power – Grow Mindfulness

Mindfully Developing Inclusive Leadership

Andrés Tapia, international inclusion expert, recently presented a webinar, Overcoming Hypocrisy: How Workplaces Move From Performative Allyship to Authentic Commitments, in which he explored how to mindfully develop inclusive leadership despite opposition within organisations. He highlighted the personal and career costs of attacking this laudatory goal in a mindless, unconscious manner. Andrés webinar was hosted by Berrett-Koehler Publishers, who published his co-authored book, Autentico: The Definitive Guide to Latino Success – which looks at bias, conscious and unconscious, as barriers to overcome if Latinos and Latinas are to get ahead. He also attacked the issue of inclusion from the leadership side when he wrote the book, The 5 Disciplines of Inclusive Leadership: Unleashing the Power of All of Us, co-authored with Alina Polonskaia.

In the webinar, he shared his experiences of developing inclusion in organisations on a worldwide basis. He noted that bias and exclusion are not the sole province of white, male-dominated organisations in the West. He indicated that exclusion exists everywhere but may manifest differently through bias on the grounds of religion, gender, ethnicity, skin colour or gender preferences thus having an impact on different groups, e.g., women, LGBT+, non-gendered, Muslims, Jewish.

Andrés explored several strategies for consciously developing inclusive leadership. His mindful approach included the following:

Be mindful of, and focus on, the people who are open to influence

Andrés warned against mindlessly attacking the problem of exclusion without awareness of the potential impact on mental and physical health and career success. He suggested that wasting time and energy on the extreme opponents to equity and fairness is exhausting, unsustainable and ineffective. He argues that you should seek out people in power who demonstrate an openness to inclusive practices and a willingness to explore the barriers, both personal and organisational, that perpetuate exclusion. This entails, in the initial stage, developing a conscious awareness of where other leaders stand on inclusion issues. It also means noting how inclusive are their friendships and social activities – what Andrés calls “foundational” evidence.

Develop allies

Exclusion is an arena of power so it is important to develop allies who will support and sustain you in your endeavours to create a counterculture that is compassionate and inclusive. Ignoring this advice can lead to burnout and isolation. Whenever, you are attempting to go against mainstream thinking and action, you need the support of others, both inside and outside your organisation. This is exactly what we did in establishing the Action Learning Action Research Association (ALARA) in 1991. At the time, action learning and action research were considered “aberrant” approaches to leadership development and organisational research – they were not mainstream and, in fact, challenged the very assumptions of the prevailing teaching, research and development culture.

Understand “bedrock principles”

In giving an illustration of a female executive’s support for the advancement of an Asian woman who had been discriminated against, Andrés maintained that the executive observed some “bedrock principles” for developing inclusivity – have a through understanding of diversity and inclusion concepts, develop awareness of an individual’s talents and capability, appreciate the importance of personal sponsorship and coaching, and draw on your courage to “step up” and “stand up” for what you know to be fair and equitable in the way individuals are treated. I have previously described the traits of inclusive leadership which reinforce Andrés concept of “bedrock principles”. He adds a further trait that he considers is frequently absent even among well-intentioned leaders – that is, an awareness of their own personal and positional power and a willingness to leverage this power in the pursuit of inclusiveness. Andrés points out that leaders often focus on empowerment of others who are disadvantaged but overlook their own power to create change.

