By Lori Granger, LMFT

Click here to contact Lori and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Mindfulness is everywhere, and it seems to work like magic for everything from high blood pressure to low self-esteem.

You read about it in the last edition of this newsletter, last month’s Psychology Today, you may even have casually caught Jon Kabat-Zinn – the father of mainstream mindfulness – on Oprah a few months ago guiding a meditation for millions.

You may even have heard Jon define mindfulness as “paying attention, on purpose, in a particular way and non-judgmentally”. You may have read the outcome research on the effectiveness of mindfulness interventions in reducing stress, chronic pain, lowering blood pressure, increasing immune system function, reducing heart disease and alleviating GAD, panic, depression, mania and preventing relapse from addictions. Thinking “…wow! I’ve got to try this!” you may, in fact, now guide your clients in short mindful exercises that you learned in a day long seminar for CEU’s.

But, you may not yet have a clear grasp as to how mindfulness does its magic.

Mindfulness alleviates physical and psychological pain by allowing us to mentally step back from and observe discomfort as it arises. On this fertile platform of awareness, we can stand behind the waterfall, feel the spray, hear the roar, experience the fall, but not get thrown down the river. Consistent mindfulness practice also creates life-long resiliency to suffering as it has been shown to rewire the brain for positive emotions.

Mindfulness affects perception and perception affects neurons. This article will focus on the perceptual mechanism. For more information on the neuronal effects see the work of Richard Davidson, Daniel Siegal and Paul Eckman.

In an important article on the “mechanisms of mindfulness” in the Journal of Clinical Psychology, Shapiro & Carlson et al. (2006) describe a shift in perception they refer to as “re-perceiving” which mediates the mindful state.

Through the process of mindfulness, one is able to dis-identify from the content of consciousness (i.e. one’s thoughts) and view his or her moment-by-moment experience with greater clarity and objectivity. Rather than being immersed in our personal narrative or life story we are able to stand back and simply witness it. (Shapiro & Carlson, et al., 2006, p. 377)

Our observer self applies the mindfulness triad proposed by Shapiro & Carlson: bringing intention, attention and an attitude that can be described as “heartful” toward change.

Carl Rogers knew something about the mindfulness mechanism when he proposed, “when I accepted myself as I am, I was free to change.”

The mindfulness translation might read: “when I brought the intention to open to and perceive my experience without filtering and judgment, without grasping or pushing away, with a peaceful mind and open heart, I could choose how to relate to my experience and that choice could include equanimity.”

“To the extent that we are able to observe the content of our consciousness we are no longer completely embedded in or fused with such content” (Shapiro & Carlson, 2006.)

So, here is the bottom line: if we are able to observe “it”, we are not “it”. The re-perceiving of experience frees us to change because we are able to witness it, are thus bigger than it, and can abide with it, hold it and ultimately heal it. Whether “it” refers to psychological or physical pain, if we can we can observe it, we can hold it, we can heal it.

I refer to this as the Ohh factor! Observe, hold, heal. Aha.

During a life changing 7-day training with Jon Kabat-Zinn, one very significant aha moment came with his statement, “awareness is not in pain, thus we are not our pain if we are in awareness”. This was about as powerful an “aha” as the moment I read Eckhart Tolle’s words, “we are not our thoughts and our thoughts are not necessarily the truth”.

When you read Kabat-Zinn and Tolle you come to the magic. And here it is. When we experience pain, with the mindful awareness of the observer, we become intimate with it and explore it, then choose how to relate to it: we feel it, we hear it, our body expresses it by tightening, but we intentionally loosen and create a container of kind attention around it. We are not it and it is not us. This is the process of re-perceiving our experience. We move from subject to object.

I perceive my self as subject: me consumed by pain. Apply mindful awareness (intention, attention, attitude) and I can re-perceive myself and my experience of pain as object: a challenging sensation or emotion that comes and goes as I observe it and ride the waves of it. Re-perceiving also allows rigidified and painful ego states like the one we deal with quite often “I am unworthy” – aka depressive conditioning – to become a simple editable story, not a historical authorized hand-signed biography of who we are and always will be.

