A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the term “Mindful Recovery?”

Is it Addiction? Trauma? Depression? Or maybe something else?

Maybe it’s all of those things, but I’m going to pose this moment to be a time to look back on the last year and ask yourself, “What afflictions have I suffered this year that I am in recovery for?” Maybe this last year you let stress get the best of you? Maybe your relationship slipped this past year as you got roped into more television programs or Facebook addictions. Maybe you did slip into abuse with drugs, alcohol, sex, work, or overly accommodating people in life who abuse you.

What’s going to be different in the coming hours, days, weeks and months ahead?

Perhaps the simplest path is to make the intention an awareness of the moments you get sucked into these destructive behaviors that you want to change. In this space of awareness we draw a second intention which is to get curious about what the feeling is that you’re trying to escape from.

I think where we make our greatest error is when we make those resolutions that say, “I’m going to go the gym more, meditate more, start playing guitar or bring the romance back.” This jumps the gun. There are so many steps that occur before taking action with any of these things. There’s already a built up resistance to them and to skip over that is a recipe for failure.

What if these changes you wanted to make were couched in less immediacy? It’s helpful to actually understand what going on with the auto-pilot that lives within each one of us.

Here’s 7 steps to get underneath the hood and give yourself the change of making real change last:

1. Set a date to do whatever it is you want to do. Whether it’s the gym, yoga, spending more time with family, or getting all the alcohol out of the house.
2. When that time comes, don’t do anything, just take a seat or lie down.
3. Open up to the body, what is being experienced? What’s the urge? What emotions are there? Just open up without judgment, exploring this with curiosity, as if this was the first time you were getting to know yourself.
4. Know you are the ocean, not the waves and urge surf. In other words, watch the sensations and emotions rise, peak and eventually fall.
5. Put your hand on your heart and thank yourself for taking time out of all your daily busy-ness for your own health and well-being.
6. Engage with whatever it is you wanted to engage with even if there’s only a few minutes left.
7. Repeat the practice several over and over again.

See if you can release whatever judgments are arising in your mind right now about whether this will or will not work. Don’t let yourself be enslaved by the judgments, instead let your experience be your best teacher. This is your year for a mindful recovery.

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

A short while ago I opened an opportunity for people to send me stories of mindfulness that can show the rest of us how it has had a practical impact on a particular event or their lives. I’m calling this column of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, “Voices.”

A number of people wrote it with stories and now, as long as there are good stories that teach the rest of us how mindfulness can work in our lives, I will choose from them from time to time to post on Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

Of course those that get chosen can also send me a link that I’ll include in the post where people can learn more about them.

Here’s a true story from Sara Boilen, Psy.D. about a simple way to bring us back to our intentions.

The bells rang four times an hour. It was a simple song that started with just a few notes at quarter past and blossomed into a full melody at the top of the hour. The library’s tower, just across from the counseling center’s offices housed the music maker and the source of mindful moments throughout the day.

Our group was called Everyday Mindfulness. The idea was to provide college students an opportunity to cultivate mindfulness skills that they could use when studying, struggling with stress, walking through campus, or just needing a reality check. We watched leaves, ate chocolate cake, laughed, listened, talked, and focused our awareness.

One day, my coworker Elisabeth and I introduced the idea of using the banal ringing of the bells as a regularly scheduled cue to come back to your self, your intention, your awareness, and your surroundings. We soon realized that crows, train whistles, and even car horns could serve as such a reminder. Using what was already in our everyday life, we found a gentle nudge toward being more aware.

For us, we used the bells. Every fifteen minutes we were granted the opportunity to center ourselves and in time, the bells became a reminder of the sense of community that we all found in our weekly therapy group. It became a sense of home – within each of us. A moment of pause and a gentle reminder of our intention to become more aware.

Creating reminders in our environment is a wonderful way to help prime us to what really matters. This can be the ringing from our phones, a green sticker on our computers or a picture of someone who exudes presence and compassion. Be creative, start creating reminders in your environment today.

Thank you Sara!

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

A couple weeks ago I highlighted a therapist in Los Angeles named Stan Friedman who had a story of how he broke free from the auto-pilot of negative thinking and into a space of choice and possibility. I want to open this up as an opportunity for people to send me stories of mindfulness that can show the rest of us how it has had a practical impact on a particular event or their lives.

I will choose from them from time to time to post on Mindfulness and Psychotherapy to help give insight to the rest of us of how mindfulness can be practically applied for our health and well-being.

Of course those that get chosen can also send me a link that I’ll include in the post where people can learn more about them.

