Mind-body connection

In the western world, we often view our mind and body as separate entities. Until relatively recently, this has also been the dominant view in western medicine, but now research and practice are exploring the linkage between the mind and physical health and wellbeing. One study at the University of Cologne explored the relationship we have with our bodies and found that some people see their bodies as separate containers, while others see their bodies as fundamental to who they are. In experiments, people who saw their bodies as separate were more likely to pick unhealthy food and avoid exercise than people who have a more connected relationship with their bodies. So, it’s no surprise that having a remote and poor relationship with your body is not good for your health.

James Joyce captured this disconnection of mind and body in his short story about Mr. Duffy in The Dubliners: “He lived at a little distance from his body, regarding his own acts with doubtful side-glances.”

One of the most obvious linkages between the mind and body is how we respond to stress. A stressful event can trigger the fight-or-flight response that evolved from when we were hunter-gatherers. Under stress, the body releases adrenalin and cortisol, which speed up the heart rate, raise blood pressure, and put the body under stress, which has dire consequences for long-term health. Around 95 percent of all illness is either caused or made worse, by stress. It’s interesting that the same brain networks that are activated when we’re in physical danger are also involved when we think that something is a threat when we become worried, anxious, or stressed.

Secular mindfulness was initially developed in the 1990s to help reduce stress. Mindful meditation can help reduce the damaging effects of stress, which boosts our immune system. A related research finding is that people who meditate regularly over the long term have a significantly lower biological age. Mindfulness offers more than stress reduction; for a start, it helps cultivate a more connected, nurturing, and compassionate relationship with our bodies.

During World War II a medic called Henry Beecher ran out of morphine in a field hospital. In desperation, he replaced this with saline solution, telling wounded soldiers that this was a painkiller. He discovered that this significantly eased the pain of around half of the soldiers. In the 1950s Beecher went on to research what became the placebo effect, which has since been used in clinical trials of new medicines. The placebo effect shows the power of expectations and beliefs on our bodies. Neuroscientists discovered that placebos trigger the brain and body to release chemicals to relieve pain that mimics drugs like morphine.

During a typical day, most of our attention tends to be in thought, then emotions, senses, and then the body. What if we reversed the priority and focused first on the body and senses, then emotions, then thoughts? This reversal of normal habits of attention helps to cultivate mindfulness.

Mindfulness is all about developing the capacity to shift our attention away from the fragmented busyness of our thinking mind to the peace, calm, and connection of our body and senses. Our mind is often mulling over the past or leaning into the future. Our body and senses are only ever in the here and now of the present.

Through practising mindful awareness and meditation, we come to realize that we’re not our thoughts; they’re mental content that is abstracted from reality. In other words, thoughts are the map and not the actual earth beneath our feet.

So, a healthy attitude is to embrace the mind and body as being different modes of the same unified and complete experience. As our body is fundamental to life, it seems bizarre that some people see their bodies as separate. As we discover more about how the mind and body work together, the meaning of “what it means to be human” becomes even more amazing and miraculous. With greater awareness we begin to fully appreciate and feel deeper gratitude for all that our body does for us, providing life and energy for each precious moment of our lives.

Suggested weekly practice

Bring your attention and awareness to your body as soon as you wake up each day, acknowledging the sensations and bringing gratitude to your body.
Use curiosity to notice the thoughts you have about your body. If they are negative, note that the thoughts are limiting and depleting, then bring kindness and compassion to your body with some nurturing and expansive thoughts.
Give your body a break by allowing it to relax and let go of tension during the week. Maybe taking a long hot bath or staying in bed for a little longer at the weekend and having a leisurely day.

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second audio to explore the relationship between the mind and body, which uses some visualization and observing what happens in the body.

Patience

If you drive, you’ve probably experienced waiting at a traffic light, not moving off the millisecond the lights change and being hooted at by the impatient driver behind. For whatever reason, the driver cannot wait and we’re in their way. We share this planet with 7.7 billion other people, so we all have to wait at some point; waiting for the train, at the dentist, or the supermarket checkout. The trouble is, the world we live in today is built around pace, meeting deadlines and getting things done. In fact, research on Internet speeds shows that people start to lose patience after as little as a two-second delay. Living at a faster pace may mean we get more done, but when we’re forced to wait, we can become irritated, frustrated and even anxious, which builds up tension and stress in our body.

