Reach Remarkable

Mindfulness

Zebras running on the Botswana savanna
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Mindfulness, Resilience

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers

This is the title of a book by Prof. Robert Sapolsky, and it has a simple message (though the book is anything but simple). For me, it’s a message that pulls together two factors, a similarity and a difference. Both zebras and humans are mammals and share some aspects of biology, including the core mechanisms of a stress response. And we are different because we have a thinking mind – at least, we believe, more so than zebras.

When we perceive a threat, our bodies start a biological process via the sympathetic nervous system, often called the fight, flight, freeze response. It puts us on high alert towards the perceived threat. It’s driven and supported by a hormonal cascade, including an increase of adrenaline, noradrenaline, and, a few seconds later, cortisol.

The terminology of this biological response isn’t important, but the experience will be familiar. We will have all benefited from it (running for the train or a final burst of energy to finish a task) and almost certainly suffered with it too (I can’t think straight or sleep).

The second core mechanism is our ability to think. Zebras, when not running for their lives, seem to enjoy grazing in the sun. And, although we may enjoy time in the sun, we’re also quite good at thinking ahead to problems that might occur or going over ones from the past, both of which can also lead to a stress response. We’re not about to be eaten, but we can imagine all sorts of unpleasant things that might happen. As the author Mark Twain said, “I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.”

We could make light of this psychological stress with phrases like ‘it’s all in your head’ or ‘it might never happen.’ There is a grain of truth to this, but it also underestimates the power of the mind. Our brain is the master organ, and the body will prioritise it over everything else. It’s the central arbitrator of every pleasantness and unpleasantness, every drive and break; nothing is more powerful. So, let’s not use phrases like ‘it’s all in your head’ as a simile for it’s not real; there is nothing more real, to us.

This isn’t great news if you’ve ever suffered from stress, anxiety, or other psychological issues. But it can also be good news if you have approaches to help use that power to support yourself. Mindfulness is a set of techniques or skills that help us develop this power, as are therapy models like CBT or any approach that allows us to combine intellect and behaviour to make a difference.

So, why don’t zebras get ulcers? Our zebra is out on the savanna, grazing. It sees or hears something suspicious, which triggers the stress response supplying the focus and energy to literally run for its life. Either the zebra is caught and eaten, a permanent ending to its stress. Or, more likely, it escapes, and the stress response has done its job and abates. Relax, no more tension, back to munching grass.

Our psychologically driven stress doesn’t always have such a clear ending, which, if unmanaged, can lead to it lingering much longer than is helpful, becoming chronic (long-lasting) – which is the connection in humans to stress ulcers.

I consider short- or long-term (resilience) approaches for managing psychological stress. Though, any strategy, if overdone or poorly done, can have downsides, which are more evident in some coping mechanisms, like drinking alcohol, smoking, and over-eating.

Other short-term tools, like exercise, relaxation, or breathing techniques, can be helpful. I think of mindfulness as helping us develop long-term approaches to managing stress. Although not a perfect analogy, one is like taking a painkiller for a headache, and the other is learning to stop the headache from coming. Both are valuable.

What short and long-term approaches do you find helpful for managing your stress and improving resilience?

Woman thinking = Reach Remarkable
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Mindfulness, Wellbeing

We become what we think about

Have you ever tried not to think? Even better, tried not to think about something specific – like white bears or noisy chickens? Once we become aware of something, consciously trying to avoid it often encourages the mind to keep checking in, to make sure we’re not thinking about it – and so, repeatedly thinking about it.

This phenomenon was tested formally in the late 1980s by psychologist Wegner and colleagues, leading to the theory of ironic mental processes of thought suppression, or the white bear phenomenon. It appears anytime we use thinking to try and stop thinking. For example, when we try not to think of unpleasant things or use thinking to try and create something that requires us not to think – consider ‘forcing’ ourselves to fall asleep or choking in sport.

Now consider how we learn. In short, to consciously learn something, we focus on it or engage in it repeatedly over time. And eventually, our brain creates more persistent neural networks that we see as skills or understanding.

