mindfulness

The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Boredom and Restlessness

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human figures

I’m not sure if boredom and restlessness have ever been studied together but two of the first things I encountered when I started practicing mindfulness were boredom and restlessness and I always noticed them together. It was an interesting observation as I can’t say I noticed either very much before I started practicing. Since I noticed it in myself I have become aware of just how prevalent these two things are in people. With restlessness I have come to be able to read body language to the point where I notice all the little movements associated with it. The big one is the leg that constantly is moving up and down while sitting (restless leg syndrome). I become aware of someone’s boredom through conversation and noticing that they have a hard time focusing. We see a lot of boredom and restlessness with ADD and ADHD and we know how prevalent that is.
So where is this coming from? In the world of stress when we have a situation of being stuck in fight or flight and the stress hormones continue to rage unabated we have the phenomenon of getting addicted to our own adrenaline. This is very similar to any drug stimulant addiction but perhaps worse as most people don’t realize the connection and it becomes hard to address. Years of research have taught us the ramifications of being stuck in fight or flight on our adrenal glands. There is an enormous amount of stress on them and sometimes they just shut down. When that happens there is a domino effect and we are also deprived of the adrenaline that we get so used to. At that point we actually go into withdrawal and experience a host of symptoms, two of which are boredom and restlessness. The problem gets compounded when we try to reproduce the adrenaline with destructive behaviors and substances. It’s like an addict trying to get their fix so they can “relax”.
When we practice mindfulness we gradually come out of fight or flight and when we do there is a gradual decreasing of adrenaline and the other stress hormones. When that happens we can experience the same withdrawal that a drug addict experiences. Two of those experiences are restlessness and boredom. As the body normalizes through mindfulness practice and we slowly get used to not having our adrenaline fix the boredom and restlessness go away. This is exactly what I experienced when I was coming out of fight or flight through my mindfulness practice. It took awhile but eventually my restlessness and boredom disappeared. The restlessness was replaced by a sense of calm and stillness. A sense of curiosity, fun and adventure replaced the boredom.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Loneliness

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nude woman painting

How could a world so full of people be suffering from an epidemic of loneliness? We don’t hear a lot about it for many reasons. Perhaps we are embarrassed and think that we are the only ones who are lonely and that others will think less of us for it. The irony here is that thinking we are the only ones suffering is a symptom of loneliness and a stumbling block to realizing the extent in which those feelings are shared by others. Even if we did realize it and even though “misery loves company” it certainly wouldn’t do us any good. Loneliness is one of those many experiences that are interconnected with others such as fear, anxiety, anger, depression and so forth. Lonely people try many ways to break out of the loneliness. Most of the time it involves setting up activities with others and staying as busy as possible hoping to keep the loneliness at bay. At best that is a temporary fix and at worst it deepens the loneliness.
The truth of loneliness is that it is exclusively an inner phenomena. The most common way of coping with chronic stress nowadays is by disconnecting from the present moment. It’s a strategy that has been hard wired into our nervous systems as a way of dealing with danger/fight or flight. We are disconnecting from our bodies, thoughts and emotions and with chronic stress the disconnection stays with us for extended periods of time. It is when we are disconnected like this that we lose touch with ourselves and that subsequent sense of loneliness is a reminder to us to reconnect to ourselves. It’s a symptom, a message from the body trying to get our attention to correct a situation. That’s what all symptoms are…messages from the body/mind to pay attention to it’s needs. If you are not in your body you are certainly not in the present moment and the present moment is where we connect with ourselves and the world around us. Mindfulness brings us back into the body/mind which is where the present moment resides. Once that happens there is a shift in the nervous system which reverses the fear, loneliness, isolation and so forth and we feel like we are “in touch” once again. In touch first with ourselves where loneliness disappears and then able to reconnect with the world around us in new deeper ways.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Sports/Teamwork/Performance

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person with soccer balls and basketball

Perhaps my first experience of mindfulness happened in sports. While growing up I couldn’t get enough of sports and would play 8 hours a day if I could. It didn’t matter what sport….whatever was in season was good enough for me. As I got older I focused more on tennis, baseball and basketball. As my skills deepened I started having what we call today “zone or flow” experiences from time to time. I would have laser focus and an ease of performance that was remarkable to me and it wasn’t until I started practicing mindfulness that I realized that what I was experiencing was in fact the present moment experience talked about by practitioners of mindfulness. Up until then I wasn’t able to duplicate my “zone/flow” experiences at will while playing sports but once I started practicing mindfulness I was able to sustain the flow consistently in sports and out of sports. We now know through countless studies of mindfulness and sports what exactly is going on in the mind/body connection while experiencing the peak performance/flow/zone. Athletes all over the world are incorporating mindfulness into their training regimen in order to give them an additional edge in competition. It is also starting to dawn on many of these athletes that if they could sustain the experience outside of sports it would greatly enhance their everyday lives.

