UCLA – Page 2 – Grow Mindfulness

Developing Kindness through Meditation

Neuroscientists tell us that we become what we focus on because the act of focusing and paying attention creates new or deepened neural pathways in our brain. So if we are constantly obsessed with criticism – finding fault – then this stance begins to pervade our whole life, and nothing will ever satisfy us. So too if we develop kindness through meditation, our thoughts and actions become kinder towards ourselves and others.

Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) at UCLA, offers a specific guided meditation designed to develop kindness. This meditation podcast is one of the weekly podcasts offered by Diana or one of her colleagues on a weekly basis through MARC – drawing on personal experience, dedicated research and the wisdom of the global mindfulness community. The kindness meditation as with most MARC meditations begins with being grounded and then moves to offering kindness to ourselves followed by kindness to others.

Becoming grounded in meditation

There are multiple ways to become grounded – becoming focused, still and fully present. Often, we can start with deep breathing to enable our body and mind to relax and increase awareness of our bodily sensations. This enables our focus to move inwards and away from the distractions and intensity of the day – away from the anxiety, negative thoughts and worries associated with meeting deadlines, doing presentations, dealing with conflict or challenging interactions with colleagues or salespeople in stores and supermarkets.

Once we gain some sense of balance and ease with deep breathing, we can move on to undertake a body scan. This entails progressively noticing the various parts of our body and related bodily sensations, releasing any tension and tightness as we progress. We can observe the firmness of our feet on the floor, straightness of our back, weight of our thighs on the seat, the pressure on our back from the chair and the tingling and warmth from energy flow in our fingers. Observation will lead to awareness of tension which we can release as we go – tautness in our shoulders and arms, rigidity in our stomach, stiffness in our neck or tightness in our jaw, forehead or around the eyes. It is important to focus on tension release and not seek to work out why we are so uptight or tense or, even more importantly, to avoid “beating up” on ourselves or being unkind towards our self because of the “failing” or deficiency” represented by our tension.

Finding our anchor in meditation

The next stage of the meditation is to find an anchor that we can continuously return to in the event of distractions or loss of focus – an anchor to stop us from being carried away by the tide of our thoughts or emotions. An anchor is a personal choice – what works for one person, may not work for another. Typically people choose their breath, sounds in the room or some physical contact point.

You can focus in on your breath – bringing your attention to where you most readily experience breathing – in your chest, through your nose or in your abdomen. For instance, you can increase your awareness of the rise and fall of your abdomen with each breath and choose to rest in the space between your in-breath and out-breath.

Another possible anchor is listening to the sounds in your room – listening without interpreting, not trying to identify the nature or source of a sound and avoiding assigning a feeling, positive or negative, to the sound. You can develop a personal preference for using your “room tone” as your anchor.

Choosing a physical contact point in your body is a useful anchor because it enables you to ground yourself wherever you happen to be – whether at work or home or travelling. It can help you to turn to awareness rather than your phone whenever you have waiting time. An example is to focus on the firmness of your feet on the ground, the floor of your room or the floor of your car (when it is not moving!). My personal preference is to anchor myself by joining my fingers together and feeling the sensations of warmth, energy and strength that course through the points of contact of the fingers.

Whatever you choose as an anchor, the purpose is to be enable you to return your attention to the focus of your meditation and, in the process, build your awareness muscle. As Diana reminds us, “minds do wander” – we can become “lost in thought”, distracted by what’s happening around us, planning our day, worrying about an important meeting, thinking of the next meal, analysing a political situation or indulging in any one of numerous ways that we “live in our minds”.

Throughout the process of grounding, it is important to be kind to our self – not berating our self for inattention or loss of focus, not assigning negative labels to our self, such as “weak”, “distractible”, or any other derogatory term.

Kindness meditation

The kindness meditation begins with focusing on someone who is dear to us – our life partner, a family member, a work colleague or a close friend. Once you have brought the person into focus, the aim is to extend kind intentions to them – you might wish them peace and tranquillity, protection and safety, good health and strength, happiness and equanimity, the ease of wellness or a combination of these desirable states.

