Mindfulness as a word, a concept, and a practice permeates our awareness these days. We learn of ways to be mindful through meditation and intentional attention so that we can cope with the myriad challenges that arise, often unexpectedly, in our life. Sometimes we can greet the depression, anxiety, eating disorder, or physical pain with composure; sometimes we find ourselves swamped with the physical and emotional sensations of the experience. We deeply wish to be able to live well through the good and bad times and we may often feel we lack the skills to achieve that apparently simple goal. In this book, we will work together to cultivate our capacity to live skillfully with careful attention so that living well is the outcome in each moment.

As a word, mindfulness has been around for centuries. In our own lives it would have shown up in the very simple advice given by our grandparents and parents. “Be careful.” “Stop and think.” “What were you trying to do?” “Wait a second.” All of these statements were little bells calling us back in to the present moment when we had gone off on some track or were operating on an automatic mode when doing something. They bring us into a state of remembering what we are doing in each moment. In fact, the translation of the original word for mindfulness, sati, means to remember.

The concept of mindfulness is a little more complex. It folds in ideas of being “in the flow” of things, experiences of fullness, peace and “being one” with an activity or a scene. There is fluidity in the concept which lends itself to our ideas of “Zen-like states” although we may not really know what a “Zen-like state” is. It is a construct that points to our state of mind as we interact with our internal and external environment. Large volumes have been written about this idea and it would be easy to get lost in the intellectual process of trying to understand it.

The practice of mindfulness is perhaps the most important in our understanding of “Mindfulness.” Like learning to ride a bicycle, we can understand it as a word and a concept but until we actually get on that little seat and find the pedals, we haven’t begun to truly experience the word or idea. In this book, we will unpack this part of mindfulness: the behaviours that go into creating a practice that leads us in the direction of well being. To do that we will constantly come back and remember the process of mindfulness as it is relevant to living skillfully: creating an intention to well being, paying attention to what is in this moment, and approaching what is with an attitude of curiousity and openness.

Let’s look at how this unfolds in our awareness as a stream of experience. In our multi-layered life, there are experiences in which we hold our breath in awe or surprise; where the body vibrates with joy and excitement; or when the mind rests gently like a butterfly landing on an open flower. In those moments we find ourselves fully attentive: open and available as both butterfly and flower, intertwined. In contrast, when we encounter painful times, we close our attention off from the experience and we become unavailable to the pain which threatens to overwhelm us. We develop a reluctance to re-engage in the things that remind us of or cause us to revisit those painful moments. Our attention is diverted and distracted leaving us with a sense of life that is fractured and fragmented.

Being human, our attention is drawn and attaches to sensations that are pleasant and joyful. As they fade, those momentary experiences become an ache and a yearning which drive us in many directions – not all of which lead to good health. We activate our intention to live well by trying to recapture the pleasurable moments and avoid the unpleasant ones. This is perfectly understandable. It is our idea of what it means to live well. However, it doesn’t take long before we begin to notice that, despite our best intentions, we may not be choosing the actions that are most likely to help us live well. Along with our best intentions, we also need to be skilful in the means we choose to foster well being.

Imagine having had a wonderful meal. The body is nourished; the sensations are activated. There is a feeling of being replenished, satisfied, and energized. Now imagine carrying the leftovers around for months in the hopes that they will continue to evoke the same sensations. We might even have done something like it when we order the same meal from the restaurant menu because it was once delicious or crave an activity or substance that gave us a lift away from the ordinary. Hanging onto the past or chasing after the future are unskillful means by which we hope to fulfill or protect ourselves but they are unlikely to have healthy consequences.

Our tendency to prefer the lighter, pleasant moments, to block out or run from the unpleasant ones, and to feel restless (bored) when things are neutral is normal (but not healthy). The consequence, however, is an experience of dissatisfaction when our preferences are not available to us. Living skillfully is cultivated by the way our body and mind meet the events that occur in our lives. When we are able to enter that interface with an attitude of even-handed observation of what is present, our quality of attention becomes steady, and living well is the outcome.

Attention to the nature of our experience generates our intentions to live well and the actions we choose to realize those intentions are guided by our attitude towards the experience. Joy and woe are part of our lives and there is little we can do to control their appearance. However, in the practice of mindfulness, we learn to focus our attention on how our experience is unfolding, work with what is truly possible in the experience, and cultivate an attitude that nourishes our well being independent of the valence (positive, negative or neutral) of the experience.

In her recent post Mindful Re-Awakening, she describes her experience of coming full circle and into her own.

Thank you, Deborah!  May our journey together be fruitful and joyous.

I’m fine when I’m meditating but as soon as I go out into the world I just can’t get back that feeling of calm.

This is really good!  It’s great noticing and more than great that it is happening!  Of course, you may feel surprised to hear that.  The first thing we bring our attention to when we notice this fracture in our experience is that we have an expectation.  I want what I had on the cushion/chair!  I don’t want what is out there in the world!  Meditation is supposed to keep me calm!  All of this is true in a way.  But – and here’s the gold nugget – it’s not the point of practice.

