When confronted with a difficult experience, the untrained mind wants to be anywhere but in the present moment, where it perceives acute unpleasantness. The mind becomes anxious whenever it’s uncertain and reacts as if one’s survival is at stake. So rather than staying with the experience and determining the best possible way to relate to it, the mind jumps to creating a story that involves worrying about the future or judging oneself or others based on past experiences. This pattern of resistance to staying present in experience is an automatic response arising from the limbic brain as it detects threats. Ironically, the story imparts a false sense fo knowing what’s going on, and therefore can seem temporarily soothing.
Philipp Moffitt, Emotional Chaos to Clarity
Mindfulbalance 
Staying in the moment is a struggle. Moffitt’s passage helps me understand why and helps me not feel somehow less or inadequate because of the struggle, and the stumbles. Thanks for sharing these insights.
great quote.
I support people with childhood trauma (C-PTSD) and when a trigger thought explodes it activates our amygdala and fight or flight mechanism. What most do not realize what happens next. We receive that powerful jolt which signifies we have lost our fine motor skills, have tunnel vision, loss of hearing, increase in BP, Heart rate and respiration with our blood flowing to our extremities.
Our being is readied for a lethal threat. Our nervous system has detected a threat however with C-PTSD this is not real. This moment when trauma explodes is the greatest moment to I prove.
We improve by staying present with letting the story of trauma fade as we follow the breath. Then as we follow the breath we observe where fear settle empty of thought. That is why we practice following the breath everyday, so it will hold up when fear and panic invade our space.
navy seals train to be able to take action when fear is present. They use slowing of the exhale to calm the nervous system. meditation activates our parasympathetic nervous system and is one skill that actually dissipates cortisol.
Karl has the best mindfulness blog I have come across. he is crystal clear and has great tidbits every day. Great job.
Marty
Thanks Marty for your faithful presence, and your insights. I thought this extract summed up well the challenge that faces all of us, but even more so those you support. Best wishes for your work.
Karl
may I ask you about therapists and mindfulness. You are a practitioner and a teacher of mindfulness, some therapist have knowledge and very little experience.
from my point of view mindfulness (meditation) is done with actual time on the cushion as the Buddhist refer to it. How would you know how to,apply mindfulness and know what it is by reading about it.
A person like you is an expert and know the power intuitively from experience. How does someone replace that?
Thanks.
Hi Marty,
I am no expert, but agree with you that everything stems from practice and not from techniques based on the theory. I will be away shortly on a ten day silent retreat so will keep you and your work in my thoughts.
Karl
Another question would be what does your actual practice add to your effectiveness teaching and supporting people. What would you be like as a teacher if you did not practice?
My hope is hat therapists have your level of experience, even though you say your not an expert. I bet 99% of therapist have never been on a meditative retreat.
How many sit everyday or eer have employed Mindulness.
If you are not an expert our therapists are novices or less. I searched out a Zenncente or expertise when I wa healing.
Since I have been through some of hemdiferent places to learn mediation our oginazation does a better job. You have urgency an application now, which is leaking at Zen centers. Wanting to be enlightened or awakened in a decade does not entice our minds. Specifi, concrete and immediate is what moves the mind o change habit, in my opinion.
Great job on your blog. From all that I see and read, you are an expert in my eyes.
“the untrained mind wants to be anywhere but in the present moment, where it perceives acute unpleasantness”. That is true, when the present moment is hard, we have tendencies to link it with something that happened in the past, or use it to predict our uncertain future. Those two activities make the present worse than what it already is.
I do believe that we sometimes need to avoid a present moment when it hurts a lot, but we don’t need to go to the past or to the future, we can just “put ourselves” into a better situation. I can take my mind to wherever I want it to be.