Mindfulness

Mindfulness

Here you will find practices that help you to connect more fully to ongoing experiences, allowing you to become more available to activities and people in daily life. Mindfulness expands happiness and counteracts the dangers of pressures, demands and stress.

Use Breathing to Blow Away Blow-ups!

You can teach your child this breathing technique to help him reduce stressful feelings and begin to manage overwhelming emotions.

There are lots of ways to react to stress, some healthy and positive and others not. Breathing in a particular way is highly effective.  The technique I describe below works because it quickly activates the parasympathetic nervous system1, which has a calming effect. It’s called the 4-7-8 technique and involves counting the length of inhales, holds, and exhales in a series of breathing cycles.

boy and lion roaringOnce your child learns the technique, she can use it the next time she’s feeling angry, frustrated, overwhelmed, withdraws, or has any other form of stress.  You may also want to use it with your child when you sense stress is building, before there’s a blow up.  An important part of self-regulation is being aware of when you’re shifting out of the so called emotional “green zone,” and moving toward a red (hot, volatile) zone or a blue (withdrawn, defensive) zone.

Here’s how to use this breathing technique

1.Begin by having your child blow his nose to clear it out, then have your child sit comfortably on a chair or the floor.

2.  Ask your child to place the tip of his tongue behind his front teeth and leave it there for the rest of the breathing time.

3. Next, ask your child to exhale fully through the mouth, letting the air blow around the tongue and past the teeth. It will make some swishing sounds and that’s fine.

4. Now ask your child to close his mouth and inhale through the nose, silently counting to four. You may want to count aloud for younger children and teach them to count with their fingers if they are not yet able to count in their heads.

5. Hold the breath while silently counting to seven. (Or counting fingers for younger children)

6. Exhale completely through the mouth, making a blowing sound, while silently counting to eight. This ends one breathing cycle. 

Repeat the inhale-hold-exhale pattern three more times, for a total of four cycles.

It doesn’t matter how fast or slowly you count – counting should fit the person’s breathing capacity.  What’s important is the 4-7-8 ratio.  It’s common to feel light-headed when you first try this practice, and that’s fine.  In time, the light-headedness will diminish. 

To help your child build the ability to self-calm, you may want to do this every day, or even twice a day.  With practice, you can gradually increase the number of cycles your child does up to eight.  Once learned, this is something your child can do anytime she or he is feeling stressed.  (And yes – it’s great for grown-ups too!)

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1The Parasympathetic Nervous System (PNS) is one of two complementary sets of nerves in the autonomic nervous system. It’s partner, the Sympathetic Nervous System (SNS) is essential for stimulating basic life functions such as digestion. The parasympathetic nerves run down from the brain, and include the Vagus nerve and segments of the spinal nerve.  One important role they play is in modulating the heart, respiration and the digestive system.  When stimulated, the parasympathetic nerves slow the heart rate, relax gastrointestinal muscles and calm a person.  It is a dampening system, variously called the “calm and connect” or “rest and digest” response. In contrast, the Sympathetic Nervous System is an activating system responsible for stimulating activities such as sexual arousal, digestion and excretion, as well as the well-known “fight or flight” response. 

Many experiences in modern life activate the SNS, including the fast pace of modernity, lack of down time, stimulation from screen devices, lack of sleep, traffic congestion and numerous other everyday occurrences.

Some other things that activate the parasympathetic nervous system are being in nature, meditating, getting a massage, deep prayer, yoga, mindfulness, chi gong, and playing with animals.  Loving-Kindness meditation is especially effective.

Mindfulness and Overwhelmed Brains

brain with paint splashes representing activityOur brains can become overwhelmed when we have feelings of anger, worry, fear, sadness and pain. Even less dramatic feelings like the exhaustion of managing daily life can overwhelm the brain.

Stressed Brains

Stressed brains become very noisy – constantly checking for the next problem. Ruminating. Chattering. Worrying. Fretting about what comes next. Judging what came before. Thoughts whirl around, layered one on another or competing with one another. That depletes cognitive and emotional resources, leading us to experience stress, tension and agitation.

The only fix is calming down

Remarkably, even a few minutes of calm a day can help. How? That’s what all the talk about mindfulness is about. Mindfulness is simply paying attention to what you’re doing at the moment. It means noticing and trying gently to be fully aware of your current activity. It is simplicity of thought, which is why it soothes a brain lost in complexity. Mindfulness can be as simple as fully savoring the sensations of slowly eating a raisin, beginning with investigating its feel in your fingers, noticing what happens when you squeeze it a bit, taking in the fragrance of the raisin, slowly tasting it and playing with it in your mouth. Mindfulness can be noticing what your feet feel with each step, or paying attention to the sounds in the environment when you take a short walk. It can even mean fully engaging in the experience of washing dishes as if you’ve never done it before, with the kind of curious delight your 4-year-old would have washing a few dishes.

