Tag: Health

Six Simple Strategies for a Stress-Free Summer, 4.

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Practice Compassion & Kindness:

Studies show that when we perform acts of kindness,  there is a sharp reduction in stress and a release of the body’s natural painkillers, the endorphins. Acts of kindness and compassion can lead to an experience of improved emotional well-being. So this day, look around at others and think beyond yourself. All kinds of opportunities to help, some big and some small, will present themselves if we pay attention.  Regardless of the size of the act, there is no wrong way to perform simple acts of kindness. The possibilities are endless! This day ask: How will I  practice spreading kindness in my life?

Six Simple Strategies for a Stress-Free Summer, 3.

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Give yourself a break from the Snowball Effect of your Thoughts

If you have done the first two practices in this series, you will have noticed how difficult it is just to be quiet or present to nature. Our minds get drawn away by the continual spinning effect of our thoughts. One thought leads to another, and yet another, until you feel agitated or upset or worried. If we get stressed, this can almost feel like a “thought attack.” When you notice your thoughts  starting to spin, consciously ground your posture and use awareness of your breathing to create a space before they build a momentum.  Try to shift your focus back to the present moment, to this period of quiet or to the sights of nature. Even a five minutes gap from our continual planning and ruminating can have an effect on our health.

Six Simple Strategies for a Stress-Free Summer, 2.

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Walk in Nature and connect with a sense of wonder

When we do walking meditation, we are using the physical, mental, and emotional experiences of walking to develop greater awareness. Walk slowly and let your attention rest on all the sensations in your body,  noting those inside your body and in its contact with the environment. When you step, feel the foot coming into contact with the ground and rising from it, and be aware of the rest of your body as you move. Contact with the earth “grounds” your attention in the present moment. From time to time stop and simply breathe. As you walk,  quietly say “thanks”  for the things in nature you notice –  for the birds, the sky,  the wild flowers and the trees.

Six Simple Strategies for a Stress-Free Summer, 1.

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

Maintain a Quiet Time Routine

Finding quiet time isn’t a luxury; it’s essential for protecting your health.  So, take time for yourself each day. The key is –  when will you practice meditation and where? It’s always easy to postpone our practice when we don’t have a designated time  for it.  A routine will strengthen your perseverence. Decide how long you will meditate. The best way to develop your meditation practice is to be consistent. Short sessions regularly are better than longer sporadic sessions . Start to enjoy the idea of regularity and routine.

Not taking ourselves too seriously

Karl DuffyLeave a comment

I faciliated a Day Silent Retreat this weekend which was really a lovely gentle experience. It passed so quickly and all participants expressed a deep contentment with the day and the time they had spent silently sitting or walking. It really confirmed for me how finding some time for quiet in our lives is not a luxury but rather is essential for protecting our health.

Retreat days and reflection aims to develop our capacity to drop into our lives as they actually are. However, sometimes, they can feed into our ever-present need to change or fix ourselves. If this happens, our awareness of  self can become a full-time preoccupation and  take away some of the naturalness of life. It is good that we try to change in ways that allow us become more healthy and happy, but sometimes we can feel pressure to change because of an unconscious sense that we are not good enough or we are unacceptable as we are. Some of the self-help culture visible today feeds into this unhappiness with how we actually are, by continually encouraging us to take on one self-improvement after another. And even noble self-improvement projects, such as “I want to be more calm“, or “I want to be more happy“, can simply substitute one type of discontent with ourselves with another. The reason they do this is that they actually strengthen our premise that we are broken and need fixing.

Even sometimes the reason we come to meditation is precisely because we want to change something inside us. We wish to be calmer, better, more spiritual, more together, more integrated. And if we examine deep enough under that wish we will find that it arisies from a belief that there is something wrong with us as we are. We look to put order on the parts of ourselves that frighten us.

But real life is not necessarily ordered; it is immediate, messy, incomplete. We are in danger of taking things too seriously and not allowing enough room for our chaotic and playful side. Part of the joy and spice of life comes from seeing that our mistakes and wrong turns, our compulsions to do too much, or our tendency to veg out, all add up to our unique personality. The end goal of all our work is not to become some ideal version of ourselves, based on ideas passed on by others or in books. We are to become ourselves fully, with all our quirks and exaggerations. Our natural selves, unaffected; not the one where we pass the time continually checking in on how are doing.

The only way out of this struggle is to leave our mind alone, to fully accept the mind that we have, anger, dualisms and all. And when we no longer judge ourselves or try to emotionally neuter ourselves, the internal conflicts and tensions gradually begin to quiet down. We might say this is the most basic psychological insight: I cannot escape myself, so I have to come to terms with the mind that I have.

Barry Magid, Ending the Pursuit of Happiness

Meditation reduces the perception of pain.

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A recent study, conducted by researchers at the University of Oxford,  has found that our physical experience of pain is influenced by the mood we are in at that moment. In other words,  our brain influences how we perceive and deal with the pain we are going through, as a low or anxious mood  disrupts a portion of our neurocircuitry related to regulating emotion, causing an enhanced perception of pain. The low mood may go as far as to drive the pain and make it feel worse. Mind and body are intimately linked when it comes to health and wellness.

Mindfulness meditation has been shown to affect the way we attend to what is happening in our lives at any moment,  and can impact upon mood in a positive manner. Therefore it is probably not surprising to read that a 2010 University of Manchester study, to be published in the Journal Pain,  noted that experienced meditators found pain  less unpleasant than did non-meditators. It seems that regular meditation can train the brain to anticipate pain less and reduce its emotional impact.

Dr Christopher Brown, who led the research,  stated “Meditation is becoming increasingly popular as a way to treat chronic illness such as the pain caused by arthritis. Recently, a mental health charity called for meditation to be routinely available on the NHS (the National Health Service)  to treat depression, which occurs in up to 50% of people with chronic pain.”

The finding is a potential boon to the estimated 40% of people who are unable to adequately manage their chronic pain. Dr Brown suggests that the reason meditation works  is due to the fact that it is a training in remaining focused on the present moment and not anticipating future problems: “The results of the study confirm how we suspected meditation might affect the brain. Meditation trains the brain to be more present-focused and therefore to spend less time anticipating future negative events. This may be why meditation is effective at reducing the recurrence of depression, which makes chronic pain considerably worse.”

You can read more on the University’s website: http://www.manchester.ac.uk/aboutus/news/display/?id=5801