You can now envisage yourself receiving similar or different expressions of kind intentions from the same person. This can be difficult to do – so we need to be patient with this step and allow our self to be unsuccessful at the start (without self-criticism or unkindness towards our self). We can try to become absorbed in, and fully present to, the positive feeling of being appreciated and loved. Drawing on our memories of past expressions of kindness by the focal person towards us, can help us overcome the barriers to self-kindness.

You can extend your meditation by focusing your loving kindness meditation on others, particularly those people you have difficulty with or are constantly in conflict with. We can also extend our kindness meditation by forgiving our self and others for hurt that has been caused.

Reflection

Kindness meditation helps us to grow in mindfulness – to become more aware of others, the ways we tend to diminish our self, our bodily sensations and our thoughts and feelings. It assists us to develop self-regulation – learning to maintain focus and attention, controlling our anger and criticism (of our self and others) and being open to opportunities and possibilities. Through the focus on kindness, we can become kinder to our self and others (even those we have difficulty with).

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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.

Creating a Positive Future in a Climate-Changed World

Diana Winston recently provided a meditation podcast entitled, Envisioning a Positive Future in Our World. The podcast was timely given the devastating fires across Australia in the months preceding and following the presentation and the ongoing challenge of gaining control over fires that continue to rage. Diana’s guided meditation was a part of the weekly podcasts offered by MARC, UCLA. Diana emphasised the need to draw on mindfulness for strength and resilience, to envisage a better future and to collaborate to achieve a better world.

The immeasurable impact of the Australian bushfires

The devastating impact of the Australian bushfires and wildfires was brought into sharp relief by the ABC Four Corners© program, Black Summer, aired on 3^rd February 2020. The program incorporated video footage from various areas and stages of the fires along with discussions by people who had survived the fires and lost their homes and/or family members, firefighters who described what it was like to be in thick of the fires, evacuation centre volunteers and elected officials living in areas impacted by the fires.

Michael Pengilly, Mayor of Kangaroo Island in South Australia, summed up the extent of the physical devastation when he said:

So far this bushfire season, almost 12 million hectares have burned. At least a billion native animals have died. More than 3,000 homes have been destroyed and 33 people have lost their lives.

He pointed out that there were still bushfires creating havoc across Australia at the time of the TV program.

Firefighters and people who had lost their homes and loved ones spoke of the trauma resulting from the fires, the fear of losing their lives, the 48 hours of blackness and the suffocating smoke that burned into your throat and lungs. Aaron Salway, who lost his father and brother in the bushfires, spoke of the immeasurable impact on themselves and children who have experienced and survived the fires:

This fire I’ll never forget. I don’t think my kids will ever forget it. It’s something that’s going to be scarred into my brain. I don’t ever want to see it again.

When you see pictures of 60 metre high flames; raging fires driven by gale force winds (in excess of 80 kph); exhausted firefighters who have just heard that two of their colleagues had died in a fire truck rollover caused by a fallen tree; and flying embers moving at high speed horizontal to the ground, you understand that the emotional scars are deep and very real.

Some of the lessons from the Australian bushfires

The fires brought to the fore the courage and resilience of individuals and communities when confronted with a crisis of this scale. One such inspiring example was that of members of a Muslim Community who travelled for five hours to cook for exhausted firefighters in East Gippsland in Victoria and arranged five truckloads of donated goods to be delivered to people in fire-affected communities.

The firefighters (many of whom were volunteers) who risked their lives, and in some cases lost their lives, showed incredible commitment to helping others to deal with the frightening challenge of the fires raging out of control.

One of the key lessons of the fires was what people could achieve when they pulled together, pooled their resources, supported each other emotionally and concerned themselves with the safety of others. The questions and answers during the video episode highlighted some other key lessons:

The climate-changed world is a “new normal”
Unless people of different political persuasions can pull together and collaborate, there is no way that the situation can be redressed and the prognosis for the future be improved
Leaders at every level need to move beyond petty differences and demonstrate true leadership – marshalling committed followers to work towards creating a positive future
Australia must find ways to tap into the indigenous knowledge of landscape management – learning about and respecting the environment and related ecosystems.

Tackling climate change as individuals

In introducing her podcast, Diana highlighted an article by Emma Morris in the New York Times on January 10, 2020. In the article, titled How to Stop Freaking Out and Tackle Climate Change, Emma provides a sound five-point plan that individuals can pursue to move beyond paralysis by fear to constructive engagement:

Ditch the shame
Focus on the systems, not yourself
Join an effective group
Define your role
Know what you are fighting for, not just what you are fighting against.

