Chapter 17

Ten Ways Mindfulness Can Really Help You

In This Chapter

Dealing with pain and stress

Improving relationships – including with yourself

Feeling happier and more creative

Mindfulness provides a plethora of pleasures that I hope you’ll experience for yourself. As soon as you start being mindful on a regular basis you’ll find mindfulness quite addictive! In this chapter I give you a snapshot of the benefits of mindfulness, many of which are backed up by scientific research.

Training the Brain

Until fairly recently, scientists thought that the connections and structure of the adult brain were fixed, because changing the brain’s connections would be far too complex.

Now we know the truth: your brain can change! Scientists looked at violinists’ brains and found that the part of the brain responsible for finger dexterity was much bigger for violinists compared with non-violinists. They also studied London taxi drivers, who need to know all the complex road networks and 10,000 different streets in London (‘the knowledge’). When scientists compared the cabbies’ brains with ‘normal’ brains, they found that the part responsible for location was significantly bigger. The longer the drivers worked, the more significant the change.

The evidence proves that through training and simple everyday experience, the physical brain actually changes. Repetitive experience changes the brain more than anything else does. The discovery that the brain changes in response to experience is now called neuroplasticity, and it gives everyone tremendous hope – you can change your brain through training at any age!

With the help of the Dalai Lama, top neuroscientist Professor Richard Davidson scanned the brains of meditating monks who’d engaged in prolonged meditation for a minimum of 10,000 hours (not all in one go!). The meditation the monks did was a compassion meditation, similar to the metta meditation described in Chapter 6. The monks’ brains totally changed through the practice of this meditation. The front left part of the brain (left prefrontal cortex if you’re really curious) associated with positivity was activated – in fact, it went off the scale! No scientist had ever seen so much positive effect in a human being before. The scientists found that the monks’ entire brains had been rewired to be more positive. This proves that mindfulness and compassion aren’t fixed, but are skills that you can train in.

Okay, monks’ brains become more positive because they spend most of their time meditating. But what about you and me? We don’t have time to meditate for that long. Can short lengths of time meditating mindfully help? Does the brain improve after, say, 30 minutes a day for two weeks?

The incredible answer is yes. Scientists have also looked at short-term mindfulness meditation. People were randomly assigned to two groups. One group trained in cognitive behavioural therapy to show group members how to see challenges in their lives with greater positivity. The other group was trained in metta (mindful loving kindness) meditation. Some of those in the metta group had greater activation in the brain region signifying positivity and also reported greater love for themselves compared with those in the cognitive behavioural therapy group. Helpful changes did indeed happen within a fortnight of practice.

So mindfulness meditation does change the brain, and the more you practise, the greater the positive change within your brain. One more reason to download the MP3 Audio tracks that accompany this book and start meditating!

Improving Relationships

Several studies show that people’s relationships tend to improve when they begin to practise mindfulness meditation. Several reasons indicate why this may be the case.

Mindfulness can switch off stress. When you feel threatened by a nasty remark or overly challenged at work or home, your body and mind engage in a stress response. You become less understanding and more reactive and judgemental. Obviously, this can have a detrimental effect on personal relationships. You may snap easily when your partner asks what’s wrong, or respond emotionally when you come home to realise that dinner hasn’t been cooked. Mindfulness makes you more relaxed in your day-to-day life, making you less likely to react unhelpfully.

Mindfulness develops your capacity to accept your experience from moment to moment. This accepting stance translates itself into improved relationships with others. In knowing how to be more accepting of another person’s faults (nobody’s perfect!), you’re more likely to develop greater understanding and increase the possibility of noticing people’s positive qualities.

Being judgemental isn’t the greatest relationship booster in the world. However, research shows that meditators are less judgemental and more focused in the moment, even when they’re not meditating. This may explain why your relationships improve once you start meditating – you’re connecting with what other people say rather than wasting your energy judging them.

Mindfulness leads to higher levels of empathy and compassion for both yourself and others. A more caring attitude naturally leads you to give greater levels of attention and helps you to see from other people’s perspective. Ultimately, a feeling of love is at the heart of any meaningful relationship, and, as love grows in meditation, the quality of relationships naturally deepens.

