Mindfulness Meditation
For an appointment, or for enquiries, please click
here
or
contact Kathleen
on Tel: 0419 524 962 or
Email: kathleen@coachingpsychologymelbourne.com.au
In work with clients I may teach Mindfulness Meditation if the client
wishes.
Meditation has been found to be extremely useful for quietening anxiety, and
also for treating depression. It also has many other benefits (see the list of
physiological and psychological benefits). It is one of the best methods that we
have for reducing stress and improving general well-being.
Dr. Craig Hassed, in his book "New Frontiers in
Medicine" (Hill of Content, Melbourne 2001) describes meditation
variously as “going more deeply into oneself” or “centering oneself”,
“a spiritual exercise” or “an exercise in self-knowledge”. It
is mostly very relaxing focusing the mind and helping to clarify thinking and
emotions. There are various meditative techniques, and a variety of descriptions
of meditation. I have chosen Mindfulnes Meditation as I believe it to be very
complementary to Cognitive Therapy.
Michael Anderson in his book “Mindfulness
Meditation” (Australian Institute of Emotional Intelligence,
Torquay, Victoria, 2004) describes meditation as an “opportunity to develop
your mental skills”. Our increasing mental, emotional, and psychological
skillfulness can then be applied in day to day living, not just in the moments
of quiet meditation. Getting more control over our mental and emotional
environments helps to clarify and simplify life. There is a shift in our
interaction with our mental and emotional worlds.
The practice of mindfulness meditation for 30-45 minutes a day
provides an opportunity to increase our skillfulness in the
interaction with others and our environment.
Before learning meditation we usually find that our minds are
full of repetitive and distracting thoughts. We may even have disturbing
and “out of control” thoughts. By learning not to react to these thoughts
and entertaining them they can eventually go away, leaving us in relative peace.
Learning what is in our minds is the job of meditation, and to some
extent, Cognitive Therapy is also, where we learn to be aware of our
dysfunctional thinking. Thus the two – Mindfulness Meditation and
Cognitive Therapy - are complementary, since Cognitive really means being aware
of what is in our mind, and the therapy then teaches techniques to rid ourselves
of any thinking which is not helpful.
Craig Hassed writes that some of the benefits of meditation
include:
-
learning to know the difference between reality and the tricks
of the mind
-
learning to get out of our mental ruts and compulsive
thinking
-
learning to focus in the moment.
He stresses that gaining benefits does not happen
overnight.
Michael Anderson says there are four main skills of
meditation:
The first is stability of
mind, that is, being able to manage a mind that varies from
agitated to bored, so that it becomes mostly stable.
The second is flexibility of
awareness. This is the ability to shift awareness away from one
thing to another as we choose. For example we could learn to shift from a
depressing or angry thought to a more positive one or to shift awareness away
from pain or noise.
The third skill is self-awareness. The skill to know what is
going on in our inner world, and how our inner world is reacting to the outer
world. We need awareness to act skillfully in our environment rather than
merely reacting in our usual automatic way. If we can understand that we
are already operating at a high level of stress or anxiety, then the reaction of
avoidance or a panic attack would be an example of our automatic response to a
further stressful trigger in our environment. If we are unaware of our
automatic responses then we can be unaware of an alternative response.
Understanding that a panic attack may begin with a small feeling of unease
can lead us to being more aware of the early stages, and thus to the possibility
of changing that automatic reaction.
The final skill is non-reactivity. In Mindfulness Meditation
I teach clients to just observe emotions, noises, thoughts and physical
sensations without labeling them. It is the mental labeling which can lead
to the reactivity. For example we may hear noise. If we label the
noise “irritating” then we feel distracted and lose our focus for meditation
which is simply observing the breath. Keeping our focus does not mean that
we won’t have thoughts, feelings, physical sensations or hear noise, but the
focus on the breath only, means that we do not get so distracted. Thoughts
become just “thoughts”, noise is just “noise, an emotion is just an “emotion”
and a physical sensation is just that.
Meditation may seem simplistic or simple but there is a lot to
it. Mindfulness Meditation should not be mechanical or rigid but allow us
the greatest freedom, that of living in the moment with awareness and
mindfulness, and the ability to choose our response. This is far less
stressful for us. We can gradually retrain and “rewire” our brain to provide
healing for ourselves in many ways, physiological and psychological.
Take a good look at the physiological and psychological
benefits of relaxation and stress reduction if you need more convincing here.
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