Short term effects

Mindfulness brings full attention of your conscious brain to one thing. When that happens, your brain becomes calm. The busy chatter, planning and worrying get turned off for a little while. The calming effect is experienced by your whole body, as muscles relax. Breathing deepens and your heart slows. You feel more open; less depleted. This feels better subjectively, but it is also restorative. The brain and body briefly recover from being stressed and overwhelmed.

Long term effects

Taking mindful breaks a few times a day is a quick, though brief anecdote to feeling overwhelmed and stressed. Over time, you learn to become more mindful, less scattered, in daily activities. You build skill in being absorbed and effective across the board and you experience a greater sense of calm and wellbeing. Actual physiological changes occur as mindfulness practices continue, among them improved blood pressure and decreased cortisol, the stress inducing hormone.

Personal Practices

The sense of wellbeing is what draws many people to personal practices. Mindfulness is actually an aspect of just about all such practices. Meditation and yoga are mindful activities. As are gratefulness, journaling and getting absorbed in nature.

Some forms of meditation involve focusing on something like the breath or a mantra. In others, the mind observes its thoughts with openness and curiosity. Each is a mindful, “present moment” experience. You’ll find an introduction to meditation in the video.

Yoga, which means “union,” has many aspects. The best known is the series of postures and breathing used in Hatha Yoga. While some people view this as “exercise,” it is a practice that brings one into present moment awareness.

We feel gratitude in the present, not imagining past or future moments. In feeling grateful, we are taking in the current moment. We don’t think, “that’s a beautiful rainbow, not as nice as the one I saw last week, but still nice.” That is a thought. A judgement. Not a feeling of gratitude. You can find out more about gratefulness practices beginning here.

Whichever practice (or practices) you are drawn to can bring greater wellbeing and each can calm down a stressed overwhelmed mind.

Learning more & creating a practice that’s right for youclose up of thistle flower head

We are each drawn to particular practices and prefer some over others. It’s good to explore and be curious. You can advantage of the many courses, YouTube videos, podcasts and other sources.

♥  Need help exploring different personal practices and figuring out which is best for you?

Please call or email me. I can teach you practices and collaborate with you to design a practice routine that fits your personal needs and lifestyle. I can also direct you to reliable sources, both on and off line. It takes just a few sessions and supports you for a very long time.
You can reach me at addunlea@insightsforparents.com or call me directly at 530 848-4740 to arrange a free 15 minute conversation.  I will work with you in person, by phone or by Skype.
Jars of Joy

close up of glass jars with ribbon around necksA mother, who is also trained in spiritual formation and is a Presbyterian ‘Stephen’ Minister, created a wonderfully thoughtful way to help her teenage daughter find meaning and move through some adolescent challenges. Pam Robertson wrote out a month’s worth of inspiring quotes on strips of paper, put them in a glass jar, and placed them in her daughter’s room. Eventually her daughter picked one up and read it. It became a ritual to read one each day and lead her to find new happiness and purpose.

Today, Pam Robertson and her daughter make and distribute Joy Jars to others seeking gentle thoughtful support.

This is a powerful practice, meaningful to both the creator and receiver. It is a brilliant way to help and comfort a teenager because the jars speak for themselves and can simply be placed where they can be discovered. The jars circumvent any issues of nagging, intruding, or offering unwelcome advice.  Jars of Joy is placed in the mindfulness section because creating them or reading a quote from a jar brings us into the present moment.

Creating Joy Jars can be:
 a personal practice
 a comforting support for someone else
♥  a parenting practice

You can view Pam and her daughter Meredith’s story here and learn more about making Jars of Joy yourself.

A film by HooplaHa.

Video from KarmaTube

What is Mindfulness?

 

Mind written on transparent globe, sky & clouds in background

 

Mindfulness is consciously paying attention to what is currently happening in the outside world and within. Just for a short while. It is a choice you make to train yourself to check in more often and be more available to events, interactions, and even emotions as they happen.

Background

We humans spend a great deal of our time in what we might call the world’s first virtual reality — our minds. We imagine, replay, ruminate, daydream and get involved in all kinds of thought strings, while barely noticing what is going on in the actual world. On top of this, the fast pace of modern life brings feelings of pressure, obligation, and stress to get countless things done on an ever shortening timeline, preventing us from feeling at ease or being happy. Instead we feel stressed.

