I’ve added a recent post to the blog on my private practice web page regarding tips for working with depression – which include mindfulness exercises. If you of anyone you know has dealt with chronic low moods or depression this blog entry could be of interest to you.

It can be found by clicking here. (or visit: http://www.counselingfortransformation.com/2009/03/17/how-to-know-if-you-are-depressed/)

Warm Regards,

David

See below for a streaming audio version of a guided mindfulness of breath awareness practice. This is also available here for download.

This is the initial practice to given to beginning students of mindfulness meditation to begin to build concentration, presence and stabilize the mind. For many this is a lifelong practice.

Enjoy!

In the swirl of stimuli and the 150 mph culture that we live in we often lose track of our body.  It takes both effort and intention to be in the present and one of the easiest ways to access this is through our physical body.  I like to check in with myself several times a day and ask myself this question:

Where are my feet?

I then feel deeply into my feet, feeling the sensations and or numbness that is there, hot/cold, tingly, etc.  Just noticing whatever is going on there.  What are they in contact with?  The floor? Am I sitting cross legged? What is that like?  You may find that it is difficult to be in your feet for more than a few seconds…just notice this and return to the feet. Feeling our body and making a relationship with it is one of the most profound types of mindfulness practice. I find that even doing this exercise for a few seconds increases my sense of presence, mindfulness, and increases grounding and relaxation.

This is an easy way to integrate some mindfulnes practice into your everyday life and give your mind and body a brief respite from the assault of stimulation.

Be well,

David

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided mindfulness and forgiveness exercise. This practice will help you begin to unwind the chronic tension in the mind and body around unfinished business with a person you feel has hurt you. Please pick something of fairly low emotional intensity to work with at first (this is explained in more detail in the recording.) We want this to be a gentle compassionate process. This exercise has been a fruitful one for my clients and I hope it is helpful to you.

Please use your discretion when using any of the guided meditations/exercises I present here. If you ever feel overwhelmed or uncomfortable discontinue the exercise. The most effective way of working with this would be with the help or support of a qualified therapist. Keep in mind that forgiveness is a progressive process and you may not feel you can completely open to or arouse and kind of heartfelt quality of forgiveness during the exercise. Approach the person, situation, or memory with gentleness and take your time. Bit by bit, moment by moment, practice by practice we can learn to let go of our pain, resentment, rage, sadness, and other types of suffering. Regular practice is required to feel the full benefits of the exercise.

Therapists and healers please feel free to link this or distribute to your clients.

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for the next 20 minutes or so and follow along with the audio.

This is also available streaming from my website, downloadable as an mp3, or you can subscribe to this as a podcast/feed from this page.

Forgiveness is at the heart of developing compassion. Many of us carry around memories of actions, decisions, and words we have used against ourselves, and against others. We may also carry the memories and stories of how we have been hurt by others. Over time these have solidified into contraction in the mind and chronic tension in the body. Until we let ourselves feel this, and allow ourselves to forgive ourselves for how we have hurt ourselves, how we have hurt others, and begin to forgive those who have hurt us, we cannot move towards freedom and happiness.

A first step here is often to catalog those things we wish to forgive ourselves for or wish to forgive others for. It is helpful to write these down, perhaps in a journal. Look at each item and notice the felt sense in your body. Is there tension around your heart? Perhaps in your belly or jaw, sadness or the tingling of excitement or anxiety… observe your reaction. Our bodily felt sense can tell us alot about what we are carrying emotionally.

Are these memories, stories, situations that you are really willing to let go of? Do you feel ready to at least attempt forgiveness? If so put a check mark next to each one you feel ready to face and make your best attempt at forgiveness/self-compassion.

I will be posting another audio feed/downloadable podcast soon that will be a guided mindfulness exercise on forgiveness. This is a tool which you can apply to one or more of these memories you have chosen to direct forgiveness towards. Look, or should I say listen for that soon.

Warm regards,

David

Forgiveness is at the heart of compassion for both ourselves and others.  We forgive ourselves a little bit each time we are able to bring our unconditional presence to whatever we have been avoiding in our lives, whether it is physical pain, a toxic relationship, an old emotional wound, anger or grief we never felt, someone who we feel has caused us pain, our perceived failures in our lives….it can look any way and there are so many things that we avoid in our lives.

The energy of forgiveness is spacious and soft, gentle and accepting. With the mindful approach we turn towards our pain, not away as is the habit for most.  I know that I am given so many opportunities to forgive in my mindfulness practice. Life gives us many opportunities as well. A re-occuring memory surfaces of how I hurt someone, or how I was hurt along with the inner dialogue and the painful contraction, perhaps anger or rage, perhaps sadness or despair.  We welcome all of it with open arms.  We let it into our awareness, even if just for a brief period. We are beginning to connect with the core experience of what we have avoided. 

