Allowing space to heal

When you have a physical illness, it can be a distressing time. Your condition may be painful or even life-threatening. Perhaps your illness means you’re no longer able to do the simple things in life you took for granted before, like run up the stairs or look after yourself in an independent way. Illness can shake you to your very core. How can you cope with this? How can you build your inner strength to manage the changes that take place, without being overwhelmed and losing all hope?

High levels of stress, particularly over a long period of time, have been clearly shown to reduce the strength of your immune system. Perhaps you went down with flu after a period of high stress. The scientific evidence strongly agrees. For example, research on care-givers who experience high levels of stress for long periods of time shows that they have a weaker immune system in response to diseases like flu.

Mindfulness reduces stress, and for this reason is one way of managing illness. By reducing your stress you improve the effectiveness of your immune system, and this may help increase the rate of healing from the illness you suffer, especially if the illness is stress-related.

Mindfulness can reduce stress, anxiety, pain and depression, and boost energy, creativity, the quality of relationships and your overall sense of wellbeing. The more you engage in mindfulness, the better: monks who’ve practised mindfulness all their lives have levels of wellbeing, measured in their brains, way above anything scientists thought was possible. Sometimes their happiness levels are so high, they think there’s something wrong with their brain scanners!

Chapter 14 is all about how mindfulness can help to heal the body.

Enjoying greater relaxation

Mindfulness can be a very relaxing experience. As you discover how to rest with an awareness of your breathing or the sounds around you, you may begin to feel calmer.

However, the aim of mindfulness is not relaxation. Relaxation is one of the welcome by-products. In clinical studies comparing the benefits of mindfulness and relaxation, there’s often little beneficial effect in the relaxation exercises but significant benefits in practising mindfulness. This shows how different they are.

Mindfulness is the development of awareness of your inner and outer experiences, whatever they are, with a sense of kindness, curiosity and acceptance. You may experience very deep states of relaxation when practising mindfulness, or you may not. If you don’t, this certainly doesn’t mean you’re practising mindfulness incorrectly.

Why is relaxation and mindfulness so different? Mindfulness is about cultivating greater awareness of what’s going on within or around you. It’s a state of wakefulness. Whereas relaxation is associated with falling asleep, letting go and reducing your level of awareness. Mindfulness is about moving towards challenging experiences to help you learn from difficult thoughts, feelings, urges and sensations. Relaxation is often about moving away from such challenges – which means you can’t learn from them.

When you first begin practising mindfulness, you may not find it relaxing at all. This is totally normal and nothing to worry about. Try shortening your practises and take a break whenever you wish. Be kind to yourself and let the process of mindfulness be unforced and gentle.

Table 1-1 shows the difference between relaxation and mindfulness exercises.

Improving focus and feeling happier

To be mindful, you usually need to do one thing at a time. When walking, you just walk. When listening, you just listen. When writing, you just write. By practising formal and informal mindfulness meditation, you’re training your brain, with mindful attitudes like kindness, curiosity and acceptance.

So, if you’re writing a report, you focus on that activity as much as you can, without overly straining yourself. Each time your mind wanders off to another thought, you notice what you were thinking about (curiosity), and then without criticising (remember you’re being kind to yourself), you guide your attention back to the writing. So, you finish your report sooner (less time spent thinking about other stuff) and the work is probably of better quality (because you gave the report your full attention). The more you can focus on what you’re doing, the more you can get done. So mindfulness can help you finish your work early – yippee!

You can’t suddenly decide to focus on your work and then become focused. The power of attention isn’t just a snap decision you make. You can train attention, just as you can train your biceps in a gym. Mindfulness is gym for the mind. However, you don’t need to make a huge effort as you do when working out. When training the mind to be attentive, you need to be gentle or the mind becomes less attentive. This is why mindfulness requires kindness. If you’re too harsh with yourself, your mind rebels. Be mindful with your mind, not against your mind.

