Body Archives - Mindful Call

Releasing tension and emotion

There are around 650 skeletal muscles in the human body. Although the primary purpose of these muscles is to provide movement, we also often hold tension and emotions in the muscles of our body. Recent research backs up what we may have already noticed: that we tend to feel anger in the face and jaw, anxiety in the chest and belly, and stress around the neck and shoulders. When we hold tension in our muscles the fibres tend to shorten, which causes tightness. Of course, we can also build tightness and tension by doing things like sitting at a computer all day without proper breaks.

Interestingly, we have only sat on chairs for a recent part of human history. Our hunter-gatherer ancestors tended to squat. As early agriculture developed, chairs were mainly for people of high status, like a King’s throne. With the Industrial Revolution, chairs became more common. Our great-grandparents worked physically harder than we do today, so were less likely to sit during the day. Today we lead much more sedentary lifestyles, often sitting for hours, and exercising little more than our eyeballs and fingers.

Emotions emerged early on in our evolution before we developed the ability to communicate through language and think conceptually. There are three main purposes of emotions; to tell us that something needs attention, to communicate how we feel to others, and to drive us to act. So, emotions are a potentially powerful and useful resource that can be used to complement thinking. However, as thinking became more dominant, our ability to notice and make use of emotions declined. Although there are differences between people’s sensitivity to emotions, many of us fail to notice when emotions arise, or what they are telling us.

Our ancient ancestors survived and thrived by developing the ability to quickly identify and respond to threats. This evolutionary bias is still with us today as our physiology, senses, and cognition prioritize and process threats much faster and with greater intensity than something neutral or pleasant.

Where our ancient ancestors would have encountered stress and then moved on, the challenge for us in the modern world is that we can encounter multiple mini stressors during the day, and we have neither the time nor the ability to allow the stress to dissolve naturally. So, we accumulate emotional tightness and tension in our bodies, which becomes the normal way our bodies feel. Not surprisingly, holding stress, tension, and negative emotions in the body can lead to long-term mental and physical health issues – from dis-ease to disease.

So how can we notice when we take on tension as emotions arise before they do any damage? A big part of the answer is to become more aware of what’s going on in our bodies in the present moment. For instance, say you’re in a meeting and someone challenges what you are doing on a project. You may notice your jaw, face, and neck tightening and your body generally contracting, as feelings of frustration and defensiveness arise.

Practising mindfulness in this same scenario, you notice and acknowledge these feelings, maybe thinking, “Oh, there’s some anger arising”, but instead of reacting automatically, you choose to respond more skilfully by noticing the impulse to react, acknowledging the other person’s concerns, and calmly reassuring them about the project. Then take a slow, deep breath, and as you exhale, release tension and allow the anger to dissolve in its own time.

Emotions are energy in motion (e-motion) that have meaning. Emotions come and go; they naturally arise, play out, and dissolve if they are properly acknowledged and allowed to run their natural course. They may be about us and our situation, but we are not our emotions. The trouble is that we sometimes strongly attach ourselves to our emotions and end up holding onto them in our bodies for much longer than necessary.

There are several steps to mindfully release tension and emotions:

Being aware, alert, and open to your present moment experience, so you’re better able to notice tension and emotions as they arise in your body.
Breathing in; acknowledging the emotion, noticing what it’s telling you, and allowing the emotion to be just as it is without wanting to change it.
Breathing out; letting go of holding on and allowing the tension and emotion to release and dissolve in its own time.

As you become more skilful in working with and releasing tension and emotions, you’ll become more open and flexible, working with greater ease in the flow of your experience, as well as being happier and healthier.

Suggested weekly practice

Notice tension and emotions rising, playing out, and dissolving in your body. For instance, in a meeting or a social event.
Use curiosity to explore what it means to become aware of and acknowledge emotions. Exploring where you feel the emotion in your body and acknowledging what the emotion is telling you.
When you notice tightness and tension accumulating in your body, take a break, connect to the present, and breathe deeply as you relax and release the affected areas of your body.

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second practice to explore releasing tension and emotion.

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Emotional resilience

Anyone who watches the news knows that the world is not in a good place now. With escalating conflicts, political and economic uncertainty, and environmental devastation. The climate crisis is already changing the lives of many people across the world; from coping and recovering from extreme weather, wildfires, floods, and droughts. As well as the practical and physical health responses to these disasters, providing psychological and emotional help, support and guidance is now an important focus for researchers and public health professionals.

On an individual level, we all encounter the challenges that life throws at us at work and in our personal lives. We cope with adversity in different ways; some people seem to flow through difficulties relatively unscathed, while others appear to crumble under the burden. As with many things in life, it’s not just the event, it’s how we react and relate to the difficulty that makes a difference.

