I: The Beginning

Mindfulness for Daily Living
  • What is Mindfulness?
    • Mindfulness: attending to present moment experiences with an openness and curiosity to be with what is.
    • Learning to show up to our own lives.
    • We are practicing the experience of being human.
    • There will always be pain and pleasure, but suffering is a choice.
      • Learning to skillfully and kindly navigate the experiences we undergo.
    • Being present is a learned skill.
      • Reconnecting to now through taking a deep breath, touching nature, feeling your body, or any way of bringing attention to the present moment.
    • First rule of mindfulness: do no harm to others or to yourself.
    • There are many breeds of mindfulness: mindful listening, mindful eating, mindful standing, mindful walking, etc.  You name it, it exists!
      • Mindful eating: eating for nourishment rather than utility.
      • Mindful walking: "Walking is like this."
    • Focusing on ourselves to best understand the world around us.
  • Why is mindfulness useful?
    • We have a well-developed reactive mind, but mindfulness fosters responsiveness.  
      • Reactions come from the limbic system (amygdala; middle brain; emotions; evolutionarily very old), while aware responses come from the prefrontal cortex (front brain; executive function, logic, and creativity; evolutionarily very young).
      • Acting out of reactivity often backfires on us.  Creating space in between event and reaction can alter our whole way of working with stimuli that come our way.  Difference between animalistic survival reaction and conscious, thought-out response.
    • Dealing with Difficulty: Pain
      • Resistance to pain only amplifies pain.
      • When we perseverate on something that hurt us (i.e., keep thinking about it even though the pain is over), we prolong our painful experience.
      • Through training our attention, we can work with pain in a helpful, kind way.
      • Learning how to weather the difficulties without making it more difficult on ourselves.
    • Dealing with Difficulty: Emotions
      • 3 basic difficult emotions: fear, anger, and sadness.
        • Often arise together.
      • Emotions are like weather; you feel them, and they always change.
      • For whatever is arising: "May I meet this too with kindness."
    • Dealing with Difficulty: Thoughts
      • Getting to know our thinking.
        • Witnessing rather than judging our experience.
      • We should not believe everything we think!
        • Take thoughts, especially unhelpful ones, with a grain of salt.
      • Noticing what kinds of thinking arise.
        • ex: planning, judging, etc.
        • Labeling thoughts and thought patterns create space for us to choose.
        • Remembering that everything "belongs."  Everything that arises has space and belongs as part of our experience.  We are all human, and we all experience these things together.
      • Responding to our thoughts with "That's interesting," rather than "That's true."
      • Remembering that we are not the problem; we are simply experiencing the weather of our circumstances and emotions, and this will always pass.
      • Finding some space so that we have a choice in what to do.
      • Looping thoughts:
        1. Feel it in the body.
        2. Ask: do I have a need right now?  How can I meet that need?
  • Early Practices
    • Try doing 5 minutes of practice per day.
      • Begin practice by assessing:
        1. What are my thoughts?
        2. What is my mood?
        3. How do those feel in my body?
    • Do a 3 minute mindful activity (like folding laundry, cooking, etc.).
    • The "STOP" Acronym
      • STOP
        • Stop
        • Take a breath
        • Observe your experience
        • Proceed
      • The STOP acronym is an incredibly useful practice.  Try using once per day to stop, check in, and pause.  Rarely do we allow ourselves even a moment to do so.  It is a gift to ourselves and to others to bring more awareness to our experience, and pausing for a moment can make a world of difference in this.  Try setting an alarm on your phone to go off at the same time every day, so that wherever you are, you Stop, Take a breath, Observe, and Proceed.
    • The "RAIN" Acronym
      • RAIN
        • Recognize what you are feeling; "this is ___" (anxiety, anger, joy, etc.)
        • Allow yourself to feel what you are feeling
        • Investigate: mind (thoughts), feelings (mood), and body
        • Non-identification: "this emotion is not me."  Find space within the experience, and let it move through you.
    • Tailor approach to present mental state:
      • When restlessness arises: bring awareness to sound (large field), loosen on anchor (back off)
      • When sleepiness arises: energize, breathe, intensify focus on anchor
      • Five Hindrances (Buddhism)
        1. Craving -- countered by mindfulness
        2. Aversion -- countered by faith
        3. Sleepiness -- countered by energy
        4. Restlessness -- countered by concentration
        5. Doubt -- countered by wisdom
      • ^These are normal and are not signs that we cannot meditate!  Work with what is there.
Notes from MARC MAPS I, taught by Gloria Kamler, November 1, 2017 - December 13, 2017 // Notes from MARC MAPS I, taught by Marvin Belzer, May 15, 2018 - June 19, 2018.

Comments

Post a Comment