The second thing we do is return to our intention in practicing; it is to develop our awareness of how we get into these sticky spots, rejecting of and clinging to our momentary experiences.  So, when we notice that we are fracturing off our life into good-bad spaces and times, we can meet that realization with kindness and understanding.  Honestly now, who wouldn’t want to have the serenity of meditation and avoid the chaos of the world?  We note that it is very understandable to want something different and we let ourselves be taught by that experience of “wanting.” 

Who do we become when we don’t get what we want?  Who do we become in the face of disappointment?  Withdrawn?  Blaming?  Helpless?  Curious?  Motivated?  Intrigued?  How interesting!

How do I practice the meditations like the 3-minute breathing or the walking meditation from office to office when there just isn’t time to get it all in there?

We tend to have this idea about practice, that it is something extraordinary, sacred even.  Again, although it is good to hold our practice and practice time as something of value, it is not separate from our life.  If there isn’t time for 3 minutes of breathing, then go to 3 breaths or even one breath.  One breath in or out, taken with gentle compassionate attention, is worth 10, 000 annoyed packages of 3-minute breathing exercises!  Do what is possible.  But also, make it always possible to do what is necessary.  In other words, it’s important to be honest about whether we are truly crunched for time or whether we are reacting to the demands made of us – with mindfulness practice becoming the scapegoat “demand.”

As we mature in our practice, we begin to let go of the rigid structure of practice.  But we aren’t there yet; at least, not a few months after the course.  So it’s important to have a regular time and space in which to work on the skills until they are well-confirmed.  Like anything – exercising, cooking, playing the piano – improvisation is only delicious to the senses when we’ve acquired some level of mastery.  Otherwise, we’re just adding chaos to confusion!

We also want to acknowledge that life gets busy and that sacred and special time on the cushion/chair may get co-opted in very real ways.  So we suggest looking at all the places we would not believe meditation is possible because it “just isn’t the way it should be”;  check out those expectations. 

There are no places that are sacred or defile for meditation. 

Surprise yourself!

Clarifying mechanisms of action is of more than just academic interest, as it will likely inform the approach taken to training the next generation of MBCT practitioners.  The fact that these are questions being asked shows how far we have come from the early days when MBCT was described as a form of attentional control training.

And it doesn’t stop there.  Segal writes more on the use of technology to make the treatment more accessible for the benefit of many more people who need it.

You can read the entire article on the UCSD blog page.  Click.

There are many things I found attractive about this book.  Despite the usual promise of finding peace and serenity in the subtitle, it is quiet and unassuming.  It paces the practice evenly over 50 chapters.  Altman keeps his promise about simplicity; over 50 short chapters, he delivers 1-minute stances we can take to our life that stop the runaway mental trains we hop onto regularly.  The language is straightforward and unpretentious.  No preaching.  No measuring of self against the great gurus and no mention of gurus.

In fact, the chapters are filled with little examples of people who struggle with their lives, moment by moment.  Altman brings them alive in a few words, sketching out their past and present, opening us to the poor decisions we can make when we live without intention, without paying attention, and with an attitude of negativity to ourselves and our situation.  I found it easy to identify with these experts of Life, not as a psychologist who meets them daily but as a human whose suffering is no different.  Altman’s offerings of practice shift our collective stance to our struggles and open new possibilities.

Technically, the book strikes a resounding chord with our approach to teaching mindfulness at the Ottawa Mindfulness Clinic.  At the intake sessions and in the first class, participants often ask how much homework time is expected of them.  After we give the usual softening statements that reframe the concept to one of “home practice” and use the “class is like a gym,” one of us will add, “So that means practice is 24/7.”  This comes as a surprise to them but is not unexpected in a culture that fosters the quick-fix or which values the intellectual process of problem-solving.  We take courses, attend workshops, and register for programs that promise increase in skills, competence, and credentials.  And often they do.

Living skillfully, however, requires more than logging time in the frontal lobe, collecting bits and bytes of information we can apply like salve to a wound.  It requires dropping into a moment-by-moment awareness of what is unfolding in our experience.  We teach this as a practice of “mindful bells”: events in our inner and outer environment that signal a return to the breath, to an awareness of what is unfolding right now.  And sometimes that means noticing the pain, sorrow, loss, and all the arrows that strike us in the passage of our days.  This is usually the part in the course where participants begin to question their wisdom in registering.  Who wants to pay attention to the icky stuff?  However, without awareness of how we create our suffering, there is no possibility of knowing which skills to transform – or, more importantly, how to cultivate a realistic acceptance of the ebb and flow of life.  And then slowly through practice, minute by minute, we learn that joy is not in the momentary uplifting (although those are important to save to the hard drive of our brain).  True Joy is in meeting our life with full appreciation of what it is in this moment.

Altman folds all these concepts neatly into the chapters.  The one-minute practices are prefaced with an tidy explanation of the need to develop an intention to act and the practice becomes a natural outcome of that intention.  I particularly like his focus on creating intention before acting because without that piece of practice, “mindfulness” is nothing more than a meaningless ricochet from one stimulus to another.  I also appreciate that the opening chapter is mindfulness of the body – in its moment of awakening in the morning.  What better metaphor and promise of deep practice!