On a recent weekend retreat with Zen teacher Reb Anderson, fifty practitioners were invited to share their “stories” with the teacher. One man who was grieving the death of his mother last month told the story of how he was convinced as a kid that he wasn’t her favorite. Then while flipping through her stack of batter-splattered Betty Croker recipes, he came across his favorite cookies. He fell down and wept when he saw, written in her perfect penmanship, “Ralphie’s favorite! Extra cinnamon!” His rigid thought “I am not special to her” was not necessarily the truth. Ralph lamented how much suffering could’ve been healed by the love that was baked into each sweet bite.

Having put the axioms, “awareness is not in pain” and “we are not our thoughts” to the test in my own life, I can now help my clients to test for themselves through mindfulness practice whether these things are true: “I am bigger than my depression, I am calmer than my panic, my mother might just not have been very loving, but I can choose love over fear now.”

The mindful observer who re-perceives experience as it arises brings a quality of affection, compassion, kindness and interest to the experience. If I stub my toe often getting out of the shower (like I do), I feel the physical pain, but I don’t – as I once did – turn the experience into suffering by berating myself with the thought, “you’d think you’d know how to get out of the shower by now!” (and that in a hypercritical New York accent!) Instead I choose to mindfully connect with the pain sensation while it throbs and perhaps briefly ponder whether my recent caffeine fast is contributing to my bruised toe. I wonder. Interest and curiosity replace self-recrimination and the story of how I can’t do anything right.

Jack Kornfield renowned mindfulness teacher and author of the book, “The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology”, recently led a retreat for mental health practitioners. We were mentally guided to experience pain – either physical or emotional – and then soothe it, rock it and hold it as if we were holding a crying child. This imagery helps to drive home the “wise heart” experience that we are bigger than our pain, and we can hold it and heal it. And this is the sweet ripened fruit of mindfulness practice that can be cultivated inside each of us and inside each of our clients. And…it’s ripe for the picking, without a prescription.

We center ourselves in our bodies through our breath, we cultivate awareness through intention, attention and open-hearted attitude, we become the observer and we hold what arises in a container of compassion. When we do this and teach our clients to do the same, we see positive outcomes in four areas that are well-documented in the research:

• self-regulation and self-management
• emotional, cognitive and behavioral flexibility
• values clarification, deciding what is meaningful for us
• exposure, becoming intimate with strong physical and emotional sensation and learning to meet it with equanimity

(Shapiro & Carlson et al. 2006)

These outcomes however, do not appear with the wave of a wand. They are hard won through consistent practice. Daily meditation is the key. Attending workshops with meditation teachers and sitting and sharing with others is indispensible to the understanding and experience of how mindfulness works it’s magic.

Mindfulness works when we practice:

1. taking a backward step from our internal experience as it is unfolding
2. bringing the intention to be present in this moment, to this experience
3. focusing our attention by staying with the experience as it arises
4. bringing an attitude of curiosity, openness, acceptance and love (Siegal, 2007) to whatever arises
   Mindfulness isn’t magic. Mindfulness is intentional mental health.

RESOURCES

Baer, R.A. (Ed.) (2006) Mindfulness-based treatment approaches: Clinicians guide to evidence base and applications. San Diego , CA : Elsevier Academic Press

Shapiro, S.L., Carlson, L.E., Astin, J.A., Freedman, B. (2006). Mechanisms of mindfulness. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(3), 373-386.

Davidson, R.J., Kabat-Zinn, J., Schumacher, J., Rosenkranz, M., Miller, D., Santorelli, S.F.,

Urbanowski, F., Harrington, A., Bonus, K., Sheridan , J.F. (2003). Alteration in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation. Psychosomatic Medicine, 65, 564-570.

Germer, C.K., Siegel, R.D., and Fulton, P.R. (2005). Mindfulness and psychotherapy. New York : The Guilford Press.

Kabat-Zinn, J. (2005). Wherever you go, there you are: mindfulness meditation in everyday life. New York : Hyperion.

Kornfield, J. (2008). The Wise Heart: A guide to the universal teachings of Buddhist psychology. New York : Bantam Dell

Siegal, D. J. (2007). The mindful brain: Reflection and attunement in the cultivation of well-being. New York : W.W.Norton & Company

Tolle, Eckhart (1999). The power of now: A guide to spiritual enlightenment. Novato , CA : New World Library

©Copyright 2008 by Lori Granger, LMFT All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lori and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile