image by jacqueline macou 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.