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This week we practiced resting awareness on the breath and the body. The mind is often scattered and lost in thought because it is working away in the background to complete unfinished tasks from the past and strive for goals for the future. We need to find a reliable way intentionally to “come back” to the here and now. The breath and body offer an ever-present focus on which we can reconnect with mindful presence, gather and settle the mind, and ease ourselves from doing into being. Focusing on the breath:

o Brings you back to this very moment – the here and now.

o Is always available as an anchor and haven, no matter where you are.

o Can actually change your experience by connecting you with a

wider space and broader perspective from which to view things.

Basics It helps to adopt an upright and dignified posture, with your head, neck, and back aligned vertically – the physical counterpart of the inner attitudes of self-reliance, self-acceptance, patience, and alert attention that we are cultivating. Please modify this position as necessary, honouring your body’s unique needs. Practice on a chair or on the floor, or if you choose another surface that’s fine. If you use a chair, choose one that has a straight back and allows your feet to be flat on the floor. If at all possible, sit away from the back of the chair so that your spine is self-supporting. If you have back problems, please choose to do what is most comfortable and honour your needs/physical tolerances. If you choose to sit on the floor, do so on a firm thick cushion (or a pillow folded over once or twice), which raises your buttocks off the floor 3 to 6 inches. Whatever you are sitting on, see if it is possible to sit so that your hips are slightly higher than your knees.

Summary of Session 3

Gathering the Scattered Mind: Coming Home to the Present

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Mindful Movement Allows Us To

• Build on the foundation of the body scan in learning how we can bring awareness to and “inhabit” body experience and sensation.

• See old habitual patterns of the mind – especially those that emphasize striving. • Work with physical boundaries and intensity and learn acceptance of our limits. • Learn new ways of taking care of ourselves. Choose the mindful option. • The movements provide a direct way to connect with awareness of the body. The body is a

place where emotions are often expressed, under the surface and without our awareness. So becoming more aware of the body gives us an additional place from which to stand and look at our thoughts.

Mindfulness of the Breath and then Breath & Body

Taking Good Care of Your Body

Two of the practices this week involve some gentle physical exercise. The intention of these practices is to become aware of physical sensations and feelings throughout your body, honouring and investigating the limitations of your body, and letting go of any tendency to push beyond your limits.

(The Mindful Way Workbook)

I have been thinking of a thousand and one other things. It’s very

difficult to keep myself from going into the future, thinking about things. I try to control it, and

maybe it works for 2 minutes, but then I go off again.

It’s natural to feel we should do something to control or get rid of thoughts, so it’s

important to remember that we are not aiming to push thoughts away or squash

them down – if we do that, we just give them more energy and they bounce back even

more strongly.

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Intense physical sensations, a.k.a., pain or discomfort

Ø The natural reaction to such discomfort is to tense or brace and push it away. Simply becoming aware of that tendency and bringing, as best we can, a friendly interest to it, and exploring it gently, provides a very useful practice. Another possibility would be to bring awareness to the sensation of discomfort itself, bringing kind curiosity, tenderness and acceptance. This requires a level of skill in sustaining non-reactive attention (takes practice). For those who are ready, the instruction is to turn towards the unpleasant sensation if it’s present, going into the pain with your attention, focusing directly on the sensation of discomfort with non-judgment and gentle curiosity. Being with and breathing with the sensation’s moment-by-moment. Attention is returned to the narrow focus on the breath when needed, using the breath as an anchor to which to return again and again. Learning to distinguish between primary pain (the actual unpleasant sensation) and secondary pain (the mind and body’s reaction to it…bracing, contracting around it, wishing it were gone, hating it, being mad at ourselves for an increases in pain...). After you’ve acknowledged its presence and given it some mindful attention, it’s fine to also move attention to a part of the body that has neutral or pleasant sensations, resting there for a while, then back to the breath.