Patience is the ability to accept having to wait, be delayed or face setbacks without reacting. This means being more aware of what’s going on and working skilfully with thoughts and emotions that arise in our present-moment experience. If we’re unaware, our options are limited, so we’re more likely to react automatically. Practising patience is often a more skilful response.

So why is it that we find waiting such an unpleasant experience? The simple answer is that we’ve not learned to practise a deeper level of patience. Impatience is our mind’s way of leaning into the future; getting to the next moment, as if that moment is somehow more important and meaningful than our experience now. Impatience is a form of aversion, a desire to get rid of something. It’s also about resisting our experience, as we feel uncomfortable in the here and now.

As well as waiting, we can also feel impatient when we’re working on something, driven by anxiety about the need for completing whatever it is, rather than accepting and enjoying the on-going process. Our intolerance of accepting delay is an indicator of our tendency to live in a projected future in our heads.

So how can we cultivate patience?

Here are some tips on improving patience as a skill:

Be more aware of situations that test your patience, notice feelings and thoughts of discomfort, irritation, annoyance or anger before they really take hold, using curiosity to explore the emotions and physical sensations you’re experiencing.
Use each situation where you feel impatient as an opportunity to practise patience and see what difference that makes.
Is the situation really intolerable? Are you making exaggerated assumptions about how unpleasant the situation really is? When you are in the situation that challenges your patience, take a moment to really explore how uncomfortable it really is. Is this more about delaying you from future moments? Are the future moments any different from your present experience?
Become more aware of the tendency of your attention to drift off in thought, imagining what you may be doing in a future moment, rather than connecting with your actual lived experience in the present.
Pause, take a deep breath, accept the reality of the situation and open your awareness to the surprisingly rich experience that this moment holds.

Mindfulness is about working skilfully with your present-moment experience. Patience is one of these skills that can be learned and developed. When we’re impatient we can experience anxiety, anger, and stress, which are not skilful responses.

By developing patience, we also cultivate other skills of acceptance, openness, awareness, and kindness, and when we practise patience, we reduce anxiety, anger, and stress and improve our relationships. So, by practising patience we move towards an easier and healthier life.

Suggested weekly practice

Notice when you feel impatient during the week and instead bring patience.
Be curious about the situations that make you feel impatient.
Be aware of the habitual impulse to want to get to the next moment, as this one is unsatisfying and not good enough

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second audio to explore reacting and responding, as well as experiencing a calm, open, and alert state to respond skilfully to your experience.

Performance

Although many of the benefits of mindfulness are about improving health and well-being, the practice can also have a positive impact on our performance, both professionally and in our personal lives. Mindfulness is used to improve performance in education, the workplace, the military, the arts, and professional sports, which is a great example to explore. Sports psychologists and coaches have come to really value the benefits of mindfulness to improve performance in professional sports like tennis and athletics.

Forms of mindfulness have been around for some time in professional sport. Back in 1974, Tim Gallwey’s best-selling book The Inner Game of Tennis outlined a set of techniques that sports professionals use today. One idea in the book is that we have a self-one and a self-two. The first self is the inner commentary that criticises a faulty shot or poor performance. The second self, referred to as the subconscious mind in the book, is the body that’s hitting the ball. One principle of the Inner Game is to allow the body to get on with the job, free from the nagging remarks of the mind. Gallwey’s formula is that performance equals potential minus interference, where interference is the negative and depleting thoughts and emotions. This is like the distinction between the foreground content of consciousness, for instance, thoughts and emotions, and background conscious awareness, the open and aware space that thoughts and emotions flow through. The Inner Game is about practising focused awareness in a state of relaxed concentration, without judgement or self-criticism. Interestingly, Tim Gallwey went on to publish many other books around the same theme, as well as successfully coaching organisations like AT&T, Apple, and IBM in using the techniques and he is still active today.

In the world of work, the potential performance benefits of mindfulness include improved focus, mental clarity, reduced stress and anxiety and improved relationships. These can make a difference right across the organisation, from the boardroom to front-line staff.

