A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook

Today in my inbox I received an email that reminded me to engage in something that has been proven over and again through research and experience to lend our brains toward mindfulness, happiness and connection.

Here is what the email said:

The medieval German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart said,

“If the only prayer you said in your whole life was, ‘thank you,’ that would suffice.”

So here we are in this moment, reading this post, and I’m inviting you to do a 1-minute practice of the things in life you’re grateful for.

If your mind is restless and wants to skip past this short exercise, check-in and see if there’s any discomfort.

Sometimes we actually have discomfort when considering what we’re grateful for. In fact, this discomfort can even cause us to skip over the practice of gratefulness altogether.

The result is that we may be denying ourselves the benefits of a practice proven to aid in the experience of life satisfaction and the encouragement of comfortable emotions.

If you experience discomfort, sense into it – allowing this awareness to also become a part of the practice.

This is an example of a Daily Now Moment that are available free through The Now Effect Community. While these are not the actual Now Moments from The Now Effect, they’ve been created to support you toward intentionally practicing bringing a greater sense of clarity, possibility and happiness into your life.

Note the very important piece that directs you to become aware of the mind’s restlessness, impatience or snap judgments around engaging gratitude, which is an act that has been proven to be an integral to connection and happiness.

It’s this type of experience that we want to pay attention to because it’s doing something very interesting. It automatically steers us in the opposite direction of health and well-being. While our individual reasons for why our brains are doing that  would be worth inquiring into, for now, just note when it happens, note the feeling and redirect to giving yourself the chance to experience this practice fresh, with a beginner’s mind and just see what you notice.

Let your experience be your teacher.

Please take this gift with you today, read the passage over again and integrate it into your day as an experiment.

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

It’s important to understand that making changes in life isn’t just about sheer willpower. For most of our lives, we’re on auto-pilot and our brain is making rapid decisions for us. It references our history, mood and environment to come up with the most adaptive response. However, when we’re trying to make changes in our lives, being more mindful, for example, we can do a simple trick to set up our environment in a way that supports our success.

If you have The Now Effect you may have found a “5 Step Cheat Sheet” in the Appendix that gives you ways to prime your mind toward the present moment and reinforce a certain way of being that you aspire to.

One of the five steps references controlling your environment. Just like signs on the road may help remind us to slow down or remind us of children crossing, we can put up signs with short verses in our day to day to remind us to be how we want to be.

Note: Check for auto-pilot reaction before moving on: Take a moment to check in with any judgments that might be arising right now. For example, “short verses? Is he nuts? How could that ever help me?” or “What is this, an affirmation?  Those never work.” Or “why am I even continuing to read this?” If anything like this arises, this is normal,  just take a moment to notice the automatic judgment, let it be, take a breath to help ground to the here and now and then gently continue on with the next paragraph.

Acclaimed author and teacher Thich Nhat Hanh uses short phrases all the time to support himself in being more present, grounded, and aware in daily life. He has taught this practice to medical professionals, psychologists, and students for many years now. He teaches the practices of walking and/or breathing and using these phrases to support us in calming our distressed minds and being more present to every day life.

I suggest reading these examples below and creating little signs in your environment at work and home that serve as reminders for you to automatically drop into more mindful moments throughout the day.

Short Verses

• You may take three steps while breathing in and say “Breathing in, I calm my body” and then with the following three steps “Breathing out, I relax.” You can then shorten this to saying “calm” as you breathe in, and “relax” as you breathe out.
• “Breathing in, I notice the colors all around me, breathing out, I smile.” Then shorten to “Breathing in, colors, breathing out, smile.” Even if we don’t feel like smiling, the simple act of doing a half-smile sometimes can change the tension in our faces, which in turn affects our mood.
• “Breathing in, I have arrived, breathing out, I am home.” Then shorten too “Breathing in, arrived, breathing out, home.” Have you ever had the experience where you were rushing home to relax? It doesn’t make sense and isn’t effective in calming the nervous system. Sometimes reminding ourselves that we have arrived to the present moment already and that we are home can help calm an anxious mind. We can then slow down and get home a few minutes later in a more collected and relaxed state.
• “Breathing in, I wash my hands, breathing out, may I use them wisely throughout the day.”  Shorten to, “Breathing in, washing, breathing out, wise hands.” This practice can not only bring appreciation to one of the unsung heroes of our bodies, our hands, but also reinforce the idea of being aware of all they do during the day and being more mindful with them.  This cultivation of appreciation can support us in feeling well.

