Believing that anyone can or should always be calm and peaceful is a misconception. Finding calm within yourself is mindfulness with purposeful adjustments that gradually become easier to access with patience and practice. So when the traffic is heavy, your child is sick, work is stressful, you have a disagreement, or there is too much to do, it is normal and expected to feel the emotions of the situation. For some of us, our feelings can be disproportionate to the experience, and we may have a history of explosions or implosions in our response. That happens for many reasons, but moving towards mindfulness can help regulate your experience wherever you start.
The benefits of mindfulness practice include overall wellness and life balance. Mindfulness reduces stress and anxiety: Mindfulness helps calm the mind, reduce stress, and improve overall emotional well-being. It also enhances focus and concentration: Regular mindfulness practice can improve focus and concentration, allowing individuals to be more productive and efficient with their time. Mindfulness boosts the immune system. Studies have shown that mindfulness can increase immune system function, helping individuals recover more quickly from illness or injury, stay healthy longer, and slow aging. Through mindfulness practice, individuals experience increased self-awareness. Mindfulness helps them become more self-aware and in tune with their thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations. This increased awareness can lead to improved decision-making and better relationships with others. Mindfulness also impacts sleep, and it can also help individuals improve the quality of their sleep, reducing fatigue and improving overall energy levels during the day. Additionally, mindfulness has been shown to lower blood pressure during practice and throughout the day. Evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation can help reduce blood pressure in individuals with hypertension. Mindfulness is a powerful tool for improving mental, emotional, and physical well-being.
Where to begin? A great way to start is to realize that you are separate from what happens
outside of you; in fact, you are separate from how you experience those things. Victor Frankl's quote, "Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom," is where we start. When you discover your ability to recognize that space, expand the space, and slow the space down, you are moving towards mindfulness and choosing calm. I frequently teach my patients a simple exercise to begin this awareness. Take a gentle breath in and then say out loud, three times each, with your breath, gently and slowly:
I have thoughts, but I am not my thoughts I have feelings, but not my feelings I have a body, but I am not my body
An example of a successful implementation of this practice is with a patient with Parkinson
disease. Every time he would experience a tremor, he would feel panic and spiral into a state of negative thinking and seeing the worst ending for himself. "My disease is progressing, and I will end up unable to care for myself, and my life will be awful." In learning this process, he began to practice, "I have a body, but I am not my body." It was easier to notice the tremor as something non-threatening. It was just information. And then, in that space, he could think, what is different? Did I sleep poorly? Did I forget my medication? Did I do too much exercise? Once he established this pattern, he changed his experience, and it helped him feel more in control and calmer about his life.
Practical application is an essential concept in mindfulness. How can this knowledge be
implemented in real life? We all have an idea of the way we believe mindfulness should work.
Quiet mind, meditating for hours, being flexible, never feeling anger, whatever it is, few of us
can start there or constantly maintain that state. Finding small ways to practice mindfulness daily can lead to greater integration of the skill into all aspects of your life. The internet is full of examples of mindfulness exercises, breathing, body scanning, mindful walking, or eating. Do your research, find a few that resonate with you, and get started. But always remember, good, better, best. Something is better than nothing, and there is a lot of space between good and best.
Aside:
I read Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning https://www.viktorfrankl.org/biography.html
in graduate school in the early 1990’s and it changed my life. It tells the story of how he
survived the Holocaust by finding personal meaning in the experience, which gave him the will to live through it. He went on to develop a new school of existential therapy called logo therapy, based in the premise that man’s underlying motivator in life is a “will to meaning,” even in the most difficult of circumstances.