Boosting Creativity

Your creativity depends entirely on your state of mind. You can’t expect to have exciting and perceptive ideas if your mind is overworked and jam-packed with opinions and points of view. Creativity requires letting go of the old to make way for the new. Mindfulness meditation is about being aware of your thoughts without judging them; this lack of judgement allows new and unique ways of thinking to arise. In most creativity exercises, the emphasis is always to stop judging ideas and just let them flow – in a mindfulness practice called choiceless awareness, described in Chapter 6, you do exactly the same thing.

Research published in the journal Consciousness and Cognition in 2012 was the first study to show that people who rate themselves as being more mindful are better able to solve insight problems – problems that require a shift of perception and novel thinking to find solutions.

Mindfulness, over the long term, leads to a calmer state of mind. When the conscious mind settles down, you begin to access the immense creative capacity and knowledge of the subconscious mind. You normally only access this creativity when sleeping, so doing so is almost totally out of your control. With mindfulness, the creative ideas that arise are more practical. Most of my good ideas have arisen while mindfully meditating. By giving my mind the opportunity and space just to be, I tap into my creativity, accessing idea after idea.

Reducing Depression

Some types of depression are thought to be caused by repetitive negative thinking patterns (rumination) and avoiding uncomfortable thoughts and feelings rather than facing up to them (experiential avoidance). Mindfulness, as part of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy explained in Chapter 13, helps combat depression in several ways. Mindfulness:

• Develops your capacity to stay with, experience and face difficult experiences and emotions instead of avoiding them. Avoiding difficult emotions has been found to be the key way in which relapsing into depression occurs. You can gradually develop an attitude of acceptance, kindness and curiosity towards experience through regularly practising mindfulness, enabling a healthier approach towards emotions.
• Shifts you towards a ‘being mode’ of mind. This being mode (described in full in Chapter 5) enables you to witness your depression as something that rises and falls within you, rather than as a core part of who you are. You can step back from your internal experience in a beneficial way and see things from a bigger perspective. This shift in perspective helps to prevent you from seeing the depression as something that’ll never end, changing the idea ‘I’m depressed’ to ‘The feeling of depression is here at the moment, but not forever. All feelings have a beginning and an end.’
• Helps you to understand the patterns of the mind. Being mindful helps you to see how your mind easily goes into an unaware ‘automatic pilot’ mode, which leads to negative thinking cycles, leading to further depression. Becoming aware of these habits of mind is the first step to beginning to see them from a different perspective and thereby reducing their potency.
• Develops healthier habits of mind. Depression is deepened through rumination. Mindfulness disables this negative thinking cycle by encouraging you to connect your attention to the present moment. This focus reduces the inner resources devoted to rumination. As mindfulness develops into a habit, when mild feelings of sadness arise, your likely response is to focus on the sensations in your body rather than spiralling into major depression.

Turn to Chapter 13 for much more on combating depression with mindfulness.

Reducing Chronic Pain

Incredible as it sounds, mindfulness can actually reduce chronic pain. Participation in Dr Jon Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) programme has shown, in several research studies, the benefits of mindfulness for those suffering from chronic pain.

In one study, 90 patients suffering chronic pain were trained in mindfulness meditation for ten weeks. Experts observed a significant reduction in pain, negative body image, negative moods, anxiety and depression. The patients also engaged in more activity, including everyday activity such as preparing food and driving, which they’d struggled with before. The use of pain-reduction drugs decreased and feelings of self-esteem increased. These patients did much better than a group that underwent normal pain-management programmes.

The most exciting aspect was the result of a follow-up four years later. The majority of the chronic pain patients reported that most of their improvements had lasted or even improved further. This was probably due to the fact that, incredibly, over 90 per cent of the participants continued to practise some form of mindfulness meditation. This is a major achievement, considering they’d trained four years previously.

All these positive benefits may be partly due to the way mindfulness can train you to accept difficult bodily sensations instead of trying to resist them or pretending the discomfort isn’t there. Paradoxically, acceptance seems to reduce the pain. You discover how to feel the pain and experience it as a moment-to-moment feeling rather than avoiding it and tensing up your muscles. You can help the muscles around the painful region relax, thereby reducing the pain itself.