In material science, resilience is the ability of a material to absorb energy when it’s bent, compressed, or stretched and release energy and bounce back as the force subsides. Similarly, developing emotional resilience allows us to absorb adversity, stress, and pressure by being more flexible and skilful in managing our thoughts, emotions, behaviour, and relationships. This allows us to emerge stronger, wiser, and with a positive outlook on life.

Before going through what it means to practise resilience, it’s useful to explore what typically happens when we encounter difficulty. For example, an email arrives with some bad news at work. The first thing we normally do is react unconsciously. Emotions are much faster than thoughts, so strong feelings like anger or anxiety are the first to appear. At the same time, our body may become tight and tense as the flight-or-fight response is triggered. Then thoughts appear that reflect the feelings, for instance, thoughts about who’s to blame, self-criticism, or worry. As we entertain these thoughts two things happen. The first is that our attention on critical and worrying thoughts amplifies feelings of anger and anxiety. The second is that we identify with the whole state which includes the emotions, agitated thoughts, and physical tension, which intensifies how we feel. When we are stressed or experience strong emotions like anger or anxiety, we lose the inner resources, like thinking clearly, that would otherwise help us respond more skilfully, so we tend to react automatically, which rarely serves us, other people, or the situation well.

Bringing resilience to the same situation requires some important missing ingredients. The key one is our awareness and focus on what’s happening in the present moment. So, we notice, acknowledge, and allow the feelings that arise in our bodies as we start to read the email. We may even label the emotions, for instance, “There’s some anger and anxiety”. When thoughts appear, we’re ready to observe them, maybe even noting them as, “Angry, self-critical and worrying thoughts”, or “Useful and constructive thoughts”. Rather than automatically identifying with the state, we know that we’re not our thoughts and emotions, which makes it easier to let go of limiting thoughts and beliefs. This stops the emotions from being amplified by our thoughts in a vicious spiral. Realizing the challenging situation, we can create some inner space by taking a brief pause, for instance, by taking a couple of aware breaths and relaxing tension in the body.

This gives us a more open perspective that allows us to respond more flexibly and skilfully. This does not mean that we become passive victims and accept things that are wrong or unfair in the world without acting. Quite the reverse; from an aware place we can use the energy from the emotions to drive us to act and explore a range of solutions with an attitude of realistic optimism. By responding in this way, we are better placed to act skilfully and appropriately.

Cultivating and practising mindfulness skills can help us develop resilience in all areas of our lives. Other mindfulness skills like practising patience, gratitude, and kindness are also relevant and useful. Having access to caring friends and family in a support network is also important. All of this relies on using the right skills when challenges arise. Although it’s not easy, the next time you experience a difficult event or situation, start by quickly tuning into your body and how it feels, before being drawn into worrying and angry thoughts, and being more skilful in how you respond and see what difference that makes.

Suggested weekly practice

Explore what happens in your body, emotions, and mind when you next experience a challenging or stressful event.
When you react, take a moment to reflect on whether how you reacted served you, other people, or the situation. Did you notice that there was a choice of options, including one that may have been a more skilful response?
Reflect on the health of your social support network, especially given the limitations of the pandemic, and take positive action if it needs improvement.

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware. There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then close your eyes while this meditation plays to explore and experience using skills that help develop emotional resilience.

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Mindful day

We all know that a day is the 24 hours it takes as the earth rotates towards and away from the sun. Although the convention is to start the day from midnight, in medieval times the day began just after sunset. Some cultures and religions still use the sunset to mark this boundary today.

In the Western world, we have an average life expectancy of around 80 years, or 29,200 days, which seems generous when compared to the 24 hours of a mayfly; but in the fast-paced world we live in, days and weeks can easily flash past. Many of us share the same daily routine, which punctuates most of our working lives: we wake up, wash, eat, maybe travel, work, exercise, socialise, relax, and sleep. It’s no wonder that when we get caught up in the routine, one busy day merges into the next until the weekend arrives.

As far as we know, being born human gives us the greatest potential of any life form in the known universe. At the latest count, there are over two trillion galaxies, each with billions of stars. Astrophysicists speculate that almost all stars have planets, but only one in 100 billion supports life. We’re extremely fortunate to live on one of them, a watery planet that orbits its star at just the right distance called the Goldilocks zone. Even the orbit of our large moon accelerated evolution and contributed to the cycles of life on Earth.

