sounds – Grow Mindfulness

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.

Cultivating Gratitude Through Nature

Georgina Miranda facilitated a meditation on the theme of Awaken to the Flow of Gratitude in Nature. In her guided meditation on the 12-Minute Meditation podcast on 12 July 2024, Georgina takes us through a meditation practice that can be conducted anywhere in nature – it could be in our backyard, the local park, or our favourite place in nature. People typically have some favourite place where they experience nature – it could be at the beach, in the mountains or by a river or creek. Georgina encourages us to use nature to reset, to open ourselves to our unity with nature and to let a sense of gratitude flow through us as we experience its stimulation of our wonder and awe.

Georgina is an author, activist, mountaineer, transformation and leadership facilitator. She helps individuals and organisations globally to move beyond their comfort zone, expand their awareness and “shift mountains within themselves and the world around them”. Her activism focuses on protection of nature and our planet, and protection of women against violence. Through her social enterprise, She Ventures, she works consciously to “unleash the untapped potential of women around the world”, offering consulting, coaching and inspirational events designed to achieve self-realisation and effect positive global change.

Georgina herself uses nature, and especially her mountain climbing, as a way to move beyond life’s challenges and to achieve a different perspective on whatever is troubling her. For her, nature provides a “reset” – enabling a movement from emotional turbulence to emotional regulation and calm.

Guided meditation process

Georgina suggests at the outset that we take our place in nature – wherever that may be in terms of accessibility and convenience. She encourages us, for the purposes of this meditation practice, to avoid treating the activity in nature, e.g. walking, as an exercise (an act of “doing”) but as a mindful moment (an act of “being”). The focus is on connection with nature through our breath and sensory awareness.

Georgina begins by having us become aware of our own breath – its pace, its temperature (hot or cold) and its evenness or fluctuations. She reminds us of our connection with nature through our breath – our outbreath is nature’s inbreath. Also, we draw vital oxygen from the plants and trees that surround us.

Georgina then leads us on a sensory journey. We are invited to take in the sights that surround us at a macro and micro level – the broader terrain and the proximate features of nature. We can notice the undulations in the landscape or the flow of waves breaking on the shore; the small plants and larger trees; the cultured lawns and the wild bush. On a closer look, we can view the colours that surround us, taking in plants, water and sky (with the colours of clouds – black, white, blue and grey). With a closer inspection, we can observe the leaves (their form, distribution and colour), the veins coursing through the leaves and the lines or markings that are visible to the naked eye. We could be watching dragonflies flutter above tall grass, grasshoppers gnawing on leaves of citrus trees, butterflies flitting through the air with no apparent goal, birds descending on bottlebrushes to draw nectar, Pelicans gliding gracefully across the Bay in search of schools of fish, or ladybirds landing on roses in our garden to feed on aphids.

We can take in the smells that surround us. It could be the salt from the sea, the earthy smell from soil and fallen leaves, or the tree born odours such as eucalyptus or wattle. It could be the strong smell emitted by herbs such as basil, lavender, or oregano – each with its own distinctive aroma. There may also be the smell of approaching rain or the earthy smell of sodden ground.

We can attune our ears to the sounds in nature. It could be the breeze blowing and rustling the leaves of the trees, the sound of rain hitting the ground, the whistle or song of adjacent birds. In paying attention to the sounds of birds we can notice sounds above, below, beside and in front of us – sometimes as small finches flitter amongst small, colourful bushes. Along with the sounds of the birds, we can pay attention to the colours, size and form of the birds we observe.

Attention to nature through conscious awareness can engender calm and contentment, increase our resourcefulness and enhance our sense of connection with all living things. Through immersing ourselves in nature we can experience gratitude for the air we breathe, the sights and sounds we experience, and the feelings of awe and wonder. We can appreciate how nature helps us to reset, broaden our perspective, reduce our agitation and heal us. We can bathe in nature’s beauty, aliveness and adaptability.

