Meditation for Trauma Healing

a woman sitting on a dock in front of a body of water.

Sometimes, when people ask me what I do for a living and I’m in the right kind of mood, I tell them I’m a tour guide through the realm of emotional pain. This is a sassy and, perhaps, slightly macabre way of describing myself and my work, but it’s an honest one. As a mindfulness-based psychotherapist and self-aware wounded healer, I know that keeping people company while they make contact with their own wounds is the most significant part of what I do. And it’s something I do with great reverence for the people who choose me to take the journey with them.

These people, my beloved clients, often seek me out in the midst of great suffering. Many of them have gone through dramatic and traumatic life experiences that interrupt their lives and negatively impact their functioning. When they arrive to their first session, many of them fight to hold back tears; they make visible efforts to hold themselves together, showing just how much life energy they’ve been expending to avoid falling apart. Once they know it’s safe to surrender, they allow themselves to reveal the pain they’ve been holding—and it’s heavy. In this beautiful clearing, they allow me to join with them and begin the healing process.

Often, clients come to see me because they know I incorporate mindfulness and meditation in the therapeutic process. Some of them have heard about meditation or been encouraged to try it, and they arrive eager to access anything that will give them some relief. Naturally, they assume that meditation will help them clear their minds and get free from the internal chaos that’s causing them so much anguish. This heartens me, as I know the abundant healing potential meditation holds. But in almost every case, I bookmark that chapter of our work together until a later time. Here’s why.

Meditation can be a remarkably effective tool that aids in the healing process. A regular practice has been found to calm the sympathetic nervous system, thus reducing the fight-or-flight response associated with trauma and post-traumatic stress. It’s also been shown to produce structural and functional brain changes that support healing. But it isn’t always advisable for survivors of trauma to hop onto the cushion right away. In fact, practicing without attending to other things first can actually interfere with and complicate the healing process.

If you practice meditation, you know that the notion of the mind getting quiet is a complete fallacy. Our brains simply aren’t wired to go silent whenever we want them to—if they could, traumas could be resolved pretty rapidly, and a whole lot of human suffering would be eliminated. Instead, what tends to happen when we enter the practice is that we become even more aware of what’s swirling around inside us. For people who’ve experienced traumas, this can be terrifying. Thoughts, emotions, and memories that are already troubling under normal circumstances can become overwhelming in the silent space that meditation opens.

The experience of trauma is characterized by intense fear that comes from a real or perceived direct threat to our survival. This kicks our nervous system into high gear and has a lasting psychological and emotional impact. After the initial event, trauma survivors often experience severe anxiety, intrusive thoughts, unpleasant physiological symptoms, emotional detachment, and unwanted flashbacks of the initial event. Without a proper foundation in place, meditation can amplify these experiences instead of alleviating them.

Here’s where that thing I said earlier about being a tour guide comes into play. It isn’t always safe to turn inward unaccompanied until we’ve done some work on being able to settle into ourselves. Research supports that meditation can be an integral part of the trauma healing process when accompanied or preceded by talk therapy or other forms of intentional interpersonal support. By consciously addressing the trauma, survivors learn how to revisit the traumatic event without become re-traumatized by it. They learn a variety of tools that help them cope with daily life and reestablish a sense of safety and security. While therapy isn’t a panacea for trauma, it provides a solid foundation that can be built upon and bolstered by practices like meditation.

Having had more than one traumatic experience in my own life, I can say that meditation is something I was able to adopt and embrace only after I did some conscious sorting out of my internal material. Through therapy and other more deliberate and directive healing modalities, I prepared myself to sit in silence, be present to my experience, and make direct contact with my thoughts and emotions. This is the space I aim to co-create and hold for my clients. Once they’ve walked through the pain and gotten familiar with the landscape, they can access the power and potential of meditation, cultivating serenity and taking their healing to new depths.

When we’ve done the work of acknowledging and addressing our traumas, meditation and mindfulness can help us get back into our bodies. These practices can serve as a profound form of empowerment, revealing to us the capacity we have for healing ourselves and learning to thrive again. They invite us to begin shining light over the parts of ourselves that were cast into darkness; they allow us to reclaim those parts and become whole again.

