Five Finger Mindfulness

When I first started running I got fitted for a proper pair of running shoes. Every six months or so I return to the store, have a discussion with one of the staff, and without exception depart with another pair of the same shoes. Six years, twelve pairs of shoes. They work for me. In fact, they work so well for me that I've not really thought about my feet at all.

These strange little shoes pictured on my feet have caused me to pay very close attention to my feet. At first I was paying close attention because I was terribly concerned my little toes would get sucked into the belt of the treadmill. As soon as I realized that was a ridiculous thought I went about the business of logging in my time running for the day.

Running, for the most part, is generally an experience of mindfulness for me. After I pass through the first few miles my mind gets (mostly) swept clear of thoughts and gets filled with an ongoing process of noticing what's around me and in me. It's a nice meditation.

These strange toe-slippers (actually called Vibram Five Fingers) changed it up. For the first time in I don't know how long I paid attention to my feet. Who knew how much information our feet provide us about the world around us. It all started with my first step on the treadmill. I could feel the rollers under the belt. As I turned up the speed I became even more fascinated. For example, my left foot strikes the ground in a totally different way than the right. The left has a way of rolling slightly out and with each strike comes a wobble that transmits all the way up my body. When I alter my foot strike my body becomes more stable.

Another thing I noticed was my toes. When my feet strike my toes slightly curl and grip the ground. When my foot comes back up my toes spread open a bit. Each step provides a bit of a stretch. Comforting--and relaxing.

As I got more comfortable and less concerned about breaking my toes I turned the speed up on the treadmill. The faster I went, the more I noticed there was a natural rhythm that ran from my toes up to my head. I could feel different adjustments through my spine depending on if it was the right or or the left foot striking.

A discussion of shoes (or my feet) isn't really my point here. This is a post about mindfulness. Most of you probably don't think about running as mindfulness. Maybe you think of someone sitting in the lotus posture on a meditation cushion or perhaps a room full of yoga students chanting. Our popular culture certainly works hard to promulgate this image of mindfulness = peacefulness.

Mindfulness, however, isn't really any of these things. It's simply paying close attention to whatever is on hand to be experienced. You can be mindful on the subway, in the dentist's chair, or on the corner of a crowded intersection. You can be mindful in the real world--try it out--while it's nice and all to find a peaceful moment on a meditation cushion it's even better to be present with all your senses wherever you might be.

I think sitting on a cushion is a great way to be mindful--it's different from what we usually do so it makes us notice things in a different way. The problem is that we've come to expect a certain experience from cushion sitting: we are supposed to be "mindful" or "peaceful." Rather than noticing we end up trying to do something. That's not meditation. Try to do something new--something that you haven't done before. If you put yourself in a position where you are doing something that you don't have a reference for you can be more mindful. You can be more aware of what your are doing and notice the experience rather than fit the experience into something that you think it should be.

That's mindfulness.

Even in the Summer the Ice Doesn't Melt

After a exceedingly long winter, I've eagerly awaited my gardens to wake up from their long nap, push threw the earth, and brighten my mood. This morning I woke to an April Fools day surprise: my gardens are covered with snow.

I'm likely not to see my early spring plants again until next year: their tender fleeting beauty will be hidden again until next spring. However, baring some sort of environmental calamity, my plants will persevere: they will grow, bloom, flourish, and eventually die. I'm not so sure they even notice the snow. If they do, they don't tell me. They just do what they do.

Can the same be said for people? Can we live our lives in such a way where we don't notice the weather? Can we just do what we do?

Several years ago I worked with a college student from the West coast. Outside my office window I had a view of an area that was densely populated with old trees. She frequently comment on those trees. At first it would be about the fall colors of the trees. As the first tinge of color would appear she talked about how excited she was to see her first autumn.

As the autumn of her first year of college progressed, so did her first experience with depression. Rather than excitement about the oranges, yellows, and reds, her mind became consumed by fear. Do the trees die in the winter? Do they every forget how to grow leaves?

As the long winter progressed we kept looking out the window. "I know you said the trees are still alive," she said. "What happens if winter is too long?" We kept looking and kept talking. Sure enough, the tender spring buds appeared. As the trees just started showing signs of life my client asked, "what if it snows in the spring and the tender buds all die? Can the tree grow more buds?"

The trees of course did come back to life. My client did too. Right before she left for a new school she presented me with beautiful handmade card. She fashioned a replica of a particular gnarled old Magnolia tree out of construction paper. The tree was alive with a mass of tender pink blossoms. She was alive too, fully in the spring of a new life.

I'm glad she came back to life and that spring came so quickly. For some, however, spring comes slowly--if it comes at all. David K. Reynolds writes:

Feelings shouldn't be ignored--how could we ignore a snowstorm, anyway? But when you have to go out in a blizzard, you go out. That is the way it is to be human. The feelings are there, but we do what we have to do. Even in the summer, when the ice hasn't melted, shivering, we do what we have to do.

What is certain is that I am sometimes this, sometimes that. Sometimes pleased, sometimes not; sometimes confident, sometimes not; sometimes compassionate, sometimes not. the ice doesn't melt at my whim. It doesn't melt no matter how well I understand its origins or believe I understand its origins. It may not  melt despite my persistent efforts to change the circumstances that I believe to be maintaining it. In such cases what else is there to do but shiver and go on about living?

 What do you think?

