Demystifying Mindfulness

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Photo by Wang Xi on Unsplash

Mindfulness is entering the mainstream. Right now, our awareness of mindfulness – what it is, how to do it, what benefits it holds – is probably where yoga was about twenty years ago. And like our early encounters with yoga, we’re just starting to fully understand what mindfulness is, and what it can do for us. 

Let’s start with a definition: At its most basic, mindfulness simply means paying attention – but in a particular way. More specifically, it means being present to what’s happening in the moment, and in particular, noticing what you’re experiencing, both internally and externally. It also means staying in the here and now, as opposed to living in the past or trying to predict the future. And finally, it means doing all of this without judgment.

Being Present

Think about when you’re driving home from work. Have you ever had the experience of all of a sudden looking at your surroundings and having no idea where the last two miles went? That’s because your attention was…well, elsewhere. And not only weren’t you aware of the scenery going by, you probably weren’t aware of what you were thinking about, or feeling emotionally, or experiencing physically.

To be clear, you certainly were thinking and feeling and your senses were all working just fine – you just weren’t conscious of any of these things in a particularly attentive way. And to some extent, that’s how it should be. If we were always taking note of everything we think and feel and experience, we couldn’t function. Our natural filters keep us (relatively) sane. 

That sweet spot, in between zoning out and sensory overload, is an important aspect of mindfulness. We become aware of what we’re thinking, we can identify our emotional state, and we’re paying attention to the information we’re getting through our senses. Not every moment of every day, but enough to be able to monitor what we’re experiencing, and that is the first step towards being able to affect our experience. In other words, the more we know what’s going on, the greater the likelihood of our being to make the changes we want to make – in our thoughts, our feelings, and our experience of our world.

The most important aspect of connecting to our breath is that is increases our physical awareness of the present moment in a very tangible, concrete way. Once we become aware of what is happening in our body, we can connect more easily to our thoughts and feelings.

How, then, do we find this sweet spot? What with thoughts, feelings and sensory input, how do we pay attention to what matters without getting overwhelmed? What’s the app for that?

Fortunately, we carry it with us all the time, and it’s completely hands-free, so you can access it even while you’re driving (or cooking or eating or showering). It’s our breath.

Breath is great for helping you to pay attention because it’s always right there, waiting for you. And while the rest of you is there too, the breath is especially useful because it has all kinds of components to it that you can focus on: there are the different stages of breath (inhale, pause, exhale, pause); there’s the sensation of the air moving in and out of your nose or mouth; there’s the movement of different parts of your torso; there’s the sound your breath makes (which you can increase or decrease if you like); heck, if you’re doing this in a really cold environment, you can even see your breath. So much to pay attention to! Which means that when we start drifting away, we only need to remind ourselves of our breath, and we’re right back in the awareness groove.

There’s also the added benefit of breath being a natural mellowing agent. Often, our runaway thoughts, including the ones that are giving us a hard time about our circumstances or feelings, can really ratchet up the tension. When we come back to our breath – good old, slow and steady, ever-present breath – it can help us find a moment of calm in the middle of our thought storm. Just watching it can do that; or, if we like, we can regulate it a bit. When we slow it down and make it deeper, we’re bringing more oxygen to our brain and we’re stimulating the parasympathetic nervous system, which is our body’s natural stress-reducer.

But the most important aspect of connecting to our breath is that is increases our physical awareness of the present moment in a very tangible, concrete way. Once we become aware of what is happening in our body, we can connect more easily to our thoughts and feelings. And that’s when things start to get really interesting.

Feeling All The Feels

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Photo by Faye Cornish on Unsplash

“You’re overreacting – calm down!”

Has there ever been a phrase more likely to do the opposite of what it’s intended to do? Something has happened that’s got you upset, and some well-meaning soul has decided that the best thing to say in this situation is that, essentially, you shouldn’t be feeling what you’re feeling. Now, if we were entirely rational people, we might say, “Oh, of course you’re right, my emotional experience should be in line with what you think it should be – I’ll just shift my reaction so that it is more moderate and therefor more comfortable for you.”

But we’re not entirely rational. We have feelings, and sometimes they’re pretty strong, and we’re not always in control of them. In fact, at least in our initial reaction, we’re not in control at all. We feel what we feel. And as hard as that may be for those around us – and even for ourselves – accepting that truth goes a long way towards enhancing our mental and emotional wellbeing.

Reaction vs. Response

Let’s back up and take a look at some definitions. When we experience an event, we often have an emotional reaction. We literally feel something in our body such as increased muscle tension, a sudden flush, or a knot in the pit of our stomach. And we associate these physical experiences with an emotion. And according to most psychological research, that emotion is always some version of one of the five universal human emotions: Anger, joy, fear, sadness, or disgust. Feeling frustrated or annoyed? That’s anger. Nervous or anxious? Those are forms of fear.  And so on. (For a great overview of all the emotions and their related forms, with a really cool graphic interface, check out The Atlas of Emotions.)

