Wellness Journalism: Building More Mindfulness

Attitudes: The Foundations of Mindfulness (Part II)

Taken from Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
and expanded by Gina Tang, Wellness Journalist

Trust: Developing a basic trust in your experience is an integral part of mindfulness training. Trusting your experience in the moment allows you to experience “reality” in a new manner.

Example: A surprise visit from a family member during the week of midterms means that you aren’t able to adhere to the study schedule you created for yourself. The panic sets in: When will you study? What if you don’t get enough time? What if you have to pull all-nighters trying to cram and then fail your tests anyway just because you’re tired? Suddenly, in a moment of mindful inspiration, your concerns give way to trust—trust that you will be able to manage your time, balancing family obligations with studying. You create a new study schedule that basically outlines a commitment to breathe, study whenever you can, and trust the outcome. As it turns out, you discover several creative new studying opportunities that you never would have thought existed. By test time you feel prepared, and more confident than ever.

Acceptance: Acceptance means seeing things as they actually are in the present moment without trying to change them. Sooner or later, we have to come to terms with things as they are and accept them. This is true even if you don’t like how things are and would like to change them.

Example: It turns out that your new roommate is vegan—a devastating blow to you, an aspiring chef who delights in cooking as many cheesy dishes as possible to share with the household. You fear that this will put a heavy damper on your weekly dinners, because now you’ll either have to make an entirely separate entrée for just one person, or force the entire meal to exist without the gooey goodness that is cheese. Your commitment to your culinary inclinations is such that you consider giving up cooking for your roommates altogether, just to settle the issue, and you mope around the house for weeks. Instead of this paralyzing frustration, however, you could whip up some mindful acceptance—you aren’t responsible for the dietary choices of others; only for your own cooking and eating preferences. It’s up to you whether or not you want to cater to the new roommate or just keep cooking your favorites. Either way, you save yourself a tremendous amount of energy by simply accepting reality.

Letting Go: Our minds get caught by habitual ways of seeing, thinking, and reacting. Cultivating the attitude of letting go, or non-attachment, is fundamental to the practice of mindfulness.

Example: You’ve just gotten out of a year-long relationship. The break-up was tough: a lot of back and forth, failed attempts to reconcile, and exhausting evenings of circular conversation. You’ve been craving peace of mind so badly that finally cutting everything off feels like weight off your shoulders. You’re re-emerging into an autonomous lifestyle, and rather enjoying it. Then an encounter with your ex—in the arms of another—at a party, sends you spinning into a mind-numbing onslaught of pain and regret. It becomes clear at this point that if you cannot let go of the past, your world will be filled with suffering. So you decide that you will not revert back to self-doubt and the torture it presents. Instead, you do what you had once thought of as being impossible: mindfully setting the intention to let the relationship go, once and for all. When you feel your brain reaching for the past (and all of its corresponding ifs/ands/buts, you root down into the present moment (and its corresponding freedom). And, as you gain stability in this new state of surrender, you find that letting go is actually easier than holding on.

Wellness Journalism: Building Mindfulness

Attitudes: The Foundations of Mindfulness (Part I)

Taken from Full Catastrophe Living, by Jon Kabat-Zinn
and expanded by Gina Tang, Wellness Journalist

Non-Judging: Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of being an impartial witness to your own experience. To do this requires that you become aware of the experience of constantly judging and reacting to inner and outer experience.

Example: You’re down to the wire, studying hard for midterms. At a group study session one of your classmates starts gossiping about drama that has nothing to do with class material. The irritation you feel is overwhelming, and a highly critical internal monologue sets in—you start thinking about how your time is being wasted, how frustrating it is to try and study when other people are creating distractions, etc. In this moment, you are consumed by your experience of judging the classmate’s behavior. A mindful attitude, however, bears witness to the irritation but is not swept away by it. You accept that the distraction is happening around you, without actually distracting yourself—in other words, you don’t internalize it. Instead of casting yourself into a state of judgment, you can choose to stay focused on your own material. And eventually, the classmate settles back into studying too.

Patience: Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept that sometimes things unfold in their own time and that our efforts to control are often part of the problem.

Example: There are four people in your group and the project is due at the end of the week. Each member of the group has taken charge of a particular section of the project, and the agreement is that everybody will submit their portion well in advance of the deadline. You’ve posted your part, along with two others, and find yourself waiting for the final segment from the fourth member—and losing patience with it. Your impatience is such that you start badgering the fourth member via email and text, making a spectacle out of it with the other group members and raising general hell. You actually start doing some of the work yourself, convinced that it isn’t going to come in on time otherwise. When the fourth member submits the completed material, the day before it is due, it comes with the revelation that there had been a family emergency that required a quick trip out of town. Since the project was on time after all, the entire episode leaves you feeling like a jerk. A mindful attitude would not have proactively pestered, rather, allowed the fourth group member the freedom to accomplish the segment and submit it to the group according to the plan. You save yourself a great deal of energy and frustration by simply giving space to the situation, and responding—when necessary—to challenges that arise with a level head.

