The Intention of the Practices
THE BODY SCAN PRACTICE
Can…
• Reconnect us with our bodies. The body is both a sensitive emotional radar and an amplifier for our emotions. By learning to pay attention, read, and understand the messages from our bodies we can become more attuned to this early warning system for unhappiness, anxiety, and stress.
• Offer an alternative way to experience the moment. People who have been depressed, stressed, or anxious often try to think their way out of their troubling feelings. The body scan offers an alternative - moving our attention from being in the ‘head’ and ‘thinking about our experience’, to being in the body and ‘sensing our experience.’
• Develop concentration, calmness, flexibility of attention and mindfulness, gentleness and curiosity.
• Enable us to notice the chatterings of the mind and its wandering as a normal experience.
• Provide a backdrop against which we can begin to notice the ‘doing mode’ of mind and associated feelings – thinking about the practice, thinking about a body part, feeling a sense of irritation, boredom, urgency, wanting to get on.
THE RAISIN PRACTICE and MINDFUL EATING PRACTICES
Can…
• Enable us to notice the contrast between mindful awareness and automatic pilot.
• Enable us to observe things we had not noticed before or had forgotten. We begin to get ‘our moment’s worth’.
• Transform an experience. We can discover new ways of relating to what is happening moment-by-moment.
• Provide a backdrop against which we can begin to notice feelings – a sense of irritation, boredom, urgency, wanting to get on.
• Enable us to notice the chatterings of the mind and its wandering as a normal experience.
MINDFULNESS OF EVERYDAY ACTIVITIES
Can…
• Bring the practice of mindfulness into our everyday lives. This is important because that is where we need it. It is easy to go about our daily activities and mindlessly slip into daydreaming and problem-solving. However, daydreaming is the first cousin of rumination.
• Enable us to notice the contrast between mindful awareness and automatic pilot.
• Enable us to gently wake up to our experience of life, and know what we are doing as we are doing it.
• Provide us with a way to immediately switch modes of mind – shifting from doing to being – making it harder for low mood, anxiety and stress to take root.
GRATITUDE PRACTICES
Attention is like Teflon for pleasant experiences but like Velcro for unpleasant experiences.
Our brains evolved for survival and reproduction, rather than for happiness and peace of mind. This seems to have left us with a natural tendency to notice and give plenty of attention to what’s wrong and to what might be a threat. Noticing and giving time to what is 'okay' and 'lovely' doesn’t happen so easily for most of us, especially when we’re under stress. Gratitude practices help us to train ourselves to bring awareness to the lovely and nourishing aspects of our lives.
Just making a mental note that something is pleasant, uplifting, or beautiful can be helpful. Much more powerful is to pause and appreciate and bring awareness to the details of physical sensations, feelings, thoughts and impulses that arise. By learning to ‘turn good facts into good experiences’ in this way, we can deepen the appreciation and gratitude that we have for these enjoyable moments and thus increase the nourishment that they give us.
FIND AN ANCHOR IN THE BODY: CONVERSATION PRACTICE
Can help us to remain grounded, aware, and attentive to our expereince whilst interacting with others or going about daily tasks.
In mindfulness practices, we choose to hold an aspect of our experience at the forefront of our minds and, as best we can, give it our full attention. This could be, for example, keeping the body in mind as we stand or move by really tuning into the feeling of the feet on the floor or the breath in the body. In this way, we are practising inhabiting our bodies more fully, moment by moment.
However, it’s often more challenging to sustain body awareness when we are interacting with others than when we’re meditating formally or carrying out a practical tasks – it is very easy to shift into automatic pilot when we are speaking or listening.
One way we can practise remaining present when relating to others is to practise finding an anchor in the body and keeping some of our attention in our own experience and giving some of our attention to those we are listening or speaking to. The intention is simply to keep the body in mind while engaging with others. We can practise this with objects (easier) and with people (more challenging!).
MINDFULNESS OF THE BREATH PRACTICE
Can....
• Ground us in the here and now. We can only breathe in this moment. Bringing our full awareness to the breath grounds us in the present.
• Act as an anchor, a single point upon which to gently focus the scattered mind.
• Enable us to see more clearly when the mind has wandered and practice returning again and again to the breath, without self-criticism but with kindness and gentleness.
• Enable us to become aware of 'how things are for us' in this moment, then by simply returning to the breath, gently let go of the tendency to try and fix things straight away.
• Allow us to let go of our need to always be in control. The breath breathes itself. It does not need our conscious input to happen.
• Offer us a gently flowing ‘target’ to focus on during mediation.
• Be practiced anywhere and at anytime. The breath is always with us.
• Be a sensitive monitor for our feelings.
• Bring a sense of stillness, calm, peace and stability.
MINDFULNESS OF THE BREATH AND THE BODY PRACTICE
In addition to the points outlined in 'Mindfulness of the Breath' above, this practice can...
• Allow us to tune into read-outs in the body: patterns of breathing, sensations in different parts of the body, and the body as a whole, including indications of emotional states too. (which will become the focus)
• Allow recognition of habitual patterns of reaction to discomfort: tensing, bracing, pulling away, etc.
• Enable us to deal skilfully with discomfort: not adding extra discomfort, but responding gently, turning towards, allowing, and in time accepting things as they are in this moment.
SITTING WITH BREATH, BODY, SOUND AND THOUGHTS PRACTICE
In addition to the points outlined in 'Mindfulness of the Breath and Body' above, this practice can...
• Enable awareness of the natural flux of experience (sound, body sensations, thoughts and emotions).
