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Some of the great tools that I encourage my clients to use are breathing techniques (which helps those who struggle with anxiety), journaling (which is a great source to relieve some emotional tension), meditation (you don't have to do 20 minutes on the first time, you can start with one minute a day and there are some good apps out there that help you with that), exercise (it's great for your health and it's also great to release some tension), and last but not least, the support network (the use of a support network is very important and it will help you thrive and live a healthier life.
Some of the great tools that I encourage my clients to use are breathing techniques (which helps those who struggle with anxiety), journaling (which is a great source to relieve some emotional tension), meditation (you don't have to do 20 minutes on the first time, you can start with one minute a day and there are some good apps out there that help you with that), exercise (it's great for your health and it's also great to release some tension), and last but not least, the support network (the use of a support network is very important and it will help you thrive and live a healthier life.
Being present means listening with purpose. Imagine showing up - not just physically but also emotionally and with all of your senses for your partner and most importantly - for yourself. Imagine those simple tasks, how much better they will look when you, for example, wash the dishes and you feel the warmth of the water in your hands or smell soap. Or even better, each morning when you prepare your coffee and you grind those beans and you can smell the coffee about to start getting ready and then you pour yourself a cup of coffee and you feel the warmth in your hands. Imagine each thing being able to enjoy it with all of your senses. Well, that is the magic of being present and how it brings happiness into your life. This is something that you can do with every activity you have each day. Nowadays, we focus so much in technology and we've missed this - enjoying the here and now of each day. Why don't you try it?
A great breathing exercise that I encourage clients to do is the 4-7-8. Four: you're going to inhale: 1, 2, 3, 4. You're going to hold it for seven: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. And then you're going to let it out from eight: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. This is a great technique for those struggling with anxiety, panic attacks, and depression and it is a great relaxation technique. If you have children and they struggle with anxiety and they need some breathing techniques as well, there's a great exercise called the starfish: you tell the child to open their hands wide like a starfish and then they're going to trace with their other finger - each finger. As they go up, they inhale. As they go down, they exhale. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. And they can do it about four times, three times - as many times as you think that it will help them - usually three times and they're tired. This is a great exercise to teach them to also start regulating their emotions as well. I hope you give it a try.
Another great technique that I like to use with my clients is the safe calm space - it is a visualization exercise. So for this one, you're going to close your eyes and imagine a place where you feel safe, relaxed, comfortable. For a lot of people, that place is a beach. You're going to be there and you're going to use all your senses. So you close your eyes and the first thing that you feel, what is it? Is it warm sand on your feet? What kinds of things are you seeing? Are there other people there? Are you alone? What kind of sounds do you hear? Is it crashing waves on the shore? What kinds of tastes do you feel? Do you feel the taste of the beach, of the ocean, is it saltiness? What kinds of smells come up for you while you are there? Is it the smells of the ocean? This is a great place for you to go every time you are stressed, anxious, or struggling with situations - it's a calm place for you to be.
Savoring success is so important for nourishing our sense of accomplishment and keeping perspective. If you find that you have difficulty savoring success, it's time to tap into that inner experience. Have you developed an inner critical voice or is there a critical voice of someone else you hear that plays in your mind? It's important to be able to step back and notice when that's occurring. Other ways to be able to save our success include practicing gratitude. Gratitude involves being grateful for your accomplishments, for the steps you have made, even if they feel small. Really taking note of those and being grateful for yourself, your unique strengths and qualities that make you who you are. Lastly, practicing mindfulness is very important for savoring success. Sometimes our brain goes away with us. Our mind follows into the land of what's next? What do I have to do next? Instead of staying in the here and now of I did this, this task is done. I accomplished this. Practicing mindfulness keeps us in the here and now and allows you to savor the success that is occurring.
It's important to become in tune with our feelings as they provide important information to us. They impact the way we think and behave and they help us feel more connected to our sense of self. One really important and easy way to feel more in tune with your feelings is to notice what the physical sensations you're having are, particularly when you're feeling off or things feel kind of out of sort. So for example, you might take a moment to step back and notice, has my heart rate changed? Am I feeling tension somewhere in my body? Am I sweating? These are good cues that you may be feeling a certain emotion. It's also really important to learn the different names of emotions. So in addition to happiness and sadness, also anger and the more emotions we don't think about as much like shyness. Lastly, it's helpful to journal and to write down your thoughts and feelings and reflect on them later. That can really help you get in tune with your feelings. If you tend to be someone who wants to avoid feelings, is important to know that they're there as much as we try to suppress them. And the more we resist them, they tend to persist.
