by Ed Halliwell
Gently swirl the water around your mouth, and notice if the flavour changes – perhaps as it mixes with saliva. Does it become warmer, duller, thicker? Let these sensations be experienced. Decide when you’re ready to swallow the water; notice the dissolving of taste – does any trace remain, and if so, for how long? Now take another, maybe bigger, sip and repeat – are the sensations the same, or do they seem different? What, if anything, has changed?
When you’ve practised working with each of the senses, you might reflect on any differences between this way of sensing and how you normally relate with your environment. If it seems different, how so? What were you doing that made it this way? Be interested in the answers that come up. Is the quality of your experience changed by how you attend to it?
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Week 1: practices to explore
Work with the Coming to your senses practice once a day. If you like, explore different locations for practising, noticing what happens each time. For tasting, you can use any food or drink.
Choose one daily activity that you normally do on autopilot (e.g. brushing your teeth, walking the dog, washing the dishes, etc.) and practise bringing mindfulness to it each day this week, experiencing it with the senses. Notice what happens.
Bring awareness to the senses at other times, whenever you remember. When you find yourself caught in rumination or distraction, gently bring yourself back to sensing. What effect does this have, if any?
Ask yourself: what are my intentions for exploring mindfulness? What would I like to learn? If you like, write these down, noticing how it feels to put them on paper, and what it’s like to look at them written in front of you.
Once you’ve recorded your intentions, see if you can let go of any explicit attempt to achieve them. Can you allow intentions to inspire your exploration, but without making them a goal to measure yourself against? Can you allow yourself just to let go into mindfulness training – giving it your full energy as you focus on what’s happening right now?
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Simon’s experience
I’d just turned 50 and thought being happy would arrive at some point if I kept trying hard enough. It was August, which is always when my work goes quiet, and once again I’d built this up to be the time when life would be wonderful. And it wasn’t.
That August my mum wasn’t very happy and I’d scraped my car. There were all these hassles happening in my perfect month! They weren’t particularly serious, but they didn’t fit my picture. I was doing what I’d always done — trying to reach contentment by working very hard for most of the year and then having a huge expectation that time off was going to be great. When those expectations weren’t met, the frustration was enormous.
I got to a breaking point where I realized my aspirations and what I was doing to achieve them weren’t meeting – one wasn’t leading to the other. It took almost a mini-breakdown for me to look for something different. I saw that if I carried on like that it wasn’t going to lead to my holy grail of happiness.
Soon after my birthday I started reading a book that had been recommended to me by a friend – it was based on the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course. I found it really useful for exploring new perspectives on things. Just at that time my partner said she was going on a mindfulness course, and we realized that it was the course of the book I was reading. I joined her on the course and it was like practising what I’d read. The book opened the door and the course enabled me to walk through it.
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Ann’s experience
The trigger of my eldest son leaving home made me realize family life was never going to be the same, and it led to quite a severe depression. I just felt unbalanced, and it was also the start of a difficult menopause. Once I felt a bit better, my GP said I needed to have some strategies for coping with the underlying anxieties, so I had some counselling, and I also booked a mindfulness course.
One of my biggest problems was that I didn’t control my own life. I let others control me to the point where I didn’t have my own identity. I felt that I always had to please other people, doing things I didn’t want to, and I realized that was a source of my anxiety. When I made decisions I wasn’t making them in an informed way – I was like a hamster on a treadmill, just going from one thing to another without having time to breathe.
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Andy’s experience
I was introduced to meditation in the early 1990s, by a friend who was interested in Buddhism. We were backpacking around India and he went off to a retreat. He’d split up from his partner and was really struggling, but there was a different depth to him when he came out. I was interested, but I was also a little cynical.
In my late twenties/early thirties, I had a ‘break-up’, as I call it, I was drinking too much, travelling all over the world with my job. It was unsustainable, living life at that speed, and I ended up in quite a bad place. I was in hospital for a period of time because I’d lost touch with reality.
I recovered from that, but I still carried a lot of anxiety. I’d get very anxious in public places. I was also beating myself up about stuff from the past – each day I’d have dozens of what I call ‘shame attacks’. Thoughts about the past were blocking my ability to be present.
The opportunity to do a mindfulness course came up through work. A lot of people said it would be good for me if I could slow down and be less busy in my mind.
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Catherine’s experience
I knew I had a good life, but I didn’t seem able to appreciate it. As a mum, I was constantly living in the future, a few minutes, a few hours, or a few days ahead, striving hard to make things right. Life was going by and I was in ‘management mode’.
With my kids, I tended to think I had to sort out every problem right away or they would never succeed in the future. Wanting to be in control and wanting everything to be perfect piled on a load of expectations. There was a feeling that if I didn’t do parenting right, it’d have consequences down the road, which meant I felt threatened and under pressure.
