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 22: Validation

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Start today by finding a comfortable space somewhere familiar to you. Let any last movements needed in your legs or neck or shoulders to squirm out. Sit with a tall spine but without tension. Imagine a string from the top of your head to the sky above holding you up. Feel into the support of your seat to feel grounded and feel into the posture to find a sense of alertness yet ease. Look around your space for just a moment to get a snapshot of the objects and colors around you. Ground into your body and its connection to the world around you. When you are ready and feel secure, close your eyes to shut out all the outside stimuli.

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Now that you’ve allowed yourself into this inner realm of yours, what do you find in here? Do thoughts start racing? Are you still seeing the silhouetted memories of your outside room? Do you find a sensation in your body? Take a minute to just explore before we find an anchor. Anything that comes up, just acknowledge it. It has a valid space here. Any emotion, any tingling, any fantasy, any administrative thoughts — they are all valid in your inner realm. Try not to reject them but validate them. “I see you.” “Ah, here you are in my inner space, coming to find me.” “Thank you for showing me that.” Give that a try for a moment.

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Now that you’ve taken a moment to validate your inner realm and all its immediate needs and wants — let’s ask this wild canvas of thoughts and feelings to clear off for a few moments. You gave it time to be heard and validated. Now you’d like these things to validate your meditation moment with peace and stillness. Take three cleansing, deep belly breaths and come to a quietness in your spirit.

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This time that you set aside to still yourself is valid. The need and want is valid. The quietness is valid. The desire for peace and expansion is valid. I hear you. I see you. This is the work. Find your breath exactly as it is. No need to try to change its pattern or rhythm. Just follow your breath and let your time be precious.

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Come back now to your mind and thoughts and feelings and body. Thank them for validating your time spent with your focus off of them and on your own inner peace. Both things have validity. Both things are priceless. Before you go back to the whims of your brain, take another cleansing breath, and thank your mind for giving you space to be present. Anytime the demands of the outside world or your own inner self become too much — just pause and validate their concerns, and then ask for a little space to just be for a moment. The ebb and flow is a beautiful relationship between the Doing and the Being of life.

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When you’re ready, you can open your eyes. Step peacefully back into your day. Feel validated for this time and come back whenever you would like. Be well, survivors.

Mindful Mondays|Week 21: Uncover

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When you slow down and take time to be in your own space, inside your own mind and body, in a relaxed environment — you tend to discover some things your brain is trying to work out or complete or solve. This often can happen when we lay down at night. When the body stops and the space gets dark and quiet, your brain can finally have your full attention and start its laundry list of things it’s wanting you to work out from the day, about your coworkers or spouse, the schedule, planning for the future, and worrying about the past. This ends up being an unhealthy time for your mind to start chattering because sleep is of utmost importance. Many survivors struggle with sleep disruptions and insomnia because the brain is using the space to work through everything it has ever been through, and it takes so long to calm its overactive nervous system.

If this is you, you probably find the same thing happens when you hit the meditation pillow where, for some, taming the monkey mind seems unreasonably difficult. That’s very normal, actually. If being here every day for ten minutes is the one time of day you are able to sacrifice and carve out as alone, quiet, relaxed, dark, peaceful space, then your experiences with monkey mind are extra common.

So — today is an unconventional practice just for you. I want to honor you for taking the time to be here, and I want you to try to be mindful inside of your non-stop brain. We aren’t going to focus on the breath or body or an anchor. Now is the time to let your mind run freely. What this mindfulness practice today is to watch it happen. Give your brain an open field for full frolicking mode — just try to not let your mind get completely lost in thought. Try to watch your thoughts, from a non-judgmental seat like a tourist would watch monkeys swinging from tree to tree in the jungle. Try to notice your body sensations while thinking. Be extra aware of emotions that arise while the thoughts jump around you. Follow the thoughts to see how far into oblivion they can go, and then chuckle to yourself as you notice the absurdity of the movie playing out in your head. Maybe there is a serious issue that comes to your mind, and you can just follow the journey the brain goes on trying to make sense of it. Maybe a difficult emotion is going to arise; just watch the story is that is causing it. Wriggle along with the storyline to see if your brain can work itself out. If you lose contact with the space, sensations, or your point of view, notice that and come back to focusing on the thoughts drifting through. Let’s allow this time to be the creative playground for your mind to get lost in wonder today.

