Mindfulness On The Go E-Book

Anna Black

• Herausgeber: CICO Books
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

Whether you are at home or at work, on your daily commute or travelling, you can practise mindfulness to decrease stress and improve your health and wellbeing. t is often challenging to weave mindfulness into our day as we get caught up in the busy-ness of life. It can feel overwhelming sometimes to know what to do and how to start doing something different and having to decide stops us doing anything at all. Mindfulness on the Go is designed to address this problem. It introduces the essential pillars of mindfulness and how to cultivate it, then offers 52 suggestions, divided into practices and activities, to start using it every day. Practices are mini meditations to do while you are out and about, while activities focus more on becoming aware of your habitual patterns of behaviour, as well as how mindfulness can help you to cultivate new ones. By focusing on just one thing per day, it makes it easier to remember rather than just feeling you should be mindful all the time. As you become familiar with the type of practices, you will find that you begin to do them without the prompts, and mindfulness will become part of your daily life.

Leseprobe

mindfulnesson the go

mindfulnesson the go

DISCOVER HOW TO BE MINDFUL WHEREVER YOU ARE—AT HOME OR WORK, ON YOUR DAILY COMMUTE, OR WHENEVER YOU’RE ON THE MOVE

ANNA BLACK

For all those who show up and practice. Remember, “you don’t have to enjoy it—just do it!”

This edition published in 2019 by CICO Books

an imprint of Ryland Peters & Small Ltd

20–21 Jockey’s Fields, London WC1R 4BW

341 E 116th St, New York, NY 10029

www.rylandpeters.com

First published in 2017 as a book and card boxed set

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text © Anna Black 2017, 2019 Design and illustration © CICO Books 2017, 2019

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress and the British Library.

E-ISBN: 978-1-78249-757-8

ISBN: 978-1-78249-722-6

Printed in China

Editor: Helen Ridge

Design concept: Emily Breen

Illustrator: Amy Louise Evans

Commissioning editor: Kristine Pidkameny

Senior editor: Carmel Edmonds

Art director: Sally Powell

Production controller: David Hearn

Publishing manager: Penny Craig

Publisher: Cindy Richards

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

chapter 1:

about mindfulness

WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?

HOW MINDFULNESS CAN HELP

TEASING APART OUR EXPERIENCE

THE LIGHT OF AWARENESS

THE POWER OF THE BREATH

BREATHING INTO

TUNING INTO

TURNING TOWARD ALL EXPERIENCE

BEING WITH

THE POWER OF THE BODY

NOTICING THE NARRATIVE

CORE ATTITUDES

ABOUT PRACTICE

CORE PRACTICES

chapter 2:

activities and practices

ABOUT THE ACTIVITIES AND PRACTICES

THE ACTIVITIES

THE PRACTICES

REFLECT ON YOUR EXPERIENCE

FIND OUT MORE

INDEX

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

The phrase “mindfulness on the go” might seem a contradiction. However, we can cultivate mindfulness in more ways than just sitting still, and this book will show you how.

People who already practice mindfulness often find it challenging to take the skills learned while meditating “on the mat” into their everyday life—the busy-ness of the office or family is distracting and they fall into familiar patterns of automatic behavior.

We can find ourselves compartmentalizing mindfulness into something we do at home for 15 or 20 minutes at a time, rather than face the challenge of doing it throughout the day. This book has been designed to encourage you to practice mindfulness anywhere and at any time. The more you do it, the more it will become second nature, and you will find yourself practicing it instinctively throughout your day.

Whether you have never meditated before or do so regularly, I recommend you read Chapter 1 first because it explains what mindfulness is and its origins, and how it can help us in our everyday lives. The focus is primarily on how to practice mindfulness, both formally and informally. It helps to be familiar with the terms used.

oTeasing Apart Our Experience (see page 22) explains what makes up our experience.

oThe Light of Awareness (see page 23) explains how we can use our attention to explore our experience.

oThe Power of the Breath (see page 24), Breathing Into (see page 26), Tuning Into (see page 27), Being With (see page 30), and The Power of the Body (see page 32) explain how we can use the breath and body as vehicles for our attention, helping us to access and relate to our experience in a different way.

oTurning Toward All Experience (see page 28) explains how mindfulness teaches us to be with all our experiences (even the ones we would rather not be with).

o Much of our suffering is self-created. We weave complex stories about our experiences, which we continually replay and embroider in our minds, thereby influencing our mood and behavior. Noticing the Narrative (see page 34) explains how we can free ourselves from believing these stories and thereby free ourselves from unnecessary suffering.

There is also information on the key attitudes to cultivate (see pages 36–43), guidance around practicing (how to take care of yourself, paying attention to your posture and managing discomfort, and dealing with the wandering mind—see pages 44–51), and core meditation practices (see pages 52–61).

Chapter 2 offers a variety of exercises, divided into activities and practices, that are all designed for you to be able to use daily and “on the go.” You can find out more about them on pages 64–67.

chapter 1

about mindfulness

WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?

Mindfulness is commonly defined as deliberately paying attention to your experience as it unfolds, without judging it. Bringing kindly awareness is crucial.

When we practice mindfulness, we use our attention like a flashlight, shining it onto our experience (see The Light of Awareness, page 23).

Our experience refers to changing internal states, such as thoughts, physical sensations, and emotions (see Teasing Apart Our Experience, page 22) and includes how we relate to them as well as to our external experience, such as sounds, smells, other people, and our immediate environment. These internal and external factors are all interconnected.

We are interested in how we relate to our experience: wanting more of it, resisting it and trying to make it go away, or tuning out from it. Much of our suffering arises as a result of not liking what is arising and trying to make it different.