If avoidance arises, how does it arise? It is part of the nature of the conditioned human mind that we avoid pain and seek comfort or pleasure. This is samsara, the endless cycle of suffering that mindfulness meditation is meant to be an antidote for. This avoidance can look many ways. Perhaps we are in so much pain we turn to food, to TV, to drugs or alcohol, to a new relationship, to pornography, or shopping to try and erase the pain. We bury it and it surfaces again and again. The compassionate way is to gentle turn toward our suffering and let it in little by little. Get to know it. Treat it as a welcome guest rather than a villain who we must keep out at all costs.

These memories and experiences in life and in our practice arise as doors opening, or brief and auspicious arising for opportunities to forgive ourselves and others.  We can begin this process by aligning our mindfulness or intention to open to the whole experience with this unconditional acceptance and take the experience however it arises, as sadness, rage, anger, joy, bitterness, despair, anxiety, excitement…..whatever it is we let it come, and we let go into it moment by moment, breath by breath.

Each time we begin our meditation practice we can set this intention for forgiving ourselves and others. I do this by repeating these phrases silently to myself from the Brahma Viharas on Conciliation and Atonement at the beginning of each formal practice period.

If there is any way I have harmed myself, either knowingly or unknowingly,
through action of body, speech, or mind, I ask forgiveness.
If there is any way I have suffered harm by reason of anything I have thought, or said, or done,
I forgive myself.
If there is any way I have harmed another, either on purpose or by accident,
by reason of anything I have thought, or said, or done, I ask forgiveness.
If there is any way another has harmed me, either knowingly or unknowingly,
through action of body, speech, or mind, I forgive them.

Note: This guided deep relaxation is now available for download as a podcast on the itunes store and as an mp3 file on this website.

Please enjoy the following streaming audio of a guided deep relaxation technique I’ve developed for my clients. This is a cross between a progressive relaxation and a mindfulness of body exercise. This will help you to become more familiar with your inner landscape, feel more connected to yourself and begin to build a reliable internal resource for relaxing more deeply. Regular practice is required to feel the full benefits of the exercise.

Therapists and healers please feel free to link this or distribute to your clients.

Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed for the next 30 minutes or so and follow along with the audio.

At its core Mindfulness practice is really about deep engagement. Deep listening to ourselves internally, and externally to our environment. Quieting the body-mind so that we can be completely receptive to what is, rather than manipulating, misperceiving, adding to, or taking away from our present experience. I emphasize contact with the body often in these posts. Experiencing through the body the phenomena of our experience. Our body is what contacts the world and feels. Our mind interprets these experiences and organizes them; filtering them through our concepts and perceptual constructs that have come out of past experiences. If we can move away from our thoughts and actually have a direct experience of what is occurring now a wonderful thing can happen….we are completely present and it is deeply satisfying. It is fresh and real and now.

Often when we release our hold on thoughts, or trying to figure things out and concentrate on our direct experience through the body real wisdom can arise in the mind. Instead of ruminating on an experience genuine insight begins to develop and this often comes as fully formed ideas, or concepts. We know they are true because of a grounded feeling in the body that comes as they arise in the mind. In these times when wisdom and insight arise the body-mind is unified and working as one holistic system.

We can practice deep listening by concentrating on a specific area of the body, that feels like a safe place to inhabit. For some of us with trauma there are specific areas of the body that do not feel ok to be in. Choose a space that feels ok. The hands and the feet are my favorite body spaces to use.

Next, choose a simple activity that doesn’t require a ton of brainpower, such as sweeping the floor, or eating, or knitting, walking, etc. Set your intention to completely soak into the direct experience of that activity through your chosen body part. Listen deeply with the body to that experience. Feel the subtle movements and sensations that occur in your hands/feet/legs etc, whatever body space you have chosen, as you move and engage with that activity. If you feel yourself drawn into thought, fantasy, interpretation, analysis, etc…gently release that and come back to your chosen body space with your full awareness.

We want about 80% of our awareness in our chosen body space and 20% staying in contact with the whole body to facilitate movement and safety while engaging in our activity. Try to devote 10 or 20 minutes to this exercise. Practice this often and notice your experience. There can be a deep satisfaction and wisdom that develops out of this fully engaged embodiment.

