Entries Tagged 'Health' ↓

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course - Week 1

January 29th, 2008 — Health, meditation, mindfulness

I’ve just started an 8 week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course, and will post a weekly review on it to let you know how I’m getting on, give you an idea of what is involved, and where you can find out more.

Stress Relief With a Raisin: Eating meditation

In the first class you practice eating meditation. All this means is to eat with awareness. And all that means is to just eat. Not think about what you have to do that evening, about the shopping or cleaning the car. Just bringing you mind to the sensations, smells, tastes, sights and sounds of eating.

So last Thursday night I found myself sitting in a circle with a group of 12 others, all of us intently staring at a raisin sitting in each of our palms. And after a few minutes becoming aware of the details on the raisin’s surface, patches of light and dark, folds in the skin, reflections, and the sensation of it lightly resting on my palm.

If other thoughts appear you’re encouraged to just gently but firmly bring you mind back to now. In this case back to the raisin sitting on your palm. We continued like this- next picking up, smelling the raisin, placing it against the lips, noting the sensation, putting it in the mouth but not chewing. Just noticing how it felt. And asking the question- Whats happening now? Noticing where the tongue was, noticing saliva building up in the mouth, and perhaps the urge to chew building up.

Next we were all instructed to bite into our raisins- noticing how the tongue pushed it to the side of the mouth, noticing if it went to the left or right. Feeling the teeth bite through the surface, and tasting the sweet bitter juice flow over the tongue and mouth. Noticing the clenching of the jaw when chewing, and finally the sensation of the raisin passing down the throat as it is swallowed.

It was, I can safely say ,the best raisin I have ever eaten!

What is the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Course?

Its a training programme developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn 20 years ago, at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre, which used mindfulness meditation to reduce symptoms of stress, anxiety, depression and pain. Patients were usually referred from clinics where they had been unsuccessfuly treated for these symptoms for several years.

Kabat-Zinn used mindfulness meditation techniques based on Buddhist meditation practices, particularly insight meditation or Vipassana. Mindfulness has been described as paying attention in a very particular way: non judgmentally with intention. Have a look at What is Mindfulness Meditation? for more on this.

Initially training includes lying ,sitting and walking meditation, and later everyday activities like brushing your teeth and taking out the rubbish. Participants are encouraged to observe all of their experiences, thoughts and feelings with a detached interest. To bring awareness to the moment, to what is happening now. This tends to reduce stress, anxiety and depression, which are usually triggered by worrying about future or past events. If you are really present now, in the moment, worries fall away. As Mark Twain said “I have know a great many troubles but most of them never happened”.

Next Time I’ll talk about Lying Meditation- based on the Vipassana Body scan

Does Compassion Meditation Prevent Heart Disease?

January 26th, 2008 — Health, meditation, science

meditation compassion heart disease

Positive Emotions Protect the Heart

People with depression, anxiety or recurrent anger or hostility are more likely to die from a heart related cause than those without. And there is now evidence that cultivating positive emotions such as compassion may reduce these risks, partly by balancing the autonomic nervous system. Meditation may be practical way
to achieve this.

The Benefits of the Parasympathetic Nervous System

The autonomic nervous system controls our heart rate, breathing, sweating, salivation, urination and digestion without us ever having to consciously think about it. Our emotions have a direct effect on this delicately balanced system. If we’re angry, depressed, anxious or stressed the sympathetic part of the autonomic nervous system becomes more active. Our hearts beat faster and more strongly, blood pressure rises, pupils dilate and breathing quickens. This is known as the fight or flight response. However it seems, when we have feelings of compassion and happiness, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated and these effects are reversed.

How Does This Prevent Heart Disease?

The increase in parasympathetic activity, induced by positive emotions, slows the heart, and increases the beat to beat variation in heart rate.
Our hearts usually beat about 70 times a minute. But this is an average. Over that minute the heart may speed and slow considerably- usually becoming faster when we breathe in, and slowing when we breathe out. This speeding and slowing is known as Heart Rate Variability . When the parasympathetic nervous system is more active, Heart Rate Variability increases, while the sympathetic nervous system has the opposite effect.

And it turns out that hearts with greater rate variability, are more healthy than those with more regular rhythms.

This increase in parasympathetic activity also improves our blood pressure control, by increasing the sensitivity of something called the Baroreceptor Reflex.

