Calming Your Anxious Mind Read online

Page 15


  Whenever you get lost, confused, agitated, or distracted, relax. Gently take the narrow focus on the breath again. Reestablish mindfulness on the breath. Practice awareness of breathing for a few breaths. Let the breath be your anchor in the present moment. You can always come back to the breath sensation. If the distraction is intense, let it be and try breathing in and out with it until it changes or until you can feel the breath more clearly. Notice your abdomen. Let it soften and relax. Come back to the breath and the soft belly as often as you need to in order to stay present and grounded in the now.

  Keep your body and belly soft and relaxed as much as possible. When you are ready, widen the focus to include all the changing body sensations as well as the breath and sounds. Let yourself experience the inner body, the felt sense of your body. Keep it simple. Let go of trying to make anything happen. You do not have to go looking for breath, sensation, or sound. Simply let them come into your awareness. Relax and soften into the body and keep the awareness open and inviting. Notice the body sensations as vibrations, pressure, contractions, expansions, warmth, coolness, and so on. Notice how they come and go, moment by moment. Again, if it helps you to focus, use a quiet mental notation to help you connect with each thing that is happening. You might say, “tingling,” “pressure,” “pulsing,” “contracting and hardening,” “softening and releasing,” and so on, for the flow of sensations. Try to soften and allow each sensation to be, in the open space of awareness.

  Open the awareness again and include any smells and tastes that are present. You do not have to manufacture these. Simply rest in awareness and notice what might be present. Be alert for the reactions and judgments of thinking about any smell or taste. Allow yourself the direct experience. Is it sweet? Sour? Salty? Stuffy? Heavy? Light? Where is it sensed: in the nose, or the mouth? Does it change, move, or get stronger or weaker?

  Allow yourself to relax. Don’t try too hard. Practice being soft, open, and receptive. Stay grounded in the sensations of the breath and the body. Allow yourself to experience directly the breath, the body sensations, the sounds, the smells, and the tastes. If you are using a quiet mental notation or labeling of experience to help stay connected, the noting should be only a whisper in your mind. Let at least 95 percent of your attention be on the direct experience of feeling, hearing, smelling, or tasting. Whenever you are lost or agitated or distracted for any reason, return to the breath awareness. Establish attention on the breath. Relax. Breathe in and out with whatever is happening. Keep the belly soft. Then open to the spacious awareness that includes everything.

  Open the awareness to include all forms of thinking. There are many of them. Just acknowledge what is going on now. Is there commentary? Judgment? Planning? Remembering? Storytelling? What is the difference between being lost in a story and recognizing that storytelling is going on? That is a moment of mindfulness. Notice certain themes in your thinking. Is it the Love story? The Boss story? The Anxiety story? The Worry About Whatever story? Learning to become aware of these stories is a moment of mindfulness. In this practice the relative truth or importance of the thoughts is not the issue. All thoughts are treated the same. Allow them to be as they are instead of meeting them with more thoughts, stories, or explanations. They are just thoughts. They are just something here in this moment along with the breath, sensations, sounds, and everything else. Find the spaciousness within and allow any thoughts to float there. Rest in the open space of nonjudging, nonthinking, allowing awareness.

  Part 4: Practicing Choiceless Awareness

  Include everything that arises in your practice of choiceless awareness. Whatever it is, it is just another condition that is here now. Recognize mind-states and emotions like anger, fear, boredom, sleepiness, restlessness, desire for something else, impatience, calm, peace, excitement, joy, jealousy, rage, kindness, love, and compassion. Allow yourself to open to the entire range of your experience. Feel the energy associated with each condition or emotion. Practice holding each one in the open space of awareness without identifying with it, grasping at it, or pushing it away.

  Open to everything that is present. Each sound, each sensation, each smell, each taste, each thought, each emotion is treated the same way. Each is just another object arising in awareness now. Notice the one that is in the foreground now. Relax into softness and allow that object to be here. Pay attention and connect with it as deeply as you can. Let yourself feel as much spaciousness as possible and rest there as you pay attention to each object that comes forward. Try to stay connected. Hold it in view as long as it is here. You might need to note it several times before it changes and is replaced by another object. For example, you might note, “hearing, hearing, hearing,” or “pressure, pressure, pressure,” or “thinking about work, thinking about work, thinking about work.” If the noting is distracting, just let it go and stay 100 percent with the direct sensation of each object. Be patient and stay present.