Develop personal preparedness before seeking allies amongst disadvantaged groups

Seeking out allies amongst disadvantaged groups while being personally unprepared for the challenge of creating change puts an unnecessary burden on people in these groups who are already burdened by bias. Andrés suggests that you have to build your own preparedness for wise action through observation, reading , watching videos, listening to podcasts and engaging others in conversation. He suggests that this more mindful approach develops full awareness of the nature and extent of disadvantage experienced by a particular group of people, the origins of the underlying bias, and the complexity of the challenge involved in creating an inclusive culture. Mindfulness meditation can be employed to develop the necessary personal traits of inclusive leadership and awareness of our own unconscious bias. Andrés notes that we can draw inspiration from the example of companies like Discover Financial Services that deliberately located one of their call centres (employing 1,000 people) in one of the poorest, Black neighbourhoods of Chicago, in pursuit of economic diversity and economic justice.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we can increase our understanding of inclusion issues, develop self-awareness (especially in relation to our biases and their impact on others), build up the courage to intervene where necessary and gain the insight and creativity to take wise action. Developing inclusive leadership needs to be approached mindfully if we are to be effective in creating sustainable change in equity and fairness within our organisations.

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Image by Gerd Altmann 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.

Enriching Your Life Through Nature

Over the past few days, I participated in a number of sessions of the online Nature Summit (11-17 May 2021) and found it very inspiring, enlightening and encouraging. I subsequently upgraded from the free version and gained lifetime access to the 30+ presentations (both audio and video versions) as well as extensive bonuses. The bonuses included access to the 35 sessions from the 2020 Global Summit on Mindfulness and Compassion together with other resources such as meditations and mindfulness practices.

The themes of the Nature Summit included developing mindfulness and deep listening through nature; finding wellness, healing, and creativity in nature; nature-based leadership; and protecting the environment. The Summit provided a holistic approach to the beauty, wonder and power of nature.

Becoming grounded in nature

One of the key speakers was Kaira Jewel Lingo, mindfulness teacher, educator and editor for Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Planting Seeds: Practising Mindfulness with Children. Kaira focuses heavily on mindfulness in education and shares the wisdom of her 20+ years of mindfulness practice including years spent in Thich Nhat Hanh’s monastery as a Buddhist nun where she developed her commitment to his tradition of Engaged Mindfulness.

During the Summit Kaira discussed how the earth engenders a sense of belonging and connectedness. She shared Thich Nhat Khan’s daily practice of a one-hour community walk in nature, interspersed with a 20-minute sitting meditation. She explained that the communal walk done slowly with full attention and with “loving steps on the earth” brings awareness of a perspective that is larger than ourselves. Kaira maintains that this close engagement with the earth takes us outside ourselves – outside self-absorption, the busyness of daily life and the afflictions of modern living.

Kaira also discussed the mindfulness practice of lying prostrate on the earth. Through “touching the earth” we can release our suffering and frustrations and imbibe its energy and resilience. She suggested that this practice can also connect us to the healing power of nature. One of the interesting exercises she does with school children is to have them touch a tree while blindfolded, then run and locate the tree without the blindfold, but relying solely on their sense of touch. Kaira laments how under-utilised our senses are, especially our vision which accounts for “80% of attention”.

Caring for the environment

Jane Hirshfield – poet, editor, translator, and author – in her session during the Nature Summit, discussed how nature engenders “a creative awakening”. Jane, as an internationally acclaimed poet, has become widely known for “working at the intersection of poetry, the sciences, and the crisis of the biosphere”.

As a trained Zen practitioner, she has a deep commitment to pursue mindfulness through nature. Her daily “trundling” in nature reinforces her view that the “natural world is the first field of [mindfulness] practice”. She argues that our environmental crisis has arisen through a lack of adequate mindfulness, of awareness of nature and our co-dependence. She maintains that “awareness is the ground for change”. Appreciating nature, its energy and beauty, develops the desire to protect it.

Jane indicated that after the election of Donald Trump, she took political action every day to protect the environment through her poetry, essays and writing letters to people in power. Donald Trump’s actions on the fifth day of his presidential office inspired a ground-breaking poem, “On the Fifth Day” that went viral and was read out by Jane at a protest march for scientists and the environment. On his fifth day as President, Donald Trump had ordered the removal of any reference to climate change from the Government’s website and forbade environmental scientists employed by the Government to speak in any public domain about climate change. Jane spoke about the resultant rise in “eco-poetics” and “poets for science”.