Beginner’s Mind: The richness of present-moment experience is the richness of life itself. Too often we let our preconceived ways of thinking and our previously formed beliefs about what we “know” prevent us from seeing things as they really are or taking a fresh perspective.

Example: A friend of yours invites you to go check out a documentary screening—an important film, the friend says, about the corruption of the food industry and the health hazards that are often over-looked and under-reported. You don’t want to see it, though. You figure you already know what’s healthy and what isn’t, and you’re satisfied with what you eat, and the way you eat it. Fast forward a few years: you are sitting at dinner, and your date starts talking about the same movie—and convinces you to watch it. You are shocked by what you learn, and find yourself wishing that you had seen it sooner, certain it would have made a positive difference in your life. A mindful approach doesn’t dismiss new opportunities on the basis of assumptions, but carries an open mind to new information, new people, and new experiences.

Wellness Journalism: Stressing You

Last week’s blog post explored stress using the metaphor of waves in the ocean.
Now, let’s take a more scientific approach.

Your nervous system is divided into two operating platforms: sympathetic and parasympathetic.

When the parasympathetic nervous system sits in the driver’s seat, your body enjoys “rest and digest.” This state of being feels nice and comfy—like life is going fine and you are going right along with it.

The sympathetic nervous system, in contrast, is triggered by a perceived threat (historically this included lions, tigers, and bears—but today’s homo-sapien is more often faced with final exams, an angry partner, or being broke). The body then responds with “fight or flight” preparedness. In physiological terms, this translates to cortisol release; with it comes muscle tension, increased blood pressure, cessation of digestive function, and shallow breathing. As you can imagine, this state of being is not conducive to normal daily life. Yet many of us run around all day as though we are at gunpoint.

Dr. Kathleen Kawamura and The Stress Management Group define stress as the perception of threat combined with the perception of an inability to cope. In other words, here comes trouble, and it’s gonna getcha. But if the “trouble” has been self-generated, it can also be self-mediated (in other words—if you made it up, you can also remove it).

Cognitive Psychology emphasizes a rational approach. You can examine your perceptions, and restructure them as needed.

To decrease a perception of threat, ask yourself:
• How bad is it really? Does this fear have a tangible basis?
• How likely is it that this feared event will happen?
• What is more likely to happen?

To decrease perception of inability to cope, ask yourself:
• If this did happen, how would I cope?
• What are my options?
• How have I coped with similar situations in the past?

Of course, it’s also effective to bypass the mind altogether and go right into the body—as the body is always ready to release stress. Exercise, sports, yoga, deep breathing, massage, and skipping happily down the sidewalk are just a few of the many ways to engage yourself in the present moment (a realm where the future—and any potential threat it may carry—is not a complication).

Wellness Journalism: Surfs Up!

One of the major factors affecting your sense of emotional well-being is stress—and how you handle it.

We live in a world of “sink or swim” and it’s easy to lose sight of the shore sometimes. With busy schedules and demanding classes, we hardly have time to take a breath between deadlines, or catch up on the little things like laundry, dishes, or shaving. Often we struggle under the added weight of relationship drama, malnutrition (skipping breakfast, eating Burger King for lunch…), being hung over, or running on a sleep deficit.

How can we keep ourselves afloat as we face wave after wave of assignments, projects, and exams? Is it possible to move with grace through the hectic pace of the quarter?

When you are out in the middle of this vast ocean of existence, how do you ride the tide?

Taking the stress/wave metaphor further, let’s look at your options. Your first instinct—wired into you early on in life, perhaps—is to flinch, fight, run, resist, or otherwise avoid the impact. You perceive the wave as an enormous beast that threatens to overwhelm you, swallowing you whole in a whirl of white water. So you burn a lot of energy trying to paddle away; a turbulent, exhausting, and frightening experience. This reaction to stress creates a sense of hopeless stagnation, compounded by a fear of drowning under the pressure. And, inevitably, the wave smacks you in the head.

What a solid emotional education will teach you, however, is to surf—a sporting effort requiring an active determination to engage the wave. In other words, “going with the flow” is an athletic art. And it gives you a certain response-ability: calm and confident (and maybe even a little curious), you make a choice. You can paddle into the wave, pop up, and go for a ride—using whatever surface area is available to you—or you can swim into and duck under it, letting it wash over you. Cultivating energy in this way provides an experience of surrender and release, transforming the wave into an infinite realm of possibility; every time you go for that ride, something awesome happens.

You determine your experience. Each wave is a unique opportunity to embrace the present moment and its vital buoyancy. The practice of mindfulness allows you to make your choices actively, rather than reactively. Responding with intention, you empower yourself!

Of course, you can always benefit from friendly guidance and support. The Counseling and Psychological Services team here at UCSD offers just that. Their website provides suggestions for meditation and mindfulness exercises that broaden your board, so to speak.

Here’s one now: When you feel a wave coming (or find yourself in the middle of one), set aside a full five minutes to focus on deep, abdominal breathing. You can contract and relax your muscle groups in sequence, starting with the toes and moving up the body. This serves to reconnect your head to your feet and facilitates self-navigation.