  Continue your practice this way. This is the practice of choiceless awareness. You are strengthening awareness and presence. Remember to keep the belly soft. Relax. Allow things to present themselves. When fear or worry or even panicky feelings arise, try to meet them with the same kind attention. Look deeply. Feel deeply. Listen deeply. Allow them to come and go. Breathe with them consciously if it helps you to maintain the connection. When they stay, pay careful attention to what is happening in your mind and body. Shine the light of mindfulness directly on whatever is the strongest or loudest part of the fear, panic, or anxiety. Hold that part in mindful awareness. Return attention to the breath and soft belly if necessary. Breathe consciously. Then allow the thoughts to go on. Notice their “attitude” or “tone of voice.” Feel the body sensations. Allow the softening and relaxing wherever possible. Remember patience and trust. Notice thoughts about failing and feelings of hopelessness and despair. Have kindness and compassion for yourself. See the thoughts as just thoughts. Feel the feelings in the body and notice how they come, change, and go. Keep the wider view. Rest in spacious and open awareness of all that comes and goes. Allow yourself to sense each object, but do not remain identified with it or swept away by it.

  End your practice by opening your eyes and moving gently .

  Suggestions for Practicing Choiceless Awareness

  As you learn to do this practice formally, you will also be able to carry it over informally into daily life. You will learn to find and to rest in the open space of awareness more often throughout the day.

  Formal Meditation Practice

  Practice for at least twenty minutes at a time when doing choiceless awareness as your formal meditation. Over time, you can move up to sessions of thirty, forty-five, or even sixty minutes. Similar to what happens in an exercise program, you are building a level of “fitness” or strength to meditate, and it is important that you practice long enough to get stronger.

  Expect to meet resistance. Your mind doesn’t want to be trained. There will be doubt, boredom, irritation, desire for other things, restlessness, and sleepiness. Please notice your reaction to any of these or anything else. Make the reaction or the resistance the object of mindfulness just like anything else. Just keep practicing being present as best you can. Recognizing and staying present with whatever resistance you feel builds real power and gives you freedom from the unconscious patterns of reactivity that drive daily life.

  As you gain experience with practicing choiceless awareness, begin to let go of the written instructions or the tape or CD you have made. Trust yourself to be able to establish attention in the breath and body and to open to whatever is here. As you practice over time, your ability to refine attention, sharpen focus, and hold the predominant object in view will strengthen. Be patient with yourself. Don’t try to get anywhere or make anything different. Just practice letting things be the way they are and knowing something about how that is by paying attention on purpose .

  Informal Meditation Practice

  Try practicing choiceless awareness informally in t
he different situations of your daily life. Allow yourself to hear the sounds, taste the tastes, smell the smells, all directly and without commentary or judgment. When you notice thinking in any form, note and welcome it. Try to remain friendly and open to all that you notice. Your thoughts are not the enemy. Thinking is just another condition. Use it when it is useful. Notice it when it is not useful. Just thinking.

  Look for opportunities to take a time-out from doing. Allow yourself to be with what is here. Really see the beautiful sunset. Really taste the delicious food. Really feel the hand of your loved one in yours. Open more fully to the richness of your life by strengthening presence.

  When fear, panic, or anxiety arise, notice your reactions to the unpleasantness. Try to find compassion and kindness for yourself and the pain you feel in the moment. Keep it simple. As best you can, see and feel what is happening as deeply as you can, with attention and nonjudging awareness. Can you notice the changing patterns of thought and sensation in mind and body?

  After you have met fear, panic, and anxiety with calm and kind awareness, ask what needs to be done. If there is a specific step or action you need to take, do it. In this way, your actions are guided by presence. Being informs doing.

  Keep in Mind

  You are not your thoughts, feelings, or sensations. These are events in the present moment that can be observed kindly and compassionately in the mirror of mindfulness. Learning to experience these events mindfully through the practice of choiceless awareness will give you new power to live with fear, panic, and anxiety.

  These events include especially what is happening in your inner life. As you learn to recognize and witness the changes in these inner experiences, you also discover your deepest quality of being and the peace and stability within you.

  Chapter 12

  Befriending Your Anxious Mind

  Larry Rosenberg, a well-respected meditation teacher, once observed that mindfulness without kindness is not mindfulness. What does this mean?

  So far, we have understood and practiced mindfulness as allowing, nonjudging awareness. A crucial element of this allowing is the spirit of friendliness, or kindness. Kindness here means a welcoming, friendly, and generous attitude. Having this attitude toward whatever arises as you are practicing mindfulness is essential.

  Shauna Shapiro and Gary Schwartz, psychologists and medical researchers, have also suggested that mindfulness has specific affective (“heart”) qualities that are important to elucidate. In addition to the seven qualities noted by Jon Kabat-Zinn (see chapter 6 in this book), Shapiro and Schwartz (2000) include loving-kindness as one of these qualities, along with gratitude, gentleness, generosity, and empathy.

  They define loving-kindness as “a quality embodying benevolence, compassion, and cherishing, a quality filled with unconditional love” (Shapiro, Schwartz, and Santerre 2005, 640) .

  And, you may recall from chapter 5 of this book that meditation teacher Christina Feldman describes kindness and compassion as “embedded” qualities in mindfulness.