Practising mindfulness helps settle mental and emotional agitation and reduce unhelpful habit patterns. Both can be viewed as a form of interference in our performance. With agitation, we’re tangled up in the content of thoughts and emotions, which we can let go of and release through intentional practise. Most of us are not conscious of the limiting habit patterns as they tend to be in our blind spots. We can start to reduce these by observing and gaining insights when we notice them operating. We can also use mindfulness to improve our relationships, by bringing openness, kindness and compassion and really paying attention to other people through mindful listening.

Tips for using mindfulness for improving our performance at work include:

Taking regular breaks away from screens to check in with ourselves; seeing what feelings and emotions are around, whether our mind is settled or agitated, and taking some intentional breaths while relaxing and releasing any tension.
Keeping grounded, open, and alert in meetings by bringing our attention and awareness to our body and senses.
Working with emotions as they arise, by using the awareness of the changing sensations, like tightening in the body as an early warning.

We all strive to be happy, successful and fulfilled in our professional as well as our personal lives. We can go through years of education yet may have never been taught what it means to be human, with an amazing mind, heartfelt emotions, a miraculous body, and wonderful senses. Mindfulness helps us improve our attention and awareness, so we can reach higher levels of performance and respond skilfully to whatever arises in the present moment.

Play the first settling practice, then read the session content, which you can print off if that helps
Then play the second audio to explore performance

Overcoming Barriers

Most of us lead complex and overly busy lives, with too much to do and not enough time. The world we live in is complex, uncertain, and full of challenges and concerns. And we are connected to all of this by our “always-on” smartphones, social media and 24-hour news. It’s interesting that secular mindfulness appeared into the mainstream in this context. Although the practice is useful for individuals, groups, and potentially, society, it’s not a universal panacea. Many things need to be solved in the world before we can live in balance.

Practising mindfulness is neither easy nor obvious. For a start, most of us were not explicitly taught what thoughts or emotions are as we develop. So, we reach adulthood assuming that we are our thoughts and emotions. Through repetition, we also lay down habit patterns of thought, emotion, and behaviour; some that serve us well and others that limit and deplete us. It’s unfortunate and a little ironic that our brain adapts to and serves us what we pay attention to; what it thinks we like. So, for example, the more we worry, the more worrying thoughts the brain provides. When we cultivate mindfulness, we begin to rewire the habitual pathways in our brains that no longer serve us and begin to transform our relationship with our experience.

So, it’s no surprise that everyone experiences real barriers at times, especially when we are starting out on this journey. Before we start on exploring some of the barriers to mindfulness practice, it’s useful to remind ourselves why we’re doing this in the first place. Focusing on the work context, some of the benefits include improved attention and focus, clarity of thought and decision-making, the capacity to be more resilient under stress, emotional awareness and stability, and better relationships. All these benefits are relevant to our personal lives as well.

With mindfulness, it’s useful to distinguish between formal practice, like a ten-minute breathing exercise and informal practice, like listening one-mindfully when someone is speaking. The formal practice supports the informal. By starting the day with a meditation we’re setting ourselves up for the rest of the day by making it a lot easier to bring awareness, peace, and calm to the present moment.

For formal practice the barriers can be separated into before and during.

Before practice:

Too busy – lack of time and competing priorities
Memory and commitment – forgetting to do the practice
Procrastination – I’ll do it later

During practice

Caught up in agitation and mental chatter, including self-critical or judgemental thoughts
Having fixed expectations on what we should be experiencing
Dullness, drifting in thought, tiredness, or falling asleep

Some helpful ways to overcome barriers include:

Establishing a regular time slot and sticking to it – after a shower in the morning, after breakfast, etc.
Setting a clear intention to find peace and calm and remain alert during the meditation
If you experience dullness or heaviness, take a few longer deeper breaths to bring in some energy, and remind yourself of the intention for the practice
Sit in a quiet place where you’ll be undisturbed and comfortable
Being kind to yourself, accepting that it’s okay to sometimes drift off in thought
If there are strong emotions around, use the practice to acknowledge them, hear what they are telling you, find where they resonate in your body, and begin to relax and release tightness and tension in that area

Whatever barriers you are facing today, it’s important to persevere with kindness and openness. Like playing the piano, things get better with practice. And if you don’t manage to practise today, then maybe that’s just how things are for you right now, so let it be. Accepting and befriending whatever is happening for you is working in the right direction.

