Minding Our Mindfulness

Next Friday (November 20) the Mindfulness and Psychotherapy Study Group will be reflecting on the issue of the therapist's mindfulness. I thought I'd like to suggest that, between now and then, we might experiment with deliberately finding our mindfulness before we begin some of this week's therapy sessions. 

Here's a guide for a brief, pre-session mindfulness exercise for therapists.  In composing it, I've tried to touch on all of the elements of the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy "hexaflex" model.  I've also remembered Shauna Shapiro's suggestion that we think of mindfulness as a matter of intention, attention, and attitude.

• Find the intention to take a few mindful breaths, and do it.
• Am I willing to be open to any experience being offered right now? (Actually check in with yourself:  What is your level of willingness?  Can you rate it from 0-10?)
  
• Why do I want to be mindful right now?
  
• What can I be aware of right now: in my body, in my thoughts and feelings, in my sense of pleasure or discomfort, in my experience of being in this room?  Am I completely open to having this experience?  If not completely, do I want to open up more, be more accepting?  Why? 
• What am I aware of about the person I'm meeting?  Am I open to "not knowing" much more than I actually know right now?  Am I willing to let go of what I already know in order to be open to whatever I am about to experience?
  
• What are my thoughts, judgments, and feelings about this person?  Am I aware of them as experiences I am having, rather than facts about this person?  Am I able to be fully accepting of all these aspects of my experience?
• What are my intentions in this particular meeting?

It might also be useful to get in touch with any overarching intentions you have, and articulate them briefly.  I sometimes find it grounding to remember the very traditional Buddhist dedication: "May all beings be happy, joyous, and live in safety."  Your own values or faith tradition might suggest a similar intention.

I'm looking forward to our discussion of our experiences on Friday!

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• Doctor and Patient: How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors (nytimes.com)
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Study Group Resumes September 18

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Our study group in mindfulness and psychotherapy will resume on September 18 at 10:00 am.  In our first meeting, we will investigate early Buddhist psychology and the transformation of negative states through mindfulness. 

If you did not participate in the study group last year, but would like to join us this year, please give me a call at 312.263.8034.

Mindfulness as Stability and Investigation

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Mindfulness has sometimes been said to be a function of RAIN: Recognition, Acceptance, Investigation, and Nonidentification (Kornfield, 2008). Each of these four processes make its own contribution to the quality of mindful awareness, and I'd like to explore them today with an emphasis on "investigation."

Sometimes it's not clear that mindfulness is more than relaxation. It's true, mindfulness can often be relaxing, because we get less caught up in the thought patterns that agitate us. This stabilization of attention is referred to in the traditional meditation texts as samatha, and it is a feature of all mindfulness processes. If we think of mindfulness as constructed of RAIN, we can see that Acceptance and Nonidentification are largely samatha processes. Acceptance eliminates the nearly constant tension that we generate by judging and attempting to control our experiences. "I don't like this, this is bad, I want to change this, what can I do to eliminate this experience, what if that doesn't work..." is a familiar train of thought that can be pretty agitating. With Acceptance, we no longer get involved in that source of stress. Acceptance is a process that encourages samatha, or stabilization.

Similarly, Nonidentification also brings stability. If we refrain from identifying with an experience, we don't get so worked up about it. It's not so personal, and therefore not so important that we change it or control it. In Nonidentification, we learn to take our experience as it is, and our reaction to it is gentler and more flexible because we are not so driven by our narcissistic strivings. So Acceptance and Nonidentification both function to increase our stability, and they help mindfulness practices feel relaxing to us.

But mindfulness goes beyond relaxation and arrives at vipassana, or insight. Once we have established some stability and nonreactivity, mindfulness can help us to see our experience for what it is (Recognition) and to explore our lives more deeply (Investigation). Mindfulness can be thought of as asking the gentle question "What is it?" in a way that is continually supported by our breathing and our willingness to be present.

