Last week I posted a piece on Mindfulness Practicing for ACT.
Here’s another practice , this time using a warrior II pose. I like Warrior II, Virabhadrasana II (veer-ah-bah-DRAHS-anna), for generating a feeling of power and focus. Try this exercise when you are having difficulty with finding motivation.
Part one: The pose
Face the long side of your mat with your arms stretched straight out from your shoulders and your feet parallel to each other in a wide stance. You want your ankles approximately beneath your wrists.
Turn your right foot and knee to face the front of the mat.
Angle your left toes a little in toward the upper left corner of the mat.
Bend your right knee so that you only see your right big toe.
Check and distribute your weight evenly between both legs. Press down through the outer edge of your back foot and four corners of right foot.
Check posture and keep the crown of your head stacked over your pelvis and your shoulders over your hips.
Reach through both arms toward the front and back of the mat and turn your head to look past your right fingertips.
Engage your abdominal muscles by creating a “lift” in your lower ab area.
Part Two: The practice
Hold the pose and breath in to the belly, reversing the exhale constrict the belly as the air empties. Continue even breathing as you look out over your right finger tips, envisioning that which you to accomplish. Switch sides and think of another project/task you would like to accomplish.
Additional:
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We are presently facilitating a mindfulness group at Grounded for Peace. The group’s purpose is to supplement clients receiving Acceptance and Commitment therapy. The group is also useful to those who want an introduction to ACT. (A good description of ACT can be found on Psychology Today: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapy-types/acceptance-and-commitment-therapy. )
ACT stems from traditional Cognitive Behavior Therapy but differs in a few ways. One of the main differences that stands out to me is that it is less judgemental. Many models of CBT label thoughts as “positive” and “negative”, which many will interpret as good or bad. Many people receiving therapy will then take it a step further and say “I am having a negative thought therefore I am negative.” CBT would then challenge and rewrite this thought of “I am a negative person”. However, ACT will bypass this all together by not labeling a thought or feeling as “positive” or “negative” but will ask is this thought/feeling moving you towards your values or away?
This brings us to the mindfulness part. In order to not get “hooked” or “fused” with the thought or feeling, ACT teaches to take a step back and observe the thought or feeling as something one is observing and not as something that they is their identity or as something intrinsically a part of them. This sounds like an easy task but if it were easy most of us would not feel the need to seek out therapy. Mindfulness practices/training teaches us how to take a step back so we don’t fuse/get hooked by a thought.
The word “practice” is used many times in reference to Mindfulness skills b/c it really does take practice. The following practice illustrates not only how to do a particular mindfulness practice, but it also illustrates how to use the practice for a purpose of helping a person to not fuse with an experience, or in other terms, help a person get through a difficult feeling, sensation, or thought and move past it.
Choose one of the following to do:
Part one:
1.Stand on one leg.
2.Focus on a point on a wall in front of you
3.Hold your arm out in front of you.
Part two:
Breath in through your nose, imagining a wave coming on to the shore.
Breath out through your nose, imagining a wave rolling back into the ocean.
Continue with smooth and method inhales and exhales like the ones described above.
Part three:
When the sensation develops where you want to stop standing on one leg, place your arm down or stop looking at the spot on the wall, try to continue the breathing till you move past the sensation a bit more. The idea is not to hurt yourself so we don’t plan to do this too long but just enough to remind ourselves that we can do hard things.
Additional Thoughts:
Finding practices that hold the space to be in a difficult sensation help us hold the space when we are faced with a difficult experience. By staying with the difficult experience we are able to look at it more clearly so we can decide what we want to do about it. A normal response to something difficult is to avoid it or stop it right away. This is not always healthy. Take for example anxiety before a test. If I don’t like the anxiety and try to distract myself with a video game or doom scrolling, I waste time and end up not getting in the studying I might need to do to pass the test. If I were to practice this breathing skill, I hold the space for the anxiety and look at what the anxiety is telling me to do, which is to prepare. When I face it and see it for what it is ,a message, I then see it as not something to avoid but as something to get my attention and take action. Once you get the message of a difficult feeling many times it will start to dissolve.
For a guided recording of the practice above subscribe to our bonus content.
If you would like to join the mindfulness group, please contact us through our contact page.