I’d been aware of mindfulness and meditation, but I didn’t think it was for me because I had too much to do. I thought I wouldn’t be able to sit down for a long time. I also thought it might be a bit shallow, more of a relaxation technique that would benefit me in the immediate term – maybe like exercising and getting the endorphins. I didn’t understand then that it was a practice, and that you can train your brain to think differently. But mindfulness kept coming up in the reading I was doing, and with the people I spoke to, so I thought: I’ve got to give it a go, with an open mind, to see if it works.
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SUMMARY
Mindfulness is a powerful practice of mind and body that can move us in the direction of peace.
For this we need to pay attention with the senses, which connect us to what’s actually happening right now.
More mindful people are prone to optimal wellbeing, and training in mindfulness helps people cultivate greater happiness, in mind, body and behaviour.
Neuroscience has shown that the brain changes with experience. Practising mindfulness changes the brain in ways that are associated with wellbeing.
Mindfulness begins when we move from a mode dominated by doing and thinking, and into a way of being, in which sensing takes centre stage. We can use the Coming to your senses practice to help cultivate this.
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Chapter 2
Planting seeds
‘No one can help you, not even your most loving mother and father, as much as your own mind, well trained.’
THE BUDDHA
Wellbeing seems to come as much from the approach we bring to experience – from how we choose to see it and work with it – as from what’s actually happening and what we decide to do. If we can cultivate healthy approaches to experience, we’ll probably feel better, no matter what’s going on.
&nbs
p; Ten Cs of mindfulness
Certain attitudes are helpful as we enter into mindfulness training. This chapter outlines 10 ways of approaching life that you might like to cultivate as part of your practice. Some of these attitudes may feel no more than seeds in your being right now, but just as seeds can flower when tended, so attitudes can grow if we nurture them. All the seeds in this chapter begin with the letter C.
Commitment
There’s a cartoon that shows a new meditator, with a bubble of worries rising from her head. The caption reads: ‘I know I’ve only been practising for two minutes, but meditation isn’t bringing me the peace of mind I was promised.’
It’s important to understand that mindfulness isn’t a quick fix – like any skill, it takes time to learn, and its rewards don’t always come immediately. When we slow down and look at our minds and bodies, we might not like everything we find. We may notice pain, anxiety or desperate thoughts. We might find impatience, anger, doubt, or sadness.
Maybe the urge to give up will arise, or an idea that we should feel better, happier, more peaceful. We might decide we’re not suited to mindfulness. Over time, we learn that whatever comes up is workable, but unless we make a steady commitment, we risk losing heart at an early stage, before the practice has time to bear fruit. Unlearning old habits and developing new ones takes patient effort. It helps to meditate each day, whether the weather of our mind is bright or gloomy.
Suggestion Look at your schedule – is there some space and time you can devote to mindfulness practice? Can you designate a place in your home where you can be uninterrupted for two, five, 10 or more minutes a day? Can you prepare this space and protect it from the demands of people, phones and computers, just for this period of time?
Compassion
When it comes to learning or making changes, many of us have been told – or perhaps tell ourselves – that we ‘need to work harder’, ‘haven’t got it in us’ or ‘should be doing better’. Our internal slave-driver barks orders, and we often react by striving harder for perfection, or refusing to engage at all. It’s all too easy to make ‘not being mindful’ another stick to be beaten with, and aim to compensate by straining for success, berating ourselves or feeling guilty.
Mindfulness is a training where being critical and trying too hard doesn’t produce results – mindfulness isn’t mindfulness without gentleness. So, compassion is key. Whenever we hear the voice of the slave-driver, telling us we’re not doing it right, or that we’re a useless meditator, we can use this as a reminder to open up to kindness. This work is a gardening of the heart, and you can’t grow a flower by screaming at it.
We can notice when we’re hard on ourselves (and others), gently recognizing harsh judgements for what they are. In this way, we create a loving space to learn. Perhaps we can bring compassion to the slave-driver in us, even as we decide not to follow orders.
Suggestion Listen to your internal voice – is there a running commentary playing in your head? How does this voice speak to you? Does it cajole and criticize, or is it kind and caring? Is this your voice, or does it come from someone or somewhere else – maybe a parent, a teacher, or the television? How do you normally relate to this voice – do you believe it, reject it, or not even know it’s there?
Experiment first with just noticing the voice – a bit like you’d notice the chatter on a radio in the background. If it’s a slave-driver, notice how it feels to be constantly shaming, getting angry, or belittling. Experiment with offering the voice a compassionate space. You might say: ‘It must be difficult to always be on the attack. I’m not going to believe what you say, but perhaps you’d like a hug?’
