Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (11 page)

Hannah had a different experience with the raisin: “It made me really aware of all the thoughts and feelings going through my mind that were getting in the way of tasting it. I just wanted to stop thinking—just for a moment. It was a real battle—not
pleasant at all.” Hannah’s experience is common. When you see more clearly how busy the mind is, even when you are doing something else, you can be appalled, and begin struggling to control it.

In mindfulness, you do not have to try and switch off your mind. Its restlessness is, itself, a gateway to mindfulness. Instead of trying to clear it, see if it’s possible to allow yourself to acknowledge what is going on. Gradually, you will come to see that turning
toward
the chatter of the mind—becoming fully aware of it—grants you more choices and greater room for maneuver. And this gives you the freedom to engage with life more skillfully—dealing with looming difficulties before they seize control of the mind and your life.

Each of us must discover this for ourselves.

We can tell you this. And you can believe it. But that is not the same as truly knowing it. And the only way you can remember this point—when you really need it, when the world seems to be slipping through your fingers—is by discovering it for yourself. Time and time and time again.

So how can you take the message of the raisin practice and apply it? You need to learn to start paying full attention; but resolving to do this, even if you think it is a good idea, may not be enough. You need to do two things. First, you need to find a way to train the mind to focus. This takes practice, and we’ll explain in a moment what this practice will entail. Secondly, you need to find ways of dissolving the habits that drive much of your routine behavior. We’ll come to that later too.

Every meditation tradition begins with daily practices that help to focus a scattered mind. The most common way to start is by focusing on a single object that is always with you: the movement of the breath in the body. Why the breath?

First, the breath is something that you probably take for granted despite the fact that you cannot live without it. You can live without food for weeks, without water for days, but you cannot survive without the nourishment that the breath provides for more than a few tens of seconds. The breath really is life.

Secondly, there is an important way in which the breath does not need
us
to make it happen. The breath breathes itself. If it was up to us to remember to breathe, we’d have forgotten long ago. So tuning into the breath can be an important antidote to the natural tendency toward believing that we have to be in control. Attending to the breath reminds us that at the core of our being, something is happening that depends very little on who we are or what we want to achieve.

Thirdly, the breath provides a natural, gently moving target to focus on in your meditation; it grounds you in the here and now. You cannot take a breath for five minutes ago, or for five minutes’ time. You can only take a breath for now.

Fourthly, the breath can be a sensitive monitor for your feelings. If you can sense more clearly when the breath is short or long, shallow or deep, rough or smooth, you can begin sensing your own internal weather patterns, and choose whether and how to take skillful action to look after yourself.

Finally, the breath provides an anchor for your attention, so that you can see more clearly when your mind has wandered, when it is bored or restless or when you are fearful or sad. During even the shortest meditation on the breath, you may become aware of how things are for you, and, returning to the breath, let go of the tendency to fix things right away. The breath opens up a different possibility, that of allowing life to live itself for a while, to see what wisdom emerges when you don’t rush in to “put things right.”

We suggest that you practice the meditation of the breath shown in the box on p.
83
for six out of the next seven days. The meditation takes just eight minutes and we recommend that you do it at least twice each day. You can do it sitting or lying, and feel free to experiment with whichever posture best supports your intention to stay awake for the period of the practice. You can also choose the times to do it. Many people find that the best times are in the morning and in the evening, but it’s entirely up to you when you carry it out. At first, you might find it difficult to make the time, but as we’ve said, meditation ultimately liberates more time than it uses.

It’s very important that you do make a commitment to yourself to carry out the meditation. It requires practice, but don’t forget that these meditations have been proven in numerous studies around the world to help people. They do, however, work most fully if you put in the required time each day. They may not appear to have instant benefits; you have to practice. And to embed these benefits, you need to commit yourself to completing the eight-week course. However, some people do report feeling more relaxed and happy almost from day one.

There will be times when you will miss out on one of the practice sessions; since life can be busy and often frantic, it’s not unusual for this to happen. If it does, there is no need to criticize yourself in any way. Likewise, you might be forced to miss out on a whole day. If you do, then don’t chastise yourself—instead, see if you can make up the time later in the week. If you only manage to carry out the meditations on three or four days, try and begin Week One again. If you really don’t want to repeat Week One, then move on to the next week.

You may wish to read the meditation through first. It’s very detailed and gives you many pointers on what to become aware of when you’re meditating. But see if it’s possible to focus on the
spirit
of the meditation, rather than becoming hung up on the specifics. Even after you’ve read it through, it is best to do the meditation following along with the guidance found at
http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness
, so that you are taken through the meditation on a moment-by-moment basis, and don’t have to worry about when the time is up.

