Mindfulness Using our personal resources for greater success

AcademiWales

Photo provided by: Debbie Olivari (Whitchurch Camera Club)

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Contents PagesWhat is Mindfulness 4

Mindfulness and Health 6

Mindfulness and Neuroscience 7

Automatic Pilot 8

The Founding Principles of Mindfulness 9

Working with the breath 12

Following the breath 12

Mindfulness at work 14

References and recommended reading/resources 16

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Mindfulness is:Paying attention in a particular way

On purpose

In the present moment

Without judgement

(Kabat-Zinn, J., Full Catastrophe Living 1996)

Mindfulness, in this context, was developed by a clinician, John Kabat-Zinn in the USA and was (and still is) subject to rigorous evaluation. Mindfulness ‘practice’ is a way of training the mind to increase levels of sustained awareness – of oneself, of others and of the environment. In cultivating this self-awareness we can be more skilful at using our energy – mental, emotional and physical – in a way that increases our inner resources, rather than depleting them. The practice can take two different forms:

Formal practice:Time set aside to sit in silent meditation with guidance from a face-to-face teacher or from audio guidance. This is the ‘training’ aspect of Mindfulness, like any athlete or dancer would do before competing or performing, and involves closely observing the breath, the body, thoughts, emotions and physical sensations. It is sometimes referred to as the Mental Gym.

Informal practice:Applying Mindfulness to every day activities by reminding ourselves to pay attention to what is happening in the moment.

Mindfulness is very simple but, as you will discover when you begin to practice, it is not easy. It is the mind’s nature to wander!

Mindfulness is not:• A religious practice

Although it is thought to support the contemplative practices of some faiths and, of course, many faiths have unique meditation practices of their own.

• Having a blank mind

While there are other meditation practices which work towards this, it is not the aim of Mindfulness practice. Nor is it designed to make us stupid or lose our analytical abilities. Mindfulness practice involves noticing what the mind does at all times.

• Becoming Emotionless

Some believe that Mindfulness will relieve them of painful emotions. The reality is that Mindfulness Practice can have the opposite effect. Because we practice being aware of whatever is occurring in the mind each moment, we actually notice our emotions more vividly. This is particularly helpful when dealing with ‘difficult’situations–MindfulnessatWorkgoes into this in more detail.

• Seeking bliss

Although there can be blissful moments inMindfulnessPractice,allofuswillfindourselves annoyed sometimes that our mind continues to wander or we become agitated, or feel ‘I’m no good at this’. In Mindfulness Practice one works on letting pleasant and painful emotions come and go. Although, like most aspects of Mindfulness Practice, this is easier said than done.

What is Mindfulness?

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• Escaping Pain

Rather than escaping pain, Mindfulness Practice helps us increase our capacity to experience it. As we practice being with unpleasant experiences, our capacity to bear them steadily increases. We also come to see that painful sensations are distinct from the suffering that commonly accompanies them. We notice that the suffering can arise from our reaction to the pain. When we practice responding to the pain with acceptance rather than resistance, protest or avoidance, our suffering diminishes (see Mindfulness and Health).

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Mindfulness and HealthAccording to Mind, the mental health charity, ‘right now 1 in 6 workers are dealing with a mental health problem such as anxiety, depression or stress’. Their research shows that work is the biggest cause of stress in people’s lives, moresothandebtorfinancialproblems.

Since its inception, the eight- week MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) programme that Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues developed has been the subject of much research. In 2010 the UK Mental Health Foundation published The Mindfulness Report which concluded that:

• People who are more mindful are less likely to experience psychological distress, including depression and anxiety. They are less neurotic and report greater well- being and life satisfaction.

• People who are mindful have greater awareness, understanding and acceptance of their emotions, and recover from bad moods more quickly.

• People who are mindful have less frequent negative thoughts and are more able to let them go when they arise.

• People who are more mindful have higher and more stable self-esteem that is less reliant on external factors.

• People who are mindful enjoy more satisfying relationships, are better at communicating and are less troubled by relationshipconflict,aswellaslesslikelyto think negatively about their partner as aresultofconflict.

• Mindfulness is co-related with emotional intelligence, which itself has been associated with good social skills, ability to cooperate and ability to see another person’s perspective.

• People who are mindful are less likely to act defensively or aggressively when they feel threatened.

• Being more mindful is linked with higher success in reaching academic and personal goals.

• Practising meditation has repeatedly been shown to improve people’s attention as well as improve job performance, productivity and satisfaction, and to enable better relationships with colleagues, resulting in a reduction of work related stress.

• People who are mindful feel more in control of their behaviour and are more able to override or change internal thoughts and feelings and resist acting on impulse.

• Meditation practices more generally havebeenshowntoincreasebloodflow,reduce blood pressure and protect people at risk of developing and dying from cardiovascular disease and to reduce the severity of cardiovascular disease when it does arise.

• People who meditate have fewer hospital admissions for heart disease, cancer and infectious diseases, and visit their doctor half as often as people who don’t meditate.

• Mindfulness can reduce addictive behaviour, and meditation practices generally have been found to help reduce use of illegal drugs, prescribed medication, alcohol and caffeine.

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There is compelling evidence emerging fromthefieldofneurosciencethatMindfulness Practice actually changes the structure of the brain e.g. there is more trafficbetweenleftandrighthemisphere,thought to increase creativity and positivity, and an increase in cortical thickness which means the brain retains its plasticity into older age. If you are interested in exploring the many studies in detail go to www.mindfulexperience.org or read Ruby Wax’s book A Sane New World – Taming the Mind, (see resources) for a simpler description of how the neuroscience works.

Mindfulness and Neuroscience

Photo provided by: Debbie Olivari (Whitchurch Camera Club)

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Photo provided by: Brian Medley (Academi Wales)

Automatic PliotIn a car we can sometimes drive for miles on ‘automatic pilot’ without really being aware of what we are doing. In the same way, we may not be really ‘present’, moment-by-moment, for much of our lives. In fact we may be ‘miles away’ without even knowing it.

On automatic pilot we are more likely to have our ‘buttons pressed’. Events around us, thoughts, feelings and sensations (of which we may be only dimly aware) can trigger old habits of thinking that are unhelpful. We may also be prisoners of our own expertise. By becoming more aware of our thoughts, feelings and body sensations – moment to moment- we give ourselves the possibility of greater freedom and choice. We do not have to go down the same old tracks, or be stuck in unhelpful habits.

Sometimes, ‘Automatic Pilot’ has tragic consequences.

Professor David Denyer Bsc, Phd, DirectorofResearchatCranfieldSchoolof Management, recently presented to The Healthcare People Management Association (HPMA), ‘Learning from the Francis Report’ during which he catalogued the failings at Mid Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust. Professor Denyer has worked with a number of organisations in the wake of catastrophic events or during crisesofpublicconfidence.Hehasfoundthat these organisations follow similar patterns of incurring many small failures rather than one big one.

Interestingly, the very first failure he notes is:

‘A lack of mindfulness across the organisation’.

In this context he refers to mindfulness as ‘situational awareness’ i.e. attention, alertness and care. He found that many people were on ‘automatic pilot’.

Mindfulness is the opposite of automatic pilot and helps us become more aware of our selves and our environment through adopting the following principles.

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The Founding Principles of MindfulnessAdapted from Full Catastrophe Living, Kabat-Zinn, J., 1996)

• Non judging

Mindfulness is cultivated by assuming the stance of an impartial witness to our own experiences. To do this requires that we become aware of the constant stream of judging and reacting to inner and outer experiences that we are normally caught up in, and learn to step back from it. When we begin practicing paying attention to the activity of our own minds, it is common to discover and to be surprised by the fact that we are constantly generating judgements about our experiences.

Almost everything is labelled and categorised by the mind.

This habit of categorising and judging our experiences locks us into mechanical reactions that we are not even aware of that often have no objective basis at all. When practicing Mindfulness it is important to recognise this judging quality of mind when it appears and to Intentionally assume the stand of impartial witness by gently reminding ourselves to just observe it. Whenyoufindthemindjudging,youdon’thave to stop it from doing that. All that is required is to be aware that it is happening. No need to judge the judging and make things more complicated for our selves.

• Patience

Patience is a form of wisdom. It demonstrates that we understand and accept the fact that sometimes things must unfold in their own time. A child may try to

helpabutterflytoemergebybreakingopenits chrysalis.

Usuallythebutterflydoesn’tbenefitfromthis.Adultsknowthatthebutterflycanonlyemerge in its own time- that the process cannot be hurried.

In the same way we cultivate patience towards our minds and bodies when practicing mindfulness. We intentionally remind ourselves that there is no need to be impatientwithourselvesbecausewefindthe mind judging all the time or because we are tense or agitated or frightened, or that we have been practicing for some time and nothing positive has happened. We give ourselves room to have these experiences. Why? Because we are having them anyway! When they come up, they are our reality; they are part of our life unfolding in this moment.

• Beginner’s mind

The richness of present-moment experience is the richness of life itself. Too often we let our thinking and our beliefs about what we ‘know’ prevent us from seeing things as they really are. We tend to take the ordinary for granted and fail to grasp the extraordinariness of the ordinary. To experience the richness of the present moment, we need to cultivate ‘beginners mind,’ a mind that is willing to seeeverythingasifforthefirsttime.

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Photo provided by: Brian Medley (Academi Wales)

• Trust

Developing trust in yourself, your feelings and your own basic wisdom and goodness is an integral part of Mindfulness Practice. It is far better to trust in your intuition and your own authority, even if you make ‘mistakes’ along the way, than always to look outside of yourself for guidance.

If at any time something doesn’t feel right to you, why not honour your feelings? Why should you discount them or write them off as invalid because some authority or group of people think or say differently?

• Non-striving

Almost everything we do we do for a purpose, to get something or somewhere. In Mindfulness Practice this can be a real obstacle. That is because it is different from all other human activities. Although Mindfulness Practice takes a lot of energy and work of a certain kind, it is ultimately about non-doing. It has no other goal than for you to be yourself. The irony is that you already are. This paradox may be pointing you to toward a new way of seeing yourself, one in which you are trying less and being more. This comes from intentionally cultivating the attitude of non-striving.

• Acceptance

Acceptance means seeing things as they actually are in the present. Putting aside major calamities, in the course of our daily lives we often waste a lot of energy denying and resisting what is already fact. When we do that we are basically trying to force things to be the way we want them to be, which only makes for more tension and exhaustion and actually prevents positive change from occurring.

Acceptance doesn’t mean passivity or that you have to like everything, abandoning your values and principles. Acceptance in this context simply means that you have come around to a willingness to see things as they are. This attitude sets the stage for acting appropriately in your life, no matter what is happening. You are much more likely to know what to do and have the inner conviction to act when you have a clear picture of what is actually happening than when your vision is clouded by your mind’s judgements and desires or its fears and prejudices.

In Mindfulness Practice, we cultivate acceptance by taking each moment as it comes and being with it fully, as it is. We try not to impose our ideas about what we should be thinking, feeling or seeing on our experience but just remind ourselves to be receptive and open to whatever we are feeling, thinking or seeing, and to accept it because it is here right now.

• Letting go

They say in India there is a particularly clever way of catching monkeys. As the story goes, hunters will cut a hole in a coconut that is just big enough for a monkey to put its hand through.

Then they will drill two smaller holes in the other end, pass a wire through, and secure the coconut to the base of a tree. Then they put a banana inside the coconut and hide. The monkey comes down, puts its hand in and takes hold of the banana. The hole is crafted so that the open hand can go in but thefistcannotgetout.Allthemonkeyhasto do to be free is to let go of the banana. But it seems most monkeys don’t let go.Often our minds get us caught in

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very much the same way in spite of our intelligence. For this reason, cultivating the attitude of letting go or non-attachment is fundamental to the practice of mindfulness. When we start paying attention to our inner experience, we rapidly discover that there are certain thoughts and feelings and situations that the mind wants to hold on to and some that it wants to reject. We try to prolong the pleasant and push away the unpleasant. In mindfulness practice we intentionally put aside the tendency to hold on to or push away by simply observing these thoughts feelings and sensations and letting go of judgement and letting things be as they are.

Mindfulness allows us to: ‘let go of the banana’.

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Photo provided by: Debbie Olivari (Whitchurch Camera Club)

Working with the breath“Breath is life. You could think of the breath as being like a thread or a chain that links and connects all the events in your life from birth, the beginning to death – the end. The breath is always there every moment, moving by itself, like a river”.

“Have you ever noticed how our breath changes with our moods – short and shallow when we’re tense or angry, faster when we’re excited, slow and full when we’re happy, and disappearing when we’re afraid. It’s there with us all the time. It can be used as a tool, like an anchor, to bring stability to the body and mind when we choose to become aware of it. We can tune into it at any moment during everyday life”.

“Mostly we are not in touch with our breathing – it’s just there, forgotten. So one of the first things we do in mindfulness is to get in touch with it. We notice how the breath changes with our moods, our thoughts, our body movements. We don’t have to control the breath. Just notice it and get to know it like a friend. All that is necessary is to observe, watch and feel the breath with a sense of interest in a relaxed manner”.

“With practice, we become more aware of our breathing. We can use it to direct our awareness to different aspects of our lives. For example, to relax tense muscles, or focus on a situation that requires attention. Breath can also be used to deal with pain,

anger relationships or the stress of daily life”.

Karen Ryder, Instructor, Stress Reduction Clinic, University of Massachusetts Medical Centre.

The audio guide accompanying this booklet explores this in greater depth and detail but here also are some tips adapted from Ronald Siegel, The Mindfulness Solution 2010.

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Following the breath• Bringing attention to the rising and falling

sensations of the belly.

See if you can observe the breath through its entire cycle- from the beginning of an in-breath, to the point where the lungs are full, back down to the point where they are relatively empty, and on to the beginning of the next cycle. Not trying to control the breath in any way simply observe it. There is no need to regulate or change it. You are simply using the sensations of the breath in the belly to practice paying attention to what is happening right now.

• Focussing on the sensations at the tip of the nose.

You can concentrate on the more subtle sensations that occur at the tip of the noseasyouexhale(asyoudidinthefirstexercise).You may notice that the breath is a little cool as it enters the nostrils and a little warm when it leaves. Sometimes focusingonthebreathhereisdifficult–thesensations are too subtle and the mind too distractible.

• Using silent self-talk

This is a good way to help focus an agitated mind. When noticing the sensations of breathing in the belly, you can silently say “rising” each time the belly rises and “falling” each time it falls. The idea here is to direct your awareness to the actual sensations

in the body and to use the repetition of words to keep the mind focused on those sensations. Similarly, when using the tip of the nose as a point of attention, you can silently repeat “in” and “out”.

• Counting Breaths

This is a related approach you might use when the mind is agitated. Try counting only the in-breath or the out-breath. The breath can be counted up to 10, starting over when you notice the mind has wandered. Remember not to judge if it does – it’s what minds do!

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Photo provided by: Debbie Olivari (Whitchurch Camera Club)

Itisnotdifficult,whenreadingthe‘Mindfulness Report’ to see how it canbenefittheworkplace:Greaterconcentration and focus, increased mentalflexibility,improvedconfidenceandoptimism and resilience to stress are just afewofthebenefits.Theresearchalsosuggests that, with increased Emotional Intelligence developed through Mindfulness Practice, interpersonal relationships improve. Mindfulness helps us to be aware of our emotions and notice the physical sensations that accompany them. This, literally and metaphorically, gives us breathing space to respond in a considered way rather than react. It can also help us differentiate between our own feelings and the feelings of others – sometimes referred to as the dark side of empathy.

Any occasions when we are called to present ourselves, our work or ideas can benefitfromapplyingmindfulnesse.g.formalpresentations,‘difficult’meetingsandfacilitation. Mindfulness Practice can help us remain aware of and manage unhelpful emotions and keep our energy steady.

As we move away from ‘command and control’ to a more coaching style of leadership, the every day conversations, that glue organisations together, provide great opportunities to practice Mindfulness. (See The Mindful Coach) The workplace offers us many other opportunities to practice also, indeed many global organisations use formal mindfulness

practice to begin meetings. And there are many other opportunities to practice informally e.g. the walking about we do every day at work – between meetings or to the car and back offer a few moments to breathe and focus on the body. Making tea and eating lunch are other ways to create moments of stillness.

Here are some actual quotes from people who participated in a pilot, eight week Mindfulness course in their workplace:

“I will use my new skills when dealing with staff and students in the classroom. Particularly being mindful of what is being said, instead of forming my answers before hearing everything”.

“I will use Mindfulness to think more carefully about decisions during challenging times at work, and to help me become a more productive member of the team. The work environment can often be quite stressful, and Mindfulness will help me to identify when I am feeling stressed or anxious, and help me to acknowledge those feelings without letting them affect my productivity”.

“I will implement this in everything that I do – from communicating with staff, to dealing with general pressures at work. It will be useful in helping me to manage stress and juggle the demands on the job, but also within my home life. It has also helped me to understand others”.

Mindfulness at Work

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“Mindfulness enables us all to think about our relationships with ourselves a little differently and encourages us to be aware of our selves, and in turn positively influence others”.“I would strongly recommend the sessions for other workplaces. Happy, healthy staff = more innovation, more productivity”.

“I realise I don’t have to take on other peoples anger, moods, depression, grumpiness.”

Not everyone can access an eight week course, but there is evidence that many ofthebenefitscanbeenjoyedthroughpracticing for short periods. Academi Wales wants to make Mindfulness available to as many people as possible. The two guided Mindfulness Practices – The Three Minute Breathing Space and a longer practice (twenty minutes) focusing on the breath and the body are available as an MP3 version on the Learning Channel. Hopefully it will demonstrate the portability of mindfulness practice and that taking a few minutes a day to invest in your health, wellbeing and vitality does not involve any complicated arrangements, rituals or equipment, and will ultimately pay dividends.

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References and recommended reading / resources:Siegel, R., The Mindfulness Solution 2009, Guilford

Kabat-Zinn, J., Full Catastrophe Living 1996, Piatkus

Chaskalson, M., The Mindful Workplace 2011, Wiley - Blackwell

The Mental Health Foundation www.mentalhealth.org.uk/mindfulness

Wax, R., A Sane New World-Taming the Mind 2013, Hodder & Stoughton

Williams, M., Teasdale, J., Segal, Z., J., Kabat-Zinn, The Mindful way through Depression, Guilford Press

Williams, M., Pennyman, D. Mindfulness: Finding Peace in a Frantic World, Audio CD and Kindle Version

Print ISBN 978-1-4734-1581-2Digital ISBN 978-1-4734-1582-9

© Crown copyright 2014 WG21321

Printed on recycled paper

Mindfulness Sowing Seeds: Written by Moira Morgan, Career and Personal Development Manager, Academi Wales.

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