Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2022 i Mindful

Two days after my dad’s funeral was the sixth anniversary of my mom’s passing. That pretty much sums up my summer. Now, randomly, I just start ugly crying without notice. My chest tightens, my breath gets caught in my throat, my eyes feel pressure—I think: Maybe I can hold it together? But no. These “cry bursts’’ don’t last long, but they are clear messages from the deep that grief is always with me. Grief I haven’t allowed myself to fully feel yet. I have a complicated relationship with the word “allow.” Maybe it’s my, let’s just call it “willfulness,” but I’ve always associated this word with permission or power being given or withheld, not assumed. During a recent meditation, however, there was a moment when I understood that “allowing” is…

KINDNESS CLASS Kylie DeFrance spent hundreds of her own dollars on menstrual products so her students who couldn’t afford them didn’t have to miss school. When she asked for donations on NextDoor, people sent thousands of boxes of product, which now stock many classrooms, and take-home kits for students. FUR EVER Pet photographer Lauren Smith Kennedy shared black-and-white portraits she’d taken of a dog’s last moments with his owners before being put down, and hundreds of people reached requested a similar shoot. To meet the demand, Smith Kennedy launched The Tilly Project, a nonprofit (named after her beloved late cat) that connects people with photographers willing to take end-of-life pet portraits at no cost. KIND FLIES In 1999, Tracy Peck gave two sisters on her flight who were fleeing then-Yugoslavia…

Kenneth Bourne’s pursuit of peace and joy for Black boys and men began when he was a kid growing up in Southwest Philadelphia. “I was never a person that could withstand any kind of mistreatment toward a human being around me at all,” he says. As a teenager, he took the long way to and from school to avoid fights. In class, he battled to succeed in an institution wrought with instability. At university he faced overt racism. He also learned that police would stop and question him, presumably, he says, because he is Black. “Personally, I find just being Black in America is beyond stressful,” he says. “I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired.” That exhaustion led to frustration and anger, which brought Bourne to mindfulness. He says deep breathing…

1 Bring your attention to describing and identifying whatever is going on for you right now. What thoughts are distressing you? What emotions are overtaking you? What kinds of stormy sensations are you feeling in your body? It might help to name any difficult emotions, body sensations, or thoughts as specifically as possible: “I feel anxious about this job interview.” “There is tension in my jaw.” “They’re not going to like me!” 2 Once you have noticed the thoughts, emotions, and body sensations that might be involved in your anxiety, gently use effort and energy to shift your attention and focus toward feeling your belly breathing in and out, closely tracking this movement. Or you could choose to focus on your hands, or the soles of your feet, counting to…

It feels, especially lately, that the world is releasing a emotional sigh. A COVID-weary, climate-anxious, war-distressed sigh. But a sigh is really just an outbreath, an exhale, the companion to breathing in. “When we inhale, it’s a very active process,” says Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang, a pulmonary physician, podcast host, and mindfulness teacher who gets to see the process play out in her students. “The diaphragm actually has to pull itself down and flatten in order for us to invoke an inhaled breath.” The exhalation, on the other hand, is much more passive, and consequently, says Dr. Liang, doesn’t get as much attention. But what’s important, she explains, “is that we can actually control the outbreath and harness our own physiology to help exhale out all of our residual breath.” In…

While mindfulness practices are helpful in many circumstances and with many emotional states, there are limitations to what mindfulness alone can do. “Mindfulness is not a panacea for everything,” says Dr. Chris Willard. “Thinking it can ‘fix’ you or the people around you can set you up for disappointment.” It’s also important to exercise caution when very intense feelings are a part of your experience, suggests Dr. Richard Davidson. If emotions are really extreme—if you’re feeling overwhelmed or unable to self-regulate—mindfulness can make things worse and introduce harm, Davidson says. “That’s why in any contemplative tradition, there are many kinds of practices using different emphases at different points in time.” The H.A.L.T. practice may be helpful to determine whether something other than mindfulness meditation is what you need when feeling…

there is a common misconception that the real you is only seen through your unfiltered thoughts and words, the you who emerges without any thoughtful processing. You hold up your immediate reaction on a pedestal. As a result, you believe that it defines your identity and reveals the core of who you are. In reality, this is completely untrue. The real you is not your initial reaction. The real you is your response that comes after your reaction. The real you is the one who can weave out of the grasp of the past and produce an authentic response that is based in the present. Your initial reaction is your past revealing itself. Whether or not you are aware of it, how you felt before has been largely bottled up…

GENERATION DREAD Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis Britt Wray • Alfred A. Knopf Canada Feel it all. Connect inward to transform oneself. Connect outward to transform the world. These are Britt Wray’s reminders (and the aptly titled sections of her book) as we “shore ourselves up against what’s to come” in facing the climate crisis. At a glance, these calls to action may make mitigating eco-anxiety and effecting change seem like individual pursuits, akin to recycling our way out of planetary disaster. But Wray, a writer and broadcaster who holds a PhD in science communication, explores how tending to each of these calls to (inner) action is indeed connected to collective action. Wray’s voice is refreshing and rooted in the realities of the world we live in.…