Reflection

I’ve been reading Kate Legge’s novel, Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story, that traces the story of Gustav Weindorfer and Kate Cowie who fell in love with each other and with Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. They were both amateur botanists and members of the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, established in 1880. They set about establishing eco-tourism in Cradle Mountain and Gustav is credited with strongly promoting (and achieving) the development of a national park in the area so that its beauty could be enjoyed by all nature lovers. Cradle Mountain is now visited not only by thousands of tourists but also by scientists from all over the world.

Kate Legge gives us a glimpse of Cradle Mountain and its surrounds through the eyes of dedicated botanists, Gustav and Kate, as they travelled the mountains collecting, documenting and preserving plant specimens some of which they sent to Germany, Austria and Britain. In 1903, before Kate and Gustav were married, Kate presented a paper to the Naturalists Club about Mount Roland in the region of Cradle Mountain. She expounded on the magnificent view from the top of the mountain and contended that botanists and geologists alike “must pause to admire it, with that silent outreach of the soul toward eternal beauty”.

Gustav himself frequently recorded his travels and discoveries as he indulged his “wanderlust” through nature. He wrote letters for his botanist colleagues around the world, reports for the Naturalist Club and articles for newspapers. One such article published in 1910 in The Weekly Courier describes Holidays in the Cradle Mountains in these effusive words, capturing sights and sounds of the mountain as he gazed in awe and wonder:

…through the silent darkness of this supreme mountain solitude stole the murmuring sound of rippling water leaping from rock to rock, gladly escaping from the sombre shadows of the lake to the sunshine of the valley. [Notice how the alliteration with the letter “s’ evokes silence penetrated by awesome sights and sounds]

Kate Legge, herself a mountaineer as well as author and journalist, found inspiration for her writing in walking mountain trails. In a chapter in her later book, Infidelity and Other Affairs, Kate discusses her “walking life”. She likens walking to writing – “walking is one foot in front of the other, just as writing is one word before another”. Other similarities she identifies are obstructed progress, concentration and shifting attention, movement towards and away from a destination. For Kate, walking is “thinking time” that provides a “fresh perspective”. She maintains that walking “rejuvenates the body and the mind and gives rise to rumination”. Kate shares the perspective of naturalist Henry David Thoreau who advocates “sauntering” and who communed with nature “on daily rambles, rarely taking the same path twice”. She suggests that with this approach we can succumb to a “meditative trance” as we scan the horizon or focus “on small miracles”, such as a “leaf curled in a web”.

So often “shoulds” get in the road of our communion with nature – the “doing” deadlines that are often self-imposed. However, when we make the time to grow in mindfulness through natural awareness, we can really appreciate the benefits of nature and our connection with our natural environment.

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Image by Penny 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.

Deep Listening: A Lost Managerial Art

Managers report that many things act as barriers preventing them from listening effectively in the workplace. Distractions from external sources such as endless emails, busyness at work, noise from “open office environments” and time pressures, are high on the list as impediments. Managers also identify what can be described as internal barriers to listening – preconceptions about an individual staff member, assumptions about what the individual wants to talk about, anxiety when the speaker is sharing difficult emotions, and absorption with their own personal issues. Managers report, too, that they tend to try to solve problems before they really know what the employee’s problem is, interrupt people to tell their own stories and have difficulty maintaining their focus on a speaker when they are perceived to be “rambling on”.

Added to these difficulties experienced by managers is what Johann Hari describes as our “lost focus” – an ongoing decline in our ability to pay attention for any length of time because of the “fire hose” of information flooding our minds through emails, social media and news broadcasts. In his book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention, he highlights our inability to stay-on-topic, be truly present and achieve flow. Research shows that our attention span is diminishing rapidly, making it all the more difficult for managers to engage in “deep listening”. In a recent podcast, Gloria Monk PhD drew on this research to explain “Why our attention spans are shrinking”.

The essence of deep listening

Joan Halifax, in her book, Standing at the Edge, describes deep listening as truly listening in the present moment with openness and curiosity. She explains that this requires us “to step out of self-absorption, self-deception, distractions” and move away “from the trance of our technological devices”. Joan maintains that deep listening involves “really hearing” someone else by listening “with body, heart, and mind”. In her words, it also involves being able to “listen past the filters of our personal history and our memories” – it involves self-lessness. Too often, we have to tell our stories to legitimate ourselves in the eyes of the other person.

Larissa Behrendt, in her novel After Story, has one of her characters describe deep listening as “listening with respect” – not trying to hurry the other person to finish, paying full attention without interrupting the speaker. She reinforces the need to be “ready to listen” – “to prepare the space and listen” so that you can take in the wisdom of the speaker and the story they have to tell. Larissa, Distinguished Professor of Indigenous Studies and Research at UTS, maintains that deep listening has its origins in the ancient cultural ways known as Winanga-Li, where “the silences are as powerful as the words”.

Deep listening for Richard Wolf, author of In Tune: Music as a Bridge to Mindfulness, occurs when we “not only hear music but feel it”. This involves feeling the music “with your body and soul”. For Richard, music can help the listener/musician overcome internal barriers to listening by “filtering out” distorting elements such as biases, prejudices, blind-spots and false assumptions.

Benefits of deep listening

There are many benefits from deep listening that accrue to the listener as well as the person being listened to. I have summarised some of the key benefits that are identified in literature that I have been reading lately:

Facilitating the healing power of storytelling: deep listening enables a person to share their story of pain, suffering and trauma. Annie Brewster details the way this can happen in her book, The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma and Loss. It is because of the healing power of storytelling that Annie has established the Health Story Collaborative. Jana Pittman, in her biography Enough: accept yourself just the way you are, highlights the destructive impact of keeping painful things bottled up – you can lose yourself. As someone who has experienced deep pain and suffering – through three miscarriages, a marriage breakdown, media taunting and bullying, “a cervical cancer scare”, multiple injuries destroying her Olympic Dream, battling with financial difficulties and an eating disorder – Jana can readily attest to the healing power that facing her pain and sharing her story has provided her. She maintains that running away from pain can be a “heavy burden” because “bottling it up” is like “carrying it round like a ball and chain”. By facing her pain, embracing it and sharing it, she has found a new release to achieve even greater goals; the alternative, avoidance strategy, “leaves you with a whole lot of defensive walls and only a short ladder”. Larissa Behrendt, in her After Story novel, has one of her characters comment that there is “strength in saying things” because “it’s like a curtain being lifted”.
Achieving resonance: `Ginny Whitelaw, innovator in leadership development, contends that leadership is about achieving resonance with followers, and that it is through listening that leaders capture the energy of followers and thus focus and amplify the collective energy of a team. She explains her underlying principles, and supporting neuroscience, in her book, Resonate: Zen and the Way of Making a Difference. Deep listening for Ginny involves getting on the “same wavelength”, instead of “talking past” the other person. This means, in effect, that energy vibrations of the leader and follower become aligned and therefore amplified. The sensitivity involved in such deep listening changes the listener and enables healing of the storyteller.
Developing empathy: Joan Halifax contends that deep listening develops empathy, motivates compassionate action and obviates self-absorption. She provides examples of deep listening in her book, Standing at the Edge, while recognising that empathy is an “Edge State” – that can lead to significant personal and social contributions, but potentially lead to “empathic distress”. This latter downside of deep listening and the attendant empathic feelings can arise where a person is unable to separate themselves from the sufferer – they effectively “own” the other’s suffering. In her book, Joan describes situations where she has experienced empathic distress, however momentarily, and offers ways to overcome this other-absorption, including her G.R.A.C.E. technique.

Ways to develop deep listening

There are multiple ways to develop deep listening and, like any art, “practise makes perfect”. However, we each have our personal and historical impediments to achieving deep listening at any point in time. Actively working to cultivate deep listening can be very beneficial for ourselves and others we interact with on a daily basis. Several authors suggest different ways to develop deep listening (apart from consciously practising it in the present moment):

Sounds as an anchor in meditation: meditation often involves choosing an anchor that can enable us to re-focus once we experience distractions during meditation. While our breath is often used as an anchor, sounds can be an alternative. Richard Wolf suggests that focusing in on the sounds of our breath along with the gap between breaths, can effectively cultivate deep listening. We can also tune into our environment, including what he describes as the “room tone”. Richard also encourages the development of “dual awareness” where we not only focus on the sounds of our breath but also become consciously aware of our associated bodily sensations.
Music to quiet the “inner voice”: Richard maintains that playing a musical instrument or listening to music can cultivate deep listening because of the sustained concentration required. You are effectively training yourself to tune into the music (by fully attending to the sounds) and experiencing the music emotionally and bodily. Richard argues that the concentration required quiets the self-critical inner voice and prevents contamination by our “cognitive limitations”. He contends that music enables us to achieve an alignment of mind, body and emotion. Richard suggests that playing an instrument for others not only develops deep listening for the musician but also provides a “stunning variety of sonic, emotional and musical elements” for a discerning audience – a catalyst for deep listening on their part. One can readily picture a young child dancing in a totally uninhibited way to music played by a street performer who is totally absorbed in his or her art.
Tuning into nature: nature provides silence and unique sounds that enable us to experience our interconnectedness to everything, including people who are attempting to gain a “hearing”. Gordon Hempton reminds us that silence in nature does not mean the absence of sounds but “an acoustic state, free of intrusions of modern, man-made noise”. Gordon has recorded his journey as an activist for nature’s “silence” in his book, One Square Inch of Silence: One Man’s Quest to Preserve Quiet. Through his work as a sound recordist and an acoustic ecologist, he has encouraged people to heighten their auditory awareness of the unique “soundtracks” that surround us in nature and to observe “the quiet between the notes” (so that we can better appreciate the value of silence and stillness). Gordon’s crusade for silence and listening to nature is mirrored in the work of Christine Jackman, author of Turning Down the Noise: The Quiet Power of Silence in a Busy World. In a chapter on nature, she highlights the healing power of nature and the need to tune into nature to reduce our “emotional inflammation” and regain our capacity to be quiet and listen. Like Gordon, she contends that when we listen to nature “our listening horizon extends”. Polar photographer, Camille Seaman, maintains that spending time in the stillness and silence of nature “dissolves the veil of separateness” and increases our understanding of, and respect for, our connectedness.
Adopting a “not Knowing” mindset: Joan Halifax recommends cultivating a “beginner’s mind” – the stance of “not knowing”. She maintains that we can never really know and understand the complex mix of emotions another person is experiencing, or the precursor events at different points in their life, or the unique interplay of triggers that were the catalyst for their current psychosomatic state. This perspective accords with the advice of Frank Ostaseski to cultivate a don’t know mind. Robert Wilder discusses the challenges and benefits of living a “not knowing” life in his podcast, The Not-Know-It-All: The Struggle of Not Knowing.
Reflective practice: reflection on our communication experiences can help us to gain insight into the barriers we put in the way of deep listening. If we are honest in our reflections, we can improve our awareness of our habituated behaviours (such as interrupting others) that act as blockages to our deep listening. I have posted a sample of questions for reflection on personal interactions in a previous post.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness by spending time observing and listening in nature, reflecting on our interactions, meditating on internal and external sounds and undertaking other mindfulness practices, we can gain awareness of our personal impediments to developing the art of deep listening. For me, some of these impediments are a tendency to deflect the conversation when emotions become intense (on either side of the conversation), to divert the conversation to my own story or to demonstrate knowledge and experience to prop up my sense of self-worth or external credibility.

A further reflection (25 August 2023)

Reflecting on my behaviour when interrupting somenone’s conversation, I realise that sometimes I come from an “I know” position, not a “don’t know” perspective. I feel I have to explain that I have experienced (directly or indirectly) what they are talking about, read about it or heard someone else talking about it. The net effect is that I don’t reflect back the communicated emotions and divert the conversation onto my issue and away from challenging emotions. I wonder whether this habituated behaviour has resulted from my academic background (the need to be seen to know).

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Image by Monika Iris 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.

Resting in Your Breath

Allyson Pimentel, in a guided meditation podcast, reminds us of the benefits of mindfulness that have been confirmed through neuroscience. Allyson is a mindfulness teacher with the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), UCLA. She often leads the mindful awareness sessions, held weekly at the Hammer Museum and/or online.

Allyson defines mindfulness as “deliberately paying attention to what’s happening around you, within you and between you [and others]”. She asserts, along with other meditation teachers, that this means accepting “what is” while adopting a non-critical and non-judgmental stance. Our thoughts can be a distraction from this deliberate attention giving but, as Allyson points out, the role of the brain is to think. Our brains are designed to enable planning, memorizing, remembering/recalling. analyzing, critiquing, creating and comparing. In mindfulness meditation, we develop our awareness muscle by constantly returning to our anchor, not sustaining the distraction but treating it as clouds passing by.

One of the anchors that Allyson addresses during the guided meditation is listening to sounds. She suggests that our ears are a doorway to the outside world and all that is happening there. She argues that our senses – hearing, tasting, touching, seeing, smelling – are effortless tools for accessing the external world. She quotes from the poem of Joy Harjo, Remember, to reinforce the beauty and diversity that is around us to take in, if we are mindful – the plants, animals, dawn, sundown, earth, stars, and everything else that makes up our universe, including our parents and siblings and our ancestors who have gone before us. Joy Harjo is an acclaimed poet who was appointed United States poet laureate in 2019 and is the Chancellor of the Academy of Academic Poets.

Guided meditation

Allyson encourages us at the outset of the meditation to become comfortable, something that is different for every person depending on their current level of health and wellness and their means of physical comfort. Once we are physically comfortable, we can employ a strategy to become grounded and focused – for some it may mean taking a deep breath or for others it will involve stretching or yawning. Allyson invites us to close our eyes “so that our inner eyes can open”.

In the next stage of the guided meditation, she encourages us to listen to the sounds within us and around us – and to do so without interpretation, just opening our ears. Sounds can provide us with an anchor if our thoughts wander. However, I personally find them more of a distraction than using the alternative anchor Allyson proposes, our breath.

Allyson encourages us when using breath as anchor to try to locate the place in our body where we can best sense our breathing – chest, abdomen, or nose. Then to focus on the sensations associated with our breath, e.g., hot or cold, calm or agitated, slow or fast, deep or shallow. Our breath can be a doorway to ease and tranquility, provided it is not a stimulus to a trauma response. Many mindfulness teachers encourage us to choose a meditation anchor that best suits us individually and encourage us to be conscious of trauma-sensitive options. Allyson builds in this sensitivity throughout her guided meditation, including providing choice of posture, grounding technique and anchor.

Reflection

Stillness and silence provided through meditation enables us to surf the “waves” of life, and not go under when we encounter turbulence. Allyson’s guided meditation reminds us about how easy it is to access our breath which is always with us in the present moment. Meditation can enable us to develop a profound consciousness of our breath, as well as the sounds that surround us.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation practices, we can experience ease and tranquility, develop the capacity to deal constructively with life’s challenges and open our minds and hearts to others as we increase our awareness of our connectedness.

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Image by DanaTentis 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.

Anxiety Management with Mindfulness

Diana Winston offers a mindfulness meditation podcast, Working with Anxiety, as one of the weekly meditations conducted by the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC), UCLA. As Director of Mindfulness Education for MARC, Diana frequently leads these weekly meditations. She stresses that mindfulness enables us to be more fully in the present moment and to accept what is in our life (including anxiety) with curiosity and openness.

Diana maintains that mindfulness helps us to work effectively with anxiety because it, (1) enables us to be present in the moment, rather than absorbed in the past or the future; (2) facilitates reframing of our experience, and (3) provides a place of rest and ease from the turbulence and waves of daily life. As Diana asserts, anxiety is part and parcel of daily life, given the human condition and the uncertainty of the world around us today. The world situation with the global pandemic and devastating conflict between Russia and Ukraine add to anxiety-producing situations we experience on the home and local front. In consequence, there is an increase in mental health issues along with restricted resources to deal with explosive demand.

Guided meditation for working with anxiety

Diana’s approach is consistent with trauma-sensitive mindfulness in that she allows a choice of posture, meditation anchor and overall focus. She encourages us to find a posture that is comfortable with eyes closed or open (ideally, looking down). At the beginning of the meditation, she has us focus on something that gives us a sense of being grounded and supported by something of strength, e.g. our feet on the ground/floor or back against the chair. It is important to tap into something that enables us to slow our minds and calm our feelings

Diana then suggests that we focus on our breath as a neutral experience of the present moment. For some people, breath may not be a neutral aspect and could in fact trigger a trauma response. So, she offers an alternative focus such as sounds in the environment, the room tone or rhythm in some music. Whatever we choose as an anchor, we can return to it whenever we notice our thoughts distracting us and leading to anxiety-producing images, recollections or anticipations.

The next stage of the guided meditation involves focus on some source of anxiety and exploring the bodily sensations associated with it. Diana suggests that if we are new to meditation we should focus on a minor source of anxiety rather than a major issue. Whatever our focal anxiety source, the idea is to notice what is happening in our body, e.g. tightness around our neck and shoulders, quickening or unevenness of our breath or pain in our back. By bringing our consciousness to these bodily sensations, we can work to release the tension involved and restore some level of equanimity.

Diana suggests that at any stage we could use imagery as a way to achieve an anchor that gives us strength and/or a sense of peace. The image could be of a tall mountain withstanding the buffeting of strong winds and rain or a still lake reflecting surrounding trees and supporting the smooth gliding of swans or ducks. Imagery can take us out of our anxiety-producing imagination and transport us to a place of strength and/or peace.

In the final stage of the meditation, Diana encourages us to offer ourselves loving-kindness, acknowledging that we are only human after all and that the world is anxiety-producing. She urges us to extend positive thoughts towards ourselves, rather then beat ourselves up for our fragility. We could focus on times when we have demonstrated resilience to overcome difficulties, extended compassionate action to those in need or expressed gratitude for all that we have.

Reflection

There are many tools to help us work with, and manage, anxiety. These include chanting and/or mantra meditations such as the calming mantra produced by Lulu & Mischka, Stillness in Motion – Sailing and Singing with whales. As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, chanting, mantras or other mindfulness practices, we can learn to be more fully present in the moment, to manage our anxiety-producing thoughts, regulate our emotions and find the peace and ease that lie within.

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Image by Patrik Houštecký 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.

Developing a Sense of Belonging through Mindfulness

In this era of widespread depression, loneliness and disconnection, it becomes critically important to rediscover and enhance our sense of connection. Allyson Pimentel, in one of the UCLA guided meditation podcasts, reminds us that mindfulness can ignite our sense of belonging to ourselves, other people and the earth. Mindfulness is a pathway to reaffirming our connectedness to everything. In the podcast, Allyson draws on the book by Sebene Selassie, You Belong: A Call to Connection. Selene makes a profound case for our connectedness, despite differences, when she writes, “although not one, not separate” and “although not separate, not the same”. She affirms that much of life is paradoxical, but to deny this is to turn a blind eye to the reality of our human existence on earth.

Allyson argues that the “delusion of separateness” contributes to depression and loneliness. She states that we all belong “in every moment and to everything” despite our traumas, injustice and racism in the world, differences in language – culture – philosophy, the presence of hate and division, and the pervasive sense of disconnection and meaninglessness. Building a sense of connection and belonging heals wounds and divisions, contributes to positive mental health and enriches our lived experience through joy, wonder, relatedness and consciously “being with”. Mindfulness, with its focus on what is happening now and doing so with openness, curiosity and acceptance, intensifies our sense of belonging. Paradoxically, being still and silent leads us to compassionate action towards others through recognition of our connectedness.

At any point in time, we can sense our connection to the community of people throughout the world who are meditating, doing Tai Chi or engaging in some other mindfulness practice; or experiencing chronic pain; or dealing with the impacts of adverse childhood experiences or other trauma; or trying to manage grief; or attempting to overcome an addiction or craving; or are experiencing anxiety and depression; or any other manifestation of the human condition. We can also become more conscious of our connection to every other living being as well as our connection with nature.

