Mindfulness - Cultivating awareness and curiosity
"Mindfulness is the act of bringing one's full attention to what is happening in the present moment. We bring our minds back to our bodies, and come home to the present moment. Mindfulness is the kind of energy that helps us to be fully present, to live life in the here and now. "
~Tich Nhat Hanh~
I invite you to pause for a moment right now. Just be aware of your breath. Notice it without controlling your breath or having to do anything. Just notice. If you start thinking, just notice that, then come back to being aware of the breath. I invite you to do this for at least 3 breaths.
There, you just had a moment of mindfulness!
Mindfulness is an essential part of the therapy journey. First we need to be aware of what we are doing in order to change what we are doing. We don’t know what we don’t know. And it is not our fault that we don’t know. How can it be our fault if no one taught us? This is a very important point about recovery.
As well as ‘turning on’ our present awareness, mindfulness has incredible beneficial effects on our brain. Thich Naht Hahn calls it the “miracle of mindfulness” for a good reason! One major effect is that mindfulness turns on parts of the cortical brain (particularly the medial prefrontal cortex). When these parts of the brain become active it can have a calming and regulatory effect on an overactive emotional limbic brain (excess fright flight or freeze). People with a history of trauma can get stuck in overactive limbic brain responses, so mindfulness is a key component to help regulate these trauma responses. As well as this, mindfulness and present awareness enhances integration and connection between all parts of the brain (coherence).
Mindfulness is like a muscle in the body. The more you use it, the stronger and more reliable it gets. That is why having a daily meditation practice is so helpful. Like going to the gym it keeps that part of the brain strong. The Buddha taught the Sattipatana Sutra, 2500 years ago, which is an instruction in how to train in the foundations of mindfulness. A lot of mindfulness practices comes from these original teachings given by The Buddha.
If you are interested, here is a video by Dr Dan Siegel, who is a professor in Psychiatry and researcher on the mindful brain, explaining about the parts of the brain involved in dysregulation and regulation. He has a simple explanation of his “hand model" of the human brain and what happens in different states of mind (8 min 15sec long) Watch Now on YouTube....
This is another great explanation of Dr Dan Siegel’s "hand model" (with animation) by Dr Russ Harris (3 minutes long) Watch Now on YouTube...
It is important to start mindfulness gently as when we start to see what we are doing or thinking, that can be very challenging, and we can tend to beat up on ourselves. For this reason, mindfulness is best coupled with cultivating compassion. Especially self compassion… Sometimes it is best for some people to start this process in session with a trained therapist. It is important to cultivate a way to become aware without judgement. This is a key aspect to know we are being mindful.
Sometimes we may need to some tools in our toolkit first before developing a mindfulness practice. I have written about resourcing here. There is no right or wrong and everyone is different. It is important to start where we are and build slowly.
A particular model that I personally like, that appears to be adapted from the Buddha’s original teaching, has been developed by Dr Dan Siegel called the “Wheel of Awareness”. You can access this free resource here (please note that this link goes to a page that has a pop up box requesting sign up. Sign up is optional and you can close the pop up and access the resource without putting your details in). This is a simple free resource for cultivating mindfulness.
In a nutshell, The Wheel of Awareness model has our awareness (mindfulness) at the centre (the hub) of the wheel and the objects of our awareness are on the outside rim of the wheel. We can focus our awareness (the spoke of the wheel) on any one part of the wheel. Dan Siegel has developed a meditation that is designed to train our awareness to rest on different aspects of our experience.
Mindfulness of the senses - sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch
Mindfulness of our inner bodily sensations such as the breath
Mindfulness of our mental activities - thoughts, feelings and memories
Mindfulness of our relational connections with other beings and environment
As well as Dr Siegel’s resources, there are many many trainings, apps and classes now in mindfulness. There is also a lot online that reviews the different mindfulness apps that you can find via your favourite search engine. If you want something more in-depth, then the training based on Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work is taught in programs by Open Ground has a lot of research behind it. Also a tremendous amount of research has also been done on Transcendental Meditation showing its coherent effects on the brain.
Of course, many other things promote mindfulness and integration of the brain, like Yoga, Qi Gong, Tai Chi and many sports such as rock climbing, Dance, doing craft such as knitting etc. Anything that brings our awareness to the present moment.
Hundreds, maybe thousands of studies, have shown the benefits on the brain from meditation. Because of this, there are many people promoting meditation and a smorgasbord of choices are available. This can be overwhelming so I suggest a good place to start is to try a few different things and see what works for you. I started with a recorded Yoga Relaxation practice back in the 80’s that I had on cassette tape. I would play it daily on my “walkman cassette player” to counter the stress of my studies as a young medical student! I have changed different techniques over the years but have always done it regularly…. Do what helps. If it’s not helpful then there is no shortage of other techniques to try!!