Along with the false belief that painful feelings are bad is the false beliefs that feelings come out of nowhere and mood swings happen without warning. You can choose to still believe these falsehoods, but believing them will probably make you feel pretty powerless. However accepting them as falsehoods then gives you the opposite concept, that feelings come from somewhere and you can anticipate a mood swing.
Where do emotions come from?
Okay now we have something to work with. Feelings arise from thought. A thought surfaces and the body decides based on information it has what that thought means and then the neurochemical process is initiated to generate the emotion so you can register the message.
Will you get the message?
So let’s take the situation of waiting for a doctor’s appointment. You have been waiting for more than 30 minutes. You have a lot to do that day and this feels a bit too long. The thought surfaces that “this is too long and I have stuff to do”. The thought surfaces, your body registers and then formulates that something isn’t right and something needs to be changed. You then become angry or frustrated and this causes you to go up to the counter and ask the front desk person how long will this wait be and that you need to be somewhere. You acted assertively and the front desk person checks back in the back and says “I told them you had to leave”. They come and get you and your anger is gone. Now if you had to wait for 30 more minutes, you may have had the thought “this is not worth it and I’ll have to reschedule”, this then prompts you to get very frustrated and leave. Each time anger and frustration prompted action. You took the message that you needed to act and did so. If you didn’t get the message or decided to ignore your anger because you have heard from childhood that “Good girls are always gracious”, which you interpret as not angry, then you may have sat there all day just to find out that there was a mistake and you were never assigned a room or they finally saw you only after it was too late to do all the other important things of your day. (This also will breed thoughts of “it’s not fair” and “what am I going to do?”. This may lead to more angry feelings(messages) because something still needs to be done to fix the situation.)
Are we getting the whole message?
Many times we react before we really get the entire message. If you are angry with the kids but don’t take the time to ask “why am I angry with the kids and what needs to be changed?”, then your may overreact or react impulsively with yelling and blaming the kids for making your angry. When you take a moment to look at”why am i angry” and what is the real message, then you may decide “I am angry because they are fighting with one another and not working on their homework.” And further thought may reveal “They are fighting because they haven’t eaten and don’t realize the reason they are angry is because their body is trying to tell them to eat. As their mother I should feed them so their body stops this message and they can calm down and do their homework.” Unless there’s a life or death situation, most situations will give you 5 minutes to take a breather before you respond. If we train ourselves to breathe through these feeling immediately the message usually presents itself relatively quickly.
Is the message based on truth?
The message itself may not be based in accurate thought. If you have the thought “I am mad because I am waiting too long” but then have the thought I shouldn’t be angry because jj”good girls are always gracious and angry people cannot be gracious”, you may not feel the anger for a while. This is only delaying the feeling till the thought comes back that you have been waiting too long. Then the emotional message will return. Identifying the thought that’s not based in truth will speed up you taking appropriate action to remedy the feeling. So one might have to add the thought “This is what I’ve been told but science suggests that anger is not a bad thing so I will respond to my anger. I can still be gracious and angry at the same time.”
Anger (or any feeling) can lead to calmness if heard and not judged.
Anger is not a hindrance to being calm if you take the message and take appropriate action. If you continue to be angry then somehow you haven’t interpreted the message correctly. You notice how if you react impulsively while angry you may still be angry afterwards or have another painful feeling like shame. This is due to not interpreting and responding to the message correctly. If we take anger or other feelings as they are, messages to do something, then we can view them without judging them “good or bad” and respond accordingly. Once you have taken all the messages and mapped out how to respond, you usually will feel calm just from having the plan because your body will register this as understanding the message. If you then take further action to carry through with the plan the feelings will be resolved completely and happiness will come. Happiness tells you that things are well. We’ve resolved all messages our body has given us.
How simple is this?
So mindfulness starts with being able to receive the message, then interpreting the message and formulating a plan is the next step. This sounds very simple. However if it was all this simple I wouldn’t feel the need to start a mindfulness class and there wouldn’t be so many books on how to be mindful and practice mindfulness. Getting to the plan from receiving the message sometimes takes a long time. We can come up with short-term fixes to being calm and taking care of things but sometimes there are emotions/feelings that keep resurfacing and we just don’t know what to make of them. This is when we have to do deeper work, sometimes with the help of a therapist, but not always is this necessary. The important part though always comes back to being able to breathe and sit without judgement and attachment. My next posts will focus on this a little more along with the concept of radical acceptance.
Encouraging recovery and balance through the practice of counseling, coaching, and yoga.