A Zen Buddhist story tells us that a monk was going on a pilgrimage, and another asked him, "Where are you going on your pilgrimage?" The monk replied, "I don’t know." The other monk commented, "Not knowing is most intimate."

Actually, intimacy depends on our ability to have an ongoing conversation with what is present. In intimacy, there is acceptance, of course, but also openness to what’s next, to what we don’t know. When we think we know something, we stop investigating it. There is a saying, “In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities; in the expert mind, there are few.”

What kind of investigation is mindfulness? Here’s a part of what TS Eliot said about it:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river,
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half heard, in the stillness
Between the two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now. Always
A condition of complete simplicity
Costing not less than everything

We are talking about a kind of investigation into what’s been there all along, but we have been unable to appreciate. An investigation into the source of the longest river of the endless present moment. We hear the waterfall of thought as it is, and recognizing it for what it is allows us to see through it, to hear the children in the apple tree.

Mindfulness tries to approach all moments and events with Beginner’s Mind - we are calm enough that we can be open to not knowing what it is, or what happens next, or how things are supposed to be. We approach each experience as if it were the only time we encountered this thing. Because it is! We might even say that the essential feature of mindfulness is the understanding that we are missing something: mindfulness starts with the premise that there is always more to discover. Because mindfulness is a process of ongoing exploration, it brings a richness to our lives that would otherwise be lost in our shopworn ideas and mental habits.

Daily Mindfulness

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Cover via AmaH

Here's some really good advice from Leo Babauta on Zen Habits:

1. Do one thing at a time. Single-task, don’t multi-task. When you’re pouring water, just pour water. When you’re eating, just eat. When you’re bathing, just bathe. Don’t try to knock off a few tasks while eating or bathing or driving. Zen proverb: “When walking, walk. When eating, eat.”
2. Do it slowly and deliberately. You can do one task at a time, but also rush that task. Instead, take your time, and move slowly. Make your actions deliberate, not rushed and random. It takes practice, but it helps you focus on the task.
3. Do less. If you do less, you can do those things more slowly, more completely and with more concentration. If you fill your day with tasks, you will be rushing from one thing to the next without stopping to think about what you do. But you’re busy and you can’t possibly do less, right? You can. I’ve done it, and so have many busy people. It’s a matter of figuring out what’s important, and letting go of what’s not. Read more: The Lazy Manifesto: Do Less.
4. Put space between things. Related to the “Do less” rule, but it’s a way of managing your schedule so that you always have time to complete each task. Don’t schedule things close together — instead, leave room between things on your schedule. That gives you a more relaxed schedule, and leaves space in case one task takes longer than you planned.
5. Spend at least 5 minutes each day doing nothing. Just sit in silence. Become aware of your thoughts. Focus on your breathing. Notice the world around you. Become comfortable with the silence and stillness. It’ll do you a world of good — and just takes 5 minutes!
6. Stop worrying about the future - focus on the present. Become more aware of your thinking — are you constantly worrying about the future? Learn to recognize when you’re doing this, and then practice bringing yourself back to the present. Just focus on what you’re doing, right now. Enjoy the present moment.
7. When you’re talking to someone, be present. How many of us have spent time with someone but have been thinking about what we need to do in the future? Or thinking about what we want to say next, instead of really listening to that person? Instead, focus on being present, on really listening, on really enjoying your time with that person.
8. Eat slowly and savor your food. Food can be crammed down our throats in a rush, but where’s the joy in that? Savor each bite, slowly, and really get the most out of your food. Interestingly, you’ll eat less this way, and digest your food better as well.
9. Live slowly and savor your life. Just as you would savor your food by eating it more slowly, do everything this way — slow down and savor each and every moment. As I type this, for example, I have my 3-year-old daughter, Noelle, on my lap. She’s just sitting here quietly, as the rain pours down in a hush outside. What a lovely moment. In fact, I’m going to take a few minutes off just to be with her now. Be right back. :)
10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation. Cooking and cleaning are often seen as drudgery, but actually they are both great ways to practice mindfulness, and can be great rituals performed each day. If cooking and cleaning seem like boring chores to you, try doing them as a form of meditation. Put your entire mind into those tasks, concentrate, and do them slowly and completely. It could change your entire day (as well as leave you with a cleaner house).
11. Keep practicing. When you get frustrated, just take a deep breath. When you ask yourself, “What should I do now, Self?”, the answer is “keep practicing”.

