Mindfulness: An Eight-Week Plan for Finding Peace in a Frantic World (17 page)

When you are ready, deliberately expand the focus of your awareness to the whole body, as if your whole body is breathing now. As well as the sensations of breathing, you also may become aware of all the other sensations that are present in your body as you sit here: from the contact with the chair or stool or cushion, to sensations on the surface of the skin and inside the body. Hold the whole body in awareness now. Become aware of the space that your body takes up, and the space around the body.

It’s not unusual when sitting for a while in this way for intense sensations to arise in your body: sensations of discomfort, stress or tension. If this happens, you have a choice about how to respond. You could intentionally shift your posture, noticing the intention to move, the movement itself and any aftereffects of the movement. Or you could choose not to move, but to stay still and bring your awareness right to the area of intensity, perhaps inviting the breath to “breathe into” that region of the body, exploring what sensations are here in this moment. See if you can notice what is in the bundle of sensations. What is changing from moment to moment, and what is staying the same? There is no need to try to make anything
different from how you find it. Simply explore, with openness and curiosity: What is this? And then, if the sensations stop pulling for your attention, return the focus back to the body as a whole, sitting here, breathing, moment by moment.

As you sit in silence, aware of the whole body, check in with your mind and body from time to time. Notice any distractions or restlessness that tends to pull you away from your intention to be fully present in each moment.

And if you become aware of distractions, notice also how you are reacting to them. Notice any frustration or irritation, any physical sensations of contraction or tension. Cradle any and all of these sensations in a larger, more compassionate awareness.

Remind yourself that the deepest stillness and peace does not arise because the world is still or the mind is quiet. Stillness is nourished when we allow the world, the mind and the body to be just as they are for now, moment by moment, and breath by breath.

Thoughts are often more prone to wandering during “sitting practices” like the Breath and Body meditation. It can be deeply frustrating. After two or three weeks of practice, you might feel that you should be seeing some progress, and yet you may feel that you are still incapable of controlling the mind. If it’s any consolation, people with many years of experience still feel this way.

And the reason is simple: the aim of meditation is not to control the mind any more than it is to clear it. These are happy
by-products of meditation, not the aims. If your aim is to clear the mind, you will end up in a wrestling match with a very skillful opponent. Mindfulness is a far wiser approach than that. It’s like a microscope that reveals the deepest patterns of the mind. And when you begin to see the mind in action, you also start to sense when your thoughts are running away with themselves.

When intense sensations arise, you notice how “pain” is created out of discomfort through the thoughts you have about it and especially your thoughts about how long it’s going to last. The mere act of observing your thoughts soothes them by holding them gently in a larger space. They tend to diffuse. Your frantic mind becomes still, not because all thought has disappeared, but because you are allowing them to be just as they are. At least for this moment. Your practice, day by day, allows you to remind yourself continuously of this—because it’s such an easy thing to forget.

This reminding, re-Mind-ing, is awareness.

One of the great ironies of mindful awareness is that it often seems to evaporate just when you need it the most. When you’re becoming increasingly burned out, you tend to forget just how useful it can be for dealing with the feelings of being overwhelmed by the world’s seemingly relentless demands. When you’re becoming angry, it’s difficult to remember why you should remain calm. And when you’re anxious or stressed, you feel far too rushed to squeeze in a twenty-minute meditation. When you’re under pressure, the last thing your mind wishes to be is
mindful—tired, old thinking habits are infinitely more seductive.

The Three-Minute Breathing Space
⁸
was created to deal with such situations. It’s a mini meditation that acts as a bridge between the longer, formal meditations and the demands of everyday life. Many people say that it’s the most important practice they learn during the whole mindfulness course. And although it’s the easiest and quickest to do, remembering to do it is the biggest challenge.

Its impact is twofold: first and foremost, it’s a meditation that’s used to punctuate the day, so that you can more e
asily maintain a compassionate and mindful stance, whatever comes your way. In essence, it dissolves negative thought patterns before they gain control over your life—often before you’re even aware of them. Secondly, it’s an emergency meditation that allows you to see clearly what is arising from moment to moment when you feel under pressure. It allows you to pause when your thoughts threaten to spiral out of control, by helping you to regain a compassionate sense of perspective and to ground yourself in the present moment.

The Breathing Space meditation concentrates the core elements of the Mindfulness program into three steps of roughly one minute each. During Week Three of this course, we suggest that you practice the Breathing Space twice a day. It’s up to you when you do it, but it makes sense to find regular times each day to set aside and stick to them, so that this becomes part of your daily routine. You may wish to do the actual practice while listening to the audio files at
http://bit.ly/rodalemindfulness
(track
8
), at least for the first few times that you do it, but then feel free to do it on your own, silently guiding your own practice for about three minutes, keeping the three-step structure. It’s also worth reading the printed version of the meditation detailed on the following page, so you can familiarize yourself with its hourglass pattern.