Jane explained that she writes her poetry not as a political action but more as a person finding her way in life and trying to meet daily challenges. However, given her focus and standing, she has been cast as a climate change activist who is grateful to the natural world for enabling her to pay attention, to achieve balance in her life and to see reality as it really is. While she is an extreme introvert, she engages in extroverted activities such as public speaking to communicate the urgency of the message about avoiding extinction that will occur if we keep destroying our planet. Jane suggests that we each need to go outside our comfort zone and contribute “one small decibel in the chorus of sanity” – to add our voice and skills to achieving balance on a personal and an environmental level.

Reflection

There are many ways to discover the benefits of nature. The Nature Summit provided a wide range of meditation and mindfulness practices that centred on nature. Many of the presenters noted that if we really appreciate the beauty of nature, we will be moved and motivated to protect it. As we grow in mindfulness through nature meditations, mindful walking, and other mindfulness practices, we can experience the healing power of nature, our connectedness to every living thing and gain the courage and resilience to adopt a form of Engaged Mindfulness that utilises our core competencies and the learning from our life experiences. Jane’s latest book of poems, Ledger, is a call for “personal, ecological and political reckoning”.

Growth in awareness of nature and its beauty will motivate us to protect the natural treasures that we are able to enjoy. Meditating on the elements of nature can bring equanimity to our lives despite the turbulent waves of our human existence.

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Image by Valiphotos 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.

Quieting Your Mind to Bring Silence into Your Life

Allyson Pimentel, psychologist and mindfulness teacher, recently provided a guided meditation podcast on Keeping Quiet. In the meditation, she stressed the importance of silence in our lives, particularly in these challenging times when people are experiencing fear, anxiety, uncertainty, worry, concern for their children and anger. Allyson explained that mindfulness meditation involved “quieting the mind” while “opening the heart” – opening to compassion towards ourselves and towards others. She maintained that by quieting the mind and experiencing the ensuing stillness and silence we can access our creativity and choose wise action. In the silence of our inner landscape lies insight, strength, resilience, and the courage to take innovative action.

Allyson pointed out that by quieting the mind, we can deal with difficult emotions – we can stop ourselves from revisiting the past (our mistakes and inadequacies) and the associated depression and regrets, and we can stop predicting a negative future and the associated worry and anxiety. In quietness and stillness, we can find the ease of the present moment, of being with “what is”. Allyson drew on the words of Pablo Neruda in his poem Keeping Quiet to envisage the outcome of each of us being quiet and doing nothing in the moment:

…perhaps a huge silence might interrupt the sadness of never understanding ourselves.

A guided meditation to quiet the mind

In her meditation podcast, Allyson offers a guided meditation designed to help you to quiet your mind – a mindfulness meditation characterised by extended periods of silence. She suggests at the outset that you take a deep in-breath and enjoy an elongated out-breath as a way of settling into the present and the meditation.

Once you have settled, Allyson suggests that you begin to focus on your bodily sensations. She encourages you to find a sensation in your body that you find pleasurable and to stay with the pleasure of the moment – quieting the mind and returning to your focus whenever distracting thoughts or emotions interfere.

You could focus on the pleasurable sensation of placing your fingers together – experiencing the sensation of touch and being touched, the tingling in your fingers, the feeling of warmth and energy coursing through your fingers, the sense of connectedness, the feeling of strength and power as you press them together and the sensation of gentleness as you lighten your touch.

Alternatively, you could focus on your breath, not trying to control it but just tapping into your process and sensations of breathing. Here you might notice the coolness of the breath in your nose as you inhale, the sounds as you exhale, the sense of being alive and a sense of connection to every other living, breathing human or animal.