These are just some examples and many more are woven throughout the writings and videos in The Now Effect. As you get the hang of it, you can make up your own that fit for you. You can do this while walking or just sitting and breathing. And of course, most important of all, don’t take my word for it, try it for yourself.

If it’s not for you, cast it aside, but give it a shot. Pay attention to how you are feeling physically, emotionally and mentally before doing it and then again after you do it for a few breaths.

As always, please share your thoughts and questions below. Your engagement here provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

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

There’s a funny print cartoon that has a man and woman sitting on the couch staring at a TV screen and the caption below reads, “It’s 12 O’clock, do you know where your mind is?” As time goes on and we grow up from children to adolescents to adults, for many of us, somewhere along the way, life begins to become routine.

Day in and day out whether we’re walking, driving, talking, eating, going to the grocery store, or being with our families, our minds get kicked onto auto-pilot and continue to develop their habitual ways of thinking, interpreting, expecting, and relating to other people. These habits of the mind can keep us stuck in stress, anxiety, depression, or even addictive behaviors..

Here are a few habits of the mind and a mindfulness practice to help you break out of auto-pilot and gain more control over your life.

The Now Effect lays out some Common “Mind Traps” that are not effective for well-being:

Catastrophizing - If you’re prone to stress and anxiety, you may recognize this habitual mind trap. This is where the mind interprets an event as the worst case scenario. If your heart is beating fast, you may think you’re having a heart attack. If your boss didn’t look at you while walking down the hall, you thinking you’re going to get fired. You get the picture. This style of thinking will support increased stress, anxiety, and even panic.

Discounting the positive and exaggerating the negative - The news is wonderful at supporting us with this one. This is where we habitually reject or minimize any positive feedback and magnify the negative feedback. The glass is always half empty. If you catch yourself saying something positive and then saying “but” followed by a negative, you are practicing this. “I got a 95% on this test, but I didnt’ get a 100%”. Without awareness, this style of thinking will likely land you in a depressed mood.

Blaming - Be careful of this one. We all do it, pointing the finger at someone else for our woes or point the finger at ourselves for others woes. “If my boss wasn’t so hard on me at work, I wouldn’t be so anxious” or “It’s my fault my parents got divorced.” Just check in with yourself after noticing this style of thinking. It doesn’t cultivate any solutions and just makes you feel stuck, anxious, or depressed.

Cultivating the ability to be more present to these mind traps will help you break free from them and shift your attention on more effective ways of interacting with life. If you notice catastrophizing, actually say to yourself “catastrophizing is happening right now,” then bring your attention to your breath for a moment to steady your mind and then ask yourself, “what are some other possible reasons why my heart is racing fast (e.g. , I just ran upstairs, I’m nervous)?

If discounting the positive, come back to the breath, and then switch the “but” to an “and” so at least the positive statement get its equal weight, being more realistic and balanced. If blaming, call it out, say to yourself “blaming is happening.” Remind yourself that blaming simply isn’t effective for anyone and then come back to your breath to steady your mind and bring yourself back to the task you were just doing.

This is not an easy process, but its important one for regaining control from the ineffective habits we develop in our minds. If we’re not mindful in our daily lives, our minds could just fall into their habitual states to the point we’re on our deathbeds asking “where did it all go?”

Just check in with yourself during the day, look at the clock and say, “It’s X O’clock, do I know where my mind is?” You may catch yourself in some mind traps and if not, just notice whatever you are doing in the moment and then continue if you still want to be doing that or change if you’d rather be doing something else.

Try to be patient through this process and not judge yourself if you find the mind traps arising. In fact, the moment you’re aware that you are in a mind trap is the moment you have stepped outside of it, this is what is called The Now Effect, that “Aha” mindful moment of clarity where you can choose a new response. Judging yourself as bad or wrong is another mind trap that holds keep you stuck. Breathe in, breathe out, and just redirect your focus.

As always, please comment below on thoughts or questions about this blog. Do you notice when you’re on auto-pilot? What kind of mind traps do you catch in your daily life, what works for you? Writing below helps create a living wisdom that we can all share and benefit from.

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

Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “Life is routine and routine is resistance to wonder.” As we get older this statement may seem too ring true more often, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

With children, research has shown that play has a significant impact on physical, cognitive, emotional, and social health. Why would it be different for us adults? How do we bring this mental health boosting attitude back into our lives?

John Kelly, a Sociologist once said,

“Adults need to play. We are working creatures, we are bonding creatures, and we are playing creatures.”