Some time ago I was working with anxiety in my meditation practice. I was at a time of transition, entering into a long term relationship in it’s beginning phases (exciting, but still somewhat stressful), juggling courses with working in my professional life and doing deep healing work on myself. These things added up to a lot of uneasiness and a low grade anxiety in day to day life. One day, when I happened to have a meeting with my meditation teacher, I was feeling particularly anxious and stressed. As was customary in these meetings we sat for a few minutes together at the beginning of our time together. I noticed the anxiety as a pulsating flow that originated in my heart center splashed out in vibratory waves over the rest of my body and dissipating out over my limbs before beginning again in a cycle that began at my heart. When I started speaking with D., my meditation teacher, I explained that I was feeling ‘anxiety’ during our sit. She asked about what i noticed and i explained the intense flowing and cascading energy I felt and how it was causing me to feel increasingly uneasy.

She gazed intently into my eyes and we sat in silence for a few moments. D. then said to me: : “That ‘anxiety’ is just your lifeforce energy.” I sat stunned for a moment. All of these years I had associated the feeling I was experiencing in that moment, particularly intense at that time and varying intensities throughout my life, as anxiety. It was my anxiety, it was bad and I had to get rid of it. I suddenly was crystal clear and sure that she was right and all these years i had made a major error in my view of what was going on. In the months that followed I began to notice that it was the thoughts that came with the feeling that were scary and uncomfortable. My aversion was mostly to these, but the feeling that I associated, or that co-occurred with these thoughts had been lumped into a general category of something bad and to be avoided. To think of this feeling as my ‘lifeforce energy’ completed changed how I related to it. Not only could I do nothing about this experience (if I wanted to remain alive , but I wanted more lifeforce in my life I wanted to increase my energy and live fully with my energy. This was a major impulse and intention in my pursuit of spiritual practice. Though D.’s comment had woken me up to how I had conditioned myself to be afraid of this feeling.

This insight completely changed how I approached my so-called ‘anxiety.’ Two things happened. When this feeling came up I would no longer label it as anxiety I would approach it in a friendly way and soak my awareness into it. Internally I began to say ‘yes’ to this experience, whereas I had previously always tensed and said a fully embodied ‘no’ to it. Now I found that if I was aware of what was happening in my body I would begin allow my experience, it became an ok thing to feel.

The thoughts on the other hand were scary, things like ‘You can’t do this, It will be too much,’ ‘You’ll never meditate correctly,’ ‘This is all a waste of time.’ I am aware, looking at these now in writing these seem like overgeneralized statements and not particularly scary at all. However, if these thoughts circulate in our minds without our awareness and are accompanied by the energetic undulations of our lifeforce energy…this formed a fear strong enough to be registered as anxiety by me. Awareness of the thoughts begins to allow them to be just thoughts and lose their attachment to the high energy of lifeforce. In my experience as we concentrate more an more on the thoughts with concentration and awareness, as well as equanimity they start to lose all power.

The energy inside the body, the lifeforce energy can then be savored. We can soak into it’s movement and organic power. For me, this energy was thought to be too intense initially. However, by our total mindfulness and soaking in of our awareness into the lifeforce energy that arises we can in fact become acclimated and begin to integrate higher and higher levels of energy. In fact, by engaging in practices like meditation, Tai Chi, yoga, etc. we are in fact conditioning our body-mind to handle more and more of the lifeforce energy inside of us, and more and more it can arise unhindered as this conditioning occurs. Of course, we will have to work through our fear and ignorance to get to that place where we encounter the lifeforce energy. It is important to know that much of our fear is not because this feeling is actually dangerous, in fact quite the opposite. The thoughts have made an incorrect or ignorant assessment of the situation.

Underneath our fears and anxieties is a wellspring of energy that if opened to and allowed to be in our bodies can have healing and purifying effects. Forgive me if I’m being repetitive, but I ask that you begin to look at this in your own experience. Feel the feelings and think the thoughts of anxiety and look at the different elements of this experience with your mindful awareness and notice what you find. Be open. Challenge your assumptions about your experience.

Most of us feel anxiety every day of our lives. Anxiety in small doses can be a healthy motivator and part of our daily performance in life. However, for many people anxiety reaches an intensity level around certain experiences and situations that prevents us from making the choices we want and engaging in activities that we wish to. Anxiety falls into the broad category of ‘Fear’ and is generally a constellation of feelings and thoughts around an upcoming situation. It is largely anticipatory, meaning that the fear and the fearful thoughts occur before the actual event/situation/circumstance that we are actual afraid of is taking place. If you have any question about this notice anxiety next time it comes up for you….is a fearful situation actually happening when you feel it or is the negative feeling/thoughts/sensatiosn occurring beforehand….? Please check this out in your experience.