Reflection

The intensity of our pleasurable sensations can deepen with frequent practice. If we can quieten our minds often enough and for extended periods, we will experience the ease of being with the present moment and the power that this give us to manage our day and our life. As we grow in mindfulness, our very presence can positively influence others and help them to deal with the waves and vicissitudes of their lives. Our mindfulness can be for others as well as for ourselves. We can not only bring the benefits of quieting the mind to ourselves but also extend them to others through our daily interactions.

Pablo maintains that if we can collectively quiet our minds and resist the urge to “keep our lives moving”, many of our global issues would be open to resolution as we moved together in an unfamiliar way:

It would be an exotic moment without rush, without engines…

The weekly meditation podcasts conducted by MARC at UCLA provide what Allyson describes in her guided meditation as “companionable silence” – a way of regularly being quiet together and experiencing the power of silence.

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Image by Jaesung An 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.

Accessing the Power of Silence

Every hour of every day we are assailed by noise that sometimes seems deafening. Christine Jackman eloquently describes this noise pollution in her own busy life. In her book, Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World, she provides insights into the practices and strategies she employed to slow down, quiet the noise and access the power of silence. She describes these quiet practices as “slithers, slices and slabs of silence” (QWeekend, 21-22 November 2020, p.26).

Noise pollution in our lives

We are so often unaware of the intrusiveness, stress, and distraction that noise pollution creates in our lives. In our own homes we are pinged by fridge doors when the doors are left open, by the car when the lights are left on, by our phone when we receive a text message, by the dishwasher & washing machine when a load is completed, by the oven when the programmed time is up, by the computer game when we “score” and by the computer when an email is received. We can also add the ringing of mobile and landline phones, the chimes of the doorbell (or the thud of the metal door knocker), the sound of music/arguments/renovations from our neighbours or the internal air flow noise of our air conditioner (compounded by external sounds of the fan and hot air extractor).

We could reasonably expect that when we are unfortunate enough to be hospitalised that we will have access to quiet time. However, the reality in hospitals is a constant cacophony of sounds – the sound of the food trolley rattling as it does its rounds, of the rolling noise of mobile X-Ray equipment, of bedside monitors, of conversations of patients with visitors, of conversations between nurses and doctors and nurses, of cleaners gathering waste…and so on.

Christine points out in her book that the cumulative effect of these sounds can lead to disorientation, depression, inertia, and an inability to sleep or concentrate. She recommends that we have to break out of the habit of blithely accepting the noises in our life and to take proactive action to remove them or to remove ourselves to engage in some form of creative or collaborative endeavour.

Practices to access the power of silence

One of the challenges is to stop long enough to understand the nature of stillness and access the power of silence. In her book, Christine offers a wide range of practices to access stillness and silence. Here are some of the ones that she found useful and others that form part of my mindfulness practice:

“Holding space” in conversation – this entails listening for understanding and viewing the interaction with someone else essentially as a shared space whereby you are able to pause long enough to let them occupy the space with their words.
Observing nature closely – the focus could be a leaf, a bird, a butterfly, a tree or still water. Here the idea is to pay particular attention for a reasonable time to visually absorb what is before you – whether it is something near or distant.
Using an app to undertake a brief meditation practice – there are a wide range of mindfulness apps that can be used for this purpose. The meditation can be quite brief or extended, depending on how much time you choose to make available for the activity.
Utilising waiting time for a moment of quietness – I use the process of bringing my fingers from both hands together as a way of focusing on my breath and/or the sensations in my fingertips as they touch each other. We spend so much time in waiting that this idle time provides a great opportunity to appreciate the power of focus, stillness and silence.
Walking mindfully – a way to slow the busyness of your life is to consciously slow your walking pace and be open to whatever comes to you in that moment.
Changing your access to media – many authors, including Christine, suggest that we could create space for stillness and silence in our lives by undertaking a “social media diet”. This means restricting the amount of time and frequency of our access to social media.
Adopt a “Digital Sabbath” – taking a complete rest from your digital technology on one day a week. This is a major ask for people who are addicted to the news and the words, dress, and actions of “social influencers”.
Breathing meditation – there are many forms of breath meditations but one of them is to tune into your own breathing by noticing the rise and fall of your stomach or chest.
Tuning into birds – as you walk outside your house, listen attentively to the singing of the birds around you.

