A certain level of anxiety is a very normal part of our human experience. We have evolved brilliant but tricksy brains which can think creatively, plan and problem solve. The flip side is that we are also good at worrying, ruminating, and catastrophising, which can lead to feelings of anxiety.
It’s important to keep in mind that practising mindfulness is a way of being, rather than a ‘fix’ for anything, but with time and gentle practice it can open up a new way of responding to anxiety. Make sure that you learn with a qualified, experienced teacher, especially if you have an anxiety disorder or another mental health condition. In my own experience, here are some ways that practising mindfulness meditation can help with anxiety: 1. You become more familiar with what anxiety feels like for you – in the mind and in the body. Recognising your own anxiety signature means that you can notice anxiety when it is building and actively take steps to look after yourself. 2. You learn how to steady yourself in the midst of turbulent thoughts, feelings and body sensations. Through mindfulness we practice finding and resting with anchors in the body and through the senses. The anchors you find most helpful will be personal to you and may change in different situations. What matters is practising regularly, so that in time, finding steadiness in your anchors becomes second nature. 3. You begin to step back from thinking and see it for what it is. My lightbulb moment as a newcomer to mindfulness was the revelation that thoughts are simply mental events which arise quite automatically without our choosing. They are not necessarily facts, or personal truths. In the words of Eckhart Tolle, rather than being my thoughts I can be the awareness behind them. This was a game-changing insight but it’s not easy to keep this sense of perspective, especially with thought patterns that go deep, so it requires ongoing practice. Learning to step back from thoughts in this way, including those that drive anxiety, gives us the possibility of gently unhooking ourselves from unhelpful thought patterns when we notice them. These next two have been just as life-changing but more of a slow unfolding – it’s taken practice, trust, and some special people helping me along the way. They are about the attitudes that we cultivate when we practice mindfulness, because mindfulness is not just about paying attention, it’s about *how* we pay attention – with kindness, openness and sensitivity. 4. You learn a new way of being with difficulty. When we go into battle with unwanted thoughts and feelings we can often make them worse. Practising mindfulness offers a new way of relating to our experiences, including anxiety: by opening to and allowing what’s here. It’s important to know that this allowing is not the same as passively resigning ourselves to our situation. It does not mean that we have to like it, or that we are not going to do something about it. But, allowing what’s already here to be here, rather than bracing against anxiety, is a key part of responding to it wisely. With practice, I have felt the possibility of loosening the knot rather than tightening it further. 5. You grow kindness and compassion. These are infinite capacities that we all have within us, but they can get veiled by our busy lives and conditioning. The wonderful thing is that mindfulness and compassion practices can help us bring them to the fore, time and time again. It is one thing to know conceptually that we should “be kind” to ourselves and to others. But it is transformational to actively orient ourselves in this way through meditation practice every day, so that the ‘knowing’ becomes deeper and embodied. What could this mean for anxiety? Worrying is not a mistake, it’s a natural part of being human and an attempt to keep ourselves safe. Rather than berating ourselves for feeling hard feelings or for becoming tangled up in our thinking (“What’s wrong with me? I should be able to deal with this. I have to stop feeling this way…”), what a breath of fresh air it can be to meet all of our experiences with kindness, openness, compassion: “Ouch, this hurts. Other people feel this way, I am not alone. Can I allow myself to feel these feelings rather than fight them? How can I best take care of myself in the midst of this?” To know that ‘Anxiety is here. And that’s ok’ Strengthening these innate capacities of mindfulness and compassion will mean we feel more resilient, more resourced. And when we feel more resourced we are more able to connect and actively engage with the world in ways that matter to us. By looking after ourselves we are then more able to look after others.
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What a balanced, gentle invitation to accept yourself just as you are while also growing throughout life.
“Each of you is perfect the way you are... and you can use a little improvement.” ~Shunryu Suzuki Many of us are tired of grappling with anxiety, overwhelm or a feisty inner critic.
