by Ed Halliwell
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The science of mindfulness and the self
Neuroscience studies of meditators seem to reflect a changing view that comes with mindfulness. This is suggested by activity changes in the brain’s ‘default mode network’, an attention-related region which, as mentioned previously, is active in most people, most of the time.
It’s been shown that when this network is active, the world is being viewed from a conceptual frame – the mind is wandering into thinking, planning, story-making, categorizing, problem-solving and generally making interpretations of what’s going on – what’s also been called the ‘doing’ mode. The default network tends to be active when we’re viewing life from a ‘self-centred’ perspective: interpreting events from a sense of how ‘I’ think about things – my ideas, opinions, and judgements – one step removed from the actual events themselves.1
When people move into a more mindful mode of processing – directly sensing events with present-moment awareness – a different set of brain regions, sometimes called the experiential network, comes more online. There is less activity in the medial prefrontal cortex and increased activity in the insula (an area known to be implicated in processing body sensations) and the anterior cingulate cortex (a region associated with the capacity for switching attention). Activity in this ‘experiential network’ appears to be a marker of the ‘being’ mode of mind.
After eight weeks of mindfulness training, it seems people are more able consciously to switch their mode of processing from the conceptual to the experiential, to shift from doing to being. This seems to be reflected by the changes in brain activity from the default to the experiential network, which occurs when newly trained meditators are asked to pay attention mindfully.
When people who haven’t learned to meditate are asked to do the same thing, they are less able to make this shift, tending to get more stuck in the default mode.2 Studies also suggest that the default mode network is deactivated more strongly in experienced practitioners (compared to novices), and there’s greater connectivity between areas of the brain thought to be involved in self-monitoring and cognitive control.3
This seems to be more evidence that practising mindfulness fosters neuroplastic changes that increase the capacity for conscious living. The good news that has been shared by meditation adepts over the centuries, and which has growing validation from scientific studies, is that we can train ourselves to switch from relying on the default mode and into opening to a more mindful mode – we can choose to move from doing to being.
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Week 7: practices to explore
Practise mindfulness of breath, body, sounds, thoughts and choiceless awareness in sequence, perhaps allowing five to 10 minutes for each part of the meditation. Notice what happens, bringing curiosity to how aspects of experience arise and fall away, and what, if anything, changes when you allow this to happen without clinging or resistance.
Practise the breathing space at regular times, and when you notice stress arising. Bring particular attention in the acknowledging step to thoughts and sensations – notice how they’re changing from moment to moment. In the expanding step, allow everything to be experienced in choiceless awareness.
Bring awareness to the impermanence and interconnectedness of everything in life. Notice how things, people, thoughts and feelings are changing and influencing one another, in dynamic interplay. As best you can, open to a sense of riding with circumstance, meeting life less from a place of independence and isolation and more from a space of connection and co-operation.
When things become difficult, and stress arises, experiment with allowing this to be seen and felt as part of the dance of existence. As best you can, go with the flow, knowing that both the peaks and troughs of life are subject to change. Notice any automatic patterns of tightening, pushing or solidifying that occur during times of stress, and experiment with allowing these to be felt with compassion.
Bring awareness to tendencies of ‘selfing’, trying to turn experience into something rigid. Be interested in your use of personal pronouns, especially in conjunction with words that fix you, others or things into seemingly unchangeable categories (I’m always depressed/She’s a bad person/Why does he never learn anything new?/ The traffic is bound to be awful.) What happens if you connect with a curious, more present-moment-centred view (There is a heaviness in the belly and self-critical thoughts in the mind right now/Holding on to old habits at the moment/I wonder how the traffic will be today?) Does viewing events with less of a sense of fixation change what’s experienced, or the relationship to experience? If so, how?
Be interested in the effect of seeing from a place of awareness. When stress arises, and you notice it, ask yourself: is the observer of the stress also stressed? Or is there a ‘seeing’ of what’s happening that isn’t caught up in the experience itself?
Choose a C of mindfulness to work with this week, following the guidance in chapter 2.
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Simon’s experience
There’s an idea that if you take away all your roles, such as parent, husband or worker, that’s who you are. That’s had a huge impact on me. Mindfulness helps me see when I’m going back into role identification, when I’m attaching to something. I was attaching to ‘our’ field at the back of our house – the one I mentioned in Chapter 2 that might be built on. Part of the problem of course is that it’s not our field! It ‘belongs’ to somebody else and we’re lucky enough to be able to look at it. I was identifying with the field, even though ‘the man with the view’ isn’t really who I am.