Reflection

Developing the practice of accessing stillness and silence throughout the day can have considerable benefits for our mental and physical health, as well as for our ecology. Acoustic ecologist, Gordon Hempton warns that unless we preserve “natural silence”, it will be lost forever “in the ever-rising din of manmade noise”. In his book, One Square Inch of Silence, he describes his travels across America while recording the “natural voices of the American landscape” – his contribution to their preservation.

There were many responses to what has been termed “lockdown life” during the pandemic. Some people, however, were able to find stillness and silence by developing their gardens, eating mindfully (e.g. while eating a mandarin), becoming grounded and connected to nature through their landscape, developing “latent talents” (such as painting), reading and listening to music (QWeekend, 21-22 November 2020, pp.12-14).

As we grow in mindfulness through stillness and silence and quiet reflection, we can learn to value silence in our life and nature, reduce the busyness of our lives and become more grounded and connected with ourselves and others.

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Image Source: Ron Passfield – “Quiet Reflection” – Manly Marina at sunrise

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.

Accessing the Power of Meditation and Loving Kindness

Barry Boyce, founding editor of Mindful.org, interviewed Sharon Salzberg, globally recognised meditation teacher, about the impact of meditation and loving kindness (about which Sharon is a world-renowned exponent). In the interview, The Power of Loving-Kindness, Sharon explained how she had studied Eastern philosophy and learned about meditation by travelling to India, not the local meditation centre like you do today. She was surprised that much of the Indian meditation practice that she learned focused on the breath, not the more esoteric approaches she had learned about.

Focusing on the breath

Sharon was at first taken aback by the simplicity of the breath focus. However, she soon realised that while the idea is simple, the execution is difficult because it involves having to deal with racing thoughts that distracted her from her focus on her breath. She found how hard it was to pay attention to her breath when “thoughts came tumbling down like a waterfall”.

At challenging times, when anxiety is high, our mind races away from our focus with some speed and intensity. Bringing attention back to our breathing focus, is difficult to do but builds our “attention muscle”. It enhances our power of concentration and our capacity to be with what is, whether it is the experience of well-being or the pain and suffering of challenging emotions. Pausing to focus on our breath develops clarity and our capacity to lead with conviction.

The role of loving-kindness

There is a tendency is to give up in the face of the difficulty of focusing on our breath. However, persistence really pays and creates the power to access equanimity, ease and creativity. Sometimes, we are tempted to beat up on ourselves by saying, “We are not good at meditation and never will be?”; “It’s such a simple thing, why can’t I do it?” “Other people seem to manage, why can’t I?”

This is where loving kindness has a role. Jon Kabat-Zinn, in his definition of mindfulness, exhorts us to practise paying purposeful attention “non-judgmentally”. It is the negative self-evaluation that creates the greatest barrier to meditation, not the fact that we have lots of distracting thoughts. Thoughts are natural and will vary in content and frequency over time, reflecting what is going on in our life at that time. Jon suggests that we treat thoughts as if they are bubbles floating to the surface in boiling water.

Sharon maintains that “kindness towards ourselves” is essential if we are going to be able to persist with meditation. She argues that paying attention and kindness are inseparable – without self-compassion, you cannot sustain your attention. The power of meditation lies not only in the increasing capacity to concentrate but also in the ability to develop robust self-esteem through loving-kindness. Another dimension of this power is the ability to rest in our breath and bodily sensations in troubling times and times of turbulence in our life. Sharon explores fully the role of loving-kindness in her recent book, Lovingkindness: The Revolutionary Art of Happiness.

