Kate's Nuggets

Mindfulness in Action
Episode 35

Podcast Opening over Theme Music:
Hello and welcome. This is Kate's Nuggets, the podcast where I share bite-size nuggets of wisdom about self-leadership. I am your host, Kate Arms. I invite you to listen lightly, let these ideas wash over you. Take what you take and let the rest go. You can always come back and listen again.

Kate Arms:
Today I want to talk about something that I don't hear talked about nearly enough, as far as I'm concerned. It's what I call mindfulness in action.

By now, most of us have heard that mindfulness is good. We may not be quite clear about what it's good for. We have a sense that it's good for keeping us calm, for quieting and clearing our mind, for having a healthy immune system, for increasing focus and attention. And certainly, some of those are things that you can get through mindfulness.

In general, mindfulness is about bringing us present into the present moment, so we stop thinking and focusing on the future or the past so that we're actually living here and now, where we are. You may have heard the Ram Dass phrase, "Be here now." That's really what mindfulness and meditation are good for.

The piece about quieting and calming our nervous systems absolutely happens when we slow down and become in the present moment. We actually see the things that we can handle more clearly, and we are less disrupted by the things that we are afraid of. And this soothes our nervous system and makes us much calmer.

It is possible to use meditation techniques to actually shut down our awareness of what's going on inside our bodies and to shut down our awareness of what's happening outside us. And this is not a healthy use of meditation.

The healthy way in which mindfulness and meditation help clear our minds is that we practice moving away from the things that distract us, moving away from all of the thoughts that show up, all of the thoughts that distract us from being here now. So, at that point, we're not clearing our mind. We're just letting those thoughts hang out in the back of our mind, and not being the things that we're focused on that are driving the show.

After a long period of time practicing these attention skills, one of the things that does happen as a byproduct for a lot of people is connecting with the quiet that is actually deeper in ourself, the space around all these thoughts. And that can feel like a real clearing of your mind, but it's actually not. It's just a very different focus of attention. It's a focus on the space, rather than all the thoughts.

But that takes time, and many of us either don't have time to meditate or we find sitting still incredibly difficult. I am in both camps, or at least for most of my life, I have been. I would probably be diagnosed with ADD or ADHD if I were a kid now. I have the characteristic need to move. I doodle, fidget, pace, dance all the time. I talk really fast or quite a lot when I'm nervous. I have difficulty organizing systems. I typically can find that, in one realm of my life, I can organize it, but my life has four or five different realms, and the other ones get scattered. I get super bored with routine, and I get distracted by interesting alternatives to the reality, where the alternative feels like it would be exciting and fun and stimulating, and the reality feels a little boring or even uncomfortable, just a quick jump away from the discomfort of reality. And I have the characteristic rejection sensitivity that many people with ADHD have.

I was introduced to meditation when I was 17, and as seems to be typical in my life, it became a multifaceted theme through the next few years. My freshman roommate introduced me to yoga. My yoga teachers introduced me to embodied mindfulness, through stillness and movement. One of my yoga teachers used a combination of the formal postures and then going with the flow of our natural body, what it wanted to do afterwards, and movement meditation, both, to help us integrate our minds, bodies, and spirits. My most serious boyfriend introduced me to Tai Chi. An acting teacher introduced me to Zen, and a dance teacher introduced me to authentic movement.

These are ways of accessing the embodied elements of mindfulness, focused attention on the input of your physical senses, to bring you into the present moment. Your physical body exists now. Your physical sensations exist now. You can't actually be feeling what's happening in your body right now and be caught in the past or the future. So, if you want to get here now, paying attention to the physical sensations in your body is the fastest way to do it.

I found all of these practices incredibly valuable, and I couldn't stick with any of them for a long period of time. I jumped back and forth between styles of practice, and each time I got bored, I would look for a different way of meeting the same need for deeper connection to the present moment and for deepening my capacity to experience discomfort, without bouncing away into something more pleasant.

Along the way, I discovered the forms of mindful meditation that use our minds, and not our bodies, as the focus attention. This became part of my practice during a time when I was suffering from depression that was not responding to standard psychiatric treatments.

And I found Philip Martin's book, "The Zen Path Through Depression," and he writes about using his depression as the focus of his mindfulness. And whether it eased the depression or not, it eased the suffering of being depressed, and I found that very powerful.

At the Toronto Zen Centre, I learned from Roshi Henderson something that I have since discovered is a classic Zen teaching, which is what you want out of Zen is what you're going to get, as long as you're willing to do the work.

So, if you want the calm and soothing of your nervous system and the health benefits that come from that, simply getting present in your body will do. Simply sitting and focusing on your breathing and counting your breaths will get you where you want to go. You won't get the psychological and transcendent benefits that are available. If you want the psychological and transcendent benefits, you will need to turn your focus inward as well.

But whatever you want, if you want to have the benefits last beyond a sitting meditation, or you can't fit a sitting meditation practice into your life, you will need to do the mindfulness practices in the busy day today of your life. And this is hard, but not impossible.

Fundamentally, what you're trying to do, if you want to take a mindfulness-in-action approach to life is, as often as possible, you want to be aware of the detailed physical sensations that you are getting through your physical senses. You're going to want to follow your intuition and notice where your intuition leads you. Learn about how your mind-body works. Learn the ways that it leads you astray. Learn the ways that it serves you but following your intuition and noticing it and paying attention, noticing your thoughts. If you can label it thinking and get back to what you're doing in the present moment, you start practicing detachment.