The last point demands moving beyond blaming to collaborative endeavour. Emma’s plan shows what individuals can do to create a positive future for their children and grandchildren.

Diana draws on this discussion to incorporate a visioning exercise in her guided meditation. After an introductory period focused on becoming grounded, Diana suggests that people engaging in the meditation begin to envision what a renewed environment would look like in terms of flourishing trees, clean air, running water, clear skies, happy children, healthy and diverse wildlife, numerous birds and butterflies – a very different picture to one of darkened skies, dense and suffocating smoke, children distressed about their future environment, blackened trees and flora and burned/dead animals (many of them in danger of extinction). Diana maintains that the future is ours to create.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation and reflection, we can build our resilience; better appreciate our connectedness to others and our natural world; develop our motivation to collaborate and take compassionate action; overcome our biases and assumptions; and develop our personal role in helping to shape a positive future in our climate-changed world.

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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.

Deepening the Mind-Body Connection through Tai Chi

In the very early stages of this blog I discussed Tai Chi as a pathway to mindfulness. I also highlighted the challenges I experienced in maintaining daily practice of Tai Chi along with meditation and writing this blog, when I still had a range of professional and personal commitments to fulfill on a regular basis. I concluded then that keeping the benefits of Tai Chi at the forefront of my mind, aligning my Tai Chi practice with the timing of my highest energy levels (I’m a morning person) and continuously reading and writing about Tai Chi would build my motivation for daily practice.

In 2018, I explored the benefits of Tai Chi for the mind-body connection based mainly on research that had been conducted at various centres of research at UCLA such as those focused on psychoneuroimmunology and East-West Medicine. This current post highlights the work of Dr. Peter Wayne who is associated with the Harvard Medical School.

Peter Wayne, who has spent decades practising, studying and researching Tai Chi, stresses the power of Tai Chi to deepen the mind-body connection. Peter is the Research Director for the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine and the founder of The Tree of Life Tai Chi Center.

The eight active ingredients of Tai Chi

In 2013, Peter published a book, The Harvard Medical School Guide to Tai Chi, summarizing the research around Tai Chi and highlighting what he calls the “eight active ingredients of Tai Chi” which he had developed through his own research and the teaching of Tai Chi Masters. These ingredients focus on the “biological mechanisms” that contribute to the wide-ranging benefits of Tai Chi including those related to cognition, breathing and neuromuscular control. Peter points out that this focus on active ingredients helps him in multiple ways – in shaping a curriculum for teaching Tai Chi, in communicating with members of the medical profession and in establishing clinical trials.

In an interview with Dan Kleiman about his research and teaching, Peter explained that his early study of evolutionary biology and ecological modelling helped him to develop a systems perspective that is holistic in orientation and strongly akin to Chinese Medicine. His orientation to integrative medicine and his mind-body perspective on Tai Chi flow from this early academic training and related research experience. In a technical presentation Neuroscience in the Body: Perspectives at the Periphery, Peter highlights the downside of having multiple medical specialisations that contribute to “reductionist thinking” and blind us to the whole-body benefits of interventions such as Tai Chi.

The eight active ingredients of Tai Chi identified in his book highlight his integrative, systems perspective:

Mindfulness
Intention
Structural integration
Relaxation (of the mind and body)
Strengthening and building flexibility
Freer breathing
Social interaction and community (if done in a group)
Embodied philosophy and ritual.

Deepening the mind-body connection through Tai Chi

Peter explained in his interview with Dan Kleiman that the integrative nature of Tai Chi and its capacity to deepen the mind-body connection is demonstrated in the focus on mindful breathing (which is common to all martial arts). He pointed out that mindful breathing requires improved posture; positively impacts your nervous system, cardiovascular system and mood; and stills what Seth Godin calls the “Lizard Brain” through enhancing the power of focus. In Peter’s view, an ecological perspective on health recognises that all these processes of body and mind are intertwined and mutually interdependent.

In his neuroscience presentation mentioned above, Peter described Tai Chi as a “multi-component mind-body exercise”. He stressed the interaction of mind-body through Tai Chi by stating that it “integrates slow intentional movement with breathing and multiple cognitive skills”. The cognitive skills he refers to include body awareness, focus and visioning using imagery.

He illustrated the benefits of the mind-body connection involved in Tai Chi by mentioning several research studies that show two key outcomes (1) the primary risk factor in falls of people over 65 is “fear of falling” and (2) Tai Chi has been shown to reduce the fear of falling by 35%. Tai Chi achieves this result not only by strengthening muscles and improving coordination and sensation (especially in the feet), but also by reducing falling anxiety, increasing exercise self-efficacy and improving the “executive function” of the brain. Peter suggests that Tai Chi is a “gateway exercise” – increasing people’s confidence to try other things that lead to overall wellbeing.

Reflection

Research into the impacts of Tai Chi reinforce its power to improve our mind and body and the mind-body connection that is so critical for daily functioning, quality of life and longevity. I have already identified the personal benefits that motivate me to practise Tai Chi. However, Peter’s research and presentation has increased my desire to improve the frequency of my Tai Chi practice.

As we grow in mindfulness through meditation, research and reflection, we gain a better understanding of the mind-body connection, the impacts of our thinking and self-stories on our intentions and the blockages that impede putting our resolutions into effect, particularly at this time of the year (with the start of 2020). I can look forward to improved Tai Chi practice and the multiple personal benefits that can accrue (not the least of these being to improve my tennis game!).

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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.

How to Let Joy into Your Life

Diana Winston recently provided a meditation podcast on Opening to Joy. She reinforced that mindfulness is about openness to the present moment in a curious and non-judgmental way. Diana thought that this particular meditation is relevant in December when we are constantly being exhorted to be “joyful” – when many of us are experiencing emotions other than joy owing to anxiety, depression, or serious setbacks (physical, emotional or financial) at this time of the year. It is also a time when we can experience extreme levels of exhaustion if we have been working intensely throughout the year or spending lengthy and stressful days as a carer. Diana offered this guided meditation as Director of Mindfulness Education at UCLA as part of the weekly meditation podcasts presented by MARC.

We can find that at this time of the year our negative feelings can be magnified as the pressure of family celebrations mounts, distressing memories of recent (or even long-past) adverse events well up or existing painful emotions such as loneliness become intensified because we are feeling left out or overlooked or misunderstood or marginalised. Some people have very recently lost family members as a result of bush fires, car accidents, or other misadventures – while others experience recollections of these devastating events occurring at this time of the year in the past. It takes a lot of time, focus and energy to heal the wounds of past trauma.

Diana encourages us to be kind to ourselves through self-compassion as well as to show compassion for others. She encourages us to explore mindful approaches to equanimity to allow peace and joy to re-enter our life if we are experiencing negative emotions or distress. To this end, she is offering an online course Cultivating Forgiveness as part of the many courses presented by MARC.

Encouraging joy in your life through mindfulness

When we practice mindfulness, we are opening ourselves to joy and contentment – to experiencing what is, in an accepting and kind way. It does not have to be a laugh-out-loud happiness but can be something small and subtle. Joy can range from something that is profoundly felt to a simple sense of being content with life at the present moment. It can be the sensation of mindfully taking a walk by the sea, drinking a cappuccino, being fully present and mindfully listening to someone – joy can happen just by being fully here and showing up in our lives. The act of gratitude for the positive things in our life – savouring our child’s development, our achievements, our friendships – can release us from unease or resentment and let joy into our life.

A guided meditation on cultivating joy

Diana provided a specific guided meditation on how to cultivate joy in your life during the podcast. The basic steps are as follows:

Begin by experiencing being grounded through your feet on the floor, your thighs resting on the chair, your back upright but not strained – developing a sense of stability and being supported.
Progressively scan your body and loosen any muscle that may be tight or tense including your feet, legs, arms, wrist, neck, shoulders, shoulder blades, lower back and your face and forehead – your whole body, opening to a sense of well-being and ease. You can take deep breaths as you progress with your scan and use the outbreath as a way to release tension and let in ease.
Now focus on something that will serve as an anchor in the event of distraction – the sensation of your breathing in some part of your body or the sounds in the room (without interrogation of their nature, source, volume or pleasantness). You can also use the dual process of focusing on the sensation of your fingers being joined while at the same time experiencing your breathing in some part of your body where your attention can focus. When you experience distractions such as planning, thinking, evaluating or worrying, redirect your mind to the present and your anchor to stay with the sense of ease, rather than the experience of unease. This process of redirecting attention builds your awareness muscle and increases the prospect of experiencing joy in your life.
While you are being anchored through your breathing or sound, be conscious of the peace or contentment you are experiencing. Pay attention to the joy that arises from being mindful – being fully in the present moment with openness and curiosity and wonderment.
Now focus in on a specific, recent experience of joy – e.g. being with a loved one, sharing an experience with a friend, enjoying company over lunch or dinner, walking in a rainforest, or enjoying the sense of competence when playing tennis or any other sport. Try to recapture the moment, the sensations, feelings, thoughts and the resultant joy – stay with these feelings and positive thoughts. You can express gratitude for being able to have such an experience and to have the capacity to recapture it.

The art of cultivating joy flows from our conscious efforts to develop mindfulness and live our lives as fully as we can in the present moment.

Reflection

We can cultivate joy in our lives through mindfulness practices, meditation, reflection and expressing gratitude. A meditation specifically designed to cultivate joy can assist us to grow in mindfulness and, as a result, more frequently capture and savour the experience of joy in our everyday lives. We can cultivate joy by being mindful in our words and actions.

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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.

Kindness and Meditation

Gloria Kamler recently presented a MARC meditation podcast titled, Body and Breath. Gloria teaches Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction programs as a faculty member of the UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC). She draws on more than 20 years’ experience educating people in mindfulness meditation.

In her podcast, Gloria emphasised the benefits of mindfulness for everyday living. She stressed the importance of mindfulness in difficult times. From her perspective, mindfulness is fundamentally training our ability to focus and pay attention while meditation is the gym where we build our “mental biceps” – where we develop the part of our brain that enables us to deal with difficulties other than by the auto-pilot mode of fight, flight or freeze. In Gloria’s view, mindfulness builds our capacity for self-regulation, to make considered decisions, to follow through with our intentions and agreements and to deal more skilfully with the waves of life with their undulating calm and turbulence. She argues that mindfulness enables us to “fire on all cylinders” when confronted with difficulties, rather than become locked into what she calls, “the cycle of reactivity”.

Kindness and meditation

Gloria maintains that, in essence, mindfulness is about kindness and caring – for ourselves and others. Being mindful requires non-judgment of ourselves in the first instance and extending this stance to others – this sometimes requires forgiveness on our part.

Part of self-kindness is noticing what we are experiencing and accepting what is. It also means being able to appreciate and savour the pleasant things that are happening in our lives, even at the simplest level.

In the guided meditation that Gloria offers as a part of her podcast (at the 15-minute mark), she leads us in a progressive body scan and breath meditation. She stresses the role of noticing and naming distractions and returning to our focus as a way of building our “mental biceps” and our “awareness muscle”.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness, we become more aware of what is happening for us – our thoughts, feelings, interactions, and automatic responses (borne of prior conditioning and/or adverse childhood experiences). Through development of our “mental biceps” in meditation, we can build our capacity to regulate our emotions, make sound decisions and translate our good intentions into action. As we develop our personal mindfulness anchors in meditation, we can return to the calmness and equanimity afforded by mindfulness and provide kindness to our self 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.

The Challenge of Maintaining Your Meditation Practice

Brian Shiers suggests that one of the problems in attempting to maintain your practice is that creating new habits requires replacing old habits with the new. He cites Neil Donald Walsh who maintains that, “yearning for a new way will not produce it, only ending the old way can do that”. Brian draws on the neuroscience finding that our habits develop through neurological patterning, the development of new neural pathways reinforced by personally valued rewards. The problem is that multiple repetitions are required to replace the old “habit-loop” with a new, sustainable pattern. Often our rationalisations take over – such as “maybe I will do it later”, “it is not a good time now”, or “I am too restless at the moment” – and interrupt repetition of our practice.