Sports has become such a powerful metaphor for life nowadays that we are putting everything athletic under the microscope and trying to discover what makes an elite athlete tick. There are of course many things that make an elite athlete tick and many of those things are not accessible to everyone. What is accessible to everyone is the mind/body integration that produces the present moment experience…..the practice of mindfulness. There is a realization that all those peak qualities have a far reaching benefit that extends way beyond sports. It extends into every aspect of our lives. Qualities such as inner and outer teamwork (mind/body coordination) , enhanced focus, attention, intuition and reduced physical, emotional and mental stress are qualities that we can use everywhere and in every situation. So whether you are LeBron James looking to express your inner Bill Gates or Bill Gates looking to express your inner LeBron James there is now a path that allows you to meet in the middle. It is called mindfulness and it deposits you square into the present moment.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Energy

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Albert Einstein

We have come to recognize that the ancients had an excellent understanding of energy far before modern science was able to measure it. It has become an enormous field of study and generally can be divided into two forms, physical and non physical. Within these two categories are multiple sub categories and descriptions about how physical and non physical energy relate to each other. As this is a blog and by definition should be kept brief I will not go into all the academic areas of energy but will keep it simple and relevant as to how we can access more energy for our lives. I think it is evident to everyone that we need energy in our bodies to function and accomplish everything. Our bodies have an energy of their own which interacts with the energy that exists all around us and throughout the universe. All the ancient traditions have a name for it and it had been known for a long time. In India it is called Prana and in Asia it is called Chi or Qi. It is somewhat akin to the electromagnetic energy of modern science but not quite, as modern science hasn’t fully grasped the true nature of it. If they did we would have far more “clean” energy at our disposal.

Since the “Universal energy” is constant and always accessible I’ll discuss how and why we can’t always seem to access it ourselves. Why can’t our bodies continuously replenish themselves with the energy that is everywhere? I think we need to look at our nervous systems as the meeting point for the physical and non physical energy. If our nervous systems are in balance then there is a natural flow between the physical and non physical energies. Eastern medicine goes into great detail about the energetic system of the body and how to keep it in alignment so that the energy continues to flow. Western medicine is only beginning to recognize this but if we look at the nervous system we can find a meeting point for the two systems. We are well aware through our studies of stress that the autonomic nervous system is getting battered about by modern stress. We know that many of us end up getting stuck in the fight or flight response for years and that the ramifications of dealing with the resulting havoc on the nervous system are related to a host of health problems. When our health suffers, our ability to access the physical and non physical energy suffers. We end up disconnecting from ourselves in order to cope with the stress and in so doing perpetuate the situation. I’ve spoken many times about how mindfulness reverses this disconnection and sets the nervous system back on it’s course to balance. When that happens the body is able to regain it’s own energy and reestablish the connection with the “non physical” energy. When that happens, we can utilize both forms of energy to reestablish the vitality and energy that is so necessary in order to truly participate in life.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Attention Skills

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clock with no hands

The current definition of mindfulness is the ability to pay attention moment by moment without judgment on purpose. This definition is the summary/end result of a number of processes that go on behind the scenes. Mindfulness has been the subject of over 1800 studies over the past 30 years and central to all of these studies is the importance of attention to the present moment. Through research and the experience of thousands of people over at least 2500 years we have come to realize that mindfulness is key to bringing our bodies/lives into balance. In a world suffering from an epidemic of ADD and ADHD it is particularly important to use mindfulness as a way of resolving this and many other issues.

Let’s take a look at the broader relationship of attention to who we are. I’m going to step out of the world of research and discuss what my personal experiences have been regarding this broader view. The world of experience used to be all we had until the scientific revolution. Science has been a valuable tool for many things and with the breakthroughs in quantum research it would not surprise me if we could eventually measure what has thought to have been unmeasurable.