On an everyday basis, we tend to get caught up in the human-scale activities, narratives, and dramas of our lives that are quite disconnected from this amazing cosmic reality. If every day is precious, how many days have we squandered by not fully appreciating the joy and wonder of being alive? It’s not that we expect to be mindfully aware of every moment of the day; there are bound to be times when we drift off in thought or get caught up in emotions, which is only human. It’s also unrealistic to expect each day to be an amazing, life-changing experience. Although some days will stand out, most will be average and relatively normal. So how can we meet each day with awareness, appreciation, and gratitude for what it means to be human, even when what we’re doing seems mundane?

Bringing mindful awareness into our day can make a real difference to how skilfully we work with whatever arises. One useful analogy is to imagine that we’re an experienced driver on a busy street. As we progress, we’re open and aware of whatever arises in our field of view: the mother with a pushchair waiting to cross the road, the wobbly cyclist, or the bus pulling out ahead. Alert, open, and aware, working with whatever arises, we respond skilfully to navigate a smooth and easy path through the situation.

Some practical steps for embedding mindfulness into your day include:

Waking: When you awake, before your head fills up with thoughts, turn your attention and awareness to your body and take a few aware breaths in appreciation and gratitude.
Presence: Use routine activities like cleaning your teeth or showering to let go of automatic thoughts for a moment and bring your attention to the present; to your senses and sensations.
Morning meditation: See if you can find 5, 10 or 15 minutes in your morning routine to simply sit and open your awareness to your body, breath, and senses, acknowledging any thoughts and feelings, but letting them come and go without getting caught up in them.
Breaks: Take regular mindful breaks of 5-10 minutes during to the day. If you can, go outside to appreciate nature, or look up at the open sky, which is a great way of finding a bit of peace and calm.
Pause: Let go of any mental and emotional energy and momentum when you come to the end of a task so that you’re ready to begin the new activity free from accumulated noise.
Relationships: Feel appreciation and gratitude for all your relationships with others, whether close or distant, bringing kindness and compassion to whoever you encounter.

It’s so easy to get caught up in the routine of the day. Before you know it, another week, a month, then a year has passed. By weaving regular formal and informal mindfulness practice into each day, you can improve your well-being and performance as well as your mental and physical health, which leads to a longer, healthier, and happier life.

Suggested weekly practice

Aim to start the day well with some peaceful and calm awareness when you wake up. Sending your attention and awareness to appreciate your body, rather than running off in thoughts.
Notice and appreciate things that are special and sacred during the day: your loved ones, the flowers or birdsong in the garden, the beautiful sky, for example.
Read an up-to-date book or watch a documentary on what we have discovered about the amazing wonder of nature and the universe. (for instance, on BBC iPlayer: The Green Planet with David Attenborough, Earth with Chris Packham, or Universe with Brian Cox)

Guidance
Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware. There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second audio to reflect on the day, then explore what it really means to be alive in the present moment.

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Peace

There are special moments in our lives when we find peace: really letting go and relaxing on holiday or walking in the countryside and stopping for a few moments to admire the view. Finding peace is to experience a deep, harmonious, and connected alignment with the world around us. The trouble is, with all the turbulence, noise, and uncertainty in today’s world, moments of peace are difficult to find.

We can pick up disturbance every time we watch, read or listen to the news, which often demonstrates little peace in the world, with wars, political and economic disorder, and the climate crisis. Using the latest technology, huge amounts of information are filtered, condensed, and presented in the news. And just in case you missed something, some news channels have a newsreader competing with other news scrolling to grab your attention on the screen. It was not always this way. Although it’s some time ago, there was a famous BBC news broadcast in 1930 where the news announcement was, “Good evening. Today is Good Friday. There is no news”. It was decided that nothing newsworthy had happened, so they played piano music instead.

So, is there peace underneath all the turbulence and noise in the world?

We often think of the world that includes smartphones, cars, coffee bars, financial services, holiday adverts, airports, supermarkets, and motorways as part of the same world that includes nature, but they’re not the same. What if we separated out the “world”: everything that humans have created, from the “earth”; the blue planet seen from space, nature itself? Using this distinction, it’s easier to see the world as a man-made overlay. Although it’s governed by the laws of nature, it tends to be a lot more chaotic; always in a state of flux, uncertainty, and disturbance. So, although we may not be able to find much peace in the world, we can find peace when we connect with the earth through nature.

Although there is sometimes conflict in nature, for instance, a volcanic eruption, most of the time there is peace and harmony. Think about the last time you walked through woodland: the natural sculpture of the trees, the call of a wood pigeon, and the sunlight glinting through the leaves in the upper branches. Apart from the changing seasons, nothing much was happening. The earth is always in relative harmony, and peace is abundant. Caught up in the busy content and activity in the world, it’s hard to find peace. It’s when we drop beneath the noisy overlay, into a more natural space, that we find true peace.