And you may have noticed that going into battle with unwanted thoughts and feelings can often make them worse. Mindfulness-based approaches offer a radically different way of relating to these very human experiences, with kindness, curiosity and deep self-acceptance. But mindfulness needs to be practised gently and regularly for this new way of being to take root and unfold. >> Join our next 4-week course and learn to meditate in a supportive group space. >> Lots of opportunities to ask questions, dispel myths about mindfulness meditation, and share experiences, with the ongoing support of an Oxford Mindfulness Centre-trained, BAMBA-registered mindfulness teacher. >> Option to join our weekly practice group after the course to keep your practice going and deepening. Next course: online via Zoom; Fridays, 11.30am-12.45pm on 4th, 11th, 18th and 25th March Early bird rate of £50 until 18th February. Please get in touch in confidence if the costs involved would prevent you from participating. A book on mindful phone use gave me a month a year back! (check my maths below )
Our phones are designed to addict us but Catherine Price’s book, ‘How to break up with your phone – a 30-day plan’, gave me the focus to turn my smartphone from a temptation into a tool that I use far more consciously. Her book is succinct, hugely readable and full of mindfulness. ‘The problem isn’t smartphones themselves. The problem is our relationship with them. We’ve never stopped to think about which features of our phones make us feel good, and which make us feel bad. We’ve never stopped to think about why smartphones are so hard to put down, or who might be benefiting when we pick them up. Breaking up with your phone means giving yourself a chance to stop and think.’ ~Catherine Price In the words of Annie Dillard, ‘How we spend our days is of course how we spend our lives’ What do you want to spend your attention and energy on? *As the pandemic took hold in 2020, I found myself scrolling social media and checking news apps a lot more than usual and this quickly became a new habit, or perhaps more accurately a compulsion. I’m sure I am not alone but I really didn’t like it. My settings showed I was spending more than 2 hours a day on my phone. Apparently, this is about average for Brits, although recently I read a BBC article claiming that people now spend an average of 4.8 hours a day on their mobile phone apps! Having worked my way through Catherine’s book, I’m now sitting at around 1 hour’s phone use a day and that feels a much healthier balance for me personally. By my reckoning that’s one hour a day that I have claimed back, so 365 hours a year. Let’s say I am awake and in fully functioning mode for 12 hours a day? 365 hours would equate to 30 ‘awake’ days. A month a year! I’m intent on choosing more consciously how I spend that time… Let Go (or ‘Six Words Of Advice’)
Let go of what has passed. Let go of what may come. Let go of what is happening now. Don’t try to figure anything out. Don’t try to make anything happen. Relax, right now, and rest. by Tilopa (translated by Ken McLeod) Photo by Tara Winstead from Pexels Some more wise advice on the ‘New Year, New You’ front, from Oliver Burkeman:
- Don’t set goals too high - Be realistic about how existing obligations may get in the way - Be realistic about will power – it is unlikely you can magically triple your self-discipline levels overnight. Practising mindful awareness of your habitual patterns can help here though! Above all, draw on a core foundational attitude of mindfulness - A deep-felt practice of self-acceptance ‘The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am then I can change’ ~ Carl Rogers Drop me a line if you would like to learn more about mindfulness or join our guided practice sessions. Have you made any New Year resolutions this year?
Is there a particular habit you would like to change or make? Maybe you would like to meditate more regularly? Winter can be a tough time for making big changes, but if you feel the sap rising and the excitement of new beginnings, here is some advice I appreciated recently: ‘Goals are good for setting direction, but systems are best for making progress’ ~James Clear - Writing down your intentions is the first step - But what matters most is the system you put in place to help make your good intentions reality - So, focus on designing your systems – the changes to how you live your daily life, new processes and practices, a system of reminders, any barriers you need to remove, any regular input that you need from others… And according to James, if you put your systems in place and ENJOY working with them, good change will follow, perhaps in ways you weren’t originally expecting: “When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy” This falling in love with the process of living, rather than an ‘end goal’ sometime in the future, also strikes me as very mindful. Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired the world is tired also. When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark where the night has eyes to recognize its own. There you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your home tonight. The night will give you a horizon further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the other worlds except the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet confinement of your aloneness to learn anything or anyone that does not bring you alive is too small for you. ~ David Whyte, from The House of Belonging *The House of Belonging is a book of poetry that I pick up often; this poem was read last night at a sitting group guided by Chris Cullen, 'A Solstice practice: knowing darkness and light' Mindfulness and compassion practices help me work with tenderness – be that physical pain in my body, or knotty mental patterns that give rise to emotional pain.
Teddy Macker’s ‘A Poem for My Daughter touches me deeply and I shared this excerpt in a recent guided practice session. This is a very personal path along which, with the right support, we can come to know and honour the rank and dank and dark. Beautiful. Whatever we dwell upon becomes the inclination of our minds.
“Your mind is like a piece of land planted with many different kinds of seeds: seeds of joy, peace, mindfulness, understanding, and love; seeds of craving, anger, fear, hate, and forgetfulness. These wholesome and unwholesome seeds are always there, sleeping in the soil of your mind. The quality of your life depends on the seeds you water. If you plant tomato seeds in your gardens, tomatoes will grow. Just so, if you water a seed of peace in your mind, peace will grow. When the seeds of happiness in you are watered, you will become happy. When the seed of anger in you is watered, you will become angry. The seeds that are watered frequently are those that will grow strong.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh So when we practice mindfulness meditation we actively turn towards helpful, 'wholesome' attitudes that are our deepest, true nature - opening to, allowing... bringing kindness and curiosity towards our experience... letting in the good, enjoying... non-judging, non-striving... patience and trust... Without a destination or goal in mind, but as a practice ("Don't meditate to fix yourself, do it as an act of love" ~ Bob Sharples) |
AuthorI'm Claire - and I (re)learn something every day from practising and teaching mindfulness... Archives
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