Mindful Mondays|Week 26: Zen

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What better way to end Season One of all these Monday meditations than with Zen — which is a Japanese translation of the Sanskrit word meaning “meditation”. For us, we also recognize this word to mean peaceful, calm, enlightened, relaxed. The original word also has to do with simplicity, not worrying, awareness. So let’s play with those concepts today and find a moment of Zen.

Today if you are able, find a comfortable place to lie down, with feet either propped up or the knees bent slightly to keep any tension off the lower back. Whether sitting or standing or lying, put one hand on your chest cavity above your diaphragm and place the other right on or below your diaphragm in the stomach region. Take a nice cleansing inhale and let it out slowly on the exhale. Close your eyes when you’re ready.

For a few minutes of Zen, just lie here. Let your body get heavy and sink into the earth below you. Let your mind quiet itself. And notice your breath, which is always easier to focus on with your hands holding the movements of the body. Stay present in the moment without falling asleep. See if you can straddle the line between staying aware that you are lying here in this moment with the other side of consciousness where total relaxation can occur. Stay with both those realities, and just breathe. Just be Zen.

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If you’ve got lost in thought and lost your sense of Zen, just come on back. Welcome your mind to anchor down into the breath, feel the sensations below your hands as your inhales and exhales flow, and keep your relaxation at peak calmness without losing your present awareness to your body.

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That, my friends, is our Zen practice for today. Simple, peaceful, and unhurried. Just being, no doing. Alert but calm. That’s the practice. You nailed it. And if you want more, stay right here after my voice fades, and keep on in the Zen for as long as you want. You earned this; you deserve this. See you next season for more mindful moments together. Be well, Survivors.

Mindful Mondays|Week 25: Yield

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It’s common for Trauma Survivors to struggle with intrusive thoughts, compulsions, addictions, obsessions, or maladaptive (once useful, now unnecessary) coping mechanisms. I find it comforting to remember that we can respect the purposes behind these things, and, without judgment, we can be compassionate with ourselves. It can be really healthy to explore and be curious about these types of thoughts and actions, just watching them and recognizing them, without yielding to them. Being aware is always step one in making any positive changes. For example, staying with a strong emotion or sensation is hard for the mind. It wants to distract you in order to protect you. There’s always room to observe why your thought or action is gnawing at your brain and see what it is trying to help you cope with. Just watching its pattern and the way it tries to manipulate you into complying can be useful data for you to break negative cycles and addictive behaviors with awareness.

A good practice is right here in this meditation space. Consider this a bootcamp for learning to not allow your mind to control you. Practicing mindfulness a few minutes each day is training your mind to pause to be present and teaching your thoughts that they are not in charge of you. You can sense things, feel things, think things, and get distracted by things, but, without yielding to their temptations, you can be aware that you moved away from your anchor and bring it right back. Just observe, recognize, and without judgment, re-focus. Let’s try it.

Make sure you are in a space where no external distractions will bother you. Feel your seat grounding you below. Allow your eyes to close or cast a soft gaze downward if that feels safer. Take a cleansing breath. Now find a part of your breath that is most obvious to you — the inhale sensation in the nostrils, the rise of your chest, the pressure expanding in your belly, or the pause in the middle of the inhale and exhale. Just stay steady on that as long as you can. Allow your mind to be here. You aren’t shutting it off; you are just choosing a focus and anchoring down into it. Thoughts will still arise; emotions may come looking for you. Let that be okay. Don’t yield to them; just notice they are there and then jump right back into focusing on the breath.

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If you got lost in thought or sensation, no judgment. That’s part of the practice. In fact, that is the practice. Now that you know, focus back on your anchor breath, and let your mind settle into it as well.

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If you are noticing intrusive thoughts or difficult emotions or obsessive-compulsive ideation, that’s okay. That’s what you are sitting here for, to notice and still not give in. Just blow it all away with your exhale and sink your mind back into the focus of your breath. Try this for one more moment.

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How do you feel after not letting your mind control you? How do you feel not yielding to every whim of your body wanting to move or get up? Was it okay to stay presently focused on the breath instead of following a thought that would have turned into a movie? Do you notice any difference in the clarity of your mind right now?

The more you practice mindfulness, the more you are able to learn how to stay steady in your thoughts and not allow addictions or tricky emotions get the best of you. One moment at a time, one thought at a time. One practice session at a time. You did amazingly well!

When you are ready, open your eyes and root back into your body. Take this focused, unyielding, powerful self on back into your day. Stay well and strong and in charge.

Mindful Mondays|Week 20: Thinking

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The mind is a complex place. The brain is made up of billions of nerve cells. The brain loves to think and work on our behalf. Even when we think we have stopped “thoughts”, the brain never actually completely stops doing what it needs to do. Beyond thinking, the brain is responsible for memory, the five senses, emotions, and all the regulation of our entire body. If the computer system breaks down, everything falls apart. So we can honor our brain by allowing thought. Channeling ideas, using thinking when most needed, calming the reacting parts, and staying on top of looping thought patterns is where mindfulness is helpful. We will never actually stop thinking, so trying to do so will only bring frustration and more worry. Meditation is about not resisting the brain’s magical thinking powers. It’s about allowing whatever is there to be there, acknowledging it, and then redirecting. This process, over and over and over again, is a mindfulness practice. That’s where you’ve found yourself today. Let’s give this a try.

Find a comfortable, quiet, relaxed space where you won’t be distracted. Take a cleansing breath. Close your eyes when you are ready. You are now inside the blank space of your mind where anything can happen.

You may notice sensations in your body, the urge to get up and jiggle around, feeling too hot or too cold, hunger, thirst, rapid fire thoughts, worries, a sense of panic, boredom, arousal, decompression from the day, coordination of your schedule, the long to-do list, fears, old grief from losing a loved one, or anything else the mind can think of to distract you. First thing to do here is to be okay with any and all of those things I just listed. Recognize this is the brain’s job. We are not going to try to stop the brain’s activity. We aren’t going to try to take away its magical powers.

Ground down into the seat below you and start to find a place in your body where you most feel your ever-constant breath. The cool air in the nostrils, the upper lip as warm exhales pass by, your chest or belly rising, or your rib cage expanding. We’ll call that the breath anchor. Stay with this focus point for as long as you can. When you get lost in a feeling, emotion, sensation, worry, thought, story, fantasy, or anything that’s outside of the focus on the breath, just recognize it. You can even tell yourself “There went my brain, working hard again.” Then gently, without judgment, just come back to the breath.

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Did you get swept away downstream with the ever-so-long list of things you ‘should’ be doing? Did your body convince you to start scratching an itch? Are you planning your future child’s wedding again? All that is fine. Just come back. “That’s just my brain doing a good job,” you can say. Focus back on the breath and just stay with it as long as you can.

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Where is your mind right now? Were you able to stay anchored a little longer this time? Did your brain come back in to do more of its good work? Great! Thank it, and then patiently return its focus on your breath and just breathe.

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Each time you find yourself floating away like a feather, that’s the practice we call mindfulness. Congratulate yourself for noticing you got lost in thought, and then come on back. That’s how we strengthen the brain’s mindfulness capacity, over and over again. Let’s keep going for just another moment.

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You did a great job today. Your brain went on thinking, as it does, and you kept on bringing it back, like a great guru of mindfulness. Be proud of the work you put in and continue bringing yourself back to the present moment throughout the day whenever you notice that your brain has taken over again. Nothing here to be upset about; the brain just loves to think. Allow it; acknowledge it. Be mindful of it as you move kindly back into your day. That’s the practice, and you did amazing work. Until next time, be well, survivors.