Mindfulness 101
By Dr. Roxanne Ahmadpour
What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness has been getting a lot of buzz in recent years. You may have noticed the term pop up seemingly everywhere. Perhaps it was on the front cover of a magazine in the checkout line at the store, something suggested to you by a friend or family member, or in a movie or TV show.
Mindfulness, simply put, is paying attention in an intentional way to what is happening in the present moment.
Why does this matter, and what is all the buzz about?
Mindfulness has been practiced for thousands of years in some eastern traditions in order to claim mastery over the “monkey mind”, a common phenomenon of continual racing and scattered thoughts. This phenomena was observed to be the root cause of suffering. The recent mindfulness explosion may be due to the fact that modern science, with the help of brain imaging and modern research techniques, has begun to elucidate and confirm much of the claims of these ancient practices. Research shows mindfulness can ease depression and anxiety, decrease physical and emotional pain, improve memory and attention, and decrease stress.
Your Brain on Auto-Pilot
Most of the time, our brains are on auto-pilot. And for good reason. It is a survival tactic to not expend excess energy processing the countless stimuli our brains receive every moment of every day. Psychology research shows that the average person thinks the same thoughts day to day, and most of those thoughts are negative. Again, a brilliant survival tactic. Our brains are evolutionarily hard-wired to pay attention to negative thoughts, in theory, because negative things are scary and might kill us, so we better pay attention so we can avoid them. There is an eddy in our brains which whirls round and round thinking the same thoughts over and over again day after day, most of which are negative. This research is shocking, but provides some insight into the common human experience that is explained by our evolutionary biology. You aren’t weak or a failure because you have an eddy in your brain, we all have one (or ten…)!
Repetitive, negative thinking is also called rumination. Cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, a type of psychotherapy practiced by psychologists, calls these ANTs, or Automatic Negative Thoughts. Repetitive, negative, and intrusive thoughts are correlated with conditions such as depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It isn’t clear which is the cause and which is effect. Do lots of ANTs cause these conditions, or do these conditions cause lots of ANTs? My theory is that it goes both ways; both can be true.
If all this is true, why do most people hold their thoughts in such high regard? Culturally, we as a society put our thoughts on a pedestal. We have a false assumption that the more we think about something, the better it will be. It is this kind of magical thinking whereby our mind fools us into believing it is in control. The more we ruminate about a thing, the more we feel we are in control. Consider worry, a type of rumination. You may lie in bed, ruminating over and over again about something that happened in the past, or something that might happen in the future, preventing you from precious restful sleep. Our minds fixate on those negative thoughts and double down. And somehow, this might feel comforting. Our subconscious assumption is “well, if I keep thinking about this thing and analyzing it over and over, that will somehow prepare me for the future, or make me really learn my lesson from the past”. Worry pretends to be very important to our survival - evolution in action.
So, most of us are running around, thinking the same negative thoughts over and over, day after day, and believing that our thoughts rule the world. This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is a way to observe ourselves in real time. We become the observer, not the thought.
Thoughts are just Thoughts
I often educate my patients that their thoughts are not the truth, they are not reality, they are just thoughts. Mental constructions based on templates laid in your brain from past experience. Important, evolutionarily wise, but not fact. When we can start observing our thoughts as they are -- thoughts -- with the clarity and compassion that our brains and bodies are governed by evolutionary biology and trying to do the best they can to help us survive, we can begin to create space between ourselves and our thoughts. That is where the magic happens. You are not your thoughts! You are the infinite spacious compassionate awareness that is thinking the thoughts, but has the ability to observe them and choose something different. The greatest lesson mindfulness has taught me is that I am not my thoughts, and that my thoughts are not fact.
Trying Mindfulness
Perhaps all the buzz led you to try mindfulness out yourself. Maybe this was your experience -- attempting to emulate the blissed out images modeled on website advertisement, you sat down, closed your eyes, tried to clear your mind, and … were abruptly confronted with an onslaught of racing thoughts, internal monologue, the awareness of bodily aches and pains, leading to further racing thoughts and internal monologue. “AH!” your subconscious may have screamed. “Get me out of here!”. And with that, your eyes popped open, you concluded you were “bad” at mindfulness, or that it wasn’t for you, and you never attempted it again.
It’s not just you! This is a very common experience. My hope is to provide some simple guidance to help you better understand how to incorporate mindfulness into your life and how to receive the benefits, without added feelings of shame and failure. I am passionate about mindfulness because it has been nothing short of life-changing for me personally. I have been practicing mindfulness now for about 13 years, and it is still challenging for me, but the challenge is the practice. I am not that blissed out person you see on the front cover of a website or magazine cover, nor do I believe you need to be in order to practice mindfulness.
Just by attempting mindfulness, not mastering it, you are strengthening those pathways in your brain, like doing a bicep curl which strengthens a muscle. Bicep curls are usually not easy or comfortable, but starting slowly, doing only one rep and gradually increasing as your body adjusts, makes the bicep curls easier over time.
A Different Approach
There are so many ways to practice mindfulness. It does not need to be an emulation of a cross legged zen buddhist to count. Here is a simple practice that you can try which incorporates some of the concepts I’ve mentioned:
Start by interrupting your eddy of thoughts by simply observing them.
Welcome them and name them with a sense of lightness and humour -- “well hello repetitive negative thoughts, welcome, here you are again, weren’t you here like 5 minutes ago?” The humour helps diffuse the intensity of the thoughts.
Thank them for trying to save your life -- “Thank you, repetitive negative thoughts, for trying to save my life. You are working so hard!”.
Take the time to double check -- are you safe in this moment? Are those thoughts serving their purpose, or are they hijacking your mind? If you feel safe, you can give those thoughts permission to move on.
Let them know their services aren’t needed right now, or that you get the point and you’ve had enough -- “worrying about the potential future of political relations in Uzbekistan is actually really getting me down, I’ve already thought about 100 potential scenarios, thank you repetitive negative thoughts but I can move on now”.
Choose something different -- change your activity, go for a walk, maybe this exercise brings up more thoughts or emotions -- write your thoughts down in a journal, call a friend, read a book, or have a good cry.
In the coming months, I will share more practical tips on how to put mindfulness into practice. If this is still confusing, or you’d like more support, I incorporate mindfulness based counseling into my work with patients and would love to support you in making your body and mind a more comfortable place to live.
Hive Mind Medicine blog posts are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your health care practitioner for personalized guidance.