What Is Mindfulness Meditation

~ MIndfulness In Toronto ~

 

So how was your day today.  Did you taste your food, notice your breath, feel calm and relaxed? Perhaps like many people in our western culture your day has felt rushed, exhausting and stressful.  In 2010 in the city of Toronto, it might feel like an almost impossible task to get through most of your day without feeling overwhelmed. Eastern spiritual practices examine the causes of human suffering and offer some potential solutions to living life in a way that feels more fulfilling.

Western psychology has scientifically tested some of these eastern psychological strategies with promising results. A meditation and yoga based protocol called Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) was tested on patients with depression. The study on Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy came out the University of Toronto and was led by Zindel Segal a professor at the University of Toronto.  The study demonstrated a 50% decrease in depression relapse rates with clients who were able to complete the 8 week meditation and yoga based treatment program. 

 

So you might ask what is “mindfulness”. The term “mindfulness” refers to a state of being where one compassionately observes their experience in the present moment without judgement. To understand a non mindful state of being, consider how many meals have you eaten and  fully tasted your food.  When you eat are you often lost in thought, conversation or watching television?  How about when you drive to work?  Our minds can have a "habitual" pattern of keeping us stuck in the future or the past.  It’s almost as if our thought patterns come with some form of crazy glue. Take a moment and consider how much time you have spent thinking about what has already occurred in your life, or what you fear may happen tomorrow or the day after. Now consider how much control you have over these past or future events during the period of time when this "habitual" thinking occupies your mind. The next step would be to consider what effect "habitual" thinking has on you. Notice the emotional responses to "habitual" thinking. Perhaps you feel sad, frustrated and tense.  This wonderful ability we have to “think” allows us to build skyscrapers and planes that can fly us around the world or even to outer space but thinking also has a downside. “Thinking” can lead us to suffer when we believe and react to our thoughts without first observing and questioning our thoughts. The bottom line is that many of our thoughts and thought patterns are not true. Our thoughts are often distortions of reality and not helpful in acheiving our hearts desires. For example, studies have shown that people frequently engage in significant worry thinking, about events or circumstances that either never occur or are not as catastrophic as the mind made them out to be. The term "catastophizing" has been coined to describe distorted thoughts of this nature.  For some individuals, the belief that they can learn to observe their thoughts without believing or reacting to their thoughts is quite an epiphany. Knowing at a cognitive level that your thoughts are sometimes not helpful and practicing calm non-reactive observation of thought in a moment of fear, anger or worry is easier said than done. Having said this, I am convinced that we can all learn to do this with mindfulness practices.

 

“Mindfulness”, invokes the concept of an observer. Within each of us is the possibility to transcend our habitually conditioned “self” so we can observe our raw thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and experiences without layers of judgement or reaction. In other words, we can learn to observe our thoughts and feeling as mental events. We further can learn to cultivate choice as to whether we choose to attend to these thoughts and feelings or just let them pass through us. Let’s take a simple example related to a client I worked with in Toronto who took a clock off the wall in a public library because he found himself disturbed by the sound. A group of people are sitting in the same room studying. One person hears a clock in the room ticking and begins to focus on the sound. The same person then begins to evaluate the sound and think, “the clock is too loud, it’s a bothersome sound, why didn’t the person who put the clock up consider how loud the ticking is, I can’t study with this sound, maybe I should just take the clock down”.  Others in the room notice the sound but do not judge it and focus on their studies.   “Mindful” awareness of the sound would lead to observation of the sound as just a sound without getting caught up in an entire “thought story” about the sound. If thoughts or judgments about the sound arose then one would observe these thoughts and let them pass through the mind. It might help to equate thoughts to waves. A wave rises and then falls. Similarly, thoughts will arise within our minds and quickly dissipate if we do not give them attention. ( The client in question who still comes to see me at my Toronto office twice per year, can now chuckle as he tells me that he hears my office clock tick, but he won`t remove it from the wall.) Another metaphor which is often used to explain a mindful relationship to thought is the image of leaves floating past you on a river. Take a moment to close your eyes. Now take a few gentle breaths and allow your mind to imagine yourself sitting by a river bank on a warm summer day. Feel the sun warming your body and look out onto to the river and visualize leaves floating past you on the river. On each leaf is a thought. As the leaves float by, you have a choice to reach out and take the leaf/thought out of the river, and play with the leaf/thought, or you have the choice to let the river carry it away until it disappears from sight.