Serving as a means of retraining our brains and deepening our connection to ourselves, meditation offers significant benefits for anyone who’s experienced trauma. It helps us safely self-monitor, notice our thoughts, soothe ourselves, anchor our attention, breathe into discomfort, confidently encounter strong emotions, and securely inhabit our bodies and minds. Through a combination of therapy and meditation, I’ve seen countless clients move from victimhood to empowerment. I’ve seen chronic drug users who’d do anything to numb the pain release their attachments to substances and learn to comfortably live in their own skin. I’ve seen suffering transformed through the power of the practice, wielded by individuals who know they’re ready to turn the gaze inward.

Meditation holds the promise of opening our hearts and transmuting our pain into loving awareness and a deepened sense of compassion for ourselves and others. Through the practice, we learn to make space for the traumatic events we’ve endured and integrate them into our story. We learn to accommodate every aspect of that story. Because the truth is, our lives are richly complex experiences; they contain darkness as well as light, sorrow as well as joy. And when we learn to accept this fundamental truth, that life is everything, we can release our attachments and access our freedom.

The Practice is the Purpose

a woman doing yoga on the beach in front of the ocean.

In an effort to invite more consistency and discipline into my routine, I’ve recently developed a morning ritual to propel me into the day. Now I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve never been one to consistently follow rituals or routines. I tend to start out strong—swearing to myself that I’ll stick to it no matter what—only to flake off when things start to feel redundant. But this time, I’m approaching things a little differently, guided by the wisdom of something I learned from one of my meditation teachers several years ago.

When I first attempted meditation, I was a self-proclaimed “stress ball.” It was hard for me to sit still for even a few minutes, and my mind felt like it was always racing a mile a minute. No matter how much I tried to slow down or calm down, it never seemed possible. Yoga, which I had been practicing for many years by the time I found my way to sitting meditation, was the closest I could get to stillness—and even that felt like a fairly excruciating challenge. During my initial conversations with the meditation teacher I mentioned, we’d talk about the fundamentals of meditation and address my curiosities and reservations. I explained to him that as much as I wanted to develop a practice of meditation, I just wasn’t the Zen type. “My mind is too busy,” I told him. “Plus, I’m prone to anxiety, so it’s really hard for me to slow down my thoughts and just breathe in the moment.” Part of me wanted him to teach me how to overcome these apparent obstacles; but if I’m being honest, the bigger part of me hoped he’d buy my excuses and exempt me from the difficult practice altogether. He did neither of these. All he did was flash his playful, patient smile and insist, in one way or another, that I keep coming back to my cushion each day. “Just keep sitting,” he’d say. “And remember, the practice is the purpose.”

These words confounded me every time I heard them. They struck me like some sort of complex riddle that I couldn’t quite solve. At once simple and profound, the phrase was clearly supposed to be encouraging; but at that time in my life, all it did was make my head spin. Nonetheless, I heeded his advice and kept returning to my cushion every day, eager to get to the other side of my struggle and reach some sort of clearing, where my mind would become silent, and enlightenment would be mine.

When I look back at these times and remember the thinking that guided me through them, I can’t help but smile. I had no idea what my teacher was talking about, but boy, is it clear to me now. You see, it’s been years since I started meditating, and I can tell you without the slightest bit of hesitation that I’m nowhere near enlightenment. And there hasn’t been a single meditation session that’s led me to a completely silent mind. But I can also tell you that meditation has profoundly and radically transformed my life. No matter what I feel, how resistant I might be, or how much my sessions challenge me, I return to my cushion—over, and over, and over again. And each time I do, I learn and I grow. Each time I do, I realize how right my teacher was: the purpose has always been the practice.