Suggested weekly practices

If you are not already doing this, set the intention and create the conditions to establish a regular daily meditation practice.
Watching out for dullness and sleepiness during meditation. Take some deeper breaths, sit in a balanced and upright posture if you can and remind yourself of your intention for the practice.
Remember to find ways to embed the informal practice into your day. For instance, taking regular breaks and bringing yourself into awareness, noticing your body, and listening to the soundscape around you.

Guided practice
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second audio to explore and experience why we practise mindfulness in the first place.

Energy

Energy is fundamental to life; every living thing on the planet needs and uses energy in one form or another. It’s amazing that most of the energy on the Earth’s surface comes from the sun. Solar energy is transformed by plants as they grow, which is then transformed again by animals as food, and some other animals eat these for energy. Every life form is a conduit for transforming energy. We are brought to life with energy and die when our body longer supports the flow of energy.

Energy can be defined as the ability to do work. Some days we are full of energy, and on other days feel a bit depleted. When we are tired, we have reduced cognitive capacity, are less productive, and are more prone to feeling stressed, angry, anxious, or low.

There are a variety of ways that we can increase our energy:

From moment to moment, every breath we take harvests energy in the form of oxygen from the air.
During the day we bring energy into our bodies in the form of food and drink, which supports our energy levels over the day, helps replenish the cells in our body, and keeps us hydrated.
We can encourage the flow of energy through our bodies by getting a good night’s sleep, taking regular exercise, eating healthy foods, and avoiding smoking or alcohol.

Things that reduce energy are often the reverse:

Not breathing properly – some people have a habit of taking shallow breaths, which has many negative effects including fatigue.
An unhealthy diet with lots of sugars, saturated and trans-fats, low fibre foods, and high-sugar drinks does not provide the resources that the body needs for energy or cell replenishment.
Smoking reduces our appetitive and the after-effects of alcohol make us lethargic.
Not getting a good 7 to 9 hours of sleep each night.
Not taking regular exercise, which would otherwise boost energy circulation and well as the supply of energy in your body.

On top of these mainly physical behaviours that many of us can do something about, stress, anxiety and low mood also reduce the flow of energy in our bodies. Although anxiety and stress seem to bring energy, they cause our mind and body to work harder, which ends up wasting and exhausting our precious energy. After all, the brain uses around 20% of all the energy in the body, so under stress, it’s going to consume available energy faster.

We can use mindfulness to reduce the negative impacts of stress, anxiety, anger, and low mood by:

Grounding ourselves in the present by bringing our attention and awareness to our body and senses
Acknowledging any feelings of stress, anger, anxiety, or low mood with kindness and self-compassion
Relaxing and releasing areas of tightness and tension that resonate with the feelings
Focusing on the breath to settle any mental agitation
Settling in the peace and calm of being connected with our body and senses

So, if energy is so important, why do we often take it for granted, and why are we not more proactive in creating the conditions that allow energy to flow? The good news is that most of us can take practical steps to improve our energy levels, and we can use mindfulness techniques to reduce the energy-draining aspects of stress, anger, anxiety, or low mood. And with more energy, we can find greater resilience, productivity, and happiness.

Suggested weekly practices

Check-in with yourself during the day with your level of energy. Do you feel energized? If not, see if you can find what the cause of the lower energy level is. Are you getting enough sleep, exercising, eating healthily, and breathing properly, or is stress, anxiety, or some other strong emotion sapping your energy?
Try focusing on the energy in whatever you eat. For instance, imagine the difference in energy from a slice of processed white bread, to eating a fresh orange or another piece of fruit.
Notice how you breathe. Is this sometimes a bit shallow? When you take breaks between activities during the day see if you can get into the habit of taking a series of longer and deeper breathes that use your lungs as well as your belly and see what difference that makes.

Play the settling practice, then read the session content, which you can print off if that helps
Then play the second audio to explore the energy in your body