365 Days of Mindfulness

This summer I've been thinking about travel. Vacations are a wonderful opportunity to travel together with family and friends, share an experience, create common experiences that can last a lifetime, and deepen and nourish relationships. Vacations can be about learning something new (traveling to historic spots, visiting museums, or learning a new hobby) or about play (getting away from it all at the beach, unplugging from the electronic devices and sleeping under the open sky, or sitting under in a comfortable chair reading a good book).

Vacations can be long or short. They can be far or close to home. Sometimes a vacation might even take the form of a mini-mental vacation. In DBT, one set of skills that are taught are those that IMPROVE the  moment. Improve is an acronym, and the v is for a mini vacation.

Overwhelmed by feelings? At the end of your rope? Try taking a mini-vacation. Close your eyes, use your imagination to fantasize what an ideal peaceful place would be. Perhaps it's a beach, a mountain top, or your favorite comfortable chair. Whatever the case is, a few moments spent on a mini-vacation there helps us slow down and think before we react rather than reacting without thinking.

There is a place near where I live which is an ideal place for me to think about when I take a mini-mental vacation. The local reservoir is a generally peaceful place. Neighbors walk their dogs there. A group of dedicated men and women tend to an ever-growing butterfly garden. Despite being in the middle of an urban environment, birds flock, deer roam, and I can let the natural environment nourish and recharge me when I'm tired, crabby, or down.

I've decided a few days ago that I'm going to start a little project for myself. It's a cross between a mini-vacation, a mindfulness practice, and a photography project. Maggie and I generally go for a walk every morning. Rain or shine, cold or hot, we'll start our day with a few trips around the local reservoir. We've done this for a year now. It's been enjoyable for both of us. I've met lots of neighbors, learned all the local gossip, watched flowers blossom and wither, and seen the seasons change.

I got to thinking that it would be interesting to spend a moment in the same spot every day for a year. What would it be to stand and watch the seasons change? What would I learn from taking a moment to observe every day?

Off to the right I'm adding a slide show widget where I'll upload the pictures as I go along. It's apparently going to take awhile for the slideshow to work: I'm having a few technical difficulties here on Blogger. The images will all be as I see them: no photoshopping, cropping, or editing. In the meantime, while we are waiting for my difficulties to be solved, here is day one of the 365 Days of Mindfulness project. I took the image on July 12, 2010.

What do you notice as the images change? Perhaps you are inspired to do something similar. If you are, make a comment here or send me an e-mail and share what you discover.

You Make Me Mad

"No one can make you feel something. You choose to feel that way." How many of us have heard this from a school teacher or parent?

"You create your own reality." Have you heard that one a lot? I have. I've heard it in the context of self-help discussions, discussions about mindfulness, and from more than a few psychologists.

I did my postdoctoral training in Dialectal Behavior Therapy. At the clinic where I worked, most of the clients who sought help did so because they were no longer able to continue life overwhelmed by their feelings and emotional reactions. Most of my clients were diagnosed with borderline personality disorder and specifically came to the clinic to receive some of the best DBT therapy that was provided in the area.

I heard many excellent psychologists and psychiatrists say that no one could make us feel something. The gist of this way of approaching emotions is the following: Another person can't open us up and make the complicated series of reactions that cause anger, fear, shame, guilt, or joy. Our feelings are on in the inside and we are responsible for our own feelings and emotional reactions. As one of my mentors would say, another individual might make the situation optimal for an individual to create a particular feeling.

I've said this over and over again to clients. Recently, I said it again only to stop, apologize, and say that this is just a bunch of poppycock. Yes, each of us are completely responsible for how we respond to our emotions. However, our emotional experience is not necessarily under our control at all.

When a driver cuts in front of me during in Boston traffic, my heart beats a little faster and my rate of breathing increases. I am having a physiological response that is out of my immediate control.

From a cognitive perspective, I interpret these physiological cues. I might worry that I might get into an accident (fear) or I might be annoyed at the offending drivers' sense of entitlement (anger). I have agency over my interpretations and thus the popular statements of "you create your own reality" and "no one can make you feel something."

At this level of iterpretation I do not disagree with these statements. I do expect myself to have a degree of agency over how decode my physiological cues.

I might have a variety of behaviors. Perhaps I might duck and start to cry in fear (not likely), or maybe I might issue some sort of special hand signal to express my annoyance (more likely). Again, I agree with the notion that no one can make me cry or make me use special hand signals. At this level of interpretation, I again expect myself to have a degree of agency over how I behaviorally respond to my decoding my physiological cues.

You might be saying "Wait just a minute Jason, you started this off by disagreeing with the notion that we create our own reality."

That's true, I do. It's because these statements contain an a major invalidation of our physiological responses. That initial quickening of our sympathetic nervous system happens without our consent or control. The driver cuts me off and my body responds. I don't make my sympathetic nervous system turn on, it is designed to turn itself on and protect me. While the driver who cuts me off doesn't not have direct control of it either, his/her actions are the stimulus that causes the whole chain of events to start: physiological response, decoding of physiological cues, interpretation of cues, behavioral response.

I try hard to never invalidate another person's experience. If you fall, I don't tell you it doesn't hurt. If you tell me you've fallen and share that you were told it wasn't supposed to hurt, I make it a point to underline the essential invalidation of your experience. It's kills our humanity, a little bit at a time, to invalidate our experiences like this.

Now don't get me wrong. If you've fallen and stubbed your toe, collapse to the ground, and hide in your house in fear for several weeks I'll have a few things to say: you very well may be having difficulty decoding your physiological cues and selecting effective behaviors.

I try very hard, however, to never tell you that it didn't hurt, wasn't important, or didn't happen at all.