Tag: Psychology

Mindfulness meditation improves sense of well being in teenagers

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An interesting study has been carried out on the effect of meditation on teenage boys in two schools in the U.K.  Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed 155 boys from two schools, Tonbridge and Hampton, before and after a  4-week course in mindfulness,  comparing them to a control group on measures of mindfulness, resilience and psychological well-being.  The training consisted of four 40 minute classes, once a week, which presented the principles and practice of mindfulness. The classes covered the concepts such as awareness and acceptance, and taught practical skills such as how to practice bodily awareness by noticing where they were in contact with their chairs or the floor, paying attention to their breathing, and noticing the sensations involved in walking.  Furthermore, the students were  asked to practice outside the classroom and were encouraged to listen to an audio recording for eight minutes a day.

After the trial period, the 14 and 15 year-old boys were found to have increased well-being, defined as the combination of feeling good – having more positive emotions such as happiness, contentment, interest and affection – and functioning well. Most students reported enjoying and benefiting from the mindfulness training, and 74% said they would like to continue with it in the future.

Lead researcher Dr Felicia Hubbert summed up the findings as follows: More and more we are realising the importance of supporting the overall mental health of children. Our study demonstrates that this type of training improves wellbeing in adolescents and that the more they practise, the greater the benefits. Importantly, many of the students genuinely enjoyed the exercises and said they intended to continue them – a good sign that many children would be receptive to this type of intervention. Another significant aspect of this study is that adolescents who suffered from higher levels of anxiety were the ones who benefitted most.

Felicia Huppert, Daniel Johnson: “A controlled trial of mindfulness training in schools; the importance of practice for an impact on well-being.” The Journal of Positive Psychology. Volume 5 Issue 4,  2010

Why meditation may help with deep emotions

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Research, mainly in the area of neuroscience,  is increasingly showing that meditation changes how the brain functions.  What I find interesting is how this harmonizes with the work of psychologists who look at the importance of early relationships or those who write about the unconscious. One of the most stimulating writers in this latter area is the modern psychoanalytical author, Christopher Bollas. Jon Kabat Zinn likes to say that meditation allows us to step out of “doing-mode” into “being-mode”. This strengthens our capacity to rest with experience rather than always conceptualizing it. As Ajahn Sumedho said in a recent  post, we simply recognize, without going into the need to analyse. Bollas’ quote here may suggest a link.  Maybe getting in touch with  silence may allow us reconnect with our earliest experiences which were processed without the use of language and thought. We may even say that sitting in silence and holding whatever arises may possibly, slowly,  heal these early experiences,  if they were somehow lacking.  His words also allow us see how our emotions contain a deep truth which may be outside of conscious thought, truths which may be “known” without being “thought”.

Some moments feel familiar, sacred, reverential, but are fundamentally outside cognitive experience. They are registered through an experience in being, rather than mind, because they express that part of us where the experience of rapport with the other was the essence of life before words existed….the aesthetic moment constitutes part of the unthought known. The aesthetic moment is an existential recollection of the time when communication took place primarily through this illusion of deep rapport of subject and object. Being with, as a form of dialogue, enabled the baby’s adequate processing of his existence prior to his ability to process it through thought. The mother’s idiom of care and the infant’s experience of this handling is one of the first if not the earliest human aesthetic. 

Christopher Bollas, The Shadow of the Object

Finding a partner within

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Jung writing here – beautifully – on the slow, lifelong process of individuation and how it means a deep befriending of all the parts of ourself and our life story. It is what we are learning as we “stay” in meditation, becoming more and more at ease with the divisions within ourselves. It reminds us that we move towards the full potential of our own maturity through the struggles of life and that we can get “lost” many times along the way.   To become fully ourselves means that we pass through these numerous “psychic transformations” and finally come to see that the happiness we were seeking for all along is based on what is already present within us and a reconciliation with what has made us who we are.

It is the state of someone who, in his wanderings among … his psychic transformations, comes upon a secret happiness which reconciles him to his apparent loneliness.  In communing with himself he finds not deadly boredom and melancholy but an inner partner; more than that, a relationship that seems like the happiness of a secret love, or like a hidden springtime, when the green seed sprouts from the barren earth, holding out the promise of future harvest.