 

You may or may not be able to relate to the ticking clock example I have used, above but can you think of experiences in your life where you engage in a similar process of getting hooked into a spiral of thinking that takes a simple event and makes it a lot more complicated that it truly is. Take a moment to consider if you engage in a similar process when driving in downtown Toronto. Have you or someone you know ever been enwrapped in road rage? Can you identify a time when you reacted to your experience and thoughts and subsequently realized that your mind had created a “mountain” from a “molehill"? 

 

Mindfulness is a state of being that allows us to experience a “molehill” as a “molehill” and observe the habitual mind from some distance when it attempts to create a “mountain” from the “molehill”.  If this sounds good then there is nothing getting in the way of your being able to accomplish this. Contemplate how much less drained you might feel if you were able to be more mindful. What you need to know is that mindfulness, is not an all or nothing state. It takes practice and like playing the guitar or any other musical instrument the more you practice, the easier it gets. I have been meditating and practicing yoga for many years and still get caught up in my thoughts and react emotionally to these thoughts in ways that I later regret. It just happens a lot less frequently and the length of time I do get hooked by reactive thinking is much shorter. Every year I practice, I become more mindful. Becoming mindful is not a goal with an endpoint, but rather, it is a journey and ongoing progressive process.

 

If you are inclined to find out what mindfulness is all about then take a juicy sweet strawberry or some other very tasty food. When you have it in front of you, spend a few moments looking at it. What colors do you notice, how does just looking at it make you feel? Do you want to gobble it down, or can you just observe the mind wanting to eat without actually eating?  Now repeat the process by spending some time smelling your tasty morsel of food and once again notice thoughts and feelings, but don’t eat it just yet. Alas the last step would be to take some small nibbles from your tasty morsel and allow each nibble to be fully tasted and experienced within your mouth before you swallow it.  Immerse and bathe yourself in the experience of each bite. Explore how slowly you can eat, and how long you can prolong the pleasant sensations of your chosen delight. When you are done, take a few deep breaths and examine your experiment with mindful eating. Then take a few moments to contemplate what your life would look like if you could experience much of your life in this way. What pleasures do you miss because you are so busy moving, thinking, doing, that you never slow down long enough to just be, feel, taste, smell and experience? Consider whether eating in this manner is an act of compassion towards the self. Can you think of other ways you could consider extending compassion to yourself?

 

By now you have wondered “How do I do this”. There are many ways to go about developing the skill of mindfulness. Meditation and yoga are two ways to do this. Yoga and meditation have been the routes that I have found most helpful in my personal journey however; there are many other ways to cultivate mindfulness. Prayer, tai chi, dance etc. are other ways to cultivate awareness of self.

 

Your next question might be, “Where do I start”.  Some of the options available to you are to read a book on mindfulness, or buy a meditation or beginners yoga CD. Attend a yoga class or mindfulness meditation class in Toronto. There are some places within Toronto that will offer free mindfulness meditation classes. Make a choice to spend some time with yourself when you eat.  I will be providing an 8 week mindfulness based cognitive therapy ( MBCT ) course within the Toronto region. Depending on your clinical history the course may be covered by OHIP.  Feel free to sign up for my news letter to receive updates on the availability of workshops on yoga, meditation and mindfulness.  If you do sign up for the newsletter make sure to add my email address, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to your email safe list, so as to ensure that any email from this site does not end up in your spam folder.

 

Most importantly be gentle and kind to yourself today.

Dr. Mark Weiss MD

Meditation Toronto Yoga Toronto