A lot of times I hear people say that they can't meditate. Usually what they're saying is that they can't concentrate. Concentration is actually the aspect of the mind that holds a mind down on an object. Mindfulness is the aspect of the mind that is the vigilance - it's the watcher. It's recognizing "is the mind on the object or did it go away?" When it notices that the mind went away from the object, it grabs it and pulls it back down. Concentration and mindfulness work together. So this meditation is the combination of all of that. A meditation practice is staying on an object, leaving the object (because all of us have such a busy mind), noticing that you missed the object, and then coming back to actually holding it down. This would be the same way of shooting baskets. So let's say you go and you're going to go practice some basketball and you're just trying to make your shots. Now you just don't count the ones that go in as practice. It's all practice, right? So just like this, we actually need the mind to go away from the object - this is our resistance - and so when the mind goes away and we catch it and we bring it back, we're practicing the muscle, the mindfulness. Most of us can only stay on the object and be in full concentration for just a few seconds, and then the mind's going to wander. So you're on the object for a few seconds, the mind's going to wander, you notice that it's wandering and you bring it back. So again, meditation is not just concentration - it's all of that: staying on the object, leaving the object, recognizing you left the object, and coming back.
Today I want to unpack: what is mindfulness meditation? Quite the buzzword. So we're going to unpack and see all the different facets of what mindfulness meditation really is. I'm going to use as a basis the definition of Jon Kabat-Zinn because it has all the crucial elements and that is: paying attention to the present moment on purpose, non-judgmentally. Let's first look at paying attention. When most people think of meditation, they think of paying attention, so it's kind of obvious, but it's actually very hard to do. How many times during the day are we actually paying attention to what we're doing? How many times do we actually taste our food? How many times are we touching something and we're actually noticing it, right? So there's that quick great quote (I believe it's Da Vinci) where he says "We look, but we don't see. We touch, but we don't feel. We listen, but we don't hear." Mindfulness is bringing this attentional value to what is actually happening. So we're paying attention and what are we paying attention to again? The present moment. And this is what separates out mindfulness from a lot of different other meditation techniques. So many people ask what makes mindfulness different than other meditation techniques? And it's this actual aspect right here - about paying attention as an anchor of focus to the present moment. So other meditation techniques generate an object and then focus on that object. For example, like a mantra meditation. So you generate a mantra and then you're focusing on the mantra. Or a visualization technique. So you set up something to visualize and then you are meditating on that visualization or the meditation becomes the actual progress of making that visualization. Now with mindfulness, you're meditating on just what's arising in this moment itself. So it's kind of cutting out the middle man there - like, you don't need to generate anything. But more importantly, it's extremely portable. So it might be very difficult to be doing an elaborate visualization or a mantra practice while at work for example, or while you're arguing with a loved one. But we can actually be practicing mindfulness in those instances. Again, paying attention to the present moment on purpose, non-judgmentally. And also, too, when we're meditating (just on the moment) it becomes extremely flexible and there's no such thing as distraction in mindfulness practice as well. So in Tibetan they call this "the yoga of space", which I really like that terminology. And what they mean by that is in some of our meditation practices, it's kind of like building a house, right? So we have a foundation, we have walls, we have a roof, and this is setting up all the parameters of how the environment needs to be before meditation actually takes place. But if I was to light off a stick a dynamite in the house, what's going to happen? It's going to explode, right? So this will be like: "okay, I'm meditating on this one object out in front of me and I'm going to tell all my family members to shut up and be quiet - I'm trying to find peace." Right? But all those factors have to be in place - like turn off your phone, all that stuff. And then sometimes let's say outside of the door and the kids start crying and things like this, and they're basically blowing up your house of meditation - they're destroying your meditation. The other way to practice is meditating like space. So if I were to light up a stick of dynamite in space, what happens? Well, nothing, because there's nothing to blow up. So how does this look in mindfulness meditation? It looks just like this: Let's say that I'm focusing on the breath. So my mind wanders and I bring it back to the breath. My mind wanders and I bring it back to the breath. And then all of a sudden my neighbor's dog starts to bark. Now I have stress because stress has two opposing forces: how something is and how I want it to be. And in that moment, how I want it to be is I want my mind here on my breath but my neighbor's dog is barking. So what do I do? Well, the neighbor's dog barking is actually arising in the present moment. So I simply turn towards the dog barking and I make that my object of my meditation. So I essentially do "dog barking meditation." Now mindfulness needs to be mindful of something, but it doesn't matter what. So the continuity of mindfulness was sustained the entire time. I never lost my mindfulness. I was always awake and aware. I'm awake and aware of my abdomen and then I was awake and aware of the dog barking and I'm also awake in a certain flavor, which we're going to unpack just in a couple more elements here, which is non-judgmentally. So I'm moving my non-judgmental awareness from my breath to this dog barking. Now if I look a dog barking is just energy, right? Without any labels, right? It's just a