Giving Deeper Meaning to Life

Before I started practising meditation, I found life rather hollow and empty. I had friends and family, a comfortable place to live and a good career, but something was definitely missing. Life was a bit of a grind and lacked zest and vitality. I still remember the first meditation class I attended. The teacher calmly talked about the nature of awareness and how, through regular practice, you can become more aware. This need for awareness resonated with me – the whole thing made sense. However, I lacked discipline to begin with, and discovered that a lack of a regular meditation routine didn’t really work. With further practice, many wonderful teachers and good fortune, I was able to deepen my meditation. The practice of meditation itself became a driving force for a more meaningful and authentic life.

When you’ve touched a sense of deep peace and calmness within yourself, you no longer ask what the meaning or purpose of life is. You’re clear in your own mind that peace, kindness, empathy and joy are available to be cultivated in your own being. You know that the suffering, pain and sorrow in the world is partly a reflection of humanity’s inability to tap into this inner source of nourishment. You see how your low moods and frustrations are partly due to seeing things from the wrong perspective. Then you know that your purpose is to access your own inner resources as often and as deeply as possible, not just for yourself, but for the sake of everyone around you. Wellbeing is contagious.

Reducing Stress and Anxiety

Stress and anxiety are slightly different. Stress is your response to a threatening situation, and anxiety is one adverse effect of that stress. Anxiety is more fear-based and a reaction to the stress itself. Mindfulness can help with both.

Mindfulness can reduce stress. One key way is by becoming aware of your underlying thoughts and ideas about, and attitudes towards, a particular situation. In doing so, you create the possibility of naturally changing your response to the stressful situation. Responding to stress appropriately is an important way of reducing stress.

Dr Richard Lazarus, world-famous stress researcher and psychologist, defined stress as ‘a particular relationship between the person and the environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her wellbeing’. I like his insight. The definition explains how an event may be stressful for you, but not for someone else – the level of stress experienced depends on whether you see the situation (the stressor) as something you can cope with.

Mindfulness reduces stress in many ways and at many different levels. For example, say your boss has a tendency to lose his cool easily and shouts at you often, even though you’re doing your best. How would mindfulness help? Read through the three ways listed below.

Firstly, by being more mindful, you’ll notice the fact that you’re stressed. You may feel your jaw tightening or your shoulders hunching before you even get to work. Then when your boss shouts at you, you’re more aware of the choices you have. You know what effect saying nothing, reacting with insults, or storming out would have. The very fact of being aware of your reactions changes them. You naturally begin to move from reacting to negative events to responding with greater wisdom. You begin to think more creatively, which may include behaving more assertively.

Secondly, through regular practice of mindfulness meditation, you give your body and mind a rest. Instead of spending your time doing and achieving this and that, you provide a space for yourself to simply be. This ‘being’ mode is tremendously nourishing and uplifts your inner resources for relaxing rather than stressing out.

Thirdly, you begin to see things from a different perspective. Although your car won’t start this morning, at least it gives you a chance for a cup of tea while you wait for a mechanic. Even though there’s a big queue at the bank, at least you have enough money to live on, unlike many unfortunate people. You may even use the opportunity to practise mindfulness as you wait in the queue.

Mindfulness can also help with anxiety. Everyone experiences feelings of anxiety in their lives, perhaps before an interview or an exam. However, if you suffer from a generalised anxiety disorder, the feeling becomes a part of your day-to-day existence. Anxiety can significantly disrupt activities you found easy to do in the past.

Anxiety and worry are based on thinking about the future. You may be concerned about what will happen later, next month or next year. Your mind drifts into predicting negative future outcomes and thereby generates challenging emotions. Mindfulness counteracts this by encouraging you to live in the here and now, from moment to moment and non-judgementally. You begin to free yourself from your dangerously drifting mind and allow yourself to emerge in the sensory world of the present.

Mindfulness enables you to step back from the contents of your mind and emotions. You discover how to identify less with the thoughts going through your mind and to realise that they’re just thoughts, rather than facts. This enables your thoughts to lose their power, which therefore reduces the anxiety.