To assist in the process of sustaining your practice, Brain offers a meditation podcast titled, How to Rediscover Your Practice, in which he offers a way to enrich your practice of mindful breathing and establish sense-based cues to regenerate your practice. Brian’s guided meditation is part of the weekly meditation podcasts offered by MARC, UCLA.

A guided meditation for maintaining your practice

Brian’s meditation process involves several steps as follows:

Listen to the end of the gong from a meditation bell made especially for its resonance – this initiates the process of paying attention through activation of your sense of hearing. A normal bell could be substituted for this initial step.
Notice what is going on for you in this moment – What are you thinking? How are you orientating your body? What are you feeling about what is happening for you as you begin your practice? Brian maintains that self-observation is the essence of mindfulness.
Form your practice intention – focus on your intention in undertaking your practice. This may involve a desire to build your concentration, to realise calm and tranquillity or to master the art of being still and silent.
Feel your breath in your body – consciously focus on one of the five places that you can feel your breath in your body – the rising and falling or your stomach or your chest, the movement of air through your nostrils or your open mouth or the sensation of breathing at the back of your throat.
Notice the thoughts that pass through your mind – thoughts come and go throughout our day and the time spent in meditation is no exception to this natural process. Be conscious that your thoughts are drawing your focus away from your breath, but don’t entertain them. Return to your intended focus and progressively build your attention muscle.
Accept what is – accept the fact that you may be tired, restless, easily distracted or frustrated by your attempts to maintain your focus. Observing and accepting your present state is integral to mindfulness.
Extend your focus to seeing – add the sense of seeing by extending your focus to a single, egg-size object while simultaneously maintaining your focus on your breath.
Extend your focusing to include sound – while maintaining your focus on your breath and your external visual image, extend your focus to the sound in your room, taking in the room tone.

Reflection

This guided meditation helps to develop mindfulness because it not only builds the power of paying attention but also provides sense-cues that will prompt your meditation practice. I have found, for example, that by focusing on the view of the waters and islands in the bay from my home deck, I can very quickly drop into a focus on my breathing. This outer awareness acts as a cue to inner awareness. The enriched experience of meditation from the focus on several senses also facilitates the maintenance of meditation practice and the capacity to progressively grow in mindfulness.

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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.

How to Cope with Uncertainty

Recently, Diana Winston offered a meditation podcast on the topic, Dealing with Uncertainty. This was at a time of heightened uncertainty generated by the California wildfires that were threatening people’s lives and homes. Uncertainty arises when we do not know what will happen in the future, we have a sense of being out of control and we fear that the future holds potentially damaging outcomes for us physically, emotionally, financially or socially. Diana emphasised that uncertainty is an integral aspect of the world we live in today – in our increasingly global environment and resultant interdependence, many things are uncontrollable and beyond our capacity to influence.

Diana reminds us that we cannot deny the uncertainty of our reality, but we can learn to manage its impact on our lives – on our thinking, feelings, behaviour and relationships. Our anxiety in the face of this ever-encroaching uncertainty is exacerbated by our brain’s negative bias – often fearing the worst to enable us to prepare for fight or flight. We tend to anticipate negative outcomes from many activities such as a medical diagnosis and we begin to worry in anticipation of this unwelcome outcome. Diana maintains that meditation can provide a place of refuge when we experience uncertainty and the associated fear and anxiety – a secure retreat away from the waves of uncertainty that besiege us.

Meditation as an anchor in a turbulent sea

Diana offers several steps in her guided mediation for dealing with anxiety (MARC, UCLA). The meditation practice is designed to engender a sense of solace when uncertainty seems overwhelming:

Adopt a comfortable position and allow your body to begin to experience relaxation.
Focus attention on your body beginning with your breath as it courses through you. You can ground this attention by focusing on the expansion and contraction of your chest or abdomen.
Feel the sensation of your breath – coolness, energy flow, evenness.
Choose an anchor – e.g. your breath, sounds in the room or a bodily sensation such as tingling in your fingers when they are pressed together, or the feel of your feet placed firmly on the floor. You can then return to your anchor whenever you become unfocused or distracted by thoughts or sensations such as an itch or pain in a part of your body.
Notice any wandering off task and name what is happening e.g. lost in my thoughts; feeling anxious. Once you have named what is happening, return to your anchor.
Notice any sensation of discomfort or disturbing thought – give it some space and pay attention to it with kindness. You can change your posture if this helps or, alternatively, accept what is happening and plan to take action later, e.g. put some dermatitis cream on an itch.
Express appreciation for your safety, protection and wellness.
Extend your sense of gratitude to people engaged in making others safe and protecting them from harm, e.g. volunteers, the police and firefighters.
Focus on the groundedness of your body, take a deep breath and return to awareness of your surroundings.