There are innumerable quotables and insightful statements in the book.  Here are some of my favourites:

Your breath is your intimate kiss with this moment.

Give some thought to the consequences of one or more of your routines.

If we’re not careful, routines can rob us of the experience of the next minute.

Where we walk, there moves our lives.

Perfectionism is unforgiving.

Patience makes mockery of expectations.

There is no small hello.

The body is the perfect traffic signal.

Silence is a process.

We know from follow-up research we conducted in the OMC that the practices most of our Alumni use are the 3-minute breathing exercise and the “mindful bells.”  Altman’s book is lovely manual of these mindful bells with the advantage that we create these bells and enter into a partnership with the ones already in our inner and outer environment.

This morning, I read a terrific blog post by David Riley, author of The Endless Further.  It is titled Mindfulness is just a four letter word.  He begins with the evolution of the term in Buddhist usage – and that’s worth reading because it reveals the flexibility of the concept even in its original context 2600 years ago.  Then David writes:

…“mindfulness” is a rather controversial word in Buddhism these days. It seems some people object to mindfulness. They say it’s been over-used, it’s just a buzz-word, a cliché, that it points to a watered-down form of Buddhist practice, it’s nothing more than a balm, an elixir, a feel-good term. What is never entirely clear to me is whether these critics merely object to the word or if they also object to the practice, or both.

And there you have it!  It’s one of those choice points we try to convey in the teaching of skillful living.  We can get caught up in the head stuff… the words, the images, the stories… or we can simply make the choice to practice.

David’s article goes on with more richly textured examination of what mindfulness is and it’s a valuable contribution to our understanding of the way we can get caught in the net of this process.

Our inaugural course for burn out has yielded a treasure trove of information.  Ten participants took part in the 8-week Mindfulness-Based Burn Out Resiliency Program from May to June.  All ten participants completed the course and reported that it had changed their perspectives on how to manage the work-personal life dimensions more effectively.  Measures of Exhaustion and Impact of Symptoms on Quality of Life responded to treatment in which participants learned how to pay attention to the early signals of stress and respond appropriately.

Read Standing up to burnout for a discussion of this and other findings.

We are thrilled to present the Professional Training Program graduating class of 2011.  An exciting mix of health care professionals coming from across the Ottawa-Valley community.  Our newest teacher/facilitators of Mindfulness-Based Interventions are psychologists, social workers, clinical counsellors, coaches, addictions counsellors, physiotherapists and occupational therapists.  They committed to participating in the 8-week program as participant-observers, a process that challenged their paradigm of health care delivery and enhanced their already-well developed compassion for the suffering of their clients.  Following the 8-week program, they participated in this two and one-half day retreat to acquire a very necessary understanding of the theory and practice of Mindfulness-Based Interventions.

This program also introduced training in trauma resilience and we are excited about the many directions our new teacher/facilitators will be taking these skills.

Congratulations and thank you for your dedication!

Photo by Siobhan Nearey

About halfway through the article, they address the role of Ethics (sila) in the cultivation of mindfulness. After listing the Five Precepts (not killing, stealing, engaging in sexual misconduct, lying, or using intoxicants), Grabovac and colleagues make what is likely one of most faulty statements of the intent of a practice founded on sila.

(O)ne of the major purposes of the ethical guideline is to reduce the baseline amount of mental proliferation, thus aiding both concentration and mindfulness practices… Leading an ethical life, in the context of the (Buddhist Psychological Model),implies that the meditator experiences less guilt, doubts, worries, etc. that can often be a source of mental proliferation.

I don’t think one can get more off-track than this. In effect, Buddhist Ethics are reduced to a utilitarian process of feeling good. In terms of Kohlberg’s moral development that makes Buddhist and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction practitioners capable of not much more than the second level in which we choose the “right” thing to do because it gets us something in return. What Grabovac and friends have missed is that sila plays an equal role (if not more so) to Wisdom and Concentration in the triumvariate model of practice. (The Buddhist practice model is formulated by the Eightfold Path which is categorized into Wisdom, Ethics, and Concentration.)  It is more than just doing something to get something in return. And perhaps, this is where I find the teaching of Mindfulness-Based courses to be inherently limited if we stop, as most courses do, at symptom relief -and that includes “feeling good.”

The ethics of a Buddhist Psychological or Applied Model requires opening to our interconnectedness (non-self is the start point). The practice of the Five Precepts (or Five Mindfulness Trainings of Thich Nhat Hanh) is more than about avoiding a poor rebirth or ensuring some Thing for ourselves. To miss this, places their translation of Dharma into Psychology on very shaky ground. In fact, I think it just collapses.

It’s disappointing that researchers who put so much into developing a bridge between the two worlds would have missed something so critical and obvious. And in a journal of some repute, it concerns me that readers not well-versed in Buddhist thought will take the diminishing of Buddhist Ethics to a utilitarian role as a fact. I haven’t seen an open challenges to this part of the article. Perhaps it will come soon.