Surprisingly, research has found that trying to stop worrying increases the worry. Through being more mindful, you change your relationship to thoughts, being more compassionate and accepting of them rather than trying to eliminate them. This mindful approach seems to be far more effective than trying to prevent worrying thoughts completely. Read Chapter 13 for more about using mindfulness to combat anxiety.

Controlling Addiction

Do you have any addictions? Maybe to coffee or cigarettes? Or maybe you’re addicted to shopping, gambling, the Internet? Or are you addicted to reading For Dummies books? Joking aside, addiction to substances like alcohol or drugs or to activities like gambling obviously has serious negative consequences for you and your loved ones. The good news is that initial findings on mindfulness are showing promising results.

For example, consider one small study in 2011 on mindfulness for smoking cessation published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence journal. The experiment took 88 smokers and split them into either a standard quit-smoking programme or a mindfulness programme. After four months, 31 per cent of the mindfulness group were smoke-free compared with 6 per cent of the standard treatment group. That’s five times (over 500 per cent) more effective!

The reason mindfulness works so well is because you learn to root out your craving. In the study, for example, the researchers offered a four-step process for managing craving:

• R - Recognise you’re experiencing a craving and allow yourself to gently be with the experience.
• A - Accept the moment as it is – no need to distract or avoid your feeling.
• I - Investigate your experience. Ask yourself: ‘What’s going on in my body right now?’
• N - Note your experience – perhaps you feel a sense of pressure, tightness, an ache, tension or heat. Realise that these are just bodily sensations which will pass. Ride the wave of this experience until it passes.

For more on mindfulness for addiction, see Chapter 13.

Regulating Eating Habits

Are you aware of what you eat? Do you taste each mouthful and chew it thoroughly before swallowing? Do you give your attention to what you’re eating, or do you distract yourself with television, newspapers or books? Do you use food as a way of coping with unpleasant emotions?

If you feel empty inside, you may eat to help try to fill that space. Or every time you’re worried, you may grab a bar of chocolate. Perhaps stress drives you to open the fridge door or makes you limit your food to feel more in control. Mindfulness offers a different way of regulating and coping with your difficult and uncomfortable emotions rather than by eating or avoiding eating.

Mindful eating is about becoming more aware of the process of preparing and eating food, being less judgemental and more accepting of your current eating habits. Mindful eating also includes being aware of the messages your body sends to you, and using that awareness to determine how much or little to eat. Through this increased awareness, you can choose what to eat and what not to eat from a wiser state of mind. You’re able to savour the taste of the food and enjoy the process of eating. With awareness, you’re more likely to be in touch with physical hunger and able to notice when you’ve eaten sufficiently. So mindful eating can even help you maintain a healthy weight!

Increasing Your Happiness

Everybody wants to be happy. All your actions can be explained as your personal desire for greater happiness. The question is, what’s the best way to increase happiness? It turns out that simply trying to think positively doesn’t work – you need to engage in something regularly that uplifts your sense of wellbeing in a more authentic way.

Positive psychologists – scientists who study happiness – think that mindfulness is the answer. Mindfulness seems to train the brain to naturally become more positive and increases resilience. Resilience is the capacity to cope with stress and catastrophe in a healthy way. It ensures that you bounce back to your happy self sooner rather than later following difficulties. It also strengthens your capacity to cope with difficulties in the future. Regular mindfulness exercises change the very structure of your brain, helping to increase your resilience in difficult times.

Through practising mindfulness on a regular basis, you also begin to discover that happiness is an inside job. You can have all the money and power in the world, but if your thoughts are very negative and you believe your thoughts to be true, you’re not going to be happy. Conversely, you can have very few possessions, but if your mind is naturally open, receptive and positive, having practised mindfulness daily, you’re bound to experience a deeper sense of wellbeing.

Here’s a simple mindful exercise to help you to happiness. Every day, look at a stranger and think in your mind: ‘May you be well, may you be happy.’ This makes you notice someone different and creates a positive wish in your mind. It’ll probably make you smile too!