The power of connection

Through meditation and loving-kindness, we come to realise our connectedness to everyone and our connection with nature. This is foundational to our ability to show compassion towards others. If we can accept ourselves fully – with our flaws, hurtful behaviour and our complex emotions – we are better able to extend compassion and forgiveness to others and accept that they are only human too.

Through our sense of connection, we can tap into the “collective energy” that surrounds us, pursue our life purpose and make a real difference in the world. Meditation becomes a power source, a way of accessing the power within and without – it becomes the conduit for our energy system.

Reflection

Meditation has a calming yet powerful effect. When we are rattled or frazzled, our power of concentration is diminished, our thoughts become dispersed and our energy dissipated. Paying attention to our breath with loving-kindness enables us to access our power source and to bring focused energy to our endeavours, whatever they may be. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, particularly through loving-kindness meditation, we can enhance our sense of connection to everybody and every living thing, build resilient self-esteem and draw on the power of focus.

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Image by Alexander Droeger 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.

Transformation through Meditation

Sohini Trehan writes about the transformative powers of a particular form of meditation – Bija Mantra. This form of meditation uses specific sounds or mantras aligned to the seven chakras of the body. Sohini suggests that the literal meaning of “mantra” is “to liberate one’s mind” and mantra meditations serve to “create transformation”. She states that the emerging research in psychoacoustics reinforces the “vibrational energy” of sound and its healing power for mind, body and emotions.

In a previous post, we discussed the experience of Tina Malia and her emergence from her “dark night of the soul” through the transformative power of Japa – in her case, the combination of the Ram mantra with the use of beads. Tina spoke of her transformation from a total loss of meaning to a deep well of energy and creativity. Some experts believe that the depth of depression experienced in the dark night of the soul is what is necessary to achieve a truly deep transformation.

This transformation occurs because the depth of depression derives from the fact that we become detached from our meaning anchors – all our constructs about meaning break down so that things like material success, being seen to be competent or creative or becoming famous or popular, cease to have meaning anymore. As a result, we have to search inside ourselves for something deeper and more meaningful – a true purpose to our lives. This purpose does not have to be ground-breaking or earthshattering – it has to be aligned to our specific life experience and our real gifts and contribute to something greater than ourselves.

Meditation brings true peace and transforms suffering

In an interview with Oprah, Thich Nhat Hahn maintained that meditation brings true peace, even in the midst of the turbulent waves of life. He also stated that meditation develops compassion which, in turn, “transforms suffering in you and the other person”. He suggested that what is needed is deep listening for understanding, what he calls “compassionate listening” – listening without judgment. By being fully present to the other person, we can enable them to release their pain and suffering. In the process, we come to understand their perspective and deepen our understanding of our own perspective.

Mindfulness meditation dramatically increases our response ability so that we are not overcome by difficult emotions, chained by resentment or captured by envy. Meditation transforms reactivity into a positive way to respond – overcoming our habituated way of reacting and developing our power and energy. Likewise, as Rick Hanson argues, meditation can transform fear into resilience.

Reflection

It is so easy to undervalue the transformative power of meditation because we often adopt a piecemeal approach to developing the habit of meditation. The real transformative benefits of meditation are experienced when it is practiced daily over an extended period. This requires discipline and a sound appreciation of the power of meditation to transform our lives, our happiness and our energy. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation (especially mantra meditation) and mindfulness practices throughout our day, we will experience the pervasive effect of meditation on our lives. As Oprah commented to Thich Nhat Hahn, other people will feel calm just by being in our presence.

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Image by Jackson David 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.

Discipline Creates Freedom and Success

Koya Webb, in her recent presentation at the You Can Heal Your Life Summit, spoke passionately about how discipline creates freedom and success. She made the point that discipline underpinned her success as a college track star and more recently as a celebrated holistic health healer and yoga instructor. Koya sustained two serious injuries that shattered her dream of becoming an Olympic track and field competitor. It was a breathing meditation incorporated in yoga practice that enabled her to recover from the dark hole of depression after her injury and go on to establish a highly successful career as a globally recognised yoga teacher. Koya has recently published her book, Let Your Fears Make You Fierce.

