A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

John O’Donohue was a priest and a poet whose life was struck short in January 2008. Shortly before his death he replied to a question about if there was anything that haunted him. He said, “It is the sense of my days running through my fingers like the finest sand and I can’t stop it.”

Whether our minds like it or not, this is the reality. We all share a common truth in this life and that is the truth of impermanence. But it is this very truth that frees us up to recognize the wonders of everyday life.

Life becomes more routine when we deny or avoid this reality.

John wished that we “experience each day as sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”

How could we possible do this if we’re not aware of the preciousness of life? Things are precious because they don’t last. Think about a butterfly or a flower. Many of us view these as precious because of their short lifespan.

In the context of this planet, we have a very short lifespan. In the context of the universe, this planet probably has a short lifespan.

Our moments in this life, in this day, right now, are precious and may even be considered a sacred gift.

Have you ever looked at the trees outside and truly wondered how it is that they grow? Or closed your eyes and listened to the birds chirping only to open the eyes back up again and sit in wonder about how we have all these different animals on this planet?

Have you ever wondered or been amazed at the fact that you have the ability to view the words on this page, read them, comprehend and make meaning? The complexity of our biological makeup is astounding our ability for consciousness and reflection has yet to be truly understood.  

One thing that I am clear on is that behind everyone’s emotional walls sits a wise self that is there to love and receive love and it seems from the accounts of many on their deathbeds when life gets simple that this is truly what is most important. 

Time is like fine sand slipping through our fingers, why not open our eyes to come in touch with what is most important right now.

Make this a reflection for today that you come back to.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

Everyone gets hooked in life? You get cut off on the road and instantly fire up with anger. Or maybe someone walks by you and just says something insulting. Or maybe it’s the man or woman you live who simply doesn’t put things away the way you’d like them to be.

There are lots of troublemakers in this world that really rile us up. What would you say if I told you the moment you noticed tension rising in your shoulders and your face becoming pursed is a moment of opportunity.

Here is a video by a wonderful teacher named Pema Chodron:

We can allow ourselves to be victim to our automatic reactions or we can learn to become aware of them so that we don’t become so hooked.

When thoughts come up, we don’t have to rise to the bait!

“I’m a failure,” “I’ll never get things right,” “Today is going to be awful” need only be mental events that have an emotional charge. They don’t need to determine our fate, but instead can teach us about how to gain freedom from the automatic aversions we have in life.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interactions provide a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

So you’re waiting in the hallway with your mind spinning about how it’s been a pretty crappy day and life just doesn’t seem to be moving in the direction you’d like it to. You’re friend walks by you and although you raise your hand to wave high, she looks at you and just walks by.

Take a moment to sense what happened in your mind before reading any further.

Various thoughts may have arisen in connection with uncomfortable emotions:

• “What did I do wrong?”
• “I’m worthless.”
• “I knew it, nobody likes me.”
• “What the hell is wrong with her?”
• “What’s the point, really.”

OK…now let’s say you’re boss just told you what a fantastic job you’ve done and how she’s going to give you a 15% raise and an extra week vacation. This is great news…as your mind is spinning around all the ways this will enhance your life, your friend walks by and as you raise your hand to say hi, she just walks by.

Now what comes up in your mind?

Many people might have an alternative viewpoint here.

• “I wonder what’s wrong with her.”
• “I hope she’s ok.”
• “Maybe she didn’t see me.”

Same event, different precipitating event and mood, different interpretation.

The bottom line: Thoughts simply aren’t facts, they are mental events that pop up in the mind and are dependent on our mood. In this case, dependent on the precipitating event that led to the mood of feeling depressed versus excited.

Next time your mind jumps to a conclusion that inevitably sends in you in a spiral toward depression or anxiety, check to see where your head was at the time of that interpretation. What just occurred prior? There may be some clues as to why the interpretation was made that way.

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction creates a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com

Here is a past post that received considerable attention and I believe is worth revisiting. Enjoy!

Ioften say that there are two things that are unavoidable in life besides death and taxes and those are stress and pain. Pain is prevalent, be it physical pain and/or emotional pain. So we can all relate. But what if we could use our minds to change our brains and actually relieve our perception of pain this way.

Jeffrey Schwartz is a psychiatrist and researcher in the field of neuroplasticity and has written on Mindfulness and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. In a 2006 article titled “Plasticity in Brain Processing and Modulation in Pain” with Donald Price and Nicholas Verne, they said:

When sufficient attention is focused on the experience of pain relief, the associated brain circuitry becomes dynamically stable. This acute effect of focused attention can then enable the well-validated principle of Hebb (1955), namely that repeated patterns of neural activity can cause neuroplastic changes and new connectivities to form in well-established neural circuits (‘‘cells that fire together wire together’’). This type of attention-based mechanism of neuroplastic change has been termed self-directed neuroplasticity to emphasize that alterations in CNS function can be readily driven by and dynamically modified by willfully directed mental events (Schwartz and Begley, 2002; Schwartz et al., 2005). As was stated above, mental events change the activity of the brain in a dynamic manner. Basic principles of contemporary physics now enable us to place this empirically well-validated fact within theoretically coherent, scientifically grounded, and technically described context.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was first designed as a systematic program to work with Chronic Pain. Perhaps the people who have taken that course actually changed their brains so that their perception of their pain has changed. That would be truly amazing, and if that’s true, we can all take a step back, pause and sit in awe that we have the power to change our brains.

Here’s the rub: In a recent post Neuroplasticity: The Good, The Bad & The Ugly, I discussed how we can also place our attention in ways that change our brains in the direction where we perceive greater pain. In other words, what and how we place our attention affects the growth of our brain, which then automatically shifts our minds and vice versa in a cycle.

So when it comes to our pain, it’s important to pay attention to how we’re paying attention to our pain. Are we damning it or trying to ignore it? Research has shown that bringing the attitudes of mindfulness (e.g. beginner’s mind, non-striving, letting be, etc. …), all serve to change our perception of pain. So can this then, in effect, change the way our neurons fire automatically so the perception of pain lessens? That’s what neuroscientists are saying.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Reposted from Elisha Goldstein’s Mindfulness Blog on Psychcentral.com