How we pay attention is important. Intention is crucial—we deliberately choose to pay attention to our experience and, most importantly, we pay attention without judging and with a dollop of kindness, if possible. These are two of the core attitudes we deliberately cultivate through practice and which are also cultivated by practicing regularly (see pages 37–39).

One of the ways mindfulness helps us is by teaching us to be with whatever arises. We don’t chase a particular experience. We don’t pick and choose and only pay attention to those parts we like (see Turning Toward All Experience, page 28). Paradoxically, it is only when we accept things as they are—that is, we stop resisting our experience—that our relationship to that experience changes. We learn to do this by accessing The Power of the Breath (see page 24) and The Power of the Body (see page 32) and by cultivating specific attitudes (see pages 36–43). Other benefits are described on pages 13–21.

Mindfulness is a natural trait that we all have to some degree. Children are inherently mindful but it is a trait that we often lose as we grow older. We can cultivate mindfulness through meditating, either formally or informally.

Formal meditation refers to meditation practices such as sitting, movement (for example, yoga or walking), and body scans. There are different variations and types of practice within each of these. Formal practices are commonly done at a chosen place, at a particular time, and for a certain duration. There are instructions for some formal practices on pages 52–61.

Informal meditation refers to practices integrated into our everyday life. This means doing an activity and knowing what we are doing while we are doing it, rather than thinking about something else or multitasking. For example, eating a meal mindfully can become a meditation. The majority of practices in Chapter 2 are informal practices. Some of them are mini meditations and others are more about developing an awareness of habitual patterns of behavior.

It is recommended that you explore a combination of both formal and informal practices. The former can be kept quite short if time is pressing. Both types of practice are beneficial and cultivate different things as well as supporting each other.

It is important that you explore your experience for yourself, rather than take anyone else’s word for it—and do take care of yourself (see page 45).

ORIGINS OF MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhism and has been practiced for over 2,500 years. However, its secular form was developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the Center for Mindfulness at the University of Massachusetts Medical School Hospital, USA.

Kabat-Zinn wanted to find a way to help people learn to live with chronic health conditions and the associated psychological problems, such as depression and anxiety. In the late 1970s he developed an eight-week program called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR).

Since then, this program has been adapted to help people with a range of specific medical and psychological conditions, including cancer, anxiety, depression, eating disorders, and addiction. These adapted forms of MBSR—each with a specific name, such as Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for the prevent of relapse in depression—are commonly taught in groups where the specific vulnerabilities of the group will be addressed and the teacher will have experience of that particular context. This is unlike a general MBSR group, where people may be attending for lots of different reasons. In both contexts the focus is on how we relate to our problems rather than the problems themselves.

As the benefits of mindfulness were revealed (see opposite), people became interested in how to use it in a nontherapeutic context. Today, mindfulness is practiced in many areas of society, including schools, prisons, the sporting world, and the workplace.

Although mindfulness is commonly taught in groups (and that can be a really helpful way to establish your own personal practice), it is perfectly possible to practice on your own, particularly in the informal manner emphasized here. If you are practicing on your own without the support of a teacher, do pay particular attention to the cautions on page 45.

HOW MINDFULNESS CAN HELP

People come to mindfulness for many different reasons. Sometimes they are looking for ways to manage a chronic health condition, such as pain, depression, or anxiety, or they may want to learn to meditate or simply be more present in their life.

Certainly the evidence suggests that we are all more distracted, with many of us leading complicated lives, perhaps juggling family demands with work, which can be physically and emotionally draining. Whatever the reasons, it seems that people get out of mindfulness what they most need, as it helps each of us to find a better balance in our lives.

Mindfulness is not a magic cure-all that will make all our problems go away. However, it can help us to relate to our problems differently. Studies have shown that as well as psychological changes, physiological changes take place as a result of practicing mindfulness meditation, and these include changes in the brain as well as blood pressure and an improved immune system.

Reducing stress

It is common for people to report feeling less stressed after mindfulness meditation. The level of stress we feel is determined by whether we believe our resources are sufficient for the demands placed on them. Therefore, if we can change our perception of whether we are able to cope, we will feel less stressed. This is supported by the neuroscience that shows that the amygdala (the area of the brain that activates the stress reaction) is less active in those practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness also activates the body’s internal calming response, which is the antidote to the stress reaction activated whenever we feel threatened.

Letting go of additional suffering

How we perceive our experience is determined by our interpretation of it—the story we create about it. This story is often the source of much of our suffering (see Noticing the Narrative, page 34). While we often can’t do anything about the original issue, we can do something about the extra stuff we pile on top. Once we realize that a lot of our suffering is self-created, the skills we learn through practicing mindfulness help us to let the stories go. They may still come into our minds but we do not believe that they are true.

For example, if we can’t sleep, we might lie awake worrying about how tired we will be the next day and how that might affect us. We get mentally exhausted as the anxiety grows; we might become cross or frustrated and perhaps blame ourselves or others for our sleeplessness. The mindful approach would be to notice the stories we are telling ourselves (whose fault it is, the crystal-ball gazing, and so on), acknowledge them, and take our attention to the body, noticing the breath and the sensation of contact with the bed and the covers. Every time our thoughts pull us away, the invitation would be to bring our attention back to the body and remind ourselves that we can still rest without being asleep.

When we experience physical pain, we often tense up around the discomfort, thereby creating additional tension elsewhere in the body. Notice how you brace yourself against a cold wind or as you walk into a room where you anticipate a difficult situation. Every time we do this we are storing up tension in the body, which can have long-term health implications. If we can bring these moments into awareness and soften into the bracing, we are preventing the tension from arising in the first place.