Martin Seligman, past president of the American Psychological Association and author of Authentic Happiness, says that the three pillars of mental health are love, work, and play. In a blog post, Therese Borchard interviewed fellow blogger John McManamy to bring up the value of play in relation to our mental health.

When we were all kids, play seemed to come so easy, but as our lives started to become busier and “more serious” it started to move lower down on the totem pole of “important” things to do and soon even off the list. He also notes that when adults engage in play nowadays, we may do it with ulterior motives to meet or network with a person which alters the true nature of play.

There has been a growing trend in research in the field of Positive Psychology that is looking at the health benefits of adult play.  Play can engage that sense of flow, where your abilities meet the challenge of the task and cultivate positive qualities. Not only can engaging in play help reduce stress, but it can also give us a sense of pleasure and satisfaction or mastery which support us working with anxiety and depression.

The theme of this blog is mindfulness and psychotherapy. When I teach people about integrating mindfulness into their lives I underscore that while mindfulness can be considered a discipline, it is a playful discipline. This is a grounding theme in The Now Effect.

How can we engage play once again and come back in touch with the wonder of life which can be so healing?

Here are some tips:

1. No Goal Attitude - John McManamy, along with many others, have suggested for years, “play for the sake of play.” That’s right, don’t have a goal in mind when playing, just engage play and know you’re playing

2. Get on Your Hands and Knees - Somehow as adults we feel this is beneath us or not acceptable. This is particularly helpful if you have any pets or children. Get down on the ground and engage with them, be present, see how you feel.

3. Laughing Yoga - This has been known to be contagious and bring about a great sense of play

4. Play Activities - Start to think about what past hobbies you enjoyed or what activities you are currently doing that incorporate playfulness. Make a list of these activities. Next time you engage in these, remember rule #1.

5. Vacation - This doesn’t have to be elaborate, it could be just a day or an afternoon. Take a day for its own sake and do something you’ve wanted to do for fun, but have just not gotten around to. You can choose to do this by yourself or with other people. Make a date for this today!

Incorporating just a bit more play in your life, or even changing to way your relate to playful activities that you’re already doing can have great benefits in your life. Choose to sprinkle some of this in today.

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

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

It’s no secret that there’s more stress now than there ever has been. Maybe it’s a result of having more things than ever to pay attention to, or perhaps it’s the increasingly panicked way the news comes at us, or maybe it’s that people are feeling more alone today than ever before. Whatever the reason, one thing we now know is that a very simple type of connection actually reduces activity in the area of the brain that is responsible for releasing our stress hormones.

In an interesting study, Director of Virginia Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, Jim Coan, PhD, found that when people are chronically stressed and had their hands held by a significant other, the hypothalamus, the region of the brain responsible for secreting the stress hormones, is less active.

Coan took 16 married women and had them go into a brain scanning machine (fMRI). Then an electrical shock was administered to them while holding their husband’s hand, a stranger’s hand and no hand at all. Not only did the women report less stress when holding their husband’s hand and the stranger’s hand, but the brain scan confirmed it.

As you might imagine the stress levels were least evident in the hands held of happier couples.

It’s always fun to see neuroscience backing up what many of us have known through experience for quite some time. For some reason it seems to add validity to it. Probably because we’re trained from the time we’re young to trust the experience of professionals, but not our own experience.

In The Now Effect I intentionally reinforce the notion of allowing our experience to be our best teacher so we can develop accurate and healthy intuition.  I dedicate an entire section to Getting Connected with the understanding that when we’re connected we simply feel better and happier. We don’t really need neuroscience to tell us that, but it’s just fun that it does.

An important fact to understand with relationships is that the brain is wired to make them routine (like everything else). While you might remember holding hands quite a bit in the beginning, perhaps that’s gone by the wayside. Good to notice and also good to know that we can always begin again.

Now that neuroscience has confirmed it, perhaps it’s worth trying a little experiment of hand holding.

If you’re in a relationship, see if you can set any presumptive judgments aside and recognize that moment choice to hold the hand of your significant other and just see what you notice. As you practice and repeat this with intention, my guess is you’ll begin noticing some positive effects not only on your stress levels, but on your relationship as well.

The two go hand in hand (pun intended).

If you’re not in a relationship, it’s also my experience that taking time to give yourself a hand massage can be stress relieving too. There’s just something about making connection through physical touch.

It all boils down to connection. Connection creates balance and that leads to feeling happier. This is just one little thing you can experiment with, a little mindful hand holding, to deactivate ongoing stressors, feel more connected and maybe even live a happier life.

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

Holding hands photo available from Shutterstock.

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