“When you drive around the city and come to a red light or a stop sign, you can just sit back and make use of these twenty or thirty seconds to relax — to breathe in, breathe out, and enjoy arriving in the present moment. There are many things like that we can do.” - Thich Nhat Hanh

Desk Dining

An interesting opportunity for mindful eating: turn a mindless lunch at your desk into a mindful meal or snack.  An mp3 to guide mindful eating is available here.

Mindfulness and Eating: Divine Desk Dining

Are you stuck eating lunch at your desk again?
Lucky you.
You see, staying put can be surprisingly soothing compared to making a mad dash to the cafe for a sandwich and running back to your office, all the while worried that you’ll miss an important call.
If you feel chained to your desk, try viewing it instead as a powerful anchor that keeps you from drifting mindlessly.
Desk dining can be the epitome of mindlessness—or a remarkable opportunity to slow down, reconnect, and enjoy a delicious moment or two. You can choose a chug-and-chew cubicle lunch or settle in for a session of mindful mastication.
Mom always told us to slow down and chew our food properly. She was more worried about choking, indigestion and bad manners than she was about the possibility that we would grow up to be disconnected from our experience of dining.
As usual, Mom made good sense. New research indicates that becoming more mindful of every mouthful is a powerful way to reduce our food intake, increase our meal satisfaction, and savor more than just the taste of our veggie on rye.
Jean L. Kristeller, Ph.D., is professor of psychology and director of the Center for the Study of Health, Religion and Spirituality at Indiana State University. Over the last ten years, she has been working on ways to help overweight individuals develop greater awareness of their eating triggers using mindfulness meditation. Her program is being applied in a number of different settings, and the results have been quite promising.
There’s even a fancy term for her technique of paying attention to what you put into your mouth—Mindfulness-Based Eating Awareness Training, or MB-EAT for short. It’s not rocket science—just a simple way to assess your needs and attend to the process of eating slowly.
Even if you don’t have an eating disorder, chances are you’ve had more than a few meals on the go. Perhaps you are a practiced drive-and-diner, grabbing your order from the drive-thru window and perfecting your food balancing technique. More likely, you’ve eaten an entire lunch while simultaneously answering phones and typing out email messages—and not really tasting a single bite.
Don’t curse your go-go lifestyle. Instead, choose to savor a slow-slow moment—even if it’s just a two-minute yogurt break.
Your divine desk dining experience starts with a couple of deep breaths and a commitment to focusing for two—count ‘em, TWO—minutes. Feel your belly, and pay attention to any hunger pangs. Check in to see if you are eating now because it’s lunch time, because you are ravenous, or because you know you won’t get a chance to eat for several more hours. Take note.
Then, take a bite. Put down your fork, spoon or sandwich, and simply chew your food slowly, relishing the flavors and textures, just like Mom taught you. Do this for one minute, and then pause. Feeling better now? Sometimes the simple act of chewing mindfully for just a moment can help us slow down enough to recognize that we’re not that hungry.
Savor another minute of mindful mastication without getting wrapped up in thoughts of work or anything else. Come back to “just this bite” until your two minutes are up. After that, feel free to eat at your normal pace, and even if you get caught up in the type-and-swallow routine, simply note it.
We spend a lot of time and energy bemoaning our busy lives. Instead, spend two minutes tasting mindfulness right there at your desk.
It’s simply divine.
-Maya Talisman Frost

The Emptiness of Humans and Raisins

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Sometimes mindfulness is taught by guiding people to eat a raisin mindfully. When I do this, I often ask the person to notice whether they can tell what it feels like to be one raisin heavier. This poem is Mary Oliver's sublime answer.