  In this chapter, you are invited to explore a meditative approach aimed at bringing forward and refining the feeling of kindness. By learning to cultivate kindness deliberately in this meditation, you will find that the quality of kindness in your mindfulness practice will become brighter, and mindfulness itself will be more accurate and steady.

  Kindness as an inner quality is something that you can actually practice.

  You already have the capacity for kindness in you. There is a naturalness to feeling and being kind that you do not have to force. You do not have to manufacture it. You do, however, have to cultivate it. Cultivating kindness means learning to recognize and overcome the obstacles that block your awareness of your deep capacity to be kind.

  Doing a meditation focused on kindness can help you discover directly what and where the blocks are to your natural and genuine impulses toward kindness. And, of course, doing the meditation can lead to more discovery about the profound nature of the quality of kindness within.

  Cultivating Kindness

  You can practice kindness in your actions. The quality of kindness shines through when you do something for someone or respond kindly in a situation.

  Perhaps you have seen the popular bumper sticker that advises practicing random acts of kindness. This idea encourages acting kindly without expecting anything in return. Kindness is freely given. Undoubtedly, you have already done kind acts for others many times in your life. But there is more to kindness than external action.

  There is an interior feeling of kindness behind all kind actions. This feeling can be strengthened through meditation practice. The kindness you feel is directly related to your sense of well-being and connection with life and others. It is an essential feeling of well-wishing. It has warmth and is friendly. This kindness reflects the capacity to love .

  Meditation teacher Jack Kornfield (1993) speaks to this relationship between happiness and love: “The longing for love and the movement of love is underneath all of our activities. The happiness we discover in life is not about possessing or owning or even understanding. Instead, it is the discovery of this capacity to love, to have a loving, free, and wise relationship with all of life” (18).

  Cultivating Compassion

  Kindness supports the presence and growth of compassion as well. There is a deep link between kindness and compassion. In our common experience as human beings, we all share the feelings of warmth and kindness, and we all feel the inevitable pains of living, aging, and dying.

  Compassion can be understood as a powerful inner feeling that involves the opening of one’s own heart in sympathy and tenderness in the presence of pain or sorrow in another. Along with this opening, there is a sense of connection with the other. And often there is a strong urge to take action to relieve the pain.

  While people may be deeply moved by the presence of pain in others, all too often they have little or no compassion for the pain and sorrow they feel in themselves. They view their own pain as vulnerability, or consider their own sorrow to be a sign of weakness. Anxious or fearful people who judge their own anxiety as a defect or failure are especially likely to deny themselves compassion.

  As we have seen, the negative self-talk and critical attitudes that often grow around experiences of fear, anxiety, and panic can be the worst stressors that are present. To break this toxic cycle of meanness and criticism means developing the capacity to feel compassion for your own pain and suffering.

  The Power of Kindness & Compassion

  We saw in chapter 4 how thoughts and attitudes are very powerful, and how they have the “connections” through brain and body to exert their influence on the body’s fear system. Working through the mind-body connection, such habits of mean thinking can be strikingly deep and strong. Consider the destructive potential of self-critical thoughts like Ellen’s.

  Ellen’s Story

  Ellen was in her late fifties when she enrolled in a mindfulness-based meditation class. She joined the class to get help with her experiences of intense anxiety, panic attacks, disturbed and nonrestful sleep, and chronic pain.

  Ellen had been married to an abusive, alcoholic man for many years. She finally divorced him, and a few months later came to the meditation class.

  One day after several weeks in the course, during which she had practiced mindfulness faithfully, Ellen arrived late to class. She was visibly upset and explained what had happened.

  “I had a flat tire on my car,” she told the class, “and it was very stressful.”

  Someone asked Ellen what it had been like.

  She paused for a moment before she answered. Then with an angry and anxious tone she said, “I kept telling myself how stupid I was to have a flat tire. Stupid! Stupid! I told myself, ‘You are too stupid to live.’ I say that to myself a lot. Whenever something goes wrong. You are too stupid to live . My husband used to say that to me a lot. Now I say it to myself.”

  Are You Practicing Meanness?

/>   Since kindness can be practiced, it is also important to understand that its opposite attitude, meanness, can also be practiced. In fact, meanness is practiced quite a lot. Most often, we aim it at ourselves. We usually don’t fully recognize how mean we are to ourselves. This meanness is a habit of thinking and feeling that arises often and is felt deeply in the body .

  Meanness expresses itself in critical tones and self-statements. You might tell yourself, “I am such a jerk,” or “I am so stupid,” or “I always make a mess of things.”

  The inner habit of mean thoughts and comments, and the related sensations of hardening and contraction in the body, arise repeatedly. It may seem that you have always had them. Until you actually bring attention to them, you may not even know where they are. Most of the time, you probably do not even notice them, at least not until the feelings or the comments are especially uncomfortable or harsh.