Tag Archives: mental health

You are all possibilities

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South West Coast Path above Pudcombe Cove

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards. Søren Kierkegaard

… Look back down the path as if seeing your past and then south over the hazy blue coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities you can see and how you live best as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.

David Whyte, Mameen

The basics of Mindfulness practice 3: Use the breath to centre yourself

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 Breath is the bridge that connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold again.

In our community, where people are practicing the mindfulness of doing laundry, washing dishes, eating, walking and so forth, everybody learns to use breath as a tool for restoring mindfulness.

Thich Nhat Hahn

Work with your day as it is

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To practice we must see exactly where we are. Of course we can always imagine perfect conditions, how it should be ideally, how everyone else should behave. But it’s not our task to create an ideal. It’s our task to see how it is and to learn from the world as it is. For the awakening of the heart, conditions are always good enough.

Ajahn Sumedho

More health benefits of mindfulness: Mindfulness, therapy and getting over our fears

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There was an article in last Sunday’s Wall Street Journal on how increasingly Mindfulness is being used to help people overcome negative thoughts and feelings, or what the article terms, “the Voice” -  that nagging, persistent commentary in your head. It describes mindfulness as an effective way of doing therapy with these negative, judgmental thoughts, by training us to simply observe them, rather than trying to deny them. Getting frustrated with aspects of our lives – such as our weight, our relationships,  or our self-confidence –   and suddenly trying to change them, (a frequent strategy around New Year),  often only strengthens the grip of negative thoughts. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is based on us  becoming non-judgmentally familiar with the stream of thoughts and emotions which pass through our mind every minute and – this is the key -  observe them without getting involved, almost as if we were observing a parade on the street or a soap opera on television.

The article concludes with a quote from Marsha Linehan, who was one of the first to apply mindfulness principles in her work with Borderline patients. She speaks about the importance of not judging ourselves, of simply being with whatever arises in the mind as a thought or an emotion: “Most of us think that if we are judgmental enough, things will change. But judgment makes it harder to change. What happens in mindfulness over the long haul is that you finally accept that you’ve seen this soap opera before and you can turn off the TV.”

The whole article is well worth the read: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704111504576059823679423598.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_health

A short practice to increase our strength

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O Adonai, and Leader of the house of Israel, You appeared to Moses in the burning bush,
and gave him the Law on Sinai: come and save us with an outstretched arm.

As Christmas draws closer,  the Christian liturgy chants the ancient “O Antiphons”  originating in the 5th Century. They testify to the desires of people down through the ages, and our ongoing human needs based on the different situations we find ourselves in. This one asks for  strength and protection, -  a strong arm to support us when we ourselves do not feel strong. It’s imagery comes from the story of the escape from slavery in Egypt and the journey across the desert.

There are so many times that we need to take in strength, to remind ourselves of our resources. One of the things which the mind does when we are stressed or depressed is to underestimate our resources and overestimate the threats which we feel. We divert our energies into the defense against threats, fearful that others may disappoint or take advantage of us.  These ancient words are a metaphor for what happens in those moments. The Hebrew word for Egypt – Mitzraim -  means “a narrow place.”  The escape from captivity in Egypt means the escape from the narrow places where we are stuck, to a wider place, a place where we can breathe freely. We can feel trapped in our lives,  in different forms of captivity. We can frequently feel as if we are travelling in unfamiliar territory, unchartered waters, and this can overwhelm us. We feel fortunate if we get through a day, or through the night when our fears come to worry us,  let alone know where we are going in our lives.

At times like this, we need to keep our focus on words and ideas that give us strength, that link us into to our fearless nature. We can try this simple exercise to increase awareness of the resources we have:

Find a quiet place and sit, gently closing your eyes. Become aware of your normal breathing and the wider sense of your body sitting here. See if you can sense the energy  in the core of your body. Notice your breathing, how it is constant and has a strength of its own. Feel the solidity in your posture, the strength in your upright back and shoulders, the dignity in the way you are sitting, the support in the contact with the chair or the floor. Become aware of the way your body functions in getting you around day after day. Consciously focus on your own strength, savouring this awareness, taking it in and drawing it out.

Now, picture in your mind something in nature that feels strong, like a mountain, noticing how massive and unmoving it is. In your mind’s eye, bring the mountain into your own body so that you become the mountain – your head the top,  your body the solid base,  rooted on the cushion or on the chair. See if you can imagine a sense of uplift, the strong quality of the mountain deep in your own spine. Invite yourself to become like a breathing mountain, unshakeable and still.

Now let that sense of strength sink into you and rest in you. Imagine it and prolong it. Breathe it into your emotions. Feel it in your spine, your head,  your chest, the muscles of your face. Let it become part of you, breathing it in deeper and deeper. Gently, let it touch the places in your life where you feel challenged or weak. Keeping the sense of the mountain in your awareness, seeing if you can place the difficulties in relation to that, almost like the clouds that pass over a mountain without affecting the mountain itself. See if you can make the awarenss of strength the present reality, even if just for a moment. If this is too difficult just do it briefly and return to the awareness of the mountain.

Rest in this awareness for five or ten minutes, if it feels right. Make conscious,  as best as possible,  the strength which is in your body and in your mind. Register it in your bones and in your muscles, your thoughts and your emotions. Continue to breathe gently as you finish the exercise and resume your daily activities.

Not getting stuck in the past

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Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on ….. their children than the unlived life of the parent. Carl Jung

I had a conversation today which made me reflect on the way that parental patterns have a huge influence on us even as adults. This notion has been around for a long time. In the Old Testament it was believed that the sins of the fathers are visited on their children. This was at times interpreted somewhat simplistically as a a way of explaining inherited illnesses or chance misfortune. However, in another sense it seems to accord with what can be found in modern psychology.

Some of the behaviours which we see in adult life are in response to unconscious traces left by experiences had in childhood. In general these experiences we have when little  frame us into certain judgements about the world. We come to see it as either predictable, stable and nurturing or uncertain and precarious. Our parents also had their own emotional and relationship patterns and ways of dealing with anxiety, and frequently played these out in their relationship to each other, impacting upon us as children. From this we drew our conclusions as to how to deal with the world, and how to develop our own relationships. This parental wound – or the places where our parents got stuck – has a huge influence on our own inner life. The inner world we form as a child will replicate what we see in the outer world and then as an adult we can gravitate towards situations that replicate this inner world dynamic.

We tend to do this by repeating the pattern or by being determined to do the opposite. However, because the opposite behaviour is undertaken in response to the parents’ way of behaving, we are still defining ourselves by it and end up strengthening the dynamic rather than weakening it. A lot of adult neurosis or anxiety can be understood as a part of the self looking to discover its full development away from the narrow confines of the family of origin. A repeating way of doing things or a rigid personal style is a clue to the original place of lack or neglect. Our minds love habits, even when they hurt us.

It is a slow work to recognize the limited nature of the early strategies which we have incorporated into our personality and begin the work of healing by no longer acting on them.

Telling the truth of our soul to ourselves is the first task. Living that truth is the second task. And telling it to other is the third. Such truth-telling will be the supreme test of our lives.

James Hollis