This learning process isn’t just about external skills like driving or gardening; it’s everything, including how we think. If we repeatedly think in specific ways, we get better at automatically thinking in those ways. If we’re always self-critical, we get better at being critical, and if we’re always supportive, we get better at that too.

We get better at doing what we repeat. Which you might word as: we become what we think about most.

At what would you like to better? When I’m asked variations on this question, my initial response is often that I want to ‘stop’ doing x or y, stop criticising my children’s behaviour, stop spending so much time on Facebook, stop…

Unfortunately, this ‘stop doing’ thinking pattern, supported by ironic mental processes, can have the opposite effect in the long run (even if there’s an initial reduction). So, what might we do?

You probably already know. It’s the what can I start doing approach. For example:

  • What can I do?
  • How will I behave when…?
  • How can I help?
  • What is a wise way to respond?
  • What would support my wellbeing here?
  • What response would support the wellbeing of others?

To help unseat persistent unhelpful (or ‘negative’) thinking, we might also start writing about the situations or the thinking itself to see it a little more objectively. The process of noticing our thinking patterns rather than trying to ‘stop’ them can cultivate a lighter emotional approach, which both reduces their unpleasant impact and allows us to start choosing how to respond or what to start doing.

Mindfulness isn’t the only approach here, but it is a comprehensive one (though mindfulness isn’t about stopping your mind from thinking).  And we can combine it with other methods for resilience, leading to more proactive ways of choosing who and how we become.  So, when you find yourself saying ‘oh, it’s just how I am‘ remember, you’ve practised yourself into how you are now AND you can practice your way out.

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Mindfulness, Pandemic, Resilience

Have you improved your resilience?

We went into a protective COVID-19 lockdown, then came out.  We had a mostly glorious summer.  Then, schools, colleges and universities went back to having students in classrooms with people standing in front of them teaching (who’d have thought this would ever be a surprising thing?).  There were some real challenges in universities initially, but things even there are heading back towards ‘normal’.  Even if you have no direct connection to people starting back to full-time education, you may be impacted by the slow creep of our old normality re-establishing itself, even if we have to wear face coverings whenever we’re close to others.  Now we’re back into a lockdown.

Near the start of the lockdown version 1, my monthly newsletter mentioned how we might be adapting to the new normal… and then we started to go back to our old normal, and now a slightly new normal.  The signs look good for a 2021 COVID-19 vaccine (e.g. see The Conversation here), so things are likely to swing back, but this is a time of testing.  So what have you learned about yourself?

Shakespeare’s Hamlet includes the phrase, “There is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so.” I dislike this quote because we could read it as blame – if you’re suffering, it’s your own fault – a mostly unhelpful perspective in my view.  Some of us are dealing with higher vulnerability, perhaps with the loss of loved ones, financial or relationship challenges and many other issues caused by a situation that we couldn’t reasonably predict.

But, it also represents an element of hope.  How we feel doesn’t have to be the whole story.  Psychological flexibility is a key aspect of resilience.  If we’re flexible, we’re more likely to see options and opportunities.  Unfortunately, unpleasant emotion – anger, fear, frustration, sadness and so on – tend to take away flexibility.  They can cause us to narrow our attention to the object of our emotion.

My own experience of homeschooling my eleven-year-old son during the first lockdown is a good example for me.  Math’s was a real challenge.  I would get frustrated, he would get frustrated – and in that frustration, we would close down, lose flexibility.  I couldn’t see another way!  Explaining something in a slightly louder higher-pitched voice, for some reason didn’t help.

Eventually, I would take a break.  Slowly, alternative ways of describing a problem or ways of dealing with the situation would creep in.  Over the weeks, I learned a lot – yes, about my son, and about angles in triangles (it’s been a long time), but I also learned how to spot and manage my and my sons rising frustration before it took away our flexibility.

I learned to be aware of the rising frustration and work with it through mindfulness, which itself is a learnable skill that has been invaluable in my own life.  I’m sure that you have been through change, and with that change have developed.  In what ways have you developed that will help you deal constructively with future challenge and adversity?