Guided meditation on belonging

At the beginning of her guided meditation, Allyson encourages us to take a number of deep breaths so that we can feel the connection with the air and our surrounds as well as begin to become more grounded and connected to ourselves. At this point, I was reminded of Lulu & Mischka’s mantra meditation, Rainbow Light and the words:

When I breathe into my heart

I breathe into the heart of all beings

After this initial grounding, Allyson encourages us to connect with our breath, sounds in the room and beyond or our bodily sensations. In connecting to the sounds surrounding us, we can become conscious of what Jon Kabat-Zinn describes as the soundscape in his book, Coming to Our Senses. Allyson reminds us to just absorb the sounds, not try to identify or interpret them or create a story about them – just be with sounds, another form of connection and belonging. We can extend our awareness to our other senses or what Jon describes as the “lightscape”, “touchscape”, “smellscape, “tastescape” and, ultimately, our “mindscape” – “the vast empty spaciousness that is awareness itself”.

Allyson suggests that another way to feel connected and belonging is to focus on our bodily sensations related to being supported by our chair, cushion, bed or floor – whatever is connecting our bodies to something solid and unmoving. Being with these sensations reinforces our supported connectedness and sense of belonging.

Reflection

In the final analysis, we can choose to focus on our differences and what separates us or, alternatively, to increase our consciousness about our connection and belongingness. As we grow in mindfulness through reflection, meditation, mantras, and daily mindfulness practices, we can gain an increased sense of connection and belonging and draw support and positive emotions from this growing awareness.

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Image by Eddie K from Pixabay

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

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

Becoming Grounded to Strengthen Your Intention

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

Guided meditation for groundedness

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

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

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

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

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

Setting intentions

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

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

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

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

Reflection

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

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

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

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Image by marijana1 from Pixabay

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guided meditation for developing mindfulness and alignment with what is good

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

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

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

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

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

Reflection

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

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Image by John Hain from Pixabay

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

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

Developing an Anchor for Your Meditation

A meditation anchor serves to stabilise your thoughts when your mind starts to wander during a meditation exercise. It is a way to secure your focus and restore your attention when you are invariably beset by distracting thoughts – a common occurrence for both experienced and inexperienced meditators. An anchor is a personal choice and what works at one time may not work in another situation. Diana Winston in her meditation podcast, Alternatives to Breath Awareness, highlights the difficulties that people are experiencing with breath as an anchor while wild fires are raging in California. People who suffer from respiratory problems, either chronically or intermittently, may also find that breathing is a difficult anchor to use during meditation. Diana suggests bodily sensations or sounds as alternatives to breath awareness that can serve as an anchor during meditation.

Bodily sensations as an anchor during meditation

Often guided meditations begin with a focus on bodily sensations, e.g. feeling the firmness of the floor or ground beneath your feet. This focus can be expanded to noticing the warmth or energy flow through your fingers when they are touching. You might alternatively focus on the breeze on your face, the sensation of uprightness in your chair, the support beneath your body from the ground or the sense of strength in your core. Personal preference plays a big part in choosing a bodily sensation as an anchor during meditation. It is important that it is emotionally neutral and does not evoke either strong emotions or racing thoughts. The anchor is designed to bring stability when everything around you is constantly changing, including your thoughts and emotions.

Sound as an anchor during meditation

Diana frequently recommends sounds as an anchor for meditation during her MARC meditation podcasts. The challenge here is to avoid evaluating the sound (e.g. in terms of whether it is good or annoying) or analyzing it (e.g. trying to identify the source of the sound). Evaluation or analysis can take you away from your meditation focus and set in train a whole new line of thinking. The sounds you choose can be anything that is relatively neutral. Every room has its own room tone, and this can be an anchor. If you tune into sounds, it can be useful to listen for the hardest to hear sound which intensifies your attention on listening. When engaging in mindful walking in the outdoors, it can be very rewarding to use the sound of birds surrounding you as an anchor.

Reflection

I recall that when we had the bushfires in Queensland, I found it very difficult to use breath as a meditation anchor because of the amount of smoke and ash in the air. I resorted to using the bodily sensation of fingers touching each other as an alternative. This has served me well ever since as I use this anchor during waiting time to increase my awareness.

The main point is to choose something as an anchor that works for you (this may require some experimentation) and being able to adapt as your circumstances change. What works at one time, may not work at another time. As we grow in mindfulness through different forms of meditation and developing our awareness muscle through effective meditation anchors, we will be better able to ride the waves of daily life and the challenges they present.