Your work also becomes more enjoyable if you’re mindful and when you’re enjoying something you’re more creative and focused. If you’re training your mind to be curious about experience rather than bored, you can be curious about whatever you engage in.

Eventually, through experience, you begin to notice that work flows through you, rather than you doing the work. You find yourself feeding the children or making that presentation. You lose the sense of ‘me’ doing this and become more relaxed and at ease. When this happens, the work is effortless, often of a very high quality and thoroughly enjoyable – which sounds like a nice kind of focus, don’t you think? In psychology, this is called being in a state of flow, and it is strongly associated with greater wellbeing and happiness – yay! (More on going with the flow in Chapter 5.)

Developing greater wisdom

Wisdom is regarded highly in Eastern and Western traditions. Socrates and Plato considered philosophy as literally the love of wisdom (philo-sophia). According to Eastern traditions, wisdom is your essential nature and leads to a deep happiness for yourself and to helping others to find that happiness within themselves too.

You can access greater wisdom. Mindfulness leads to wisdom, because you learn to handle your own thoughts and emotions skilfully. Just because you have a negative thought, you don’t believe the thought to be true. And when you experience tricky emotions like sadness, anxiety or frustration, you’re able to process them using mindfulness rather than being overwhelmed by them.

With your greater emotional balance, you’re able to listen deeply to others and create fulfilling, lasting relationships. With your clear mind, you’re able to make better decisions. With your open heart, you can be happier and healthier.

Mindfulness leads to wisdom because of your greater level of awareness. You become aware of how you relate to yourself, others and the world around you. With this heightened awareness, you’re in a much better place to make informed choices. Rather than living automatically like a robot, you’re consciously awake and you take action based on reflection and what’s in the best interest of everyone, including yourself.

I consider the Dalai Lama as an example of a wise person. He’s kind and compassionate, and thinks about the welfare of others. He seeks to reduce suffering and increase happiness in humanity as a whole. He isn’t egocentric, laughs a lot and doesn’t seem overwhelmed with all his duties and the significant losses he’s experienced. People seem to thoroughly enjoy spending time with him. He certainly seems to live in a mindful way.

Think about who you consider to be wise people. What are their qualities? I’d guess you find them to be conscious and aware of their actions, rather than habitual and lost in their own thoughts – in other words, they’re mindful!

Discovering your true self

Mindfulness can lead to an interesting journey of personal discovery. The word person comes from the Latin word persona, originally meaning a character in a drama, or a mask. The word discovery means to dis-cover or to uncover. So in this sense, personal discovery is about uncovering your mask.

As Shakespeare said: ‘All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.’ Through mindfulness practise, you begin to see your roles, your persona or mask(s) as part of what it means to be you. You still do everything you did before: you can keep helping people or making money or whatever you like doing, but you know that this is only one way of seeing things, one dimension of your being.

You probably wear all sorts of different masks for different roles that you play. You may be a parent, daughter or son, partner, employee. Each of these roles asks you to fulfil certain obligations. You may not be aware that it’s possible to put all the masks down through mindfulness practise.

Mindfulness is an opportunity to just be yourself. When practising mindfulness meditation, you sometimes have clear experiences of a sense of being. You may feel a deep, undivided sense of peace, of stillness and calm. Your physical body, which usually feels so solid, sometimes fades into the background of your awareness or may feel like it disappears altogether, and you can have a deep sense of connection and oneness with your surroundings.

Some people become very attached to these positive experiences in meditation and try hard to repeat them, as if they’re ‘getting closer’ to something. However, over time you come to realise that even these seemingly blissful experiences also come and go. Enjoy them when they come, and then let them go.

Through the practise of mindfulness, you may come to discover that you’re a witness to life’s experiences. Thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations come and go in your mindfulness practise, and yet a part of you is just observing this all happening – awareness itself. This is something very simple that everyone can see and experience. In fact, being naturally yourself is so simple, you easily overlook it.