Here are the instructions for this informal invitation:

1. Send me anything from a paragraph to a single page, single spaced of a personal story or a story of someone you know (with pseudonym if appropriate) that applied mindfulness or had a moment of mindfulness that provided some form of change. This can be in relationship to thoughts, emotions, stress, anxiety, depression, addiction, trauma, joy, hope, gratitude, adults, teens, children, business, politics, health, you name it.
2. Make sure woven within the writing is a practical example that we can all relate to, as if someone could read what you wrote and bring it directly into their lives.
3. Send a word document to elisha@drsgoldstein.com – That’s it!

If there’s enough I’ll try and make this a weekly event. At the end of the day learning from our peers is powerful.

I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

PS – If you missed Stan Friedman’s story on a Metaphor of Possibility, here it is.

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

We spend a lot of our attention day in and day out, knowingly and unknowingly trying to be somewhere else than where we are. You may have had this thought before, but still the same process continues. It’s as if our mind is in the business of constantly trying to evade life as it is.

On the subtle end it’s when we’re in the shower and planning what needs to get done at work, on the more blatant end it’s when we have a fear of heights and we stay away from getting on anything that’s taller than us. What would life be like in the days, weeks and months ahead if you truly believed the following thought?

No matter where I am, especially if I am facing a fear or pain, I am exactly where I need to be.

The truth is we cannot gain freedom in this life or even in this moment if we cannot learn the skills of being with life as it is.

The moment we recognize that we can “be with” what’s here and the moment we especially realize that with fear is the beginning of a fundamental awakening. It’s when we see that we have much more freedom in this world than we ever knew.

It’s also the moment when we start being on the lookout for fear, but in an entirely different way. We’re not anxiously afraid of fear where we walk around like a blanket of gasoline ready to erupt with any spark. We’re actually looking for the fear so we can continue to show ourselves that everything is going to be okay.

What would the days, weeks and months be like in your life if you had a credible voice inside that was saying “everything is going to be okay?”

That is the voice we begin to cultivate as we practice mindfulness of fear in our lives.

It doesn’t happen overnight for most of us, it isn’t an enlightenment that changes the face of our lives forever as has seemed to happen to very few people. It is a gradual shifting that continues to be practiced, nourished and grown over time.

The truth is you are exactly where you need to be, even in the face of fear and pain. Be gentle with yourself and what it’s like to hold this with a heart of compassion. You can say to yourself, “Breathing in I recognize this fear or pain, breathing out, holding it with a heart of compassion.” At the same time, know your limits. It be a source of wisdom to turn away from pain at times in the face of deep trauma and it can be skillful to get the support of a professional.

Take this with you today.

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

As I look out my window right now and see the overcast, gray sky I’m reminded of the seasons changing and although fall is coming up, winter is just around the corner. While it’s a wonderful practice to be in the present moment, at times it’s good to look toward the future so we can use this moment for planning. I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who said, “Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” When it comes to seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or just being negatively affected by less light or shorter days, this is a great opportunity to get your ducks in a row to stave off a depressive slide.

Here are 5 key tips to stave off any upcoming fall and winter blues:

1. Mindfulness training – If you haven’t jumped in yet now may be the time. Mindfulness is a wonderful practice for breaking out of the ruminative cycle that can get triggered as the days get shorter. We start to open the mind to become more appreciative of what’s here instead of focused on what isn’t here. This is the seed of resiliency. If you’re in Los Angeles, I have an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) group to prevent depressive relapse starting Sunday.  
2. Exercise – Many people wait until New Years to make the resolution, this isn’t preventative care. There’s no other time than now. If the gym is too big of a commitment, what about getting a 20 minute exercise or yoga DVD to practice to or making a 5-minute commitment to do a few sit-ups and push-ups each day. The fact is, if you’re not going to take care of yourself who will?
3. Light therapy – For some people this is a good solution. There are many light therapy lamps and bulbs on the market, create more light at home, your body just may need it.
4. Gratitude list – When this is brought up it can really get the automatic judgments jumping. However, did you know this is a well-researched approach to creating a greater sense of well-being? Yes, creating a daily short gratitude list of specific things in the day that you are grateful for can help incline the mind toward the good in life.
5. Connect – While Facebook can be a resource for connection, see if you can start nurturing some regular connections with people who are supportive with you, not just acquaintances. Start making some regular plans to go to coffee, go on a hike, and join a special interest group that meets live. You can find these on meetup.com. If you have a family and everyone has been on their own schedule lately, create a regular family time for connection.

This is about nurturing your life, it’s about creating resiliency and most of all about getting in touch with what really matters.

Start putting some of this in your calendar as dates and little by little you will have a support for what a lot of people experience as potential difficult times.

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