Moment of Mind
In mindfulness, attention is like a beam of light shining into our moment to moment lived experience. When we shine that attention light onto thought experiences, emotional experiences, feeling experiences…we develop a supportive relationship with them. We also start to see their changing nature, that we’re the one having the experiences, and how well intention the protective methods of the brain are.
This month we’ve peeked at how the body and its sensations can be pathways into the presence that we are. This is one the reasons that time in nature, mindfulness practices, and tuning into the senses can be so restorative. We come back to our core alive awareness out of what I call the mental fog.
Believing the internal narrative can be exhausting. The mind crafts such creative stories of futures that aren’t yet here and projections about what other people are thinking or doing and the body will often resist them based on how stark they can be. This resistance shows up as stress.
It’s that experience of when you say something and the other person’s (boss, client, friend, partner, child etc.) expression or tone of voice indicates their mind is doing something with your statement. Then your mind creates a prediction about what the other person is thinking (usually without asking to confirm) and the mind then has a field day with what any of this could mean – for you, for your relationship, your job, etc. I call this mental lego worlds. They feel solid, and they’re totally made up.
In the first week of this month we looked at why supports for the body are so helpful during stages of growth. Then we explored how sending the attention into the body specifically when the mind has intrusive thoughts is a type of resourcing (often taught to trauma survivors because this can redirect attention out of that loop and/or pause the brain from creating more thoughtmares it’s the basic “look over there!” move), and last week we looked at how supports can help us see unconscious patterns.
This week I invite you to bring attention to how frequently you utilize supports during times of intense mental chatter or stress. What do I mean by supports? Anything that strengthens the body or brain with very few negative consequences such as going for a quick walk, being in nature, time with animals, writing out thoughts/feelings, drawing/painting/crafting, calling a friend, meditation, listening to music, feeling emotions fully, crying, punching a pillow, eating a fruit or vegetable, listening to an inspiring talk, breathing practices, etc.
This is in contrast to coping actions which are patterns we learn to use to distract, distance, cover up or resist negative thought loops and the emotion or feeling states the brain creates in response to those thoughts (e.g. stress). Example coping actions that I’ve learned include obsessively reading news headlines, withdrawing from friends, eating junk food, social media scrolling, twisting/pulling my hair, researching or shopping for something online, negative fantasies, or using anything else to avoid feeling even if society approves of it (e.g. cleaning, organizing, working, staying busy). Coping actions aren’t bad, they’re bandaids and necessary for survival. And then at some point they start being their own hindrances (raise your hand if you find yourself cleaning an entire house to procrastinate?).
This month, based on guidance from my coach Clare Dimond, I’ve been tracking my ratio of support actions vs resistance actions using one of my taking-a-count worksheets like those in my Resilient Supports Accountability month-long program. And what I noticed is that on days when the mind creates very high volumes of thoughtmares or worry worms (aka from “triggers”) the coping actions nearly double and the support actions almost disappear. This was helpful to see because it means a) this brain learned to run rather than to turn and support the body, b) the brain is believing the mind’s stories, c) getting immersed in the beliefs means attention is taken away from supporting the body which makes the cycle worse, and d) knowing this – there’s more choice about shifting those tendencies. For example, mid way in the month I added the support behavior “start moving to a coping action and then stop and switch to a support” – and as I notice more coping actions then more choices to shift gears are happening too.
I love making the unconscious conscious because this is part of where positive changes emerges. Let me know if you take a look at your use of supports – I’d love to hear what you notice!
Much love,
Tia
Love for Your Inner Science Activist Nerd
This month is a throw back where we revisit a study showing that mindfulness training can, just like training a muscle, cause the brain to grow new connections, change size and shape, and change your body’s stress responses.
“Neuroplasticity” refers to the brain’s ability to change, adapt, and grow throughout life. Your neural networks are how different parts of your brain talk to each other and send/receive signals through nerves into, and back from, your body. These networks are responsible for generating what you know as thought, sensations, and feelings. You don’t see, hear, or feel in your eyes, ears or body – it all happens in the brain. The meaning the brain makes are predictions and these happen on demand, when you need them, based on prior experience, learned concepts, and sensory inputs from the environment and your body. This is also how your brain selectively tunes you (you = alive awareness) out from body activity that would be so loud you would have trouble focusing – like your heart beat.
In a German study published in 2017, researchers enrolled about 300 people into a 9 month mental training program called ReSource (the neuroplasticity link above takes you to a video by the lead ReSource researcher about compassion findings). In what is called a “crossover-controlled” experiment, people (aged 20-55) who had neither meditated nor had a spiritual practice, had not been in therapy, and did not have active mental health diagnoses in the last two years, were assigned to take a series of three different 3-month trainings, or to not receive any training at all as a “control”. These three trainings included the Presence/Empathy training (being mindful to your breathing, body sensations and emotions), an Affect/Compassion training (being mindful of your heart and feelings of compassion while working with a partner) and a Perspective/Cognitive training (observing your thoughts).
I’ll highlight a few cool things they found here (there’s too much to cover in this newsletter!). They found that when people trained daily on specific attention skills their neural networks grew in specific, measurable ways.
The Affect/Compassion training gave people the biggest gains in caring about other people (the others didn’t affect this much). An example invitation would be loving kindness, or metta, meditation.
The Presence/Empathy training by itself reduced people’s perception of stress. A simple invitation is to place attention wherever you feel the breath most vibrantly and rest it there as the breath goes in and out, returning to it whenever the mind starts chatting at you. The Affect/Compassion and the Perspective/Cognitive training both significantly reduced cortisol (a stress hormone) in the body. An example of a perspective invitation is while you’re sitting with a soft gaze or closed eyes to notice whenever the mind starts chatting and say aloud or quietly “thinking” and then go back to a resting spot for attention.
This means training the mind also resulted in changes to the brain-body’s social-stress response system. My interpretation of this is that the brain changed, the people perceived the situation as less stressful…and then at least one component of the body’s level of stress declined based on what the brain had learned.
We don’t know if different populations in different countries/cultures/ethnicities/races/ages/abilities, people with active mental health challenges, or those with physical health conditions would experience the same results. They also only focused on a narrow set of mindfulness practices, some of which I wouldn’t recommend as starting points for those with a trauma history. Still, this was a well-designed study that shows promise about how different forms of mindfulness training can help the brain-body learn new responses.
Get Your Park Groove On
Phew! I made my way up to Mt. Rainier National Monument this summer for the first time, for only one day, and I will definitely head back. Driving up and then hiking the Skyline Loop Trail (oh geez, that trail was so intense) revealed vast vistas, numerous different ecosystems (glacier fields and waterfalls, moss, wildflowers, forest, so many huckleberries, lupine, etc.), and my favorite moment was being able to look into the distance and see Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens and Mt. Adams all from the same spot. It really hit home that the Pacific Northwest is part of the “ring of fire” of volcanoes around the pacific rim of the ocean.
The know before you goes are to consider accessibility, crowds, cost, and parking. I went with 3 other people in one car so we were able to share the cost of a one day $30 entrance fee. Probably an annual pass if you could go more than once is a better deal at $55. There were so many folks visiting from around the world (this was a warm fuzzy moment for me, I love hearing multiple languages in a day to remind me of the beauty of human expression). All the parking lots were full so folks were parking on the edges of road which seemed…well, if you visit a popular hike, I recommend visiting earlier in the day.
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