Reflection

Meditation can help us to grow in mindfulness – awareness of our external reality and internal reactions such as fear and anxiety in the face of uncertainty. Meditation provides a refuge and a source of solace in the face of life’s uncertainty. The anchor we develop through meditation can serve us well throughout our daily lives, at work or at home. Mindfulness can help us scare away the darkness of uncertainty so that we can achieve what the singer, Passenger, suggests:

Feel, feel like you still have a choice
If we all light up, we can scare away the dark.

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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 Reflection Meditation to Access Your Inner Wisdom

Diana Winston provides a reflection meditation podcast to enable us to access our inner wisdom. We are so often absorbed with thinking our way through issues and challenges that we block access to our inner wisdom. She suggests that if we shut down our thinking and just listen to our inner wisdom, we will arrive at creative insights and a way to move forward, ideally in line with our life purpose. The reflection meditation is offered as one of the weekly meditation podcasts provided by the Mindful Awareness Research Center (MARC) which aims through research and education to promote the practice and benefits of mindful awareness for people of all ages.

Reflection meditation for accessing inner wisdom

Diana’s 30-minute reflection meditation podcast basically has two phases – (1) relaxation and (2) opening to inner wisdom:

In the first phase, you are introduced to a light body scan followed by a focus on an anchor of your choice such as breath, touch or sound. You are encouraged to avoid entertaining distracting thoughts and to return to your meditation anchor once you are conscious of being distracted.
In the second phase, the emphasis is on listening to your inner wisdom while focusing on an aspect of your life that you want to improve, e.g. how to improve your relationship, how to enhance your well-being or develop your creativity. The challenge here is to avoid thinking about the question – avoid trying to resolve your question cognitively. This requires settling your mind, quieting your brain. You are attempting to access your intuition rather than your rational, logical thinking. Whenever your mind wanders, bring your focus back to your anchor and your inner wisdom.

To access the deeper levels of our inner wisdom takes time and lots of practice over a sustained period. Karen Brody maintains that a quicker way to access deeper levels of consciousness is by using the Yoga Nidra Meditation discussed previously.

Reflection

We spend so much of our time trying to think our way through issues and life challenges and ignore our intuition and inner wisdom. As we grow in mindfulness through various forms of meditation such as the reflection meditation, we can develop ways of accessing deeper levels of consciousness and bring our inner wisdom to bear on the questions that challenge us in our daily lives.

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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.

How to Develop Patience through Meditation

Diana Winston, in her meditation podcast, Practicing Patience, suggests that patience is an expression of mindfulness. Patience involves being present in a purposeful, non-judgmental way. It requires self-awareness, self-regulation and, in the final analysis, a willingness to be with “what is”. Her guided meditation that follows this explanation is one of the many and varied, weekly meditation podcasts offered by MARC (UCLA). Diana is the principal meditation teacher but is very ably assisted by guest meditation teachers such as Matthew Brensilver, Mitra Manesh and Brian Shiers.

What makes us impatient?

The Cambridge Dictionary explains that we become impatient in two primary situations that frustrate our goal orientation, (1) where we are held up and have to wait when we are trying to go somewhere and (2) where we perceive that we are not achieving something fast enough that we are excited by. So, impatience involves a lack of tolerance of the present situation where we must wait or of our rate of progression to a desired future state. Richard Wolf explains that learning a new piece of music requires practice, patience and persistence, but we can be impatient with our rate of progress towards mastery. The tendency, then, is to become judgmental and self-critical.

The sources of our impatience can be numerous, e.g. stopped by a traffic light, held up by a slow driver or a cyclist in our car lane, experiencing writer’s block, an inability to master some aspect of a desired sporting skill, a mental blockage when presenting an idea, cooking a meal that overheats or becomes burnt, delays that make us late for a meeting or when preparing a meal for guests or any other sources of frustration of the achievement of our goals.

