#330 Mindfulness Practices - Simple but Not Easy

     "taking time out to sit in silence and bring attention to something like the breath, there is an opportunity for a degree of relaxation, or ‘slowing down’. Secondly there is a perhaps more counter-intuitive opportunity to simply notice - as non-judgementally and non-analytically as possible - the experiential flow of thoughts, feelings and sensations. In other words, there is an attempt to cultivate awareness of one’s moment-by-moment experience ... a ‘post-modern’ meta skill.
     Straight away in this two-fold description, one may appreciate why it could be said that mindfulness is ‘simple, but not easy’. The process of sitting and bringing some light attention to the process of breathing (or in other mindfulness practices it may be for example the process of walking, or eating), is not technically complicated and may feel a welcome relaxation. Alternatively, being invited simply to notice one’s experience, can feel tremendously challenging. One can come up closer to previously less noticed streams of negative, painful, or fearful thought, or at the very least one can feel unsettled by noticing for perhaps the first time, how ‘all over the place’ our experience can be, veering in the space of a few moments, from wild fantasy, to profound sleepiness, for example. It is not something we may ever have done before, in such a direct way, and it can feel anything but relaxing at times. Thus, mindfulness could be said to be a more radical practice, of learning to be with both positive and painful experiential states, in the present, without loading this with strong expectations, of an outcome."

       Moss D, Waugh M, Barnes R. A tool for life? Mindfulness as self-help or safe uncertainty. Int J Qual Stud Health Well-being 2008; 3(3): 132-142.

 

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#81 Conscious Awareness

     “Much of what happens in the mind is not within consciousness, yet these non-conscious processes have an impact on our health. Bringing these negative thoughts, such as fear, hostility, betrayal, or sadness, to awareness is part of basic health, because those thoughts – what in (psychiatry) are called unintegrated neural processes – are basically like black holes. They have so much gravity to them that they suck the energy out of life. They influence the health of the mind, its flexibility and fluidity, its sense of joy & gratitude. They impact relationships, leading to rigid ways of behaving or explosive ways of interacting. They also influence the body itself, including the nervous system and the immune system.
     So an exploratory process like mindfulness that brings those fearful negative thoughts to awareness can be very beneficial. Sometimes you have to name it to tame it. A number of studies suggest that when you bring something into awareness, and describe it, you can move that previously negative energy – a draining thought or cognition – into a new form.
     With mindfulness, what was not available to awareness becomes available. We need to support people in that journey, because bringing more of what’s going on in the mind to awareness can be a very helpful development in a person’s life.”
       Daniel Siegal MD, clinical professor of psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine.

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