Hannah followed the instructions in the audio files at
http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness
twice a day, every day, for a week. Given her reaction to the raisin, it did not surprise her that she found her mind-wandering during the practice almost unbearable: “On the first day, I sat for a few seconds, then found myself thinking:
I’ve got so much to do, this is just wasting time
. Then I argued with myself:
OK, I promised myself I would put this time aside. Fine. Sit. Breathe
. Then a few seconds later, I started to remember a report that I’d promised to get to a colleague by the next day. My stomach sank.
If I don’t get it to him, what will he think?
Then I thought,
This meditation is making me feel worse!
”

This is a short body and breath meditation designed to settle and ground yourself in the present moment.

Start by finding a comfortable position. Either lie on a mat or a thick rug, or sit on a firm, straight-backed chair, a cushion or a meditation stool. If you’re sitting on a chair, allow your feet to be flat on the floor with your legs uncrossed and your spine straight, so that your posture supports your intention to be awake and aware. In this way, the posture is dignified but comfortable—not stiff or tensed up. If you are lying down, allow your legs to be uncrossed, with your feet falling away from each other, and your arms lying alongside and slightly away from your body.

Now allow your eyes to close, if that feels comfortable, or lower your gaze. Bring your awareness to the sensations where the body is in contact with whatever you are sitting or lying on. Spend a few moments exploring these sensations.

At a certain point, gather your attention and move it to focus on your feet, so that the “spotlight of attention” takes in the toes, the soles of the feet, the heels, the top of the feet and the ankles. Attend to any and all of the physical sensations you can be aware of in your feet and ankles, moment by moment.

Notice how sensations arise and dissolve in awareness. If there are no sensations, simply register a blank. This is perfectly fine—we are not trying to make sensations happen—we are simply registering what is already here when we attend.

Now expand your attention to take in the lower legs, the knees, then the rest of your legs. Hold both legs “center-stage” in awareness—notice whatever physical sensations there may be here in the legs.

Expand your attention up the body to the pelvis and hips, the lower back and the lower abdomen. Move up the torso to include the chest and the back—right up to the shoulders—noticing all the physical sensations in the torso.

Expand your attention again to include the left arm; then the right arm; then the neck and the face and head, until you are holding the whole body in awareness.

See if it is possible to allow the whole body and its sensations to be just as they are. There’s no need to try to control anything. As best you can, allow sensations to be just as you find them.

At a certain point, bring your awareness to the center of the body—to the sensations in the abdomen as the breath moves in and out of the body. Become fully aware of the changing patterns of physical sensations in this region of the body. If you like, you can place your hand here for a few breaths and feel the abdomen rising and falling. There may be mild sensations of stretching as the abdomen gently rises with each in-breath, and there may be different sensations as the abdomen falls with each out-breath. For the full duration of each in-breath and the full duration of each out-breath, be fully alive to the sensations of breathing.

There is no need to try to control the breath in any way at all—simply let the breath breathe itself. Focus on the physical sensations, breath by breath and moment by moment.

Sooner or later, you’ll probably find that the mind wanders away from the breath to thinking, planning, remembering or daydreaming. When this happens, and you notice that your attention is no longer on the breath, there is no need to judge yourself or criticize yourself in any way, and no need to “rush back” to the breath. Instead, taking your time, allow yourself to register where the mind had wandered to. Then, when you’re ready, very gently but firmly bring your attention back to the breath.

Such mind-wandering will happen over and over again. Each time, remember that the aim is simply to notice where the mind has been, then to gently escort your attention back to the breath, seeing the mind-wandering as a chance to cultivate patience and compassion as you bring the attention back. Remind yourself that noticing that the mind has gone and bringing it back again and again and again
is
the meditation—this
is
the practice.

And now continue to practice this by yourself, coming back to the breath whenever the mind wanders; allowing the breath to be like an anchor, grounding you in the present moment.

Remember that the breath is always available to you to help bring you back into the present moment, when you find your mind scattered and dispersed by the rush and busyness of your life. It’s always here as an anchor deep within you, a place of stillness and of peace.

We suggest that you do this practice at least twice a day for the first week of the mindfulness program.

Despite everything that she’d read, Hannah still assumed that the goal of mindfulness meditation was to clear the mind of thoughts. So when this did not happen, she became distressed, not only about what was going on in her mind—all the tasks she’d still not completed—but also about the fact that she could not shut these out. Secretly, she still believed that with the right trick, “mind clearing” could be accomplished and her stress would disappear.

For some reason, Hannah persisted with the practice twice a day. She found that there were some times when it felt as if a storm was raging. At other times, she found her mind wasn’t so busy. Then, on the third day of her practice, something new happened. She began to think of her mind, its thoughts and its feelings, as a weather pattern, with her task simply being to observe the weather, even if it was stormy. At other times, she found it helpful to think of her mind as a lake, sometimes whipped up by winds, at other times quite still, so that it could reflect all the landscape around it.