When we are impatient, we can experience a wide range of negative emotions such as annoyance, agitation, anxiety, anger or resentment. We can become overwhelmed, make poor decisions and behave rashly. In contrast, patience can lead to many positive outcomes – it is a common belief that “patience is a virtue” because it leads to many benefits such as maintaining peace and equanimity, keeping things in perspective, opening up opportunities and enriching relationships.

A meditation for developing patience

Diana in her meditation podcast provides a meditation designed to develop patience and cultivate the associated benefits. The patience meditation has several steps:

Become grounded and focused – using your personal choice of an anchor such as your breath, sound or bodily sensation.
Envisage a time when you were impatient – identify your thoughts, capture and name your feelings and revisit your bodily sensations
Envisage a time when you were patient – again experience what it was like in respect of your thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations
Re-envisage the situation where you were impatient – this time picture yourself being patient and in control. Try to capture the positive thoughts, feelings and sensations that accompany being patient in that situation.

This meditation, if repeated with some regularity, can help you to develop patience and experience the many positive benefits that accrue.

Reflection

As we grow in mindfulness through patience meditation, we can learn to transform situations where we have been impatient into ones where we are patient. In this way, we can develop our patience and realise the many benefits that accrue with the practice of patience.

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Image by wal_172619 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.

Tuning Into Sound

Diana Winston provided a meditation podcast on the topic, Listening to Sound, as part of the weekly offering by MARC (Mindful Awareness Research Center, UCLA). Diana’s main theme was that there are times when sound “intrudes” into our meditation practice and we have a choice in how we respond. We can become agitated and irritated or we can use the sound as the focus of our meditation. She suggested that in taking the latter path, we are building our capacity to deal with the sounds and other unpleasant experiences that ‘intrude” in our daily life.

I can relate to this situation as I was recently meditating when workmen began hammering and sawing in the house next to mine. I found I was really annoyed and resented this intrusion into my quiet time and solitude. It had taken some discipline that morning to undertake my meditation in the first place. My reaction at the time was to abandon my meditation – my level of annoyance impeded my capacity to focus. Often our negative response in these situations is exacerbated by the expectations that we bring to our meditation, such as the expectation of absolute quiet.

Diana makes the point, though, that mindfulness “is not about seclusion” – it is about being with what is in the moment, whatever we are faced with. The sound intrusion could be traffic noise, house renovations or heavy earth moving equipment. As Diana observes, there is an alternative response other than our habituated flight or fight response. We can focus on the sound and make that the object of our meditation. She offered a hearing meditation in her podcast to build this capacity to deal with intrusive sounds and other “intrusions” in our life – experiences that clash with our expectations.

A hearing meditation – tuning into sound

The hearing meditation begins with the normal practice of becoming grounded and focused. Diana then takes you through several steps that progressively build your awareness muscle:

Focus your attention on the sounds in the room, the room tone, and include external sounds that may be penetrating your room space. Here it is important to avoid pursuing what Diana calls “your story” about the sound – your interpretation of the nature of the sound, your emotional labelling of the sound as good or bad or your recollection of similar sounds in your prior experience. The challenge is to just focus on the sound itself – tuning into it and the sensation of hearing it.
Turn your focus now to some significant sensation in your body – it could be the groundedness of your feet on the floor or the energy and warmth flowing through your fingers or your feet.
Your focus now switches to your breathing – to a part of the body where you can experience the act of breathing such as your abdomen, chest or nostrils. Notice the “in” and “out” breath and the effect on your body with the rising or falling of your abdomen/chest or the flow of air through your nostrils.
Finally, choose an anchor – the sound, the bodily sensation or the breath – to sustain the meditation over the remainder of your meditation session. If you find the sound disturbing, take a few deep breaths and let out the sense of irritation – just let it be and return to your focus on your anchor. Intruding thoughts and feelings are “part and parcel” of meditative practice, even for experienced meditators.

As we grow in mindfulness through mindfulness practices and hearing meditation, we can progressively build our capacity to deal with the intrusions in our daily life that challenge our expectations. The hearing meditation itself strengthens our awareness muscle and builds our resilience in the face of setbacks.

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Image by skeeze 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.