During his time in the US Navy, my brother Brian became adept at complex navigation and “rules of the road”—how large ships and tankers keep from running into each other at sea. When he retired, he went on to have a part-time career that included being an instructor in a ship navigation simulator. Once when I was visiting him in Norfolk, Virginia, he took me for a spin in the simulator. Imagine the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, except that it’s more like the actual bridge of a very large ship. Where the wrap-around windows would be are television screens, and when you punch into the simulator’s computer one of hundreds of ports, it’s as if you are looking out from the bridge to that port. Brian punched in my…

DOWNGRADING STRESS A sample of 139 healthy students at the University of Edinburgh, 92% of whom reported feeling mentally distressed, were randomly assigned to either online mindfulness instruction or a control group. Over four weeks, the mindfulness group viewed 10 interactive, 30-minute digital sessions including sitting meditation and body scan instruction, and tips for incorporating mindfulness into daily life. Students were asked to practice between sessions. Control group participants viewed the BBC Ancient Worlds documentary series (six onehour videos). Both groups provided saliva samples to assess for stress biomarkers at the beginning of the study. They also completed a series of questionnaires and stress-inducing tasks before and after training. At study’s end, mindfulness group members reported less perceived stress than the control group. Group differences regarding changes in biomarkers of…

1 Zero In on the Present When you are completely in the moment, what do you perceive? While running, feeling the rhythmically moving body or alternating steps—left, right, left, right—can be a good anchor of mindfulness and even have an almost hypnotic component. You can also pay attention to your surroundings and to the constantly changing sensory impressions. What can be seen, heard, felt? This is easier in a beautiful or unfamiliar environment, but it can be practiced anytime and anywhere, whatever you are doing. Taking yourself somewhere new every now and then helps keep the mind fresh and in the moment. 2 Team Up For runners, joining a running group to train for a specific race or distance, or to avoid having to run alone all the time, helps…

Just miles from my house in Northern California is a serene meditation center called Spirit Rock. It’s nestled in golden grassy hills away from the hustle and bustle—the perfect place to gather and ground oneself. Spirit Rock has welcomed many renowned mindfulness experts, and I’ve had the fortune of hearing wise words in many contemplative talks. After listening to these talks, when it was my time to meditate, I was restless. I’d try to focus for a few minutes, but I just couldn’t do it. Invariably, I’d slip outside and spend the remaining meditation time walking quietly around the grounds. I thought that, because of my ADHD, I was cheating. Failing. Meditation was not for me. In a nutshell, if mindfulness is a state of being where the mind’s constant…

Anna Lembke’s gateway drug was Twilight, the young-adult vampire-romance novel. “I was at my kids’ elementary school and heard a bunch of moms talking about it, and one of them was saying she couldn’t put it down,” Lembke recalls. “I thought, gosh, that sounds good! And it was true: It totally transported me. It was just the right drug at the right moment.” The Stanford University psychiatrist was so enthralled by that first sweet hit that she went on to reread Twilight four more times, always trying, in vain, to replicate the high. In the meantime, she devoured every other vampire bodice-ripper she could find, soon moving on to erotic novels involving werewolves, fairies, witches, time travelers, soothsayers, and mind-readers. Undeterred by tortured syntax, worn-out plot devices, stock characters, or…

A common fear is that letting go might make you passive. We are often so driven by our pain and fear that it is hard to conceive of any other way of existing. The reality is that letting go will not make you dull, and it certainly will not turn you into a pushover. What it does do is reconfigure your mind so that you are no longer carrying the heavy weight of the past into the present. If you are seeking to reclaim your power, one of the essential steps is realizing how much of your power you have given up to the hurt of the past and your fears of the future. Here are five things to consider when letting go: The heavy mental weight that you carry…

Visit mindful.org for featured meditations from Aden Van Noppen, Mark Coleman, and Boo Boafo 3 GUIDED MEDITATIONS TO FIND BALANCE DURING MOMENTS OF PANIC 1 Find Stability with Aden Van Noppen The breath is the most common anchor used in meditation because it’s always with us. Our inhales and exhales may change in cadence or depth, but we can rest in assurance that another cycle will follow. In this meditation on impermanence, Aden Van Noppen reminds us that when the outside world feels overwhelming, we can often find inner calm by coming back to the breath. 2 Be in the Moment with Mark Coleman The breath may be the most common anchor in mindfulness practice, but it’s not our only option. “Listening is a beautiful doorway to the present moment, a tuning…