To me, attention is the third process and perhaps the most critical in how we experience things and get things done. The sequence is: being, awareness, attention, creativity/imagination, intention, and action/expression. Most of as can agree that being is a given as a first principle although I understand there are some who are not sure that they even exist. These people notwithstanding, we would next get to pure awareness. After awareness would come the all important attention to the present moment. I see being as the ocean, awareness as a boat and attention as the rudder. We all know what happens to a boat in the ocean without a rudder. Apply that to your life and the realization of the importance of present moment attention becomes clear. The effectiveness of creativity/imagination, intention, and action/expression is directly related to the rudder of attention. Without that rudder it’s easy to see how the rest can go astray. The rudder of mindfulness is the element that creates the necessary symmetry to allow all these things to line up and flow naturally together with a sense of ease. When this happens there is cooperation with the energy that is everywhere and the expression of “being in the flow” comes to life.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: The Smile Exercise

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smiling cat

Many years ago came across a study that spoke about all the tiny muscles around the mouth and how smiling engaged those muscles in a particular way resulting in a release of endorphins, natural pain killers and serotonin. It also lowers blood pressure and boosts the immune system. In addition, in the 1980s, some interesting studies on the physiology of smiling brought it back into the consciousness of the psychology field. One study found that when subjects contorted their faces to indicate fear, their body temperatures increased and their pulses sped up. Dr. Zajonc’s research took this observation further, into a full-fledged proposal for why a smile might trigger happiness. It basically goes like this: When the temperature of any body part changes, the chemical activities connected with that area also change. Therefore, when facial muscles are activated in an expression, the biochemical processes associated with those areas of the face are altered according to their temperature change. And research suggests that a cooler brain creates good emotions, while a warmer brain produces negative emotions [source: Goleman].

Zajonc points to the part of the body called the internal carotid artery, which is the “pipe” that delivers the majority of blood to the brain. This artery flows through an opening called the cavernous sinus, which contains lots of facial veins. When someone smiles, causing certain facial muscles to stretch and tighten, veins are constricted. This would cut down on the blood flowing to the cavernous sinus, which in turn would reduce the amount of blood flowing through the carotid artery to the brain. Less blood volume means the temperature of that blood drops. When that cooler blood gets to the brain, brain temperature would drop, too, triggering a happy feeling. The theory works in reverse, too: Zajonc says that when the muscles involved in a frown tighten, the result is increased blood flow to the cavernous sinus and, by extension, a warmer brain. So, if Zajonc is right — and not everybody thinks he is, but it’s an interesting possibility — does that mean you could avoid sadness for the rest of your life by faking a smile?

Definitely not. Even proponents of the theory don’t suggest that smiling can make unhappiness go away. The theory basically states that in a state of emotional neutrality, putting a smile on your face can tip you in the direction of a positive feeling. My experience is that it can actually go further than that. I’ve seen positive effects for a wide spectrum of starting negative emotional states, not just neutral ones. Suffice it to say that if you are already happy it simply enhances the happiness. The smile can be forced or not, either way it works.

So many years ago I decided to put it all to the test. I started putting a small smile on my face while meditating, much like we see in pictures of the Buddha. I was pleased with the results so started ending my MBSR classes with an exercise I made up one day. At the end of class we all spend 60 seconds putting on a big smile and noticing what is going on physically, mentally and emotionally much like we do in a mindfulness practice. After 60 seconds we go for another 60 seconds with that same big smile and same mindful attention only this time making eye contact with everyone in the class. So that’s a 2 minute exercise and the results have been impressive. I have continued for over 20 years to do this class ending exercise and it continues to be a high point of everyone’s experience.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Fun

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yellow triangular sign - fun zone

I find that most people come to meditation, whether it be mindfulness or some other form, to address concerns they have in life. That was certainly the case with me as I was struggling to overcome fears, depression and a whole litany of dysfunction while at the same time wanting to figure out how the universe worked. Regardless of the issues being addressed, whether physical, mental, emotional or spiritual a lot of attention and energy goes towards resolving the issues. Life becomes all consuming in the pursuit of figuring these things out and making peace with them. It seems for many of us that while we are pursuing these things there is a heaviness about our lives and the lightness of spirit and playfulness of heart takes a back seat. This can last a long time, even a lifetime, as this search wears on. Things become very serious….