Close your eyes and see what you uncover in your mind for a few minutes.

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Welcome back. Open your eyes and wiggle your fingers and toes. Reground into the room you are in. 

When your brain had your full attention, what did it uncover? Is there some vision or goal you need to go write down like a dream journal? Is there a pressing matter you need to add to your to-do that you had been forgetting? Did you uncover a new perspective to a trauma trigger that you had earlier this week? Did you solve an argument you and your partner had?

Whatever you uncovered is precious. Treat it like a newly discovered gem. Your brain created an idea, calculated stuff, organized an issue, or talked you onto or off of a ledge — now you know what it wanted to tell you while you were busy all day long. Yet you allowed the thinking to uncover itself in a process of mindfulness — you stayed present to your body and emotions and the world around you without getting too swept away.

If you found this very helpful, maybe you could find a space to add in a 5–10-minute monkey mind session throughout the day. Meditation is to help improve mental focus and to stay present in the moment. Today we wanted to see what it would look like without a settled focus, just for fun. If your mind was going crazy with delight for you allowing it to flutter around its playground, perhaps a few minutes of that right before you begin a meditation practice would help settle the monkeys so you can work on staying present in the moment or focused on an anchor.

This is a new tool for you to play with as you become more aware of what your mind, body, and spirit all want to uncover for you. This was great and important work. Be well, survivors.

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.

Mindful Mondays|Week 17: Quietness

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Sometimes allowing quietness can be triggering for trauma survivors. When it’s quiet, you can hear your heart and head much more loudly. That may not seem like a positive choice because what’s in your body or mind may scare you or worry you. In the solace without noise, you may be confronted with some problematic thoughts or painful emotions. While that’s really common, it’s also totally normal and okay. Staying for a moment with those, you can then find an anchor like a soft gaze on the floor to focus on or listening to the rhythm of your heartbeat. Your soul may muster back up more of those thoughts and emotions, but you can sit with them again for a brief period and then go back to your focal point. You can watch the difficulty rise up, recognize how it shows up in your body, be okay with it, and then choose silence again by directing your brain back to its anchor — such as the breath or the pattern of rain tinkering on the window. It’s inevitable that when you slow down, still yourself, settle in, and pause — that the quiet around will be a lot for your brain to manage at first. Your mind wants to think, plan, worry, figure things out. Your heart wants to express the grief, anxiety, sadness, or joy that it feels. That’s what they were built to do. Anything that comes up is okay. It’s information for you to make note of so you can explore with curiosity later, and then to gently guide your brain back to its anchor and ask it to focus again. In this quietness, you can find peace between the balance of internal movement from thoughts, feelings, sensations, tingles, vibrations to internal quiet of stillness, solace, calm. Let’s try this today.

Whatever location and body position you’ve found yourself in for today’s meditation is wonderful. Stay there and settle down by feeling the weight of your body on the ground below you. Nestle your spirit into the safety of your body, this space, and this time. Close your eyes and search around for the anchor that feels right for you. Maybe a vision in your mind, your breath, or a noise around you. Whatever you choose, just get quiet and then let that quietness come like a blanket over you.

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When your thoughts and emotions rise up, let them rise. Don’t fight them or force them. Just watch them come in to try to make noise, get curious about them, recognize where you feel them in your body, and then just recenter your mind back on the quietness of your anchor.

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If you are lost in sensation or worry, that’s okay. Be kind to your feelings and mental state, and gently draw yourself back into the solace. If you need, you can even give your soul a soft “shhhh” sound to lull it into the quiet rest. Ground into your anchor and be still.

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Coming back to your body now; feel the space around you and your body in that space. Slowly open your eyes when you are ready.

Entering back into the noise of the world around you, remember that whenever you need a moment of quiet, you have that inside you anytime you wish to return.