#726 Your Mind Transforms When Practicing Meditation

     1. Each time you focus on or return to the anchor, you are building your concentration
     2. Each time you focus on the anchor, you detach from your thought stream. This is a practice of letting go in the moment, which translates to letting go in the rest of the world.
     3. Each time you notice that the mind is wandering, that is the moment of mindfulness — not a moment of failure.
     4. Each time you are kind to yourself when your mind wanders, instead of criticizing yourself, you are exercising and strengthening your self-compassion for challenging moments in the rest of your daily life.
     5. Each time you notice where the mind is wandering, that is an opportunity for insight into your mind’s habits and patterns — what we might call wisdom or self-understanding.

       Christopher Willard. "Growing Up Mindful: Essential Practices to Help Children, Teens, and Families Find Balance, Calm, and Resilience." Sounds True, 2016.

Apple blossoms, Wolfville, NS

#716 How Mindfulness (MBSR) Can Change Your Life

     "Mindfulness is a way of being - a basic human quality of awareness that is cultivated by learning to pay wise attention to whatever is happening in our lives.
     People who participate in a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, learn through their own experience how to take better care of themselves, by understanding the interplay of mind and body, allowing for greater access to inner resources for coping, growing and healing. 
     MBSR is an approach that combines meditation, dialogue, reflective inquiry, mindful yoga and movement, as means to assisting participants to work more effectively with stress, pain and illness, as well as the challenges of life in the 21st century."

 

#666 Practice - Perseverance - Embodiment

     "It is a natural law that actions have effects; even if your development is not as rapid as you would like, progress occurs through meditation."

       Shaila Catherine "Wisdom Wide and Deep. A Practical Handbook for Mastering Jhana and Vipassana." Wisdom, Boston, 2011.

#550 Mindfulness - State or Trait?

     "Passing states like joy, fear, excitement, or depression come and go like the weather. But enduring traits, like reliability or empathy or natural mindfulness, are more stable, and thus more dependable from moment to moment. Certain qualities can take the form of a state or a trait. Consider happiness, for example. Positive experiences might make you happy for an hour or a day, but as soon as the state passes, the feeling fades as well. By contrast, the trait of happiness, the enduring sense of subjective well-being, doesn’t come and go but abides as the backdrop and flavor of all your experiences. 
     Meditation that just induces a pleasant emotional or mental state for as long as you’re practicing, a state that then fades when you stand up and go about your day, has only limited value in the stress and strain of ordinary life. The purpose of mindfulness meditation is to cultivate & strengthen the TRAIT of mindfulness — enhanced present moment awareness — so you can extend it to every situation you encounter, no matter how challenging, and reap the ongoing benefits.
     ... The results of (this) study suggest that mindfulness intervenes in several ways in the usual stress cycle: by helping with the regulation of negative emotions that tend to intensify stress and by enhancing restful sleep, which in turn tends to moderate stress. ... Of course, for those of us who don’t score high on natural mindfulness, there’s always the practice of mindfulness meditation!"                     Stephan Bodian

http://www.mentalworkout.com/blog/2013/12/05/mindfulness-state-or-trait/

Garage, Rome, Italy

#399 Letting Go of Soil - the Jar of Soil & Water Metaphor - Part 2

     Continuing with the jar of soil & water metaphor of #398, sitting meditation practice shows us that we're so used to thinking about something that we actually feel one with or identified with thoughts ("cognitive fusion"). It's as if the clear water didn't exist, only the soil. Thoughts ("objects of mind" - bits of soil) seem sticky, some much more so than others eg the memory of someone insulting us; or catastrophizing about an upcoming interview or medical appointment. Our entire world can become this one story (single particle of soil) for days, weeks or even longer, while our day-to-day affairs are managed "on autopilot."
      Another discovery we make in meditation is that our thinking is mostly about the past ("the good - or bad - old days") or future (wishing or anxiety). This is despite the practical fact that the present requires our full attention. ALSO experience and now science shows that stable awareness of what's going on in the present moment feels  good - much better than being off in the past or future. Our quality of life is at its highest when we are whole-heartedly engaged in the present for prolonged periods of time eg being with a beloved person or pet, "wrapped-up" in a great movie, doing our hobby, participating in an exciting (even extreme) sport, etc.
     The soil particles are in motion - either being stirred up or settling down, while water is at rest. When we're present, mindful, we have the perspective of clear still water & observe the particles (thoughts) floating by without attaching to (identifying with) them. Training allows this to happen with increasing ease, consistency and stability. Sticking to particles going by is a habit. Noticing & repeatedly letting go of this old mental habit ("cognitive defusion"), replaces it with a new mental habit - mindfulness. This is the predictable, scientifically-proven effect of mental training that rewires the brain, creating new connections and new brain cells (neuroplasticity). 
     Gradually we come to feel at home in clarity (clear water), without habitually clinging to the (mud particles of the) past or future, resting joyfully in the constantly changing fascinating challenging present moment. 
     See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/12/249-busy-scattered-distracted-monkey.html

Kentville, Nova Scotia

#396 Intentionally Improving our own Mental & Emotional Health

     "... just as we as a society are learning to take more responsibility for our physical health by engaging in regular physical exercise, we can also take more responsibility for our minds & brains by engaging in certain mental exercises (mindfulness meditation) that can induce plastic changes in the brain and that may have enduring beneficial consequences for social and emotional behavior. 

