Tag: Health

When we feel that we want to run away

Karl Duffy1 Comment

All relationships demand that we trust the other person. However, due to our personal history, this can sometimes prove a challenge. Our brains are wired to remember the risks that come from encounters with others, such as those in our childhood. Therefore certain words or situations may trigger deep felt unconscious memories and the brain automatically applies an expectation of danger to them. Our stress and anxiety rises, and we feel trapped. Our instinct is to run away. This happens even though our strengths and resources are greatly different now than what they were when we were little.

Thus it can help if we increase our capacity to see these fears as they arise in order not to be influenced by our automatic reactions to them. A way if doing so is outlined here:

Anxiety, dread, worry and even panic are just mental states like any other. Recognize fear when it arises, observe the feeling of it in your body – watch it try and convince you that you should be alarmed – see it change and move on. Verbally describe to yourself what you are feeling, to increase frontal lobe regulation of the limbic system. Notice how the awareness which contains fear is itself never fearful.  Keep separating from the fear; settle back into  the vast space of awareness through which fear passes like a cloud.

Rick Hanson, Buddha’s Brain

Using time wisely

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For those of us who live in nanosecond time, a moment becomes very, very short, and in each moment we ask how much we have gotten done. How much did I cram into it? Was I successful in multitasking? As one woman in a class I was working with said to me, “I have finally figured out how to relax. When I go from my job teaching to my consulting job and I’m driving in my car, I listen to a self-help tape, I eat lunch on the way, I talk on my cellular phone, and I relax at the same time.”

This approach to time management simply turns up the speed on the treadmill of our lives. I propose we evolve beyond time management to “timeshifting”-which is different from merely “downshifting.” The practice of timeshifting recognizes that every single moment has a particular rhythm to it, and that we have the capacity to expand or contract an individual moment as appropriate. One way to shift what’s going on in our world is not to try to rush to do more, but to allow ourselves to go deeper into that moment of being present. Our ability to shift gears, to shift our rhythm to meet that moment and be present in it, is what allows us to experience the fullness of life – to create our life in the way we want it to be.

Stephan Rechtschaffen.

Meditation improves capacity for attention

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The longest and most complex study of meditation ever undertaken is beginning to publish its first results after more than two years spent analyzing the significant amount of data it gathered. This research, called the Shamata Project, began in 2007 at the University of California, Davis, and uses methods drawn from fields as diverse as molecular biology, neuroscience, and anthropology. It advertised for participants via word of mouth and advertisements in meditation-themed magazines. About 140 people applied to participate, of whom 60 were selected to take part in several experiments.

The first official findings released from the Project provide evidence to support the notion that the practice of meditation improves perception. An article published last month online in Psychological Science reports that those who participated in the study became better at making fine visual distinctions and sustaining attention during a 30-minute test. This test, derived from those used to assess vigilance in radar operators,  involved the participants  watching a screen intently as lines flashed on it; most were of the same length, but every now and then a shorter one would appear, and the volunteer had to click the mouse in response when recognizing it. It was found that meditators were able to sustain their attention for longer periods without getting bored or distracted. Meditation seems to increase the capacity to be mindful, or pay attention, even to the small details happenig before us.

“Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s kind of a perfect index of meditation training,” says Katherine MacLean, the graduate student involved in the Project.  “People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself. That’s what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted.”

Katherine MacLean, Clifford Saron, B. Alan Wallace et al. Intensive Meditation Training Improves Perceptual Discrimination and Sustained Attention. Psychological Science, (in press)

For more details check out the press release: http://news.ucdavis.edu/in_the_news/

Or the website : http://mindbrain.ucdavis.edu/

Busy

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It has become the standard greeting everywhere: I am so busy.

We say this to one another with no small degree of pride, as if our exhaustion were a trophy, our ability to withstand stress a mark of real character.  The busier we are, the more important we seem to ourselves and we imagine, to others.  To be unavailable to our friends and family, to be unable to find time for the sunset (or even to know that the sun has set at all), to whiz through our obligations without time for a single, mindful breath, this has become the model of a successful life.

How have we allowed this to happen?  This was not our intention, this is not the world we dreamed when we were young and our whole life was full of possibility and promise.  How did we get so terribly lost in a world saturated with striving and grasping, yet somehow bereft of joy and delight?

Wayne Muller, Sabbath

Six Simple Strategies for a Stress-Free Summer, 6.

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Learn to say No – there will always be Unfinished Business

Many of us have the tendency to measure how successful a day was in terms of things that we got done. We can even prioritize our to-do list items over other activities vital to our wellbeing, such as spending time with family and friends, having quiet time for ourselves, walking in nature. It can be relentless – as items on our “lists” are checked off, new ones simply replace them. What we need to see is that if we are only concerned with what’s not done, we will never find peace. Today let’s remind ourselves that the purpose of life is not to get it all done, but to “enjoy the ride.” On the day we die, there will still be unfinished business to take care of.  And ironically, someone else will do it for us!

Six Simple Strategies for a Stress-Free Summer, 5.

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Allow yourself to be Bored

Summer sometimes marks a change from our usual routines. And even though we may have been looking forward to it, we can sometimes find that we have the thought “I am bored”. To most of us boredom feels uncomfortable and we try to avoid it. We immediately believe the thought and then ask ourselves “what else can I do?” and our head plans and looks for a different activity. This summer, try to notice when you are feeling bored and just sit with it.  Boredom is one of the more interesting thoughts to work with. It tries to draw us away from this moment by suggesting that our lives should be elsewhere. The secret to contentment is being in each moment fully. And sometimes our systems need to do nothing and feel the tension of transition from the rush of our normal lives to a deeper calm.