Jung, Mysterium coniunctionis

Resting on our own ground

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No one else can ever provide the connection that finally puts the soul at ease. We find that connection when the window of the heart opens, allowing us to bask in the warmth and openness that is our deepest nature. When we look to others for this ground, we wind up trying to control and manipulate them into being there for us in a way that allows us to settle into ourselves. yet this very focus on trying to get something from them prevents us from resting in our own ground, leaving us outwardly dependent and inwardly disconnected.

John Welwood

Staying safe or choosing to grow.

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We can go back to sleep in order to resist the forces of change or we can stay awake and be broken open. Both ways are difficult, but one way brings with it the gift of a lifetime. If we can stay awake when our lives are changing, secrets will be revealed to us – secrets about ourselves, about the nature of life, and about the eternal source of happiness and peace that is always available, always renewable, already within us.

Elisabeth Lesser, Broken Open
 

Driving home the other night I met a tiny baby fox on the road. Luckily I saw it on time and slowed the car down. It looked at the car briefly but was clearly frightened and quickly vanished into the field of wheat. It was a lovely glimpse of something I do not see too often.

It is a strange paradox that the heart needs to be afraid at times. It keeps us safe. It is certainly appropriate when we are young and getting to know the world and who can be trusted. The reality that some children experience as they are growing up obliges them to put up protective barriers within their hearts. And, to different extents, all of us carry around some of these wounds and some of the protections. However, sometimes the wise behaviours needed  when young – the need to be very aware of other people’s emotions, the response to other’s ever shifting moods – can become maladaptive and a hindrance as time goes on. Some people continue to scan for danger or be hyper-vigilent even as they grow older and the original danger has passed. Trusting others becomes the defining question of their lives, and doubting people’s’ motives becomes an ongoing survival mechanism. Sometimes the lack of a secure base in childhood leads them to have so little  confidence in themselves  that it is hard to accept that they can be loved, and this leads them –  paradoxically  – to keep people at a distance and do everything possible to make people prove to them that they are reliable. They can never relax. Deep in their hearts they remain the frightened little animal, looking for the slightest thing to show that people were never reliable and thus prove that they were right all along. And in doing this they push people away, repeating the original pattern.

However, when we seek safety as our first strategy we fall into two traps:  Firstly, we  impoverish our life and limit our potential because we miss opportunities to grow. Secondly, we project our fear onto situations and people, thus giving them power to scare us and restrict what we do. It is true that healing these wounds in the heart is not easy. We do not like to admit this fear, to allow it out and be fully present with ourselves. It is easier to turn away from the situations that frighten us. However, it is precisely by taking a non-judgmental interest in what is going on inside rather than running away from it that we grow. By taking this risk our life becomes richer. It could mean reaching out to someone who we are estranged from or going to some activity that raises anxiety at the thought of it. We can only  come to know our true capacity in the context of our struggles, and in how we face the challenges which life presents to us. So today we could look

Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, “May I have permission to go into battle with you?” Fear said, “Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.” Then the young warrior said, “How can I defeat you?” Fear replied, “My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.” In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear.

Pema Chodron

Space for the conditions of life

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To free ourselves from our neurotic ego is ultimately to accept the conditions of existence and to see ourselves not as victims or opponents of the givens of reality, but as adults who face up to them honestly. These givens include the following: things change and end; life is not always fair; we pay for growth with suffering; things do not always go according to plan; people are not always loyal or loving.

Accepting the conditions of existence means first of all admitting our vulnerability to them. When we realize that the givens of life – no matter how ferocious – are not penalties, but ingredients of depth, lovability and character, we can let go of the belief that we are immune (or need to be). “That can’t happen to me” or “How dare they do that to me” changes to “Anything human can happen to me and I will do my best to handle it”. The strength to handle challenges, in fact, is directly proportional to how much we let go of entitlement.

David Richo, How to be an Adult in Relationships