Mindfulness helps me see the little alarm bells when I can feel myself attaching to something, or having a reaction based on an identification, or an identification being threatened. The signs of that are intensity, tension, upset, or anger. Mindfulness reminds me there are different ways of dealing with things.
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Ann’s experience
In my head I have this role of being the eldest child and the eldest grandchild. It’s not necessarily in anyone else’s head, but for me it’s meant that I’ve had to act in a certain way and be that person – the one who’s always calm and good in a crisis.
But I couldn’t always cope with that role; it’s not who I felt I was inside. No-one had ever said I had to, but unconsciously that’s what I was choosing. I took on that role and actually I didn’t want to sometimes – I wanted to scream at everyone to go away!
Part of me likes that role, but I now realize that I needed support not to be the one who’s totally in charge. I got wrapped up in that persona. It was very lonely and a great source of stress. Even my work was something I did to have an identity.
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Andy’s experience
Mindfulness practice changes the experience of who ‘I’ am. We’re the sum of our experience, a collection of molecules, and all types of programming that’s developed. There’s a biochemical element to us, but I believe we do have choice, to a degree.
It’s really useful to be aware of our desires and cravings, as well as what we tend to avoid, because it gives us a deeper insight into the mechanisms that make us operate as beings. Understanding the processes and the reactions within us can give us a much deeper insight into how things impact on us and how we respond.
Our circumstances will funnel us to a degree, but often we can do something different if we want to. We’ve learned to think as we do because of past experiences, but we don’t have to be stuck. Where and how we go in the future is very much down to how we look after ourselves in the here and now. In meditation you get some insight into that.
There are some things I’m not stuck with anymore because I’m relating to them in a different way. Take the anxiety of carrying a cup of coffee across the room. I might think: I’m carrying this cup of coffee and my hand’s shaking, and people are going to see me as a weak person. But hold on: if my hand shakes and I’m a bit nervous when I enter a ro
om, isn’t that a normal human experience? Does it really make me a weak person? So now I might think: Well, if my hand’s a bit shaky, that’s fine. And then my hand doesn’t shake. By allowing myself to be, I’m already dealing with it.
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Catherine’s experience
Sometimes I try to fit myself into too few boxes. I say: ‘I am me and this is what I do; I’m not allowed to do something else.’ We have a view of ourselves, and what we can and can’t do – how the world is and how we relate to it.
For about 10 years, I’ve thought that I want to be more organized. I want to have everything tidy, with routines and a diary, to be in control and to know what’s going on. I grew up in houses that were messy and I was labelled as the organized one. But I’ve been wondering if I’m trying to force myself into a particular way of being as a strategy to cope – actually, I can be a bit more intuitive, creative and ‘go with the flow’.
So I’m learning to trust, rather than trying to be organized in a really set way. That means being mindful of how I’m feeling and sensing. It’s thinking, What’s a good thing to do today? rather than What should I do? or I must stick to what I’d decided, even though I’ve got a headache and I’m really exhausted. It means letting go and giving up control.
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SUMMARY
There’s nothing in the appearing world that isn’t always changing.
We can’t pin down the ‘self’, in the sense of an independent, fixed, unchanging entity. We exist, but not in the way we habitually imagine.
What we call ‘me’ is a bundle of tendencies, subtly shifting, dependent on causes and conditions, interconnected with others and the environment.
Our stress comes from trying to grasp the ungraspable, and resist the irresistible – when we accept that things are impermanent, and that there’s no essential self, we’re liberated to live in accordance with reality.
Brain studies of meditators seem to reflect the transformation of view that occurs when we open to a mindful perspective. After eight weeks of mindfulness training, people are more able consciously to switch their mode of processing from ‘self-centred’ to ‘experience-oriented’.
Formal mindfulness practice is one of the best antidotes to fixing experience into solid ‘selfhood’. When we meditate, we’re transforming our perspective, which can help bring a lightness to life.
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Chapter 8
Mindful action
‘The quality of your action depends on the quality of your being.’
THICH NHAT HANH
The more we can attune in a sensory way, the more we develop an eye, ear, nose, mind, taste and feel for the most appropriate action to take. With space to breathe, we may find skilful activity comes, without our having to strain for it.
When we buy a new piece of technology we expect it to come with a set of instructions. Even with these in hand, we usually accept that it may take a while to become familiar with our purchase. We’re prepared to invest time and energy in learning how the product works because we understand this will make it easier to use.
Yet how many of us take a similar attitude towards the mind and body? Here we have some of the most amazing technology in the known universe, and somehow we think we’ll pick up how it works as we go along. Of course, there are education systems and training programmes of many kinds, but most of these are geared towards ingesting information and performing tasks. This is like loading software onto a computer hard drive without getting a handle on the operating system.