• Help us attend to sensory experience as it is, aside from mental labelling, internal narratives, etc. (sound).
• Help us learn decentring (from thoughts and emotions).
• Enable us to notice recurring patterns (with respect to thoughts and emotions).
• Allow us to notice what happens if we simply allow thoughts to come and go without engaging with them.
• Help us become aware of the quiet, or shadowy thoughts that ‘come from behind’.
• Enable us to notice how some thoughts relate to sensations in the body (emotions).
• Help us attend to and accept what is arising in our experience in this moment (choiceless awareness)
• Enable a greater sense of spaciousness
More generally, the practice as a whole allows us to notice our tendency to attach to some experiences, and to feel aversion to others (be those thoughts, emotions, body sensations or sounds)
SITTING WITH DIFFICULTY PRACTICE
Can…
• Help us to learn to approach difficulties, see them clearly, and remain in contact with them in a new way.
• Enable us to disengage from adhesive rumination through focusing attention on sensations in the body
• Help us to respond to difficulties with kindness and curiosity, instead of automatic aversion or judgement
• Over time, reduce our vulnerability to stress
• Be an emotionally challenging practice. For that reason, it is important for participants to care for themselves, that is, to monitor their internal state so that they can choose wisely: how close to come to the difficulty and for how long; when to steady themselves by returning to the breath; whether to return to the difficulty, in the body, after steadying themselves – or not.
THE THREE-MINUTE BREATHING SPACE EXERCISE
• The breathing space is THE way to step out of automatic pilot and reconnect with the present moment.
• The aim of this programme is to use mindfulness as a way to gather the scattered mind and relate more skillfully to difficult emotions as they arise, wherever you are.
• In most situations it’s not possible to close your eyes and meditate for 20 or 40 minutes!
• To bridge the gap between extended “formal” meditation practice and everyday life where you actually need to use mindfulness skills, we use a mini-meditation: the three-minute breathing space.
THE THREE-MINUTE BREATHING SPACE EXERCISE - EXTENDED INSTRUCTIONS
Can
• Enable us to bring the lessons of “Sitting with Difficulty” into the flow of everyday life.
• Allow us to be present with difficulties, see them clearly, and remain in contact with them in a new way.
• Provide us with a gateway to clearer awareness of thought, and of skillful action.
BRINGING AWARENESS TO PLEASANT EXPERIENCES
Can...
• Enables us to become more aware of our earliest reactions to our moment-by-moment experiences. We react to incoming stimuli on the basis of whether they feel pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. These can be trigger points for the mind needing things to be different to how they are – reacting with aversion, or to wander off into streams of thought or rumination.
• Help us to notice what positive things are happening in our lives and to cultivate appreciation.
• Allow us to simply experience and appreciate the moment as it is without adding further thoughts, trying to hold on to something pleasant or avoid something unpleasant.
• Help us deconstruct fleeting or powerful experiences into their constituent elements (ingredients of experience) such as thoughts, feelings, body sensations. This provides opportunities to respond differently, skillfully, rather than automatically with habitual patterns.
• Enable us to recognise the sensitivity of the body to our thoughts and feelings from moment-to-moment.
BRINGING AWARENESS TO UNPLEASANT EXPERIENCES
Can...
• Be the first step in learning to relate to differently to our experience. By bringing awareness to each situation, especially those we label as good or bad, we start to notice the very beginning stages of aversion, our tendency to avoid or push away the experiences we find unpleasant.
• Enable us to tune into how aversion feels in the body. Aversion or 'not wanting' itself feels unpleasant. If we look carefully, over time we may recognize the difference between unpleasant feelings and the our reaction of “not wanting” or pushing away. The body can give us clues—you may have noticed tension, contraction, or resistance in the body linked to “not wanting.”
• Reduce the potency and impact of unpleasant experiences by deconstructing them into their constituent parts — body sensations, feelings, and thoughts. Often, it’s the stories we tell ourselves about our unpleasant experiences—the thoughts that get triggered by them—that create and sustain the suffering we experience.
THE MINDFUL MOVEMENT PRACTICES
Can…
• Reconnect us with our bodies through movement.
• Offer an alternative way to experience the moment. People who have been depressed, stressed, or anxious often try to think their way out of their troubling feelings. The mindful movement practice offers an alternative - moving our attention from being in the ‘head’ and ‘thinking about our experience’, to being in the body and ‘sensing our experience.’
• Develop concentration, mindfulness, gentleness and curiosity.
• Provide a backdrop against which we can notice the chatterings of mind and associated feelings – thinking about the practice, thinking about a body part, feeling a sense of irritation, boredom, urgency, wanting to get on.
• Offer a step towards mindfulness in everyday life, everyday movements.
• Help us to notice when we are wishing things could be different, rather than accepting things as they are.
• Teach acceptance: we learn to experience and work with our physical limitations.
• Teach us to take care of ourselves, to listen to what our bodies tell us and to respect its limits and needs.
MINDFUL WALKING PRACTICE
Can...
• Be a useful alternative practice when we feel too driven, or agitated to 'be still' and focus on the breath in a sitting meditation.
• Help us to feel more emotionally grounded in difficult times. For some, tuning into the moment-by-moment physical sensations of walking can bring a greater sense of stability than trying to sit still.
• Help us to let go of striving and doing. By learning to walk for its own sake, rather than to get somewhere, we gently let go of doing-mode and shift into being-mode.
• Provide us with a practice that is easily transferable to everyday life. We can walk mindfully to the car, through the supermarket, or up the stairs to bed. In this way we can use small moments in our day to be mindful.