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Image by Oleg Mityukhin 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.

A Meditation for Grief and Loss

The sense of grief and loss can be overwhelming in these challenging times of the Coronavirus pandemic. Maybe we have lost a relative, friend or colleague to the virus or we are experiencing the loss of the way things used to be – the levity and gaiety of daily interactions, the structure and social intercourse of a common workplace, the freedom of movement and access, the enjoyment of our favourite sport or pastime or the security, success and predictability of our business. It is easy to beat up on ourselves and say, “I should be over this by now” or “Why aren’t I more positive like other people?” Grief and loss have their own individual expression and it takes time and space to deal with the intensity of these difficult emotions.

Meditation as a refuge

Whatever is the cause of our sense of grief and loss, meditation can serve as a refuge – a place of safety, security and equanimity in the midst of everything that is unsettling. It enables us to accept what is and move forward, even with tentative ideas and steps. Meditation provides a grounding when the sense of loss is swirling around us, encompassing our thoughts and emotions.

We can become grounded through our breath – noticing the in-breath and out-breath and the rise and fall of our abdomen or chest. We can rest in the space between our in-breath and out-breath and envisage kindness and strength flowing into us while tension and unease flows out of us.

We can sense the solid feeling of the floor or ground whether we are sitting, lying, standing or walking during our meditation. As we do a body scan, we can notice our bodily sensations and points of tension – caused by suppressing the sense of grief and loss and holding back the natural flow of difficult emotions. We can breathe into these places of tautness and pain and allow our emotions to surface and release.

We can feel the flow of energy, warmth and strength move through us as we sense the tingling in our hands and feet or through our fingers touching each other. We can sense surrounding sounds by tuning into the room tone or the sounds surrounding us in the open – the breeze blowing, leaves in the trees rustling or the birds chirping or singing. We can become immersed in the energetic field of our surround-sound as we allow ourselves to experience focused attention.

Meditation for grief and loss

We can use general forms of emotion meditation or a structured approach such as the R.A.I.N. process (recognise, allow, investigate, nurture). Alternatively, we can use a specific meditation focused on grief and loss. For example, Diana Winston, author of The Little Book of Being, offers a guided meditation podcast on Working with Grief and Loss.

Her approach begins with grounding processes such as those described above but then moves onto dealing directly with the emotions of grief and loss. She suggests at the outset of her focus on grief and loss (22min. mark), that you envisage a time when you were held tightly and securely and encompassed in love and compassion – whether by a parent, intimate partner or a close friend. Diana encourages you to dwell in this feeling of being surrounded by support and strength, a feeling that can be reinforced by feeling the solidity of the floor or ground beneath your feet or body.

Diana encourages you to notice your feelings of sadness whether it is for yourself, others close to you or people in your neighbourhood or interstate (as with the rising number of deaths from Coronavirus in the State of Victoria, Australia). She suggests that you allow the emotions and bodily sensations to manifest themselves – whether feelings of anxiety, constriction or heaviness of mind and heart. She stresses the importance of staying grounded throughout by simultaneously being connected to something solid – a memory of being held warmly or the solidity of the earth beneath your feet.

While experiencing these emotions, especially if you are feeling regret at failing to appreciate what you had or connecting with a loved one, it is vital to show yourself kindness and self-compassion and to reassure yourself with words like, “I can get through this”, and “I have the support of others wherever in the world they might be”. You can extend your compassion to others who are experiencing their own form of loss and grief, especially those in Beirut at the moment. Tara reminds us to accept what is and to acknowledge that “we are all in this together”.

Reflection

It is natural to feel grief and loss in challenging times like those we are all experiencing differentially at the moment wherever we are in the world. Denying those feelings can intensify them and lead to harmful and unproductive behaviour and negatively impact our interactions. Meditation provides a refuge and a way to face our difficult emotions with kindness and self-compassion.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can find the resilience and strength to persist in the face of adversity and restore our equanimity no matter what the circumstances that challenge our ability to cope.

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Image by Nikolaus Bader 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.