Our physiological response to stress is pretty much the same whether we are defending ourselves from physical dangers, such as being threatened, or “dangers” of incessant pressure and demands. Cortisol streams through the body bringing bursts of energy and strength to fend off danger. This is an excellent response to sudden danger, but not for prolonged dangers or those brought on by our thinking. Levels of circulating cortisol bring muscle clenching that we experience as tension and tightness. Remaining in a state of tightness and defensiveness is exhausting and leads to feeling tired, strained, and depleted. It can also disrupt sleep, impair thinking, lower immune function, and elevate blood pressure.

So we have two ongoing patterns: a general tendency to get lost in thoughts and be less engaged with what’s going on in the real world, and a tendency to feel chronic stress and strain from pressures and obligations that are piling up.

Numerous studies using experience sampling methods, in which subjects are signaled randomly throughout the day, reveal that people are thinking about something other than what they are doing at least half the time. Yet these studies, which also gather data on emotions, show that people are happiest when they are fully involved with what they are doing. (This is called being in flow.) Other studies, from both psychology and medicine, show that pausing for just short periods to connect with the here and now dramatically reduces feelings of stress, reduces cortisol, and increases physiological responses associated with calm positive feelings. These pauses are instances of mindfulness.

Mindfulness

Mindfulness practices date back thousands of years and are especially associated with Buddhist teachings. Mindfulness simply simply means being aware of what you are sensing and feeling in the present moment, without evaluating or judging it. It is being fully open, or available, to experience what is happening.

child standing inmudThis is how children regularly experience the world: aware, tuned into what is occurring and to sensations they are having. Think about how intensely children watch a bug crawling, watch their footprints appearing in sand or feel the squish and squeeze stuff. Think about how engaged they are playing, or slowly licking ice cream or letting something dissolve in their mouths. Children move through many other mental states as well — daydreaming, thinking, solving problems, worrying. Many on the same kinds of things adults think about. But children naturally spend more time being mindful.child licking plate

Obviously there are times for thinking. Our thinking and problem-solving are a huge part of who we are as humans and how we’ve accomplished and invented all we have.

There are even times for mindlessness. Relying on habits or acting on auto pilot is actually very useful. Good habits preserve effective ways of doing something. They come from our previously having attended to a task of some sort and learning how to accomplish it. Tying shoes, driving a car, and typing on a keyboard are all very useful habits. They free up our mental space for other things. We wouldn’t be nearly as competent without such habits. So mindless functioning actually has it place in life.
In contrast, drifting through days without really getting involved with what is happening is living without really being engaged in life and without really connecting to others. It is unsatisfying. Daily life lacks richness. Promising yourself that you’ll enjoy life as soon as the next project ends or the next task is checked off is a promise you never keep. When you’re not experiencing life much, you don’t really taste food, you don’t see and smell nature as you pass through it, you don’t even really feel the fond touch of someone stroking you. Everything is diminished. Life is a fraction of what it can be if you were really there.

Mindfulness counteracts both stressful living and lack of engagement. It’s actually a natural state. Remember, you did it a lot as a child. We naturally open to it with just a small amount of guidance.

Modern Practices of Mindfulness

Several strands and traditions come together with the new millennial interest mindfulness. One is a booming interest in meditation as a way to counteract stress and experience greater happiness or well-being. Another comes from programs that target stress reduction.
During the 1980s, Jon Kabat-Zinn, now emeritus professor of medicine at the University of Massachusetts, developed an eight week course called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). The program helps lower high blood pressure and improves health in patients at risk for diseases associated with elevated pressure. Today, MBSR programs are offered through many hospitals as well as through other organizations. Research indicates that MBSR may decrease levels of cortisol, lesson some kinds of chronic pain, improve sleep, and lower risks of depression.

Studies of changes in individuals who meditate show similar reductions in cortisol as well as improved vagal tone (which means a healthy heart and breath rate), changes in the amygdala related to how stress is handled and several other positive measures. Both MBSR and meditation are associated with greater feelings of happiness and positivity, greater mental and physical flexibility and a higher subjective sense of general well-being.

How do you learn or practice mindfulness?

You can develop mindfulness in many ways.

  •  Enrolling in an MBSR program near you or taking a class in meditation are obvious options.
  • Many colleges and universities offer (low-cost) meditation programs, as do other organizations.
  • Many major meditation centers and universities have online offerings.
  • You may want to explore websites for Insight Meditation centers near you.
  • There are a variety of new apps, such as Headspace, that offer guided meditation.
  • If you type meditation or mindfulness into your search engine you will find a surprising number of programs.
  • You may want to look through the magazine, “Mindful” for support and ideas.

Insights For Parents includes mindfulness practices here as well as in some of its weekly Micro Practices

stones in water

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