Suggestions for finding peace include:

Settling agitation and letting go of holding onto any agitated emotions, stress, tension, and tightness
Reconnecting with nature – the “earth” rather than the “world”
Taking an occasional digital detox for half a day, a full day, or a weekend
Practising acceptance, rather than avoidance or resistance
Avoiding getting pulled into the news for a day or two and see what difference this makes
Connecting with the space, stillness, and silence that rests in the background of experience, rather than the foreground objects and content that we normally inhabit

They say, “Rest in peace” when someone dies, but we all aspire to find a bit of peace and happiness while we’re still vibrant and alive. Although finding peace at work and in our personal lives can be a challenge, by looking in the right places, and moving towards peace in nature we can uncover the peace inside ourselves.

Suggested weekly practice

See if you can make time at the beginning of each day to find a little bit of peace.
Avoid getting into conflicts or arguments before bedtime; protecting the peaceful hours before you go to sleep can make a real difference.
If you need a bit of peace, take a deep breath and sound the word “Peace” internally as you slowly exhale, allowing mental agitation and noise to dissolve as you imagine a clear open sky.

Guidance

Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware.
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the first settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then play the second practice to explore and experience inner peace.

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Simply being

There is a concept in science fiction that is also a hypothetical future development called Mind Uploading. For extreme transhumanists, it’s imagined that the contents of someone’s conscious mind can be uploaded to a computer to achieve immortality in a virtual world. To explore this in a thought experiment: imagine that you are in a special laboratory where people in white coats have connected electrodes to your head. A few minutes later the operator announces that your consciousness has been successfully uploaded into computer memory. As you are still conscious in your body, how do you know whether this is true?

Interestingly, a US start-up is working on Mind Uploading, based on their work on rabbits; they promise to upload a copy of your brain to a computer. There’s only one catch – as they need to freeze your brain to make a copy of all the neural connections, the process is fatal.

Partly driven by our quest to develop artificial intelligence, a vast amount of research is being done on understanding human consciousness. One useful distinction is between the content of consciousness, for instance, the words you are processing reading this, and broader conscious awareness – the background awake energy and aliveness that you wake up with every morning before thoughts come streaming in. Another distinction is between the objective reality of the world, the trees, roads, buildings, and the sky, and the thoughts and perceptions we have about them. We can look at an apple on a plate and think “I see an apple on a plate”, but reality is always far more complex than we think. For instance, the subtle range of colours on the apple skin, the sweet and sharp tastes of the fruit, the arrangement of seeds within its centre, the bruise under the skin where it’s been knocked, and so on.

So, when we become caught up in the content of consciousness, we experience a more limited view of ourselves, other people, and the world around us. This can be summarised as our tendency to:

Conflate the content of consciousness and conscious awareness as the same thing.
Skim over the surface and miss the rich complexity and wonder of reality.
Overly identify with our thoughts. Although they may be about us, they are not who we are.

So how can mindfulness help us break through these limitations? Given that our minds typically wander around half of our waking lives, bringing ourselves into the present moment to notice the thoughts we’re entertaining is a good start. We can then shift the focus of our attention away from our thoughts to a different mode of experience; by coming into being, which is conscious awareness. Simply being means resting in the expanded space and stillness of awareness that includes all the thoughts, emotions, and sensations (content) that come and go within that space. Thinking is often directed inward. Being is turning our attention and awareness outwards to our body and senses.

We can bring ourselves into being mode by:

Letting go of overly identifying with thoughts and beliefs about “me and my situation”.
Disengaging our attention away from thoughts and turning it out towards our body and senses
Fully accepting whatever is happening in our experience
If thoughts and feelings arise, acknowledge them and allow them to come and go
Bringing openness, kindness, and appreciation to our experience

Our busy work and personal lives are often so full of responsibilities, activities, and deadlines that it’s no wonder that our minds become agitated and that we spend so much time in our heads. By developing and practising mindfulness, we discover that there is a different mode of experience, a hidden resource that is always available in the background. Coming into being connects us to a more open, flexible, and direct experience of reality that can free us from our mind-made limitations and transform who we are in that moment.

Suggested weekly practice

Notice the difference between thinking and being, where your attention is consumed in content (thinking) or broader awareness (being) of what you are doing
Explore the space of background awareness as you walk, turning awareness out to the broad soundscape as sounds come and go, the movement of your body, and thoughts that arise are acknowledged and pass away as you rest in being while moving
Try resting in awareness as you move into activity – doing from a state of being. For example, extending the walking practice above into other areas of activity, like listening in a meeting, etc.

Guidance

Find somewhere undisturbed and sit in a comfortable, dignified, and upright posture, where you can remain alert and aware. There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes or lower your gaze while the meditations play.

Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
Then close your eyes while this meditation plays to explore and experience coming into being.

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