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Tips about intense physical sensations/pain while meditating

Ø If any sensations become too unpleasant you can move your body to relieve your suffering. Make a conscious choice about how you will respond. You can try changing positions or relaxing into the pain. See if the ebb and flow of the breath affects the pain. Often the breath will help to find some ease within or bring down the suffering. Always try to remember that you are free to do whatever you require to be comfortable.

Ø Most people automatically hold their breath when they feel pain, stress or discomfort. The

habit of inhibiting the breath can also manifest as shallow breathing or as hyperventilation. The disturbed breathing triggers the mind’s alarm systems, which, in turn, create tension and stress in the body. The mind then senses this increase in tension and stress and becomes even more alarmed. In this way, disturbed breathing can drive Secondary Suffering in a vicious and distressing cycle that also fuels anxiety and stress. The reverse is also true: breathing into pain or distressing feelings tends to dissolve or reduce them. So mindfulness and breath awareness can be used to sap this vicious cycle of its momentum. Very quickly, your distress spins down into a state of peacefulness.

Ø As far as breath is concerned, only this moment exists. And you can relate to your pain and

suffering in the same way. Pain need be experienced only one moment at a time. Suffering is different – you can amplify it with painful memories or project it into the future to make it even worse. But focusing on the breath brings you back to the present moment and teaches you a subtly different way of relating to experience. The breath is a dynamic anchor for your attention and is a focus to return to. This gradually builds your powers of mindful awareness – where the mind, body and heart are an integrated whole, rather than fragmented.

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Ø Mindfulness works on another deeper and more physiological level too. When you pay

attention to the breath, and it becomes calmer, it naturally becomes deeper and more rhythmic. You also start to use the back of your lungs and ribcage a little more. In fact, your whole back moves when you breathe naturally. Combined with the movements in the chest and abdomen, along with the massing of the internal organs with each breath, this is known as ‘whole-body breathing’, which is naturally calming. It stimulates the parasympathetic nervous system (which you’ll learn about), which releases many hormones into the body that defuse tension and stress and promote healing.

Ø When your mind is pulled towards the pain/unpleasant sensations, notice if you quickly revert to inhibiting and tightening around the breath in areas that are tense or painful. You will have probably turned this tightening into quite a persistent habit. This is normal, so try not to criticize yourself. Instead, simply soften this tension with a gentle inward smile each time you notice it. Breathing into the experience of pain or distress – imaginatively directing your breathing towards the unpleasantness – naturally undermines the habit of inhibiting the breath. It is then a great relief to simply let go and relax into the out-breath. Gradually, during the course of a few breaths, your tension will begin to reduce. This is also true of emotional distress. Feeling stressed, anxious or depressed is often associated with a contracted breath. Calm and peacefulness naturally arise when you become aware of this tendency and then simply breathe into the emotional tension.

Ø Notice that the breath is always changing…our minds can find this increasingly interesting. See if you can become fascinated by how breathing is felt as a constant flow of movement and sensations. See if you are able to relate this to pain and discomfort. These too change continuously – never exactly the same from one moment to the next. In this way we can change our relationship to our pain: rather than seeing it as a static enemy to be defeated, we can soften around it and experience it as a process of changing sensations.

HURRAY FOR MIND WANDERING!

Mind wandering is not a mistake or a failure – it’s just what minds do. The aim of this practice is not to prevent your mind from wandering but to use the times when you notice that the mind has wandered to develop your skills of:

1. Recognizing that this has happened – without giving yourself a hard time 2. Pausing long enough to know where you mind is in that moment 3. Letting go of what was on your mind 4. Gently and kindly bringing your attention back to the breath

The practice gives us chance after chance to come back from mental time travel and begin again, in this moment, with this breath. NOTICING when the mind has wandered and bringing it back is the core of meditation practice – that’s how we learn to know when we are in doing mode and gently release ourselves and enter being mode.

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Ø “Lots of people tense up when they feel their pain”, says Mike. “They’re afraid of it and try to avoid it. But you shouldn’t be afraid of it, if you can help it. It takes some guts to look at your pain, but when you do, you realize that it’s not hard or solid or unchanging. It’s like the breath – and everything else in life – it changes moment by moment. Often it’s not as bad as you think it’s going to be. When I looked more closely, the pain began to dissolve. Sometimes it was pleasant in an unexpected way…I found warmth, tingling and a form of muscle tightness that felt like I’d just exercised”.