Managing mind and body well
In mindfulness training, we focus on managing mind and body well. We become familiar with the workings of our internal processes, seeing parts and patterns with a precise, open eye. Through this process of quiet observation, we can notice what leads to wellbeing and what doesn’t.
Simultaneously, we’re training in working more skillfully with what we find. We gently exercise the muscle of attention by coming back when the mind wanders, and we practise staying present, neither following nor resisting impulses that lead to unhelpful action. We connect with and shift towards the experience of life It may seem like we’re not doing very much when we practise, but plenty can change in the stillness. We’re performing a kind of internal alchemy. Over time, mindfulness training can open us up to a radical transformation of perspective, leading in turn to a new way of being in the world.
This sounds somewhat magical – and in some ways it is, for really we know little about this remarkable thing called consciousness. It’s also in the spirit of good scientific inquiry. The subject of the study is us, along with our relationship to the world we live in, and we carry out the experiment from a space of awareness. With the understanding cultivated, we learn how to live more effectively.
It can be tempting to come to mindfulness training and hope for lots of techniques to help us handle specific situations. What’s the right method for dealing with a parent or child, or for making the right career move, or for managing depression? Of course, there are ways to approach these situations artfully, but if we train ourselves to work with the mind and body, really getting to know how they function best, we can bring this learning to every circumstance, without needing a new set of instructions each time. Mindfulness isn’t learned by filling up with information, or by forcing ourselves to be someone we’re not. It comes from opening to a transformation in the way we experience.
Studies suggest that mindfulness can help in a wide range of educational and vocational circumstances, such as helping maintain attention and performance in the face of demanding workloads,1 protecting professional carers from burnout and empathy drain2, and enabling wellbeing, attention and good performance among students.3 These highly practical benefits may partly be why mindfulness training has been introduced in many schools and universities, businesses and other organizational settings.
People experiencing many kinds of difficulties find mindfulness useful. There have been positive results from studies involving people experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder, paranoia, irritable bowel syndrome, insomnia, asthma, fibromyalgia, tinnitus, bipolar disorder, loneliness, and the stress of being a carer, among many other situations.4 There seem to be few circumstances in which practising awareness doesn’t help, and mindfulness is now an option that health professionals turn to in supporting the people they work with.
However, in each of these instances, changes seem to come as a by-product of people learning foundational practices and attitudes, such as the ones we’ve been exploring together, and applying what they learn to their lives. This appears to be the best way to approach the training, for as soon as we try to make mindfulness solve a particular problem, or fit a certain set of circumstances, we’ve already moved away from the present moment and into focusing on future results.
A problem-solving approach is sometimes counter-productive, as it can create and highlight a stressful mismatch between our current circumstance and our desired goals. Rather than trying to achieve a prescribed set of outcomes, mindfulness training helps us understand and work with the human experience itself more skillfully. If we can do that, aren’t we likely to manage things better anyway?
Effortless action
This doesn’t mean that action won’t happen. With space to breathe, we may find skilful activity comes, but perhaps without our having to strain. Slowing down and listening to what’s sometimes called ‘wise mind’ – the understanding that comes from connecting with mind and body – we may find ourselves drawn to make changes.
Sometimes the best action is no action (or no action yet). At other times, we may not feel ready for a particular course, even though we’d like to take it. This is okay too – we don’t have to get ahead of ourselves, or try to be perfect. Sometimes we need to wait for more growth and unfolding to take place.
We may need to practise accepting what we can’t change (or can’t change yet), and seeing what’s her
e in a new way. The shifts people make as they practise mindfulness are often small, but over time they can add up to greater transformations. Without having to make great plans or push for major changes, a path towards happiness and wisdom can be walked. Awareness tends to lead us into healthier circumstances, and healthier responses to those circumstances. As we experience greater contentment, we’re following a virtuous, upward spiral to wellbeing.
Sustaining the virtuous spiral
This shift towards contentment can be sustained, even when things get rough. After mindfulness training, difficult emotions interfere less when people are asked to respond to events quickly – suggesting they’re less likely to be knocked off a chosen course by life’s challenges.5 Along the way, we’re also more likely to be compassionate to ourselves,6 which studies suggest is a key factor in wellbeing.7
Whereas low mood tends to lead to more of the same, mindfulness training offers a counterweight. It’s associated with increased experience and appreciation of pleasant emotions, and a greater ability to engage in activities that can increase those emotions.8 After mindfulness training, people are more likely to remember pleasant stimuli, and this change is associated with less depression and anxiety, and a deeper sense of wellbeing.9 They’re not only more able to manage difficult experiences, but increasingly capable of appreciating and being buoyed by pleasant ones.