So What is the Baroreceptor Reflex?

This is an automatic system which allows us to keep blood pressure at just the right level, whether we’re lying, standing or upside down! When we stand, for instance, there’s a big shift in blood to the feet, blood pressure drops driving less blood to the brain- so we may feel light-headed. Receptors in blood vessels in the neck and chest detect this drop in blood pressure, and send a signal to the heart via the autonomic nervous system. The heart beats faster and more powerfully, blood pressure rises and we start to feel less light-headed.

A more sensitive baroreceptor reflex gives us better control of blood pressure, and seems to reduce our chances of a heart related death.

Compassion Meditation Activates The Parasympathetic

It seems then that meditation, where a feeling compassion for others is generated, increases parasympathetic activity, causing our hearts to slow and increasing beat to beat variability in heart rate. This makes our hearts healthier,and reduces our risk of heart related death.

(More about the effects of compassion in later posts).

Does Mindfulness Meditation Protect Us From Depression?

January 15th, 2008 — Health, meditation, mindfulness

meditation depression

What is Mindfulness Meditation?

Mindfulness is often defined simply as paying attention in a very particular way. In concentrative meditation attention is directed towards a specific object like the breath as it passes over the edge of the nostrils, a repeated mantra or an external object, such as a statue of the Buddha. But during mindfulness meditation you are encouraged to become aware of whatever arises in the mind. This might be bodily sensations, such as tingling in your feet, an ache in your back, sounds around you, or various thoughts and emotions. You are advised to accept and not judge whatever comes up. To watch without getting too involved. For example if you think ” this meditation is a waste of time”, or ” I just can’t do this” then you just observe these thoughts, and any linked emotions such as fear and anxiety. Just keep watching.

How mindfulness meditation can protect us from Depression

Depression is often triggered by identification with the negative thoughts, which endlessly cycle in the mind. This is known as rumination. Mindfulness can help to loosen identification with these thoughts. To help you realise that you are not your thoughts.That they are transient, and will fade if you don’t become involved with them. In fact practising mindfulness, can make you a sort of expert on you own mind, so that you can spot negative thoughts before they take over

Can mindfulness make us happy?

Can practice mindfulness go further than just preventing depression, bringing us to a neutral state. Can it actually help us to be happy?

The Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard argues that happiness is a skill to be learnt. It is, he says, a process of eliminating negative emotions like anger and envy using specific methods. Probably the most powerful and simple is observation or mindfulness of thoughts and emotions as they arise, coupled with an attitude of acceptance.When attention is focused on an emotion such as anger, says Ricard, without looking at the cause of the anger, the transient, insubstantial nature of the emotion becomes evident. It cannot persist. However if attention slips to the reason for the anger then the emotion is fed.

How to Practice Mindfulness of Thoughts and Emotions

Mindfulness can be practiced anywhere, while brushing your teeth or mowing the lawn but the most useful place to start is probably during sitting meditation. When you meditate its best to begin by establishing some stability in your mind by spending a few minutes watching your breath. You can then move on to observe the ebb and flow of your thoughts and emotions. Its best to spend just a few minutes on this before returning to the breath again.
Jon Kabat Zinn, author of Full Catastrophe Living, explains how to practice mindfulness meditation of thoughts and emotions as follows:

When your attention is relatively stable on the breath, shift your awareness to the process of thinking itself. And just watch thoughts come into your field of attention. Try to perceive them as events in your mind.
Note their content and charge while if possible not being drawn into thinking about them.
Note that an individual thought does not last long it is impermanent. If it comes it will go. Be aware of this.
Note how some thoughts keep coming back.
Note those thoughts that are “I”, “me”, or “mine” thoughts, observing carefully how ” you” the non judging observer feel about them.
Note when the mind creates a “self” to be preoccupied with how well or badly your life is going.
Note thoughts about the past and thoughts about future.
Note thoughts about greed, wanting, grasping, clinging.
Note thoughts about anger, disliking, hatred, aversion, rejection.
Note feelings and moods as they come and go.
Note feelings associated with different thought contents.
If you get lost in all of this just get back to your breathing.

Summary

Practising mindfulness during meditation and everyday life seems to be an effective way to prevent depression and cultivate happiness.
Its a skill, which although requiring effort, can be learnt.