Ø The act of simply watching your pain with calm acceptance can begin to transform suffering.

It does this by helping you to relate differently to painful sensations. You can begin to see them as changing weather patterns in the sky. Sometimes there is a violent storm. Other times there are clouds on an otherwise sunny day. But one thing remains constant: the sky. The weather may change, but the sky always remains. Mike began to see his mind as the sky and his pain as the weather. Pain, like the weather, is ever changing. And sometimes, there is not a cloud in the sky.

THINKING and INTENSE PHYSICAL SENSATIONS:

Ø We know for sure that negative thoughts are triggered when the brain perceives sensations that are painful. You can end up torturing yourself with harsh critical questions that grind away at your soul: “Why does it hurt so much?", “What started it this time?”, “Is it getting even worse?”, “It hurts, what have I done to myself this time”, “what if I have to live like this forever”. These open-ended questions can enhance anxiety, stress and low mood. They burn up your energy, leaving you feeling fragmented, fragile and broken. But the mind makes it even worse by sparking other thoughts such as: “It’ll get worse and worse…I don’t know what’s going on…nobody knows what’s going on….my life is ruined…maybe I’ll never get better…maybe they missed something on the tests…maybe they just won’t give me the bad news”.

Ø One fear leads to the next, which leads to the next and then next. Next thing you know you’re

lost inside a maze of dark thoughts. But this is also crippling in the body, increasing the physical pain (due to the interconnected neuropathways and neurotransmitters) and suffering, which feeds back again to increase your mental anguish. It’s an endless cycle that can leave you burned out and exhausted.

Ø But there is an alternative…

Ø If you have chronic pain, or other stress symptoms, you can’t stop the triggering of unpleasant

sensations in the body. But you can stop what happens next. You can stop the spiral of negative thoughts, feelings, and emotions that drive your pain. It’s possible to relate differently to your suffering. And when you do so, you find that your suffering begins to evaporate. You do this by stepping out of the Doing Mode and into the Being mode. You can become AWARE that you’re thinking. Scientists call this metacognition and it allows you to experience the world directly without your thoughts acting as a lens. It’s like a vantage point that allows you to see your mind in action. Or a mountaintop that’s unclouded by thoughts, feelings and emotions…. it’s called the Being Mode.

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Ø The Being mode allows you to step back from your pain and suffering. It helps you break free from the tendency to overthink your pain and suffering. It stops your thoughts acting as a filter or a distorting lens and breaks the cycle that leads to anxiety, stress, depression and, ultimately, more pain.

Ø The Being mode is bigger than thinking and kinder than thinking. And wiser than thinking too.

Ø It’s okay if you’re not feeling it or believing it yet. Keep doing the practices and your pain and

suffering will begin to dissolve… Source: Adapted from Mindfulness for Health: A practical guide to relieving pain, reducing stress and restoring wellbeing. Burch and Penman. 2013.

When Strong Emotions Arise: We can work with emotions by holding the feeling mindfully in awareness, without having to act on it. To say to ourselves, “Oh, anger is here” rather than focusing on the thoughts, ex. “I am really fed up with her for talking to me that way”, or “Here is fear” rather than “I’m terrified of making a mess of this presentation” allows us to be with the emotion in a way that does not require us to identify with it completely. In time, we also learn that the feeling itself may constantly be changing ‘shape’. Ø Picture the mind as being like a vast, clear sky.

All our feelings, thoughts and sensations are like the weather that passes through, without affecting the nature of the sky itself. The clouds, winds, snow and rainbows come and go, but the sky is always simply itself, so to speak, a “container” for these passing phenomena. We practice to let our mind be that sky, and to let all these mental and physical phenomena arise and vanish like the changing weather. In this way, our minds can remain balanced and centered, without getting swept away in the drama of every passing storm.