There’s nothing quite like real life for learning lessons – but it also requires an openness to learning.  William B. Urvine’s book, The Stoic Challenge, describes seeing challenges as tests of your ability to get through something while maintaining creative control of your choices [that’s my summary] – which is one way of maintaining a creative and realistic outlook.

Perhaps you feel like you know yourself a little better, know when to take a break, or when to speak openly with friends or others who will support you.  How the amount of sleep you have impacted you for better or worse;  how to mentally stand-back, maybe taking a few breaths to gain some perspective rather than ploughing into an argument?  Maybe you’ve learned how much impact your environment has on how you think and operate?  Perhaps you’re a little more open to change, able to adapt more flexibly?

Reflect, and see how the challenges of recent times have helped you develop.

Header - good or bad perception
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Mindfulness, Resilience

Using daily life to grow resilience

Schools and colleges shortly universities have gone back to having students in classrooms with people standing in front of them teaching.  Who’d have thought this would ever be a surprising thing?  Even if you have no direct connection to people starting back to full-time education you may be impacted by the slow creep of our old normality re-establishing itself, even if we have to wear face coverings whenever we’re in close proximity to others.

Near the start of the lockdown, my post Staying flexible when it’s tough mentioned how we may be adapting to the new normal… and now we’re doing it again!  The signs look good for a 2021 COVID-19 vaccine (e.g. see The Conversation here), but this is a time of testing, so what have we learned about ourselves?  I don’t mean as a whole, I mean each of us as individuals.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet includes the phrase, “There is nothing good or bad, only thinking makes it so.”  I dislike this quote because we could read it as blame – if you’re suffering, it’s your own fault – a wholely unhelpful perspective in my view!  Some of us are dealing with higher vulnerability, perhaps with the loss of loved ones, financial challenges and many other issues entirely caused by the situation that we couldn’t reasonably predict.

But, there’s also some truth in there, and it represents an element of hope.  How we feel, doesn’t have to be the whole story.  Psychological flexibility is a key aspect of resilience.  If we’re flexible we’re more likely to see options and opportunities.  Unfortunately, unpleasant emotion – anger, fear, frustration, sadness and so on – tend to take away flexibility.  They can cause us to narrow our attention to the object of our emotion.

My own experience of homeschooling my eleven-year-old son is a good example for me.  Math’s was a real challenge.  I would get frustrated, he would get frustrated – and in that frustration, we would close down, lose flexibility.  I couldn’t see another way!  Explaining something in a slightly louder higher-pitched voice, for some reason didn’t help.

Eventually, I would take a break.  Slowly, alternative ways of describing a problem, or ways of dealing with a situation would creep in.  Over the weeks, I learned a lot – yes, about my son, and about angles in triangles (it’s been a long time), but I also learned how to spot and manage my and my sons rising frustration more frequently before it took away our flexibility.

This ability to be aware of the rising frustration and work with it are aspects of awareness, which is a learnable skill – most commonly through mindfulness training – that has been invaluable in my own life… and of course something that I’ve now been teaching for seven years (see Mindfulness at work, or my public courses).

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Mindfulness

Mindfulness is not… about stopping your mind thinking

Perhaps you’ve heard someone suggest ‘don’t think about pink elephants,’ or some such example in order to demonstrate how tricky it can be to not think about something that has just been suggested.  This paradox was first written about by a group of research psychologist’s, led by Daniel Wegner, in a 1987 paper Paradoxical effects of thought suppression in what have come to be known as the ‘White Bear’ experiments.  After further study, Prof. Wegner proposed the theory of ironic processes of mental control, describing the ironic or paradoxical effects of thought suppression.

The super summary of the paradox is that the more you try not to think about something, particularly if there is associated emotion or anxiety, the more your mind brings your attention back to the thought – it’s called a rebound effect.  In teaching mindfulness, I often describe this phenomenon as, trying to push away unwanted thoughts (or feelings) gives them the energy to push back.  Sometimes you can distract yourself enough that the thoughts seem to go away, but usually, they’re waiting for the next moment in which to jump out on you again.