vibration of energy. We call it sound and we could label it dog barking and then we can label it a nuisance and see now we're off in distressful thinking. Instead of just looking at it just as something that's simply arising in my awareness, I'm just simply noticing it. So the next piece, paying attention to the present moment on purpose. Personally, this is my favorite piece of the definition: on purpose. So what does this mean? So if I would take a dog and I give the dog a treat and I tell the dog to sit and stay, that dog is going to be like a zen master, like totally incredible, right? Amazing concentration, right? So we could say, "hey, that's it. That's what we want to do. Be just like the dog." But the dog is not necessarily conscious of consciousness. It's not necessarily doing it on purpose. It's doing it out of habit - something very primal, right? It's looking at that food, it wants the food. It has a high degree of concentration, but not exactly on purpose. A similar analogy would be if you heard maybe like a car accident or something outside of your outside of your house. You might run to the window and look out and you're paying attention, but you're not necessarily doing it on purpose. In fact, there might be a lot of things around you that you are completely unaware of - so you're not awake and aware, although you're paying attention, right? But not on purpose. So paying attention to the present moment on purpose. Now, here's something that's a little bit more subtle, but another reason why I like this aspect of the definition is that what shows up when we're practicing on purpose is the exact thing that we're trying to marinate in during meditation. And like I said, this might sound a little abstract right now, but most of the time we're actually self-identifying with the contents of our awareness - so with the thoughts, emotions, sensation, external stimuli - and we're not aware of the knower of those things. So the knower of what is looking at those things is awakened when we pay attention on purpose. Now there is a knower and what is known, and this we might cover in different videos, but it is important to note that we're not all exactly what's arising, but when we're meditating, we get to have a choice and this is actually a very not so abstract part of meditation or mindfulness is that we're recognizing that there's stimulus and in that recognition that there's some kind of stimulus arising (it could be a thought, emotion, it can be anger.) Now by noticing this, we notice that we have a choice. We could follow that emotion or we could actually let it go, or we could create a new right action instead of an habitual action. So paying attention to the present moment on purpose. Now the final piece is really the kicker. This one's more difficult. This is non-judgmentally. In my opinion, this is why we all don't practice mindfulness all the time is because this non-judgmental aspect is very difficult to do. So a lot of things that we experience are uncomfortable and to be with them non-judgmentally is something that we really haven't been taught how to do. Take, for example, you're driving to work and a memory comes up into your awareness and it's uncomfortable. Being that you're not even aware of it, you move towards your radio dial and you turn on your radio and then you distract yourself away from this uncomfortable something that's happening. This is our normal reaction. So when something arises, we usually label it right away: this is good, this is bad, this is pleasant, this is not, and if something is neutral, we usually don't like this. Usually we label this boredom, but I like to say: don't confuse boredom with peace, right? When something's neutral, maybe there is actually a moment of stillness and even with a moment of stillness, we don't know what to do with that because we're not used to it. So usually we want this rollercoaster, right? We want this rollercoaster of really good and really bad. So mindfulness is just being with what is as it is, allowing things to come, allowing things to go - just as they are, with non-judgmental awareness. Not good, not bad. Now this is the definition of mindfulness: paying attention to the present moment on purpose, non-judgmentally. Now is this mindfulness? No, it's not. Mindfulness is your experience of the definition. Really important to remember. True mindfulness is your experience of the definition. This is an experiential practice. This is not something intellectual or conceptual that could just stay up here. For example, like if your friend went on vacation to Italy and she came back from that vacation from Italy and told you all about Italy, would you really know what Italy felt like? What it's like to really be there? No, you'd have to go yourself. Mindful meditation is just like this. You're going to have to actually try this on. True mindful meditation, you really can't describe. Just like this, it's real. It's a real experience, but you can't verbalize it, like you can't verbalize falling in love. If you're moved by a work of art, you're truly moved by this, but you can't truly explain it. It's like that. This definition that I just unpacked is just an entry point. It's just an invitation for you to move in and practice this yourself so you can feel what it's like to be with stimulus but not follow it, to be with what is arising in your life, but have the choice, the ability to choose what you want to think about and what you want to let go. This is the freedom that mindfulness brings. What you want to nurture and enhance and what you want to let be - this is your choice. There's a wonderful saying that the mind is a horrible master but a wonderful servant. But usually, it's the other way around. Usually, we wake up in the morning and we ask the mind how we're doing. We'll say, "how am I doing, mind?" You wake up and if the mind has negative thoughts, let's say thoughts of sadness or anger, we think, "oh, I'm angry." And we ask the mind, "how long do I have to be angry or sad?" And if it says all day, then you're angry all day. But we could shift this. We can become the master of our minds. We don't need to self-identify with what's arising. We can notice what's arising with non-judgmental awareness and we become the knower and not what's known, moment to moment. This is true liberation. This is true freedom.
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