     ... qualities such as well-being ought to be viewed, at least in part, as a product of trainable skills ... interventions explicitly designed to promote well-being may have beneficial behavioral and biological effects."

       Davidson RJ, McEwen BS. Social influences on neuroplasticity: stress and interventions to promote well-being. Nature Neuroscience 2012; 15(5): 689-95.

     For a nice summary of the neuroscientific support for the effectiveness & benefits of Mindfulness training see: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2013/09/emotions-attention-introspection-are.html

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"Well-being is actually a skill," said Dr. Richard J. Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and the study's senior author. "It's something that can be enhanced with training. If we can take more responsibility for our well-being, we can help to minimize burnout or decrease its severity." - See more at: http://wisdomresearch.org/blogs/news/archive/2013/09/05/mindfulness-meditation-fights-burnout-new-study-of-teachers-suggests-video.aspx#sthash.DXmVJtve.dpuf

#360 Technology MUST be Balanced with Timeless Basic Human Skills

     Google's director of research interviewed Nicholas Carr, author of the article "Is Google making us stupid?" and the book "What the Internet is Doing to our Brains - The Shallows." Carr argued that regular use of the internet, computer games & smart phones thoroughly & effectively remodels our thinking, behavior patterns & our brains physically (neuroplasticity), with the corresponding very real danger of disuse atrophy of the neural networks that enable us to reflect deeply AND THUS weaken our ability to behave wisely - "Use it or loose it!"
     "If you look throughout the history of culture, you see that many of the great monuments of culture - whether we're talking about art, science, literature, whatever - come from people who were able to think attentively, deeply, and be contemplative, meditative, and be reflective. And if we devalue those things, and practice those things less, I think we not only get less interesting as individuals, we face a culture that is flatter, not as vibrant, and not as interesting as it used to be.
     ... inundating (oneself) with new technologies, with new information, has to be balanced with being attentive, reading, backing away from technology, even backing away from friends sometimes. It's great to collaborate, but there's also a role in the world for solitude, and I think we should encourage our kids, and ourselves, to practice that as well."
http://fora.tv/2010/06/23/Nicholas_Carr_Is_Google_Making_Us_Stupid

     Speed, quantity, meaningless fun, fast food etc must be BALANCED with - and as we mature as individuals & as cultures, progressively REPLACED by - slowing down, quality, meaning, food that's slowly prepared with love & other quality ingredients etc. Our lives have meaning; technology has no inherent meaning. We make tools / technology to improve - not distort - the quality of our lives.

     See also: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/07/146-time-to-re-engage.html

evanrassbcglobalnet   www.dpreview.com

#206 Neuroplasticity - Brain Continuously Sculpted by Experience & Training

     “Neuroplasticity refers to the concept that the brain can change in response to experience, and in response to training. Probably the greatest discoveries in the last decade in modern neuroscience concern the many different mechanisms of plasticity. The brain is literally built to change in response to experience and in response to training. It’s the only organ in the body that’s really designed explicitly for that purpose. We now understand something about the mechanisms for plasticity, and they are varied. They range from new connections being formed to new cells actually growing in the brain - new brain cells, new neurons, and many other related kinds of processes. So when we talk about neuroplasticity, we talk about both the structural and the functional changes in the brain.

     It’s important to understand that our brains are constantly being shaped wittingly or unwittingly. So even if we’re not engaged in any intentional strategy to change our minds and our brains, our brains are constantly being changed by the forces around us. If we have an argument with a friend, or a family member, that will shape our brain. If we have a warm, positive interaction with someone, that will shape our brain. If we watch television, depending on it’s content, that will shape our brain in one way or another. Everything that we do literally is constantly shaping our brain."      Ritchie Davidson PhD

The Compassionate Brain by Rick Hanson PhD – Sounds True – free streaming webinar

live.soundstrue.com/compassionatebrain/event.php

Session #1 - How the Mind Changes the Brain - Ritchie Davidson PhD interviewed by Rick Hanson PhD

Photo: avec fleur   http://www.flickr.com/photos/avecfleur/2483563486/