Neuroscience research supports that we can change our brains—and, thus, change our lives—through committed and consistent practice. But we don’t need science to tell us that; it’s evident everywhere we look. How do professional athletes get so good at their game? Practice. How do long-term, successful couples quickly resolve issues in their relationship and reestablish harmony? Practice. How does anyone who’s exceptional at anything get to that point? Yep, you guessed it: they practice, with purpose, repeatedly and consistently. They keep coming back, no matter how difficult or mundane the task may be. And it’s important for us to remember that we all have that capacity. Over time, our brains and bodies reward our practice, yielding positive results that, if we let them, can reinforce our efforts.

Now that I understand what it means for the practice to be the purpose, I challenge people not to count themselves out of meditation because their minds are too busy. And I talk back to my own narratives about not being consistent enough to stick to a morning ritual. There’s beauty in devotion and discipline. Even when it seems like nothing is happening, practice works some pretty brilliant magic—the kind that can change our lives and evolve us into the best versions of ourselves.

So, what practice can you commit to? And who might you become through your purposeful dedication to it?

Meditation and Mental Health—Part 5

a man sitting in a field watching the sunset.

It’s time for the fifth and final installment of this series on meditation’s role in mental health—and I’m honored to share it with you. I’ve talked so far about the many ways in which meditation can support and expand our lives in terms of our thoughts, our emotions, our relationships, and our physical health; but the benefits don’t stop there. The last domain of mental health supported by meditation and mindfulness is one of the most significant. In this way, perhaps, you might say I’ve saved the best for last.

It’s no secret that people who feel good about themselves, live with integrity, and see their values reflected in their choices tend to be pretty healthy when it comes to their mental and emotional experience. This way of living allows them to develop a strong sense of purpose and conviction about the lives they lead, which is all but guaranteed to improve their quality of life. It’s also not much of a secret that many people who maintain a regular meditation and mindfulness practice live in precisely this way.

That’s because the process of witnessing what’s unfolding inside us and what’s happening around us—which meditation and mindfulness are all about—makes us more familiar with who we are, what we value, and what we desire. We grow tremendously when we realize that we are responsible for creating our lives through the choices we make and the stories we tell ourselves. By paying attention to what’s happening in our lives, from moment to moment, we improve our ability to interpret and respond in ways that align with our core values and support our mental health. We learn to step into the power we possess to choose our own way, no matter what circumstances might befall us.

Self-esteem, integrity, and purpose are important aspects of mental health that we can cultivate by learning what we want. But this is one of those things that’s much easier said than done. The question, “What do you want?” is one that most people have no idea how to answer. And the reason it tends to be so elusive is that we aren’t practiced in asking the question and then going inside to wait for the answer. Instead of determining what we really want, we go with what we’ve been told we should want or what other people seem to want. We don’t do the work of finding and owning our authentic, legitimate answers. To do this takes courage; it requires practice. But the more we do it, the more familiar we become with ourselves. We grow to learn what makes us tick, what inspires us, what opens our hearts. We learn to access and honor our internal reservoir of yeses and nos.

Becoming familiar with who we are and what we want fortifies our self-esteem and enables us to feel confident about what we have to offer and what mark we want to leave on the world. It allows us to deliberately and intentionally create lives of integrity; it helps us align our actions with our values. All of this can generate a profound sense of fulfillment—the kind that boosts our mental health and dramatically improves our quality of life. And meditation is one of the foundational practices that can support us in generating these kinds of outcomes and this kind of purpose-driven life.

It’s astonishing to think that sitting in silence and connecting with ourselves in the moment can hold such potent, transformative potential. But this is what meditation has to offer—if only we’re willing to commit ourselves to it. The more we practice, the more purposeful our lives become. We transform our relationship with our thoughts and emotions. We create deeper and more meaningful relationships with other people. We experience greater vitality in our physical bodies. We get closer to living a life of integrity that brings contentment and makes us proud.

It’s been an honor to write this series, and I’d like to conclude it with an offering of the hopes I guard in my heart for all of you. I hope you come away from reading this with new ways to think about the ancient practices of meditation and mindfulness. I hope their many benefits are apparent to you. I hope the information I shared will inspire you to adopt a practice of your own. And finally, I hope you feel confident and excited about the contributions your practice will make to your mental health, your life, your future, your relationships