If you are struggling to make changes in your life, and you want to broaden your sense of identity, you want to have some of the psychological benefits of meditation, one of the psychological benefits of meditation is letting go of your ego and being less defensive.

And if you want that, a tool that you can use is to, when you notice you're having a thought, you can get curious. "Who is thinking this thought?" And then, whatever answer you get from that, "Who is observing the one thinking the thought? Who is observing the observer? Who observed the one who was observing the observer?" Just keep going back, as far as you can. This loosens your sense of attachment to your thoughts. You can do these anytime you catch yourself having a thought and being in a time in your life when you can pause enough in your action to do a little internal mental activity.

This is great to do when you're doing all of those routine things that are physical that need to be done, the laundry, the dishes, and taking out the garbage. These are great opportunities to practice the mental aspects of being present and questioning and observing how your mind works.

A great tool is to add this language of labelling a painful sensation. Challenge taking the word "pain" out, so that you separate the sensation. You get curious about the sensation, even if you just label it sensation or experience, because if you can get the judgmental language that this is good or bad out and just get curious about what is the experience, and the experience shifts.

Like meditation, when you are sitting on the mat or on the cushion, the most important part of this practice is returning to the object of focus when you've been distracted, remembering to notice, "What are the colors I'm seeing? What are the textures I'm feeling? What are the temperatures I'm feeling on my skin? What are the smells and tastes that I'm sensing? What am I noticing about the weight of my butt in my chair or the connection between my feet and the ground?" We get distracted, and the practice is bringing ourselves back to the point of focus.

Shirzad Chamine wrote the book, "Positive Intelligence". In that book, one of the things that I took away the first time I read the book was he's got this idea of what he calls PQ Reps, and PQ is Positivity Quotient. And his theory is that, if you do enough of these, you actually calm your nervous system, to the point that your default system shifts from being in fight, flight, freeze mode to being in open, calm, loving, trusting mode. And the balance needs to be four positive thoughts for each negative one.

If you're in that positive space, 75% of the time, 80% of the time, you actually create an upward spiral of your mood and your positivity. And any less than that, you're always fighting against a downward spiral of negativity because our brains have internal feedback systems.

So, when he's working with his clients, what he's trying to get them to do is trying to get them to do these positivity quotient reps enough times a day to flip the switch, to toggle into the upward spiral of mood, rather than the downward spiral.

So, what is a PQ Rep? A PQ Rep is simply the length of two breaths during which you pay attention to the sensations in one channel of sensory experience. So, two breaths, noticing what you're hearing, two breaths, noticing the colors that you're seeing, the shapes that you're seeing, two breaths, noticing what you're touching, two breaths, noticing what you're tasting or smelling.

And, in the book, he talks about trying to do 100 reps a day. And I read this book at a time when I was fighting the downward spiral. I was doing a pretty good job. I was never going into the depths of the downward spiral of negativity, but I was never in the positivity place.

I undertook this practice, and it changed my life. After doing this practice for a few weeks, I felt the toggle. All of a sudden, things happened in my life, and I was great. I was fine. I was okay. I was creative and calm and in flux, things that before I had hit that toggle would've derailed me.

Since then, what's interesting is that I have had experiences, where I've gone below the line. And if I just dip below the line, then I know that I need to do some positivity things, some mindfulness, and I get back.

Now, I got myself into a relationship at some point after I'd done this toggle, where the relationship was toxic, and I let those mindfulness practices go because it was too difficult for me to be with those feelings. And it wasn't until I realized that my mood had shifted and that I had gotten into the downward spiral, and then I actively upped the mindfulness in action, positivity, sensory things. And by doing that, I got to the point where I was ready to hold the boundaries that I needed to hold, to get out of the relationship.

So, once you know what these tools are, it's about returning to the object of focus. So, what's a place to start? A place to start is to pick a chore that you do on a regular basis, whether it's brushing your teeth or doing the dishes, and make a commitment that, when you do those things, you will do them with attention to the sensations of what's happening in your hands.

Start there. Start small. Recruit help if you need it, and create structures that remind you. There's an app that I use on my phone called Mind Jogger, that you can set to several times a day, and you can set it randomly or at fixed times, and you can let that be a cue. "Oh, I'm going to take two breaths now and pay attention to what I'm sensing."

You can stick Post-it notes up on your bathroom mirror or cabinets in your kitchen or the refrigerator door, or on the dashboard of your car, that say "Two breaths" or whatever else will remind you to pay attention to the sensory input that you're getting for the length of two breaths.

You can do what I did. I just set an intention to do it as often as I possibly could. Every time I remembered that it was a thing I was working on, I did it. And, because it was calming in the moment, it felt good enough that I was motivated to do it again. And, so, it became a positive feedback loop, and that's a positive feedback loop that I wish for you.

May you find calm and ease and freedom from reactivity in the midst of your busy life.

End Theme and Credits:
If you're enjoying Kate's Nuggets, please share it with your friends, and please write a review on iTunes so other people know what they would get if they listened too. Thank you.
To dig deeper into the topics I cover on the podcast, follow me at instagram.com/SignalFireKate or at facebook.com/katearmscoach.
To take this work deeper and learn how I can support you personally as your coach, email me at kate@signalfirecoaching.com to schedule a free consultation.
Here's to Thriving! Catch you next time.
Kate's Nuggets is a Signal Fire Coaching production. The music is adapted under license from Heroic Age by Kevin McLeod.