Because anxiety is based on future events Mindfulness can be an antidote to this future-oriented fear. How? We have defined mindfulness practice as using our attention and concentration to be in the present with our moment-to-moment experience. If we are present in our bodies and thoughts then we cannot be anticipating or jumping ahead to future oriented events. Often our minds are conditioned to look towards the future and this disconnect from our present experience has alot to do with the unpleasant feelings in our body that come with anxiety. Our being is split…the mind is in the future and the body is in the present, this conflict brings about a sense of dis-ease.

From my own experiences with anxiety and my work with clients I have found that often the feeling of anxiety is much more accessible than the thoughts that go with the state of being anxious. I am often aware of a tightness in my chest, or a sinking feeling in my stomach, perhaps also a tightness in my throat or jaw. These are my first indications of anxiety….another good indicator is that nothing is happening in the moment to cause this fear. I am safe yet i am having these sensations and feelings that I associate with fear. Next I might go to the thoughts. I notice that I am telling myself a story…’the last time you did this they all laughed at you…’ That is a common story that runs through my mind before I do any kind of public speaking or teaching. There was a single incidence in my past of people laughing at me in 5th grade while i gave a presentation. Yet close to 30 years later the same story that was true one time, and has been untrue many other times still comes up.

Most of us have these stories, or as one of my former therapists called them ‘my tapes.’ Our tapes run almost all of the time and often shape our experiences in ways that we do not want. In this case, my story about performing was creating a feedback loop. First I would have the anxious feeling then the thoughts associated with the upcoming experience and that in turn intensified the feelings and so on…. With anxiety often a feedback loop is created between the thoughts and the feelings and each perpetuates the other; both phenomenon becoming stronger on each cycle. For some this experience escalates into a panic attack.

This feedback loop happens unconsciously for most of us and we do not recognize the thought or feeling component of this anxiety. Instead, because both the thoughts and the sensations are painful, we seek to push them away or banish them from our consciousness. Though the impulse to avoid pain is natural and very human it does not serve us in this circumstance. This avoidance tends to condition this feedback loop in an increasingly compelling pattern into our mental body, physical body, and emotional body. In other words it becomes a habit to feel anxious.

The answer to this is to start to pay attention to our experience of anxiety with as much awareness as possible. We want to approach our anxiety as a good old friend. To get to know its nuances and subtleties to let it know that even though it is unpleasant it is part of us, part of our experience and it is worth getting to know.

As said earlier, often the physical and emotional sensations in the body are the most easily accessible when anxiety is present. I have found that a very good strategy when feeling anxious is to direct our attention to the sensations of the anxiety. We use our awareness to surround the sensation, not penetrating it but finding its form and volume and surrounding it with our awareness allowing it to soak into the feeling. I often experience anxiety in my chest as a tightness, as if there was a clenched fist around my heart center. To encounter this anxiety I would surround the fist with my awareness feeling its details and being willing to know it, if even for a short time. You might even try saying silently to yourself ‘yes’ as you feel the sensations.

This strategy short circuits the feedback loop. First of all we are doing something different by not avoiding the experience. We are turning towards the anxiety rather than away from it. Instead of trying to feel something different or feel better we are just allowing ourselves to feel what is. This attitude of openness and acceptance characterized by the ‘yes’ is an affirmation to ourselves and an acceptance of our present experience.

By turning towards the feelings we are moving out of our future orientation and encountering the present in our bodies. As we become willing to connect to our moment-to-moment experience in our bodies we let go of the thoughts which are pushing us toward a future time or situation. By definition, our feelings occurring in our body are happening in the present. The thoughts of the future situation are about something that is a fantasy…we do not yet know what the future will bring.

The thoughts will keep occurring, but the important thing is to move our attention and concentration away from them and into our somatic experience. This creates mindfulness as we track and open to our sensations/feelings in the somatic body. Our thoughts are often compelling and we may have to move away from the the thoughts again and again.

The feelings may also be unpleasant. However, there is a rule with our feelings. They can only happen for a finite amount of time. They may grow weaker or stronger as we pay attention to them, but eventually they will pass away and we will feel something else. So instead of recreating these feelings in each moment by telling ourselves a fearful and future oriented story we are turning off the circuit by taking away the energy of our awareness and directing it instead to an experience of our bodies and our emotional energy in our bodies. Without being fed by fearful thoughts our energy in our bodies will move and change in response to the present. We will have an authentic experience of being rather than an inauthentic experience created by fearful fantasy.

This takes practice. I suggest you begin to notice if your anxiety works this way…and begin to have the intention of directing your attention and concentration to your bodily experience. Our body’s experience is generally related to our present experience. As we disconnect from the stories we tell our selves our bodies begin to regulate and experience feeling connected to what is going on in the present moment. Even if the present moment is not ideal there is a certain satisfaction and relaxation in connecting to what is rather than reacting to a fantasy. Trust your body to guide you in this.