Millennium Park Zen Group

The Millennium Park Zen Meditation Group is a month old now.  We meet every Wednesday afternoon, from 2:15 to 3:30 pm. Each meeting, we practice the Zen tradition of sitting meditation (zazen) and walking meditation (kinhin), and we also have a discussion.  I've been trying to post something weekly about the most recent discussion, and you can see these posts in our blog section, if you like.  If you are interested in joining us for meditation and discussion of Zen meditation and mindfulness, just contact me at thomson@integrativehealthpartners.org.

Is Mindful Eating Right for You?

Starting March 3, 2010, we will be offering another course in Mindful Eating (for those of you in the Chicago area). We developed these classes to help people who feel caught in compulsive eating or dieting patterns, and who want to find their way to a more natural and satisfying relationship with food. You might be asking yourself, Are mindful eating classes the right approach for me? To find out, try considering these statements:

• I sometimes binge or eat compulsively
• I’ve tried restrictive diets and they don’t work for me
• I know I sometimes eat because of stress or emotional needs
• I’d like to feel less guilty about my eating and my weight
• It would be easier to deal with my eating if I could manage my stress better
• I want to learn to eat in a way that nourishes and respects my body
• I really value health and wellness, and would be willing to spend a half hour a day to develop this area of my life
• I’ve been interested in meditation, yoga, or tai chi
• I have a spiritual side
• I’d like to develop more patience, acceptance, and forgiveness
• I’ve been able to apply myself to activities that require home practice, like music lessons, workouts, or schoolwork
• I would like to give and receive help with others in my situation
• I’m open to taking a new approach to eating

The more you agreed with these statements, the more likely you are to find mindful eating classes helpful. For more information, call Dr. Mary Connors at 312-372-5501, or visit our website.

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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!

Related articles by Zemanta

• Doctor and Patient: How Mindfulness Can Make for Better Doctors (nytimes.com)
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The Most Important Thing

When I was practicing mindfulness in a monastic community, one of my most important teachers was the person responsible for taking care of hospitality for the monks and for any guests we would have (mostly visiting teachers). Her job involved a lot of activity, and during work period she would often be seen walking quickly, head down, attending to some task. In the middle of her busy-ness, she would come to a dead stop and look around and breathe. "I don't want to waste this precious life," she said. In doing this, she reminded herself of her deepest intention, the one that transcended and encompassed all the others. From that position of knowing the most important thing, the rest of one's life can actually make sense.

What is your deep intention? What is the reason to practice mindfulness-based stress reduction? Yes, of course it is your desire to relieve your stress, but for what purpose? What do you want to do that you cannot do when you are too stressed? What do you really value in life that your stress keeps you from actualizing? Who would you like to be, if only your difficulties did not interfere?

No one practices mindfulness without a reason. As Jon Kabat Zinn has said from the beginning, mindfulness is deliberate. Our ingrained habits will gradually but inexorably bring us into a state of only cursory and limited awareness. Left to be guided by entropy, we will eventually relate to the world simply through our habits and prejudices. To counteract this psychological tendency toward accommodation and dullness, we have to know why we want to pay attention. To support our mindfulness practice, knowing the most important thing is the most important thing.

You might try finding a way to express this intention in a little gatha or breath-poem that you can say to yourself on the inbreath and outbreath.

This - breath
Calm - and free
Heart - and mind
Open - to all

Or in a more traditional vein, this condensation of a passage from the Teaching on Loving Kindness:

May all beings - be happy
May they be joyous - and live in safety
All living beings - weak or strong
May all beings - be happy

How about for you? What is your gatha that expresses the most important thing?

Sutra on Mindfulness

In our study group on mindfulness and psychotherapy, we've been asking the question, "What do the original sources tell us that will help us integrate mindfulness into psychotherapy?" I thought it would be good to make the most important sutra on mindfulness available here. This is the Mahasatipatthana Sutta, often translated as "The Four Foundations of Mindfulness," although the title also has more subtle meanings. Maha means "great." Sati means "mindfulness," but it also has the connotation of "remembering." The term uppathana refers to a process of repeated penetration. Sutta is a buddhist teaching. So the Mahasatipatthana Sutta is the great teaching about entering mindfulness time and time again, or I suppose we could say "the teaching on mindfulness practice."

At any rate, here are some translations available on the web. Enjoy your reading!

http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.22.0.than.html
http://www.basicbuddhism.org/index.cfm?GPID=47#Breathing
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/mahasati.htm

Meditation, Anxiety, and Depression - Part I

I've given a lot of thought to how mindfulness meditation can be helpful in dealing with psychological problems like anxiety and depression. In this and subsequent posts, I'd like to share some of these ideas with you. Let's start with a look at the mental activity that goes into mindfulness meditation.

Meditation, as a psychological process, is pretty interesting. A typical approach is to be mindful of the breath: just let your attention go to the physical experience of breathing. When the attention wanders away from the breath, simply notice that you have been thinking or daydreaming (or whatever) and then, gently and without self criticism, bring your attention back to the breath. Even in the process of guiding your attention back to the breath, maintain an attitude of acceptance toward all of your experiences.

Even though these instructions are pretty simple, they actually involve training ourselves in some very important psychological processes. In mindfulness meditation, we are:

learning to recognize and relinquish the mental states we become absorbed in

treating ourselves with gentleness and compassion

learning to settle and be accepting of ourselves and our experiences

developing our ability to have a negative experience without being overwhelmed or panicked by it

Later, I'll write in detail about how these skills relate to the mental states that generate and sustain depression and anxiety, but for now I invite you to ask yourself this question: Do these qualities sound like risk factors for depression or protective factors against it?