Performance Archives - Mindful Call

Modes of mind

When we watch an engaging film, we are taken for an experiential ride from beginning to end. If all the elements are the right way, we suspend disbelief. We let go of the fact that we are sitting at home or in a dark cinema, as we are moved by the story and emotional dynamics of the characters. In our heads, we are privileged observers in the actual scene. For that moment, however unrealistic, the action on the screen provides a novel and compelling substitute for our day-to-day experience.

Watching a film is a useful analogy for what happens when our mind wanders. We can be walking along, fully aware of our environment when suddenly, a thought pops up and grabs our attention. Lost in thought, we momentarily disconnect from the rich and complex world around us. For that moment, there are only the thoughts and any emotions that are triggered. After a while, we may notice that our mind has wandered and bring ourselves back to being aware of walking, the movement of our body, the sounds of traffic and birdsong, and the cool air on our faces.

Our minds operate a bit like a radio station that’s always on in the background. The chatter is sometimes engaging and draws us in, and at other times we hardly notice that it’s still talking away. In a mindless state, we’re not aware that there’s the option to turn down the volume, or change channels, to focus on the here and now of simply being in this moment.

Thoughts are produced from two main directions. There are top-down thoughts, the intentional “thinking on purpose”, about a problem, plan, or project, directed from the neo-cortex and executive function of the brain. Then there are bottom-up thoughts that emerge from the senses and emotions from lower down in the brain that inform higher brain functions. Bottom-up processing is faster, more impulsive, intuitive, emotional, and always active. It’s the bottom-up that takes care of habits, so, for instance, does most of our driving for us. In contrast, the top-down is slower, rational, and intentional, and takes effort, as it’s the part that acquires new skills and knowledge.

As well as up and down, there are differences in how the left and right hemispheres of the brain process information and engage with the world. The psychiatrist, philosopher, and author, Iain McGilchrist, found differences between the brain’s left and right hemispheres that include attention and perception, language and communication, relationships, time and space, creativity and problem-solving emotions and social awareness, and self and Identity.

Put simply, the complimentary, yet different, characteristics of the hemispheres are:

Right: deeply connected and embodied, open to the broader context, the interwoven nature of relationships and things, and creative and intuitive.
Left: disconnected and disembodied, narrowly focused on detail, and dominates language, abstraction, and seeks to simplify the world into categories.

Einstein commented on these modes of mind by saying, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

So how can we use mindful skills to make the most of these powerful resources?

One of the core changes that mindfulness practise cultivate is the ability to rest in a state of simply being in the body, open and aware of whatever is coming in through the senses as well as physical sensations, emotions, and thoughts. This is about nurturing the characteristics of the right hemisphere and bottom-up modes.

Learning how to make the best use of all of these modes; the speed, creativity, and intuition of the bottom-up and right brain, together with the clarity, insight, and learning from the top-down and left brain can make a significant difference in many areas of our lives. Learning to rest in embodied being as our “sacred gift” and making use of our powerful, yet disembodied mind, as its “faithful servant” allows us to trust our intuition, improve our relationships, release unhelpful habit patterns, and think with greater clarity, which help us to live happier, more productive, and easier lives.

Suggested weekly practice

Cultivate resting in embodied being by connecting peacefully with your body awareness before you get out of bed in the morning, and at other times during the day. Make this the place where you are “home”, where you have access to your greatest resources.
Explore the relationship between feelings and thoughts in your own experience. What comes first – a thought or a feeling? Are there thoughts without any feelings? Are there feelings without thoughts?
Appreciate and have faith in just how amazing your thinking and intuition can be. For instance, your ability to call on knowledge and experience in real-time as a skilful response to a question.

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 practice to explore the bottom-up and top-down modes of mind.

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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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Positive mind-wandering

The world of science is full of “Eureka” moments, where a sudden insight or solution to a problem suddenly appears in the mind, from the story of Archimedes in the bathtub to Newton’s apple and Einstein’s theory of relativity.

There are two modes of thinking, intentional and unintentional. Intentional thinking is thinking on purpose, including planning, analysis, and problem-solving. Unintentional thinking is when our attention is drawn towards automatic thoughts when our mind wanders away from what we are doing in the present. The thoughts that arise when our mind wanders can be negative, positive, or neutral and about the past, present, or future. Unintentional automatic thoughts tend to be more negative for several reasons:

Our brains evolved with an inbuilt negativity bias, which accentuates things that are threatening, or unpleasant, over things that are safe and pleasant.
Like many social media algorithms, automatic thoughts are subject to the law of entropy, so degrade from order to disorder.
They may be negative repeating habit patterns or beliefs about ourselves and our story. For instance, “I’m not attractive, successful, or intelligent enough”.

Neuroscientists have discovered a part of the brain called the default mode network that becomes active when there is not much going on, for instance, cleaning our teeth or taking a shower. The default mode network switches our attention to internal dialogue, similar to a smart speaker, like Amazon’s Alexa in our heads. This internal dialogue tells us things like, “Still haven’t organized that holiday. Not looking at my best today. Are those bags under my eyes getting worse? This mirror needs cleaning…”

The latest research on mind-wandering explores the idea that we have an unconscious monitoring function that scans our mental content just below awareness and automatically switches it into attention in moments of apparent downtime. This function alerts us to unresolved activities and unfinished business that may be useful in the future, as well as habitual past and present-moment commentary about us and our situation. So, for example, our attention may be drifting when driving a car as our mind wanders to explore pre-conscious mental content about who we are meeting at the destination.

Some automatic thoughts can be positive, expanding, and nurturing and others can be negative, limiting and depleting. A big part of mindfulness practice is about noticing and observing these as they pass through the mind with what is called meta-awareness – the awareness of the content of our conscious experience.

Like the eureka moments, positive automatic thoughts can help us solve complex problems as well as be creative. Positive mind-wandering plays an important and inspiring role in many creative and performing arts, including music, literature, painting, acting, and photography. Interestingly, some artists, poets, and writers use daydreaming as part of the creative process. Obviously, they must remain aware and awake while they drift off. So maybe all those times when your attention drifted off in the classroom at school, or in those overly long meetings at work, can now be justified!

The human brain is the most complex object in the known universe and is amazingly powerful. One well-known technique for solving difficult problems is to send a well-formed question to the back of our minds and wait for the answer to percolate. For instance, asking “How can I overcome the block on the project I’m working on?” and then move on to something else. The chances are that sometime later, maybe when you are walking the dog or taking a shower, a useful answer pops into your head.

When we practise mindfulness, we learn to become more aware of and notice when our mind wanders. This is not so that we stop this activity or block thoughts; it’s to step back and gain insight and understanding of how our mind operates. Without awareness, negative automatic thoughts define and limit who we are, and we miss the positive, useful, and creative ideas and insights that emerge. So being more aware of both positive and negative mind-wandering can make a real difference to our wellbeing and performance.

Suggested weekly practice

Use curiosity and awareness to observe whether your mind works in the ways described above and see what insights emerge.
Have a go at solving a difficult problem by sending a well-formed question to the back of your mind, leaving it to percolate and see what happens.
Watch your automatic thoughts and observe whether they are useful positive, expanding, and nurturing or negative, limiting, and depleting.

Guided practice

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 that starts with noticing sounds and then explores noticing thoughts.

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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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