Curiosity
A scholarly student visited his teacher’s home for tea. An avid reader, the student had formed many opinions about what there was to learn. As the student talked, the teacher filled his tea cup to the brim, and kept on pouring as it overflowed. The student protested, and the teacher explained: ‘This cup is like your mind – there isn’t any space. If you want to study with me, first you must empty your cup.’
Like the student, we may cram our minds with ideas. Intellectual knowledge can be good, but when we become stuffed with concepts, this can get in the way. Curiosity means we’re prepared to rest in not-knowing. Instead of meeting the world with expectation, we move towards it in a spirit of interest, with an open mind and heart.
We let go of reassuring attempts to confirm what we already think, and instead offer a friendly engagement with what’s actually here. We can look, listen, smell, taste and feel, not limiting our view by laying old maps onto fresh terrain. We allow ourselves to explore the world, re-discovering in every moment if it fits with preconception.
Suggestion Open up to what’s sometimes called ‘beginner’s mind’: a willingness to park prior learning and experience the world afresh. We don’t have to give up being smart – real wisdom offers space for new perspectives.
Courage
The mindfulness road can be rocky. It’s brave to stay with the present moment, especially when we don’t like what’s happening. This courage is known as an ‘approach’ mentality. Approach-minded people move towards challenge with interest. They don’t just push away or run from difficulties. When driving in the snow, it’s better to turn into a skid, even though it runs against instinct. Sometimes, the skids in life are the same.
The opposite of approach is avoidance, which is a sign of poor psychological health. Avoidance means habitually fleeing from fears: turning away from the skids. Of course, it’s good to stay out of danger when we can – it doesn’t make sense to put our hand in a fire – but when avoidance becomes a default setting, an automatic response to everything unpleasant, we restrict our range of responses.
In avoidant mode, we might never go to unfamiliar places, try new things, or explore possibilities that don’t fit our existing schema. Life might feel safer, but also small and restricted. When we run or hide from anything painful, we don’t practise meeting challenges wisely. When troubling things find us, as they usually do, we’re unlikely to be ready. We’re easily overwhelmed.
If an event, sensation or thought is present, no amount of struggling will make it not be here, in this moment. There may be things we can do to change the future, but only by meeting and working with what’s going on right now. Curious though it may seem at first, by gently embracing pain, sadness, anger, loss, fear, or whatever is bothering us, we can develop a resilience that helps us live fully.
Suggestion The way we hold our bodies affects our experience.1 To cultivate courage, we can take a dignified posture. Sometimes, people think courage means tensing up and getting ready to fight, but that’s not what’s meant here. Real courage is a willingness to be touched by life – to connect and co-operate with things as they are.
When sitting, standing or moving, feel your feet making connection with the Earth – this is an embodiment of groundedness. Feel your body rising up to the sky. Feel your chest open, its movements in tune with the rhythm of your breath. Let your shoulders drop, and the head and neck be balanced. Feel your beating heart at the core of your being. You don’t have to force it – gently experiment with this way of being, and notice what happens.
Centring
Where is your mind? Ask most Westerners and chances are they’ll point to their heads. To many of us, mindfulness suggests a cognitive quality, something to do with thinking and the brain. But this is only part of the story. We don’t just exist from the neck up; we are also bodies, and by recognizing and attending to physical sensations, we can connect to fields of intuition.
In the story of the rider and the horse, which do you most identify with, the rider or the horse? Many people think they’re the rider, trying to control a wayward beast. Actually, though, we are rider and horse, which represent qualities of mind and body. And the horse isn’t wayward – it just isn’t being handled with care. In fact, the horse is the rider’s best friend – able to bear heavy loads and negotiate trick
y terrain with nimbleness and skill. When danger approaches, it’s often the horse that senses it first.
By opening our perception to and from the body, we can be aware of the wonder of physical form. We can appreciate the breath and blood and organs that keep us alive – as well as hearing and responding to the messages that come from body sensations. The body is the home of the senses, which offer us a window to direct experience. Centred from the body, we’re in the saddle of life.
Suggestion Check in with your horse. What’s happening in your body right now? Is there fatigue, energy, tension, relaxation, discomfort, restlessness, peace, or something else? Where do you notice these arising? Can you describe the sensations?
Co-operation
A wise teacher was once asked: ‘What is the secret to your happiness?’ The reply came back: ‘A wholehearted co-operation with the unavoidable.’ When the present moment is boring, irritating, frightening or painful, we may not want to co-operate. We may fear this will feel like resignation or self-betrayal, that we’re failing to fight an unfair situation, or that we’ll be overwhelmed.
We may not be able to change our situation, but we can always change ourselves. The word co-operate means ‘to work with’: and to work with our situation requires alignment. We can let go of the struggle for things to be different. We can stop trying to fix ourselves by battling: with pain, depression, anxiety, or whatever else ails us.