One of the things I like about mindfulness versus other forms of inner practice is that in bringing us to the present moment it takes us away from the intense focus of our own inner world to something larger. It takes us outside our own bubble and allows us to merge our life with the life outside the bubble. In many cases it may seem like a tearing away of the obsession with the “little self” and an opening up of a much larger self which includes everything/body. It’s when that happens that we wake up to a much larger reality, one that is interesting, engaging and fun. I noticed with my own experience that when my practice started bringing me into the present moment and away from my inner struggles that I began to have a new perspective on life. I actually started to have fun again, something that had been missing for a long time. As I embraced the return of fun in my life it continued to deepen and expand. It was then that I realized that having fun was a big part of of my mindfulness practice and that I wanted to share that with others. It seemed to me that the more people in the sandbox, the more fun would be had. I also found that as the sense of fun returned, the other issues I was dealing with were resolving. So there is some connection between allowing fun back into life and resolving the many issues we all bring to our inner practice. For me, the engagement with the present moment was the key that opened the lock. There is an alchemical reaction that takes place in the present moment that transforms the nature of our issues and allows us to have fun again. It ends up influencing the way we see things and not taking ourselves so seriously. We can still continue to address our original reasons for entering into this process but now with a lightness of being and playfulness in our hearts.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Fear

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man nervously biting his fingernails

When I first started meditating 45 years ago the driving motivation was fear. I had reached a point in my life when fear was present all the time. The fear influenced everything I experienced and I was ultimately driven to discover and resolve the cause. As I explored the present moment I was able to discover how the fear was affecting me physically, mentally and emotionally. Once I was able to get in touch with that visceral experience it forged the connection to go deeper and trace the roots. I was able to be present with and explore the things I was fearful of and ultimately traced it all back to the fear of dying which was something I had been aware of since very early childhood. I discovered through that introspection that all my other fears could be traced back to fear of dying. I also noticed that there was a connection to a lot of other physical, emotional and mental issues that fed on the fear. I had stomach issues that I could see were directly related and many other issues such as fear of public speaking that obviously stemmed from the constriction of fear.

As I went deeper into my fear I came across the realization that the fear of dying was an effective way of addressing survival. I looked deeply into the fight or flight response that is hard wired in our autonomic nervous system and concluded that because of my heightened fear I would have an advantage in a survival situation. The problem was that I was always in that heightened fear and deduced that it would be much better if I could call upon it only when I needed it. The more I was able to fully experience the fear in the present moment the more it started to go away. As I faced the fear of dying my nervous system began to change. The fear lessened and all the other “symptoms” of fear lessened too. Over the years I began to have dreams of dying and actually was able to practice dying in my dreams. That combined with my mindfulness practice put an end to my fear of dying and other connected issues and rewired my nervous system so that it wasn’t constantly in fight or flight. I have come to realize the importance of going deeply into the fear of dying. I have concluded that it is the root of all fear and is connected to many, many other issues. Mindfulness practice is a great way to explore this and is a great touchstone as we all embrace our own paths of exploring and resolving fear.

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The Many Uses of Mindfulness: Silence and Stillness

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rowboat on a moonlit night

As I begin to write this blog it occurs to me that writing about the connection between mindfulness, stillness and silence is counter intuitive to the subject. That realization stops me dead in my tracks and makes me wonder if I can convey this idea without violating it. In any event I suspect this will be one of my shorter blogs….or it should be.

When I first started practicing mindfulness I discovered physical and mental restlessness, and a mind that was constantly hearing sounds and thinking thoughts. My life was much the same way in that I lived in a constant whirl of activity. As I developed my mindfulness meditation practice I discovered that gradually I was experiencing less restlessness and a sense of quiet. There is an argument to be made that this new found stillness and silence would spill over into my life and in fact that is what I have noticed. The grand epiphany is that my outer life does not need to be still and silent in order for me to sustain the inner stillness and silence. They are the engines of focus and attention. I have come to experience that two basic qualities of the present moment are stillness and silence. They seem to be the at the core of our essential being. I would liken them to the blank canvas of a painter who has the opportunity to create anything on that canvas.

So silence and stillness are always there, the balm of existence that allows for the arising of all experience. I found this in the present moment and it continues to deepen day by day.

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