Ø WHAT am I feeling, not why I’m feeling this Ø Feeling the emotion through the body- not attaching to it, being curious, staying present – even for

a few seconds

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Ø What does the emotion feel like, experientially – the ‘felt experience’ Ø Ex. Ah, frustration’s like this…. sadness is like this…anxiety`s like this…. Ø Acceptance of the emotion(s), feel the body’s reaction to the emotion, if not the centre of it, then

the outer periphery, “the edges”…“Working the edges” Ø Work with the breath, use it to work through emotional pain Ø If tears arise, cry with compassion, not judgment Ø would I be this critical if someone other than me was having these experiences/resistance? At various times during the course of your day, see if it is possible to step out of “automatic pilot”

for 3 minutes, or thereabouts, in the following way: 1. AWARENESS (What’s Here?) Bring yourself into the present moment by deliberately adopting an upright and dignified posture. Straighten your spine and generally relax the body. If possible, close your eyes. Then ask: “What is my experience right now ... in thoughts ... in feelings ... and in bodily sensations?” Acknowledge, register and accept your experience, even if it is unwanted. 2. GATHERING (Breathing) Then, gently redirect full attention to breathing, to each in-breath and to each outbreath as they follow, one after the other. If this is helpful, you can try noting at the back of your mind: "Breathing in ... breathing out" or “Inhale….Exhale”. Do this for one or two minutes, as best you can. Your breath can function as an anchor to bring you into the present and help you to tune into a state of awareness and stillness. 3. EXPANDING (Outwards) Expand the field of your awareness around your breathing, so that it includes a sense of the entire body, your posture, and facial expression. Allow your attention to expand to the whole body - including any sense of discomfort, tension, or resistance. If these sensations are there, then bring your awareness to them by "breathing into them" on the in breath. Then, breathe out from those sensations, softening and opening with the out breath. As best you can, bring this expanded awareness to the next moments of your day.

The 3-Minute Breathing Space (3MBS) – Basic Instructions

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The breathing space provides a way to step out of automatic pilot mode and reconnect with the present moment. It can be seen as encouraging a shift in mode, from Doing to Being, from Automatic Pilot to Awareness and deliberately changing our relationship to whatever we are experiencing. The key skill in using MBSR/MBCT is to maintain awareness in the moment. Nothing else. p.s. You can adapt this to what works best for you. The aim is to simply maintain awareness in the present moment and to shift modes from doing to being, as best you can.

Mindfulness of Sound

Practice sitting with mindfulness of the breath and body awareness for a few moments, and then open up your awareness to hearing and include sound into the landscape of your awareness. You may be aware of sounds far away from you giving you an expansiveness of awareness. You may be aware of sounds very close to you – even the sounds of your own body breathing. Sounds may be loud or subtle; they may be experienced as pleasant or unpleasant; jarring or calming. They may be continuous or intermittent. Be aware of the spaces between the sounds and the whole of the ‘sound-scape’. See if you can experience sound as pure sensation, without judging it and without getting caught in thinking about the sounds. We do not need to name what we are hearing, or to get lost in thoughts about liking or liking. If we find that sound has acted as a trigger into any train of thought, once aware we can simply come back to hearing and let the hearing be our anchor in the present moment. We do not need to chase after the sound or to push it away. We do not need to strain for sound, but simply to notice what sounds come to us as we bring awareness to hearing. We can note the qualities of the sound and notice how it touches us as we hear. Perhaps we will be aware of emotions arising in response. Perhaps we will be aware of the hairs standing up at the back of our necks. We can let our whole self participate in the experience of hearing, becoming one with the sound. We can allow our awareness of sound to become expansive, broadening our awareness from the intimate sounds from the body, to sounds within the room or building, to sounds further and further away, or we can bring our awareness of sound gradually back to ourselves and our bodies, until we hear once again the subtle sounds of our body breathing.

The 3-minute breathing space is the single most important practice in the MBCT program.

