1. Breath awareness
I was inspired to read ‘The Happiness Trap’ possibly by reading
an article in the Guardian. I became obsessed with ‘Acceptance and Commitment
Therapy’, thinking that it held a vital message for my struggling family. The ‘Breathing
to connect’ exercise is in the middle of the book. This passed me by to begin
with until a light bulb moment told me we needed to do this exercise regularly
and others like it if we were to get out of our continuing state of crisis, I
now have a number of breath awareness exercises we practice. One of my
favourites is Exercise 1 from Jon Kabat Zinn’s ‘Full Catastrophe Living’; it
features friendly images which make it extra pleasant.
2. Body scan
The body scan from ‘A beginner’s guide to mindfulness’ by
Bohlmeijer and Hulsbergen was the first mindfulness exercise I tried with my
daughter (on 23rd March 2018). At the time I knew we should be doing
something different and these mindfulness exercises, starting with
breath-awareness and the body-scan, would be the foundation for a new approach
to life, I find exercises that include both breath and body awareness to be the
most helpful, like the one from ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’.
3. Loving kindness
I have recently felt that we should make an
effort to move forward, to move on from our breath and body work and try other
meditations as well. I have been a Christian surrounded by atheists and getting
virtues on the agenda in my family has been tricky. Love and kindness are two
of the fruits of the spirit. The other seven are joy, peace, patience,
goodness, faith, gentleness and self-control. Luckily the Buddhist tradition is
keen on these ‘fruits’ too. The loving kindness meditations we use regularly are from ‘The Book of Joy’ by Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu and also the befriending
meditation on the Mindfulness CD by Williams and Penman.
4. Acceptance and letting go
I feel acceptance is the key to moving on
in life. Even if you don’t like something, you have to first accept the reality
of its existence, before you can deal with it effectively. I have read many
books on ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy’, they all have good exercises in
them, my favourite is the one from ‘The Book of Joy’ by Dalai Lama and Desmond
Tutu. Other useful exercises related to acceptance are ‘Observing your thinking’
from ‘A Beginner’s guide to mindfulness' by Bohlmeijer and Hulsbergen and ‘Defusion’
from ‘Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’.
5. Food meditation
There are good food meditations in the
Penman and Williams 'Mindfulness' book and also much about mindful eating in ‘Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’. There is much more scope for mindful
eating and drinking in our lives, seeing as we eat and drink everyday! The important thing is to savour our food and
to be grateful we have enough to eat. You can extend mindfulness of eating
practices to other mindfulness of routines practices such as doing household
chores or watching TV.
6. Walking meditation
I would like the opportunity to go on more mindful walks
with my daughter, hopefully that will arise more in the summer holidays. Thich
Naht Hanh has written extensively about mindful living, in particular relaxing
walking meditations. Walking meditations usually involve connecting with nature
in some way, like walking in a wood or by a river, but you can also partake in
mindful walking in urban settings, in your garden, on the treadmill in a gym or
just walking backwards and forwards in your living room.
7. Music meditation
We all enjoy our music in my house so being more mindful
while listening to it is a very good idea. My favourite guide to mindful music
enjoyment is from the teenage ACT book ‘Stuff that Sucks’. Music is one of the
best, most human, things in life. Music meditation involves deeply tuning into
the music, maybe moving to it, completely immersed, but remaining present. Also
relevant is the mindfulness of sounds, tuning into the everyday sounds that
surround us in our everyday lives.
8. Being still
My favourite ‘Being Still’ meditation is from ‘Acceptance
and Commitment Therapy for Dummies’. It is a refreshing alternative to the ‘doing’
culture. I think my family and I spent too much time in doing mode and not
enough time in being mode. Other meditations related to ‘Being Still’ are ‘Being
a tree’, ‘Standing in the garden’, ‘Finding balance’ and ‘Feeling gravity’. I
think too often we lose touch with the fundamentally important basis of being
alive and in the world; a ‘Being Still’ meditation brings you back to the core
of yourself.
9. Meditation ‘On-the-go’
When I first attempted to introduce mindfulness into everyday
life it was met with suspicion and people didn’t think they had enough time for
it. Therefore one of the first guided meditations we attempted was the one
minute meditation from the Williams and Penman’s ‘Mindfulness’ book. This book
also included the very useful ‘three minute breathing space’ meditation. There
are many quick ‘on-the-go’ meditations available. I have a range that last
between 1 minute and 10 minutes. I think when you get up to 15 minutes you are
becoming a more serious meditator.
10. Yoga
My daughter and I attempt to do one and a half hours of mindful
yoga once a week at the local Buddhist centre. We also attempt to do our 7
poses stress relief exercises once or twice a week. Many of my therapy books
include mindful movement practices and Jon Kabat Zinn is always recommending
getting in to ‘corpse pose’ at least once a day. Another useful selection of
mindful movement exercises comes from my Sophrology book, the foundation
practice involves exercise in each of the 5 body zones, these exercises
comprise of head rotation, shoulder pumps, arm windmills, deep breathing and walking
on the spot.
11.
Visualisations
In our mindfulness journey (which began on 23rd
March 2018), it took me a long time to get my head around visualisations. When
I eventually got around to paying them more attention (about four months into
my journey) I could see that they could prove very useful in our progress. The
first visualisations we tried were really the defusion exercises from ACT and
DBT, involving waterfalls, clouds, leaves and rivers mostly. Now we use the
Bubble and the Reflex meditations from Sophrology, also futurisations from
various sources, I would also like to delve more into useful visualisations to
help with fear, anger and other difficult emotions.
12.
Beditation
My journey into mindfulness has coincided with the long, hot
summer of 2018, so it has been even more of a challenge to stay calm and get a
good night’s sleep. Using guided meditation to help get a good night’s sleep is
a new area to explore. I have found some tips from ‘The Sleep Book’ where the
sleep therapy is based on Mindfulness and ACT and also various beditations from
the internet. My home made beditation that I use with my daughter involves
breath awareness, the body scan, loving kindness, acceptance and defusion,
visualisations, ‘teddy bear therapy’ and Alpha brain-wave meditation music.