If during a mindful meditation practice you find yourself trying to push away thoughts, or trying to ‘stop thinking,’ by dragging your awareness back to, say, your body breathing, there’s a good chance you’ll also find yourself frustrated by rebounding.

So, the first useful realisation is simply, don’t try to stop your mind thinking about something, and indeed mindfulness meditation is not about stopping your mind from thinking.  So, what is it about?

A much more productive approach is to be able to watch your mind thinking, without being caught up in the thoughts.  This detachment or more formally, meta-cognition, takes some practice (that’s why we call it mindfulness ‘practice’), but it can have surprisingly helpful results.

In a typical concentration practice, like watching your body breathing, the intention is to bring your focus and awareness to the chosen anchor (the breath in this case).  But, what do you do if you’re constantly interrupted with ‘thinking’?  Well, firstly, recognise that this is a normal process of our mind – it’s what our thinking mind is designed to do, so as far as possible remain objective, curious or relaxed about it.

As soon as you notice your attention has been snagged by some thought, you can feel pleased that you’re back in the present moment, aware of the thinking you’ve just been engaged in.  Next you might acknowledge the thought by labelling or describing it (e.g. ‘ahh, that’s planning again’), and then choose whether to stay with the thought or come back to your breath.  If you choose to come back to your breath, you’re allowing the thought to go.  And, although this might sound like we’re stopping the thought – the difference between ‘trying to stop it’ and acknowledging it and choosing a different focal point, is in practice, very different.

We’re allowing and accepting both that our mind thinks, and that our attention will be snagged by that thinking.  This gentler approach ultimately means we react differently to the thoughts. In fact, we react less to the thoughts, which is less likely to trigger the ironic processes, and so fewer thoughts snag our awareness.  Overall, by not trying to stop the thinking, we get more choice over where we place our attention.

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Mindfulness

Mindfulness is not… about relaxation

For this, the first in a series of ‘Mindfulness is not…’ posts, I’d like to deal with the most common misconception I meet, and one that can pervade even those who regularly practice.  The reason is that sometimes mindfulness meditation can be relaxing… but it certainly isn’t the intention of the practice.

So, what is the intention?  Well, you’ve probably seen a definition of mindfulness, mine is ‘choosing to be aware, in the present moment, without judgement.’  The word mindfulness is a translation of the Pali work sati, which some also translate as awareness, though its somewhat more complex than any single translation (for example, see Mindfulness, by any other name) – though I’ve never seen any connection with the idea of relaxation… quite the opposite in fact.

Using a typical meditation as an example of formal mindfulness practice – choosing an anchor, such as the movement of body as you breath, and bringing your full attention to the phenomena of that anchor.  In choosing a focal point such as the breathe, there may be little to entertain our busy minds, and before long (seconds!) you may find yourself planning what to have for lunch, wishing you’d said something different in an earlier conversation, or in a deep investigation of that idea you have to solve the world energy crisis… indeed anything but focusing on the body as it breathes.  As soon as we realise our minds were off thinking about something else, we can choose to bring our attention back to our anchor.  And this process may be repeated many, many times.

So, the intention is to be alert, focused and awake, with a light concentration on our anchor – which isn’t how I would describe relaxation.  Just try doing it when you’re tired or hungry, it’s hard. That isn’t to say it shouldn’t be relaxing, if it is, well, then you might consider that a pleasant side effect.

Rather than the gentle numbness of relaxation, mindfulness is more about being awake to the realities of the present moment, including our thinking patterns, perceptions, automatic reactions, emotions and sensations.  And with this reality, being able to make discerning choice about what, if anything, to do next.

-Mark

Mindfulness, by any other name…: trials and tribulations of sati in western psychology and science. Contemporary Buddhism, 12(1), 219–239.

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Mindfulness

Why Mindfulness?