Koya maintained that discipline incorporating mindfulness practices leads to freedom because it releases you from negative self-talk and fear that depletes your energy and power and enables you to create the life you want and to make a difference in the world. She recommends a daily routine incorporating mindfulness practices in the morning and at lunch time. Koya suggests starting your morning practice before you become lost in, and stressed by, your email, text messages or your news channel. I have found this approach essential to sustain my daily practice of researching and writing this blog. Koya’s suggestion concerning a lunch-time daily practice is designed to break down the accumulated stress of the morning.

A daily routine of mindfulness practices

Koya described her daily routine that incorporated several mindfulness practices. Her recommendation is to develop your own rituals to create a daily routine that suits your preferences but engages your body and mind to reinforce your mind-body connection and tap into your life force. Some of the elements that make up Koya’s routine are as follows:

Breathing meditation – Koya begins each day with several breathing meditations, some involving slow, deep breathing, while others require quick, sharp exhalations. These breathing exercises clear away fear and anxiety if you envision the outbreath releasing you from their hold. The in-breath is envisaged as drawing in energy and power.
Movement – yoga is Koya’s preferred choice of movement; other people may prefer Tai Chi or similar meditation-in-motion practice. Her YouTube© channel provides videos offering training in several yoga poses for different levels of practitioners, along with inspirational videos on holistic health practices.
Connect to nature – there are numerous ways to connect to nature and enjoy its energising and healing benefits. For example, you can be mindful of the breeze, cloud formations, the movement of birds and butterflies and the sight of rivers, oceans or mountains.
Visualisation – the focus here is to visualise a positive, ideal future to replace negative perceptions about the past or present or a fearful future.
Writing a gratitude journal – gratitude has numerous healing benefits and serves to replace fear with hope, envy with appreciation and apathy with energy. It also blocks out negative self-evaluations and diminishing judgments about self-worth. Writing itself reinforces and deepens insight, leading to growth and development.

Koya maintains that the discipline of a daily routine incorporating mindfulness practices enables you to set up your day so that it works for you, not against you. She argues that if you establish a daily ritual for your mindfulness practice you will “put yourself in a higher state of vibration”, your energy will flow more fully, freed from the blockages of fear and anxiety.

Reflection

The discipline of daily practice is difficult, but the rewards are great. It requires forgoing some things and making space in our lives to enrich it in a holistic way. As we grow in mindfulness through these diverse mindfulness practices and the discipline of a daily ritual, we can restore our energy and motivation and experience freedom and success.

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Image by NickyPe 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.

Overcome Your Habituated Way of Reacting and Restore Your Energy and Power

In her podcast interview with Tami Simon, Dr. Lise Van Susteren identified four patterns of reaction to life challenges that she describes as “survival strategies”. If we can understand these patterns of behaviour, we can regulate our normal way of responding to stimuli we encounter in life and develop more tolerance towards others. In her book on Emotional Inflammation, co-authored with Stacey Colino, Lise offers a process to discover our triggers and recapture our balance, energy and power. The book spells out the 7-step process, called RESTORE, and looks at ways we can personalise this process in line with our preferred survival strategy.

Four survival strategies that become habitual behaviour patterns

Lise maintains that the four survival strategies she has identified are based on solid empirical evidence and her own life experience. She suggests that your preferred survival strategy is shaped not only by your personality and temperament but also by your life experiences and the people who influenced you throughout your life. The four survival strategies are:

Nervous – fearful and anxious because they are able to clearly see dangers, both present and pending, and are capable of providing a warning and catalyst for action through their vigilance and thorough research (they “run the numbers”).
Molten – angry and outraged response to situations that are perceived as immoral, unjust or irresponsible and that constitute grounds for justifiable anger.
Revved – frantic response to the needs of others leading to ignoring own needs and resultant personal exhaustion.
Retreating: a reflective and considered response that exhibits humility and compassion for others while exercising patience in the pursuit of resolution of issues and challenges.