Step 1: Becoming aware

Deliberately adopt an erect and dignified posture, whether sitting or standing. If possible, close your eyes. Then bring your awareness to your inner experience and acknowledge it, asking: what is my experience right now?

 

• What
  thoughts
  are going through the mind? As best you can, acknowledge thoughts as mental events.
  
 

 

• What
  feelings
  are here? Turn toward any sense of discomfort or unpleasant feelings, acknowledging them without trying to make them different from how you find them.
  
 

 

• What
  body sensations
  are here right now? Perhaps quickly scan the body to pick up any sensations of tightness or bracing, acknowledging the sensations, but, once again, not trying to change them in any way.
  
 

Step 2: Gathering and focusing attention

Now, redirecting the attention to a narrow “spotlight” on the physical sensations of the breath, move in close to the physical sensations of the breath in the abdomen … expanding as the breath comes in … and falling back as the breath goes out. Follow the breath all the way in and all the way out. Use each breath as an opportunity to anchor yourself into the present. And if the mind wanders, gently escort the attention back to the breath.

Step 3: Expanding attention

Now, expand the field of awareness around the breathing so that it includes a sense of the body as a whole, your posture and facial expression, as if the whole body was breathing. If you become aware of any sensations of discomfort or tension, feel free to bring your focus of attention right in to the intensity by imagining that the breath could move into and around the sensations. In this, you are helping to explore the sensations, befriending them, rather than trying to change them in any way. If they stop pulling for your attention, return to sitting, aware of the whole body, moment by moment.

It is helpful to view your awareness during the Breathing Space as forming the shape of an hourglass. The wide opening at the top of an hourglass is like the first step of the Breathing Space. In this, you open your attention and gently acknowledge whatever is entering and leaving awareness. This allows you to see if you are entangled in the Doing mode of mind, and if so, to disengage yourself from it and shift into the full awareness of the Being mode. In doing so, you are gently reminding yourself that your current state of mind is not a solid “fact,” but is instead governed by interlinked thoughts, feelings, physical sensations and impulses to act. These can, and do, ebb and flow, and you can become aware of them as they do so.

The second step of the Breathing Space is like the narrowing of the hourglass’s neck. It’s where you focus your attention on the breath in the lower abdomen. You focus on the physical sensations of breathing, gently coaxing the mind back to the
breath when it wanders away. This helps to anchor the mind—grounding you back in the present moment.

The third step of the Breathing Space is like the broadening base of an hourglass. In this, you open your awareness. In this opening, you are opening to life as it is, preparing yourself for the next moments of your day. Here you are, gently but firmly, reaffirming a sense that you have a place in the world—your whole mind-body, just as it is, in all its peace, dignity and completeness.

Watching TV can be a particularly potent habit, so you can easily take it for granted and stop valuing it. It’s all too easy to come home from work, sit down, turn on the TV and watch it. And watch it. And watch it … You may feel that there are more interesting things to do, but somehow you just can’t bring yourself to do them. You may then start criticizing yourself for watching. You may tell yourself how bad you are for slumping comatose in front of the TV when you could be doing something worthwhile.

Can you make the TV more valuable, and respect it more than you do?

One day this week, see about getting a weekly TV schedule, or looking it up online, to see what program you’d really like to watch: ones that are interesting or enjoyable or both. (Note: if you don’t have a TV, then carry out this habit releaser with the radio, or other form of entertainment that you may have come to take for granted.) On your designated day, only watch the program that you have actually chosen to watch and consciously switch off the TV for the times in between. You could read a book or newspaper, phone a friend or relative you haven’t spoken to for a while, or perhaps catch up with a few minutes of gardening. You could even do an extra eight-minute session of meditation (or make up for one you’ve missed out on).

Remember consciously to switch off the television as soon as the chosen program has finished, turning it on again later if there is something else that you particularly want to watch. At the end of the evening, record in a notebook how it went: not only whether it felt good or bad, but what you noticed. What thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses were around? Remember that the intention is to help dissolve old habits that have often grown up slowly over many, many years, so don’t expect miracles. But if, as a result of any of the practices you undertake this week, you catch a glimpse of another, freer way of living your life, you may be taking the first step to discovering something new: that you don’t have to change much of what you do from day to day, but instead learn to do the same things differently; to surround your tasks with the fresh air of awareness and choice.

John was on his way to school.

He was worried about the math lesson.