Q When I’m anxious, I find awareness of breath meditation hard to do—but I know I need something to help calm me down. What else can I try? A Awareness of breath can provoke anxiety, and not just for the lung disease patients I see as a pulmonologist. The 4-7-8 breath can be used for situations where you’re feeling particularly anxious, stressed, and even if you have some difficulty falling asleep. THE 4-7-8 BREATH It’s a simple and portable practice: You inhale for a count of four, then you hold your breath for a count of seven, and then you exhale through your mouth through pursed lips for a count of eight. The durations of these breaths aren’t as important as the ratio of the inhalation breath, breath-hold, and the exhalation…

It’s a dark and stormy night, and it’s only 8 a.m. My demons are knocking. I barricaded the door, but they slipped in through the cracks. They seem to be everywhere, and there aren’t enough blankets or beds to hide under. So I’m trying something novel—I’m inviting them in for tea, exploring what happens if I stop trying to avoid the little beasties that seemingly just won’t go away. Demons can manifest in many dastardly ways. As the voices that whisper persuasively that you are destined to fail. Demons can grab you by the throat and shake you when you listen to the news, or they can be the fears that assail you when you leave the cozy cover of your bedroom. For instance, if you pulled an all-nighter to prepare…

Stimming, short for self-stimulation, is a common behavior for most folks but a more frequent habit for people with ADHD. This might look like chronic hair twisting, finger drumming, or knee bouncing, among other things. For most, it happens in a state of hyperfocus or boredom. Some people stim to manage anxiety or sensory overwhelm. There’s nothing wrong with the need to stim, but bringing mindfulness to the habit can be a stress management exercise that also helps you understand why you stim, and if there’s something else going on that needs addressing. 1. Take a few deep breaths and think about any chronic habits you have. 2. With your eyes closed, in a comfortable position, start the habitual behavior while moving through breath cycles. 3. Note any sensations that…

There’s no shortage of insights and practices from mindfulness teachings that can help us find the presence to navigate difficult emotions. When we approach our pain with open-hearted kindness, we find we have the ability to turn toward whatever we’re feeling, the ability to see it and name it for what it is. Making friends with any difficult emotion is at the heart of the handshake method, which is explained in detail in the forth-coming book Why We Meditate, co-authored by psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman with teacher and author Tsoknyi Rinpoche. THE HANDSHAKE PRACTICE As the name suggests, the aim of the handshake method is to meet and make friends with upsetting feelings, to know them rather than avoid or fix them. “You tune in to the disturbing…

Q WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY THAT’S USED FOR GOOD AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING? A When the 2016 election happened and it was clear how much technology was dividing our country, I decided to focus on the intersection of my work with tech for social good and my firsthand understanding of going on meditation retreat and putting aside technology. The experience of being with myself, being present with what is around me and tasting that deliciousness, offers a contrast to what it’s like to constantly be plugged in. On the last day of a retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, when people were asking questions about integrating back into the world, a primary concern people had was, “I’m terrified of my phone, and I’m terrified of my email, and…

STEPHANIE DOMET: You talk a lot about self-acceptance in this book. Why is it such a powerful force? YUNG PUEBLO: If you really want to open the door to wisdom or open the door to peace, it all begins with acceptance. And I find that in my daily life, or even when I’m meditating, things get rough when I’m not accepting. Just accepting what is can help you flow with life a lot better than getting tossed around. But acceptance doesn’t mean that you’re going to lay back and let whatever happen to you—you’re just accepting what’s actually happening in the moment. And then through that acceptance, you get a lot higher quality of information so that you can then act, and act skillfully, so that you can maneuver the…

INNER GREEN DEAL PODCAST Episode: “What role do mindsets play in sustainability and climate action?” Christine Wamsler, Professor at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, joins host Liane Stephan for a hopeful conversation on how mindsets (cognitive, emotional, and relational capacities) can support sustainable climate action. Why are mindsets relevant to climate action? “The simple answer is they can be seen as so-called ‘deep leverage points’ for change toward sustainability,” says Wamsler. Initial results from Wamsler’s research projects identified five skills that could support transformation toward sustainability: openness, self-awareness, relational awareness, compassion, and empathy. “These qualities inform our view of ourselves, our life, our society, nature, and the world around us,” says Wamsler. “So these perspectives, ultimately, underpin and inform our life choices, actions, and interactions.” – KR WE CAN…

“A brilliant and wonderful distillation of Rama’s recorded talks.”–James F. Chiles, Software Systems Consultant This beautifully organized synthesis of Rama’s core teachings, with commentaries by long-time student Lawrence Borok, has just been published. WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING American-born Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz practiced and taught a radical pathway to Enlightenment. He adapted the venerable Eastern practices of Tantric Buddhism to a modernday-Western setting. Larry Borok does a wonderful job of organizing and distilling Rama’s core teachings in a manner that preserves their original essence while retaining their nuance, depth, and humor.– Andrew Jurkevics, Director, The Adi Da Foundation I was especially drawn to feeling the subtle energies of the actual words of Rama that are presented in each chapter. Lawrence Borok’s comments act as a guide layered on top…