Lise identified herself as a person who adopts the “revved” survival strategy. She cannot say “no” to requests and finds herself in a whirlwind of activity giving talks and presentations and writing articles and other publications. She identified Greta Thunberg’s “How Dare You” speech to world leaders, participating in the 2019 UN Climate Action Summit, as an example of a “molten” survival strategy – her words and actions precipitating a global, youth climate change movement. In reflecting on my own response to the Coronavirus and its resultant impacts, I can identify my survival strategy as “retreating” – which is clearly shaped by my life experiences and the people who were most influential in impacting my thoughts and actions in response to anxious and challenging times.

Lise suggests that if you can understand your habituated survival strategy, you will not only be more tolerant of others but also be better able to respond differently and more effectively when the occasion demands it – because you will have been able to reduce your “emotional inflammation”. She proposes the RESTORE process as a way to achieve these ends.

The RESTORE process

Lise maintains that the RESTORE process is a pathway to overcoming habituated responses to the things that trigger us while providing us with a means to regain our equilibrium and power to contribute to a better world. Each of the seven steps of the process draws its name from one of the letters of the word, “restore”:

Recognise your feelings – identify and name your feelings, not denying or avoiding them. The more you deny your feelings, the stronger they become and the greater is their influence over your words and behaviour leading to an increasing number of negative, unintended consequences. This also involves getting in touch with your body and what it is telling you about your level of stress and agitation and the difficult emotions you are experiencing, particularly in situations where you perceive you have no control over what is happening.
Examine your triggers – gain an understanding of your triggers and their impact on your words and actions. This involves a willingness to reflect on situations that led to a high level of reactivity on your part. It also entails identifying the people and experiences that have shaped your habituated, unhelpful responses. The process previously described for dealing with resentment is an example of this self-exploration. Both this step and the former require self-observation and self-intimacy that can be developed through meditation, mindfulness practices and reflection.
Steady the natural rhythm of your body – breathing with the earth, somatic meditation and mindfulness practices help to restore your equilibrium that arises when you are attuned to the natural rhythm of your body.
Think yourself into a safe space – often we are overcome by negative self-talk which makes us inflexible and destroys our equilibrium. Working with your mind is necessary to achieve emotional agility and the capacity to adapt to ever-increasing stress situations. Jon Kabat-Zinn provides a cautionary reminder that “you are not your thoughts” – they are like passing clouds, while you are the peaceful and resilient reality behind those clouds.
Obey your body – this entails self-care including physical exercise, practices like Tai Chi and yoga, avoiding foods that your body experiences as harmful, reducing stress by achieving a better work-life balance and using self-care services especially if you are a carer.
Reconnect with nature – Lise suggests thatyou can “reclaim the gifts of nature” by accessing its healing benefits and its capacity to stimulate appreciation and gratitude and inspire awe. Mark Coleman offers online courses on nature meditation to assist you to reconnect with nature.
Exercise your power – Lise argues that to consolidate your newfound equilibrium and power, you can become an “upstander” instead of a “bystander” – taking effective action in the world (e.g. on climate change) out of a sense of thoughtfulness, compassion, self-belief and hope. This is the pathway to joy – pursuing a purpose beyond yourself that reduces self-absorption.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness through nature meditation, mindfulness practices and reflection, we can deepen our self-awareness and tolerance, build our understanding of what triggers our unhelpful responses, develop equilibrium and reconnect with our personal energy and power to create positive change in the world.

Throughout our restorative approaches we need to practise self-compassion, not beating up on ourselves for any shortcomings or shortfalls. Louise Hay recommends that we practise the affirmation, you’re always doing the best you can with the understanding and awareness and knowledge you have.

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Image by NickyPe from Pixabay

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

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