Stress Reduction – Page 100

When busy, just take time to stop and notice

July 18, 2012July 18, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

In your life just take time to stop, just this sense of stopping and opening when you find yourself in that moment – “Oh I’m caught up, this thing, the next thing and the next thing” …… Just say to yourself “STOP” and relax and open – try to listen to the sound of silence.

And even if you can’t notice it, just that stopping just being caught in that momentum of busyness of compulsion…one thing to the next and one thought to the other – it’s a dualistic world, a conditioned world that we bind ourselves in – going from one thing to the other, until we get tired and go to bed – we get up and again we do this and we do that, running around one thing after the other…. Now, that is going from one condition to another…we get caught up in our own particular conditioning and programming – worry worry worry – meeting the deadline. It is always like this – this sense of feeling that there’s always something else, something I have to do, something that needs to be done!

So then the stopping and reflecting, just stopping and being the KNOWER of this feeling – not trying to suppress it but just recognise that compulsive momentum….. “its like THIS” …this feeling of rushing…of going onto the next thing – meeting the deadline, so much to do, so much pressure, its like THIS. Now staying with that, even for a moment is better than not doing it at all – not just being a helpless victim of compulsive habits, until you burn out and break down. It’s like running a motor car until it just breaks down, not reading the signs. This is your life – don’t be intimidated by it or just become a victim of habits.

Ajahn Sumedho

More scientific evidence supporting health benefits of mindfulness meditation

July 16, 2012July 16, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Although meditation practices in different wisdom traditions and religions have been around for thousands of years, there has been an increasing amount of scientific interest in their effect over the last decade or so. It is true to say that for a good part of the last century, the psychological community had a low opinion of religious practices, as can be seen in Freud, who regarded them as an attempt to control the outside world and sometimes as a regressive infantile delusion. However, in more recent times, a significant amount of attention and research has been conducted on both the medical and psychological benefits of religious practice and on the health effects of secular meditation programmes such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT ).

One recent study, published just this week in the July 2012 Journal of Psychiatric Practice, was conducted by Dr William R. Marchand of the George E. Wahlen Veterans Affairs Medical Center and the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, and found that there was “convincing evidence that such interventions are effective in the treatment of psychiatric symptoms and pain, when used in combination with more conventional therapies”

Dr Marchand set out to review published studies evaluating the health benefits of mindfulness-based practices. His conclusion was that both MBSR and MBCT have “broad-spectrum” effects against depression and anxiety and can also decrease general psychological distress.

Based on the evidence, MBCT can be “strongly recommended” as an addition to conventional treatments (adjunctive treatment) for depression. Both MBSR and MBCT were effective treatments for anxiety and Dr Marchand states that from a medical point of view “the available evidence indicates their use is currently warranted in a variety of clinical situations”

Real strength

July 13, 2012July 10, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

If you are truly strong, there is little need to emphasize it to yourself or to others. Best to take another track entirely and direct your attention where you fear most to look. You can do this by simply allowing yourself to feel, even to cry, to not have opinions about everything, to not appear invincible or unfeeling to others, but instead to be in touch with and appropriately open about your feelings. What looks like weakness is actually where strength lies. And what looks like strength is often weakness, and attempt to cover up fear; this is an act or a facade, however convincing it might appear to others or even to yourself.

Jon Kabat-Zinn

Just witness, not judging yourself

July 10, 2012July 5, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Maybe you have a hard time getting up in the morning. Just make that conscious. Maybe you are a night owl and you prefer waking up late, you find early morning’s difficult. You do not need to fit your mind’s image of the perfect meditator – just witness the struggle of your mind, or your discomfort. If your mind is bright or comfortable in the morning then notice that too. The more you witness and take refuge in the knowing mind, the more you will find that whatever needs to be discarded will be discarded. Whatever is not useful will just naturally fall away, but not through rejection or aversion, simply through the knowing of the experience in each moment.

Ajahn Sundara, The Knowing Mind

Making space to pause today

July 6, 2012July 3, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

Choose a time when you are involved in a goal-oriented activity — reading, working on the computer, cleaning, eating — and explore pausing for a moment or two. Begin by discontinuing what you are doing, sitting comfortably and allowing your eyes to close. Take a few deep breaths and with each exhale let go of any worries or thoughts about what you are going to do next; let go of any tightness in the body.

Now, notice what you are experiencing as you inhabit the pause. What sensations are you aware of in your body? Do you feel anxious or restless as you try to step out of your mental stories? Do you feel pulled to resume your activity? Can you simply allow, for this moment, whatever is happening inside you?

Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance

Everything you need is already here

July 3, 2012July 3, 2012 Karl Duffy1 Comment

This is what we mean by the practice of mindfulness. It is the how of coming to our senses moment by moment. There really is no place to go in this moment. We are already here. Can we be here fully? There really is nothing to do. Can we go into non-doing, into pure being? There really is nothing to attain, no special “state” or “feeling”, because whatever you are experiencing now is already special, already extraordinary, by virtue of the fact that it is being experienced. The paradox of this invitation is that everything you might wish for is already here. And the only important thing is to be the knowing that awareness already is.

Jon Kabat Zinn, Mindfulness for Beginners.