In research into the latest form of mindfulness therapy called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), becoming aware of this sense of self that is beyond your thoughts, emotions, sensations and urges is a key part of mindfulness. Through identifying with this ‘Observer Self’ you become more psychologically flexible and resilient against the challenges of life.

According to Eastern philosophy, as this witness, you’re perfect, whole and complete just as you are. You may not feel as if you’re perfect, because you identify with your thoughts, emotions and body, which are changing over time. Ultimately you don’t need to do anything to attain this natural state, because you are this natural state all the time – right here and right now.

For these reasons, mindfulness is not about self-improvement. At the core of your being, you’re perfect just the way you are! Mindfulness exercises and meditations are just to help gently train your brain to be more focused and calm, and your heart to be warm and open. Mindfulness is not about changing you: it’s about realising that you’re perfectly beautiful within, just the way you are.

Consider what Eckhart Tolle, author of A New Earth: Create a Better Life, says:

‘What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.’

Once you spend more time being the witness of your internal experiences, you’re less disturbed by the ups and downs of life. This understanding offers you a way to a happier life. It’s that little bit easier to go with the flow and see life as an adventure rather than just a series of struggles.

Beginning the voyage

The journey begins, and you set sail. You’re not sure what you’re going to find, and you may not be too sure why you’re going in the first place, but that’s part of the excitement and adventure. You may think that you’re finally doing something you really enjoy and can gain from. This is what you wanted to do, and you’re on the boat now. At the same time, you’re a bit anxious about what may happen – what if things don’t work out?

The beginning of the mindfulness journey may feel like this for you. You may be thinking, ‘Finally, I’ve found what I need to do,’ and you’re keen to find out how to do it, being curious and in anticipation. At the same time, you may feel unsure that you can ‘do’ mindfulness: you suspect you don’t have the patience/focus/discipline/inner strength. You have ideas about the journey of mindfulness. At the moment you may suffer from x and y, and after reading this book you want to have reduced those painful feelings. You may have clear goals you want to achieve and hope mindfulness is going to help you to achieve those goals.

Having a long-term vision as to what you hope to achieve from mindfulness is helpful, but concentrating too much on goals is unhelpful. Mindfulness is ultimately a goalless activity. Mindfulness is process-oriented rather than goal-oriented. You’re not actually going anywhere. This is the paradox of mindfulness. If you get overly obsessed with the goals, you focus on the goal rather than the process. However, mindfulness is the journey itself. You aren’t going to reach the present moment sometime in the future: you can only be in the present moment now. More important than anything else is how you meet this moment. If you can train yourself to be open, curious, accepting, kind and aware of this moment, the future takes care of itself. So, as you steer your boat, keep aware and awake. See Chapter 3 for more about vision in mindfulness.

Exploring the journey of a lifetime

After sailing for a long time, you finally see some land in the distance that’s more beautiful than anything you’ve seen in your exploration. You decide to stop when you get there. The land looks so new and fresh, but at the same time very familiar and cosy. As you draw closer, you discover that you’re approaching your own house. Of all the places you’ve been and all the adventures you’ve had, you feel most at home here, the place you left! However, the journey hasn’t been fruitless. You’ve discovered much along the way and had to travel that journey to discover what you most treasure.

Ultimately in mindfulness, you realise that you don’t need to search for anything at all. Everything is okay just the way things are. You’re already home. Each moment is magical, new and fresh. Each moment is a treasure never to be repeated again, ever. Your awareness is always shining, lighting up the world around you and inside you effortlessly. Awareness has no off or on switch: awareness is always effortlessly on. Although you experience ups and downs, pleasures and pain, you no longer hang onto things as much, and you therefore suffer less. This isn’t so much a final goal as an ongoing journey of a lifetime. Life continues to unfold in its own way, and you begin to grasp how to flow with life.

In this context, think about the following quote from Buddha:

‘The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.’

The journey of mindfulness is to discover how to live this way.