We feel what we feel. And as hard as that may be for those around us – and even for ourselves – accepting that truth goes a long way towards enhancing our mental and emotional wellbeing.

And here’s the thing about those emotional reactions: we can’t control them. They happen automatically, without thought or volition. The intensity of how each of us reacts to any given situation is a unique mix of our own personality and psychological make-up, which is why something that makes one person sad may not have much of an effect on another person. But that doesn’t mean it’s any less valid. So being told you’re overreacting, or that you shouldn’t feel a certain way, is sort of like saying you’re wrong for preferring chocolate ice cream over vanilla. It’s not a conscious choice, it’s how you’re built.

It may seem surprising to suggest that we have no control over our emotions, but here’s where we need to make an important distinction: we can’t control our emotional reactions, but we can (usually) control how we respond to those emotions.

That’s a distinction we’re not often taught to make. We usually believe they go hand in hand: Being angry means you yell, being sad means you cry. And since you can (usually) choose not to yell or cry, that must mean that we can choose whether to feel angry or sad.

I say “usually” because there are times when the reaction is so strong that the response is nearly impossible to moderate, such as when we are suddenly informed of a tragedy and we burst into tears. However, we can learn to shape our responses to even the most intense emotional reactions, because our responses are based on our thoughts and beliefs, and we can change those.

But when we or someone else won’t make the distinction between our reaction and our response, it can feel like we are being told that how we feel is wrong, when what’s probably really going on is that how we are responding may be problematic.

For example, when a friend does something you strongly disagree with, you might feel a rush of anger. Nothing wrong with that, since it’s not under your control. However, if you choose to respond with violence (verbal or physical), that could be an issue, and that’s something you could learn to control. 

We can learn to shape our responses to even the most intense emotional reactions, because our responses are based on our thoughts and beliefs, and we can change those.

Or, if you are seeing a response in someone else that you find challenging, it’s perfectly fine to tell them you don’t like their behavior, but it doesn’t make much sense to tell them that what they’re feeling is wrong. Behavior can be changed. And over time, even emotional reactions can change, if we come to see situations with a new perspective. But in the moment, we feel what we feel. We can only affect the response to that feeling.

So the next time you or someone else tells you you’re overreacting, remember: there’s no universal right way to feel about something. You’re allowed to feel exactly how you feel. At the same time, if you find that your response  to how you feel is harmful to you or those around you, you may want to examine the thoughts and beliefs that lead to that response, and make some changes.

Working With Anger In Troubled Times

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“Being angry all the time is exhausting and corrosive. Not being angry feels morally irresponsible.” @timgrierson

For many of us, it seems, this tweet concisely characterizes the emotional turmoil we’ve been experiencing for the last 18 months or so. 

I’ve certainly been wrestling with this tension, so I thought I’d share a few of the ways I’ve found that mindfulness can help relieve some (though by no means all) of the stress.

The first part has to do with the anger and outrage that arises when we learn of the latest act of injustice. If we’re at all engaged, it’s nearly impossible to avoid those initial feelings of rage, frustration, fear and/or sadness. Emotions arise spontaneously, and there’s little we can do to stop them.

We can, however, learn to step away from them, to give ourselves breaks, to not remain fixated. 

A few simple practices:

  1. Consume less news. There’s only so much information we need to be informed; beyond that, we can start to feel overwhelmed.
  1. Be aware of your communication. If, in conversations (including on social media),  you regularly talk about how angry/sad/hopeless you feel, those feelings will be magnified. Similarly, avoid non-constructive arguments.
  1. Stay in the present. Rather than focussing on how awful things “will be” in the future (and we really can’t be sure), put your energy into addressing what’s happening right now.
  1. Find ways to engage constructively. Learn about and connect with others who are doing the same. Celebrate the little victories.
  1. Practice gratitude. Especially for those of us whose rights and safety aren’t under immediate threat, take a moment to appreciate our circumstances. Then find a way to use our relative good fortune for the benefit of others.

Now, as soon as I think about doing these things, the “morally irresponsible” part shows up. I start to feel guilty. “How can I relax for a minute,” I think, “when things are so awful?”

I approach this mostly from a pragmatic perspective, and I ask myself these questions:

  1. Is keeping myself in a perpetual state of emotional turmoil actually helping?
  1. Under what emotional conditions am I most effective – calm and determined or furious and reactive?
  1. Am I substituting feeling outrage for actually doing something?

And then there’s one more question that often arises: Am I doing enough?

The answer I’ve found is twofold: No, I’m not doing enough, because no one person can ever do enough; and yes, I’m doing enough, because every action makes a difference.

If you’re engaged, anger is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to be constant, and in fact, we may be more effective if we learn to take a break from it now and then.