(The Mindful Way Workbook, 2014)

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We can practice mindfulness with sound as a formal meditation with sound as the anchor to the present moment, in the same way that we have used the breath. Or we can use mindfulness with sound at moments during our everyday lives when we choose to stop – listening to a piece of music, the sounds of nature, or even the silence. Source: Mindfulness Scotland

But listen to me for one moment, Quit being sad

Hear blessings dropping their blossoms

All around you

RUMI

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Patience

I remember one morning when I discovered a cocoon in the bark of a tree just as the butterfly was making a hole in its case and preparing to come out. I waited awhile but it was too long appearing, and I was impatient. I bent over it and breathed on it to warm it. I warmed it as quickly as I could and the miracle began to happen before my eyes, faster than life. The case opened, the butterfly started slowly crawling out, and I shall never forget my horror when I saw how its wings were folded back and crumpled; the wretched butterfly tried with its whole trembling body to unfold them. In vain. It needed to be hatched out patiently and the unfolding of the wings needed to be a gradual process in the sun. Now it was too late. My breath had forced the butterfly to appear, all crumpled, before its time. It struggled desperately and, a few seconds later, died in the palm of my hand. Zorba the Greek, from “A Path with Heart”, by Jack Kornfield

Have patience with everything that is unsolved in your heart and try to cherish the questions themselves, like closed rooms and like books written in a very strange tongue. Do not search now for the answers which cannot be given you because you could not live them. It is a matter of living everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day, live right into the answers.

Rainer Maria Rilke, from “Letters to a Young Poet”

I felt annoyed with myself – it’s such a simple thing, I should be able to do it. I’m sure other people don’t

have this problem – I must try harder.

Most people at this stage of the program spend a good deal of time struggling to maintain the focus of their attention on their breath. As best you can, acknowledge the wandering mind as “just how it is right now” and respond with as much gentleness,

kindness, and humour as you can – and if you can’t be kind, be kind to that too!

My back was aching, my knees were in pain – it took a real effort to stay focused on the breath and not move – but I hung in there until the end.

The idea isn’t to feel you have to endure physical pain indefinitely as a test of endurance or character! It’s best not to move as soon as you feel any hint of

discomfort (because that will strengthen the habit of automatic avoidance) but, once you’ve explored the intense sensations with wise and gentle awareness, it’s fine to move mindfully as an act of kindness to

yourself.

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Source: The Mindful Way Workbook, 2014

Wehaveanautomatictendencytoreacttounpleasantfeelingsbywantingto

getridofthemorgetawayfromthem.This“notwanting”or“aversion”itself

feelsunpleasant.Ifwelookcarefully,overtimewemayrecognizethe

differencebetweenunpleasantfeelingsandthereactionof“notwanting”or

pushingaway.Thebodycangiveusclues–youmayhavenoticedtension,

contraction,orresistanceinthebodylinkedto“notwanting”.Eachofushas

ourownpatternofsensations–perhapsintheface,shoulders,belly,hands,

orchest–lookoutforyourparticularpattern.

Notwantingtoexperienceunpleasantfeelingsorthoughtsmeanswetry

tokeepdifficultoruncomfortableexperiencesatadistance–wedon’t

lookcloselyatthem.Thismeanstheycanseemlikevaguelythreatening

“bigbadblobs”.

Instead,practicenoticingcarefullywhathappenswhenyou“de-blob”

unpleasantexperiencesbyfocusingattentioncloselyonthem–homing

inontheirseparatecomponents–bodysensations,feelingsand

thoughts.

Often,it’sthestorieswetellourselvesaboutourunpleasant

experiences–thethoughtsthatgettriggeredbythem–thatcreate

andsustainthesufferingweexperience.Forexample,wemighttell

ourselves,“Ishouldn’tbefeelinglikethis.WhyamIsostupidand

weak?”Orwemightask,“Whatifthiskeepsonhappening?”And

thenwejustfeelevenworse.

Seeifit’spossibletonoticethewaysthatyourthinkingcanfeed

stressanddistress…andsometimesincreaseunhappiness.