In my last post, about mindfulness at work, I wrote about one of the core benefits of mindfulness is improved control of our attention.  But, it’s certainly not the only benefit.  Since the late 1990s, the number of research papers studying mindfulness practices has grown exponentially year on year, with 1203 studies published in 2019 (from goAMRA.org);  that’s a lot!  So, what are some of the benefits of mindfulness practice these studies reveal?

First, let me add ‘awareness’ as a core benefit to the ‘aerobic fitness’ model I suggested previously, and then I’ll list a group of overall benefits.

Mostly our minds have, well, a mind of their own.  They dart here, which links to this, which brings up this thought, which reminds us of a task we hadn’t quite finished, which prompts us to open a new web browser window, which reminds us… and so on.  Having control over these related leaps of attention is an important part of the story;  the other part is having the awareness that your mind has wandered off-topic.

This awareness though goes beyond spotting that your mind has wondered.  It is also the awareness of how our own mind and body work – that thoughts do come and go, sensations rise and fall in our body, and emotions affect our mood.  With practice, this awareness, sometimes called meta-attention, allows us to more easily choose whether to follow a thought, sensation or emotion; or whether to let it pass, deciding not to be snagged by a negative thought and led down a path to unproductivity.

I describe attention and awareness as the big two, the two most basic skills that come from mindfulness practice.

But there are many more benefits*, often building on the big two.  For example:

And this is far from a complete list.  But, it’s worth noting a couple of things.  Firstly, that there are many ways of practising mindfulness and, different practices may emphasis different benefits.  For example, a 2012 study that compared Yoga (yes, it’s much more than stretching and postures), sitting meditation (closer to the way most people think about meditation), and a body scan technique (focusing progressively on each part of one’s body), found that:

  • Sitting meditation was better at distancing participants from judging their own thoughts and feelings
  • Yoga improved well-being more than the other two
  • Yoga and sitting meditation improved emotional regulation the most (e.g. being less ‘triggered’ by emotional reactions)

And so, many mindfulness-based courses teach multiple practices (including our own).

Secondly, despite the long list of benefits, mindfulness isn’t a cure-all.   As with all interventions, some practices will benefit some people more than others, some people will enjoy mindfulness practice and others will not, the benefits may be more relevant in some circumstances than others, etc..

Though, one potential benefit I didn’t list is ‘world peace.’  That’s the ultimate outcome Chade-Meng Tan, the founder of Google’s mindfulness-based emotional intelligence course, sees of having enough people being mindful – hmm, perhaps it is a cure-all.

Be mindful,
-Mark

 

 

*Many of the research studies related to clinical topics, such as pain management and depression.  For example, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) is recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in the UK for those who are at risk of relapse into depression, and so available through the National Health Service.

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Mindfulness

The UK as a mindful nation?

Yesterday (20th October 2015) in the UK a somewhat unusual report was published.  Coming from the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group (MAPPG), following eight hearings in parliament and over a year of research, the report, Mindful Nation UK, makes recommendations about teaching mindfulness in the workplace, education, healthcare and even in the criminal justice system.  Not the kind of research I ever expected to come from parliament!

OK, being formally trained in psychology and as a mindfulness teacher, I’m perhaps a bit more excited about the recommendations of the report than most.  But then, although mindfulness is not a panacea, I’ve witnessed how the mind skills that it helps develop can be of real benefit in life and work.  So, what does the report recommend?

Here are some examples:

  • For education: create a challenge fund where schools can bid for the costs of training teachers in mindfulness.
  • For healthcare: Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) should be available in line with the NICE guidelines for those at risk of recurrent depression (that’s 580 thousand people!)
  • and in the workplace: leading by example, government departments should encourage the development of mindfulness programmes for staff.

And in all cases, further targeted research should be used to forward understanding and good practice.  The report also sites a shortage of teachers that have been trained according the UK Network for Mindfulness Teacher Training guidelines (the guidelines that our teachers are trained with and follow, naturally :-), see here), at about 2200 in the UK, and 700 for those in clinical practice.

If you’d like to read the full report, you’ll find it here.  It’s 66 pages without appendices, though it’s well structured.  So if you main interest is in, say the the workplace, then you can read pages 39-50.

-Mark

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