Gannets

I am watching the white gannets
blaze down into the water
with the power of blunt spears
and a stunning accuracy--
even though the sea is riled and boiling
and gray with fog
and the fish
are nowhere to be seen,
they fall, they explode into the water
like white gloves,
then they vanish,
then they climb out again,
from the cliff of the wave,
like white flowers--
and still I think
that nothing in this world moves
but as a positive power--
even the fish, finning down into the current
or collapsing
in the red purse of the beak,
are only interrupted from their own pursuit
of whatever it is
that fills their bellies--
and I say:
life is real,
and pain is real,
but death is an imposter,
and if I could be what once I was,
like the wolf or the bear
standing on the cold shore,
I would still see it--
how the fish simply escape, this time,
or how they slide down into a black fire
for a moment,
then rise from the water inseparable
from the gannets' wings.

Mindfulness of Thoughts and Thinkers

Our normal relationship to our thoughts is that we identify with them - that is, we fail to see any difference between our thoughts and ourselves. We do not actually recognize that we are in any relationship with our thoughts because we are completely fused with them. We create our sense of self out of our thoughts. Needless to say, once we do that, we are very reluctant to question them. We are narcissistically invested in our private experience, committed to it in a way that can actually have negative consequences. What war could be fought if we are willing to question whether we actually believe our thoughts about our ‘enemies’? A lot of the harm we do springs from our failure to recognize that thoughts are, at best, only partially reflective of reality. Apparently, thousands of years ago, Buddha taught that if we did not “delight” in our mental creations, enmity would be ended.

In point of fact, we do delight in our ideas and imaginations. So when ACT suggests that the self is more like the context of our experience than the experience itself, we can feel confused, and somehow threatened.

Normally, we hold the opinion that thought is self. This is completely untenable, since thought is the most ephemeral of all phenomena. Are you currently thinking the same thing that you were thinking when you began to read this essay? If not, are you a different person now? Most of us are unwilling to admit that our ‘self-nature” is so ephemeral (even though it is).

One of the reasons we identify so strongly with our thoughts is that thought seems to be in the same family as speech. But while speech is frequently an effort to communicate about something we really believe is true – a need, an evaluation, whatever - thought is much more experimental! Most of our thinking is our brains trying out possible connections between experiences or ideas. A moment’s reflection will tell us that realism is not a prominent component of most thought. Thought is simply what it is: it’s “just a thought.” It’s worthwhile to remember that sometimes brains secrete thoughts, just as stomachs secrete gastric juices, and it’s important not to take them too seriously (not to delight in them). It’s often useful to be rather tentative in believing what we think.

It’s also important to recognize that there are a couple of psychological difficulties that go along with identifying too strongly with our thoughts.

• We believe we are responsible for our thoughts. This results in all kinds of judgments about ourselves. “I must be a bad person to think such things.” And yet, how much conscious control do we have of thought? Can we predict what we will think next? Does thought follow our direction? In order to avoid self criticism, we can become very involved in suppressing thought (experiential avoidance), an activity which usually has a negative impact on mental health.
• We fail to appreciate the ways in which we can be responsive to our thoughts. We have some choice over how we treat ourselves in response to our thoughts. Caught up in a distressing chain of thought and emotion, we can breathe ourselves into mindfulness of our wholeness in the present moment and cultivate an attitude of compassion for ourselves. We are carried along in a karmic stream which often brings us to painful and distressing experiences – a karmic stream for which we have limited personal responsibility. As such, we deserve our compassion and kindness, much as we would extend the same to our friends and family who have come on bad times.

If our self is not composed of our thought, then of what is it composed? The key to establishing mindfulness of our thinking is our willingness to accept a certain amount of indeterminacy in our sense of self. Self is not completely knowable. One way of thinking of self is that it is the complete range of experience, actual and potential. In this view, self is so vast as to be impossible to categorize. Alternatively, in the ACT view, self is skillfully conceptualized as the context of our experience, without being confused with the experience itself. In this view, self is a subject without being any particular object.