Mindfulness and Meditation

I practice mindfulness and meditation and teach it to some of my patients. I create some guided meditations tailored for them and we meditate for 5-20 minutes in our sessions.  Mindfulness and meditation are practices that increase wisdom, concentration, and knowledge; they help contain and process difficult emotions, increasing one’s capacity for self-regulation and self-soothing.  By discovering one’s inner resources, one can enhance the capacity for tolerance of unpleasant experiences and stress, as well as boost one’s capacity for wellbeing, relaxation, freedom, and contentment. Through inner exploration, these practices restore the mind-body connection, helping the practitioner to live in the present moment and connect with the surrounding environment. As a result, there is a deepening engagement with the world, including increased feelings of love, forgiveness, compassion, and appreciation for small things.

 

Mindfulness is unstructured, flexible self-observation and attention to the present moment, it helps noticing and accepting change, both in the internal and in the external environment. It is a state of mind that can accompany one throughout the day, it does not have to be something only practiced “on the cushion.”  For example, there can be mindfulness towards washing the dishes.  It is about paying attention to the hands, to the tiredness in your legs, to the dishes, the sounds of the water, the mixed smells of soap and dishes, the slight feeling of hunger, and the tendency to rush through and be mindless; catching your mind as it starts to drift allows it to return to the present moment. Mindfulness is comprised of being present and aware of the experience and your body. However, it does not have to have a single focus. There is a mindfulness of three, for instance, as Marsha Linehan, the creator of Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) often recommends to her students. This can be practiced sitting in silence while paying attention to three channels of perception simultaneously. First, the practitioner pays attention to the information coming from their breath, with breathing in and out, then adds to it the feelings in their hands, and finally adds the sounds in the room, paying equal attention to the three of them. It is similar to what a mother of young children does naturally, while attending to the dinner on the stove, folding the laundry, and paying attention to the sounds of her children playing in the next room. This type of mindfulness is different from typical multitasking, which is often mindless and rushed and ignores the needs of one’s own body and mind for the benefit of production.

 

Though religious in its origin, Meditation’s benefits are open to all and can be practiced for free in many centers around New York City. Though ritual can be slashed to a bare minimum, and one does not have to sit in the lotus position to receive its benefit (on the contrary, comfort is key!), meditation has a degree of formality and an erect spine is often recommended. The ritual component, with its comfortable familiarity and predictability, is helpful in marking a space outside of the daily preoccupations and chores in which is easier to begin. Meditation is generally practiced sitting in silence. The stillness of the body, as one learns how “not to scratch an itch,” is very beneficial, training the practitioner to both let go and improve focus. It is a process to clear and calm the mind. Studies have shown how this training can actually make positive, lasting changes to the brain. Meditation can be practiced in a state of mindfulness, by paying attention to what appears in the mind, labeling those things, and letting them go; it can be pointed, such as focusing on an object, or it can have the purpose of emptying one’s mind to eventually discover deeper truths.  It sometimes involves the recitation of mantras; some people believe that the particular sounds of the mantras have healing and beneficial properties.  However, the more skeptical among us can skip this belief and still enjoy the pleasure and benefit derived by their body singing and vibrating in unison with the group.

 

Meditation can also involve movement, bodily awareness, and breath synchronization. One can walk very slowly, optimally barefoot, back and forth in a space where there are no distractions. Some people report feeling sensations in their bare feet for the first time, once the attention is shifted to them. For others, it takes a while to appreciate walking as a form of self-knowledge. By proceeding slowly and mindfully, we are observing and re-learning about movement and space. Yoga and qigong are also forms of moving meditation.  I highly encourage the practice of moving meditation, especially for people that sit long hours.

 

Among my favorite guided meditations are the Metta meditation— meditation on loving kindness—which is practiced with the intention to offer love to oneself and others, and the body scan meditation, a type of meditation that focuses attention on different parts of the body, toward increased relaxation. Other practices that help reestablish wellbeing, stress management and self-regulation that are popular among my patients are Open Focus, Open Space and the Resin meditation.

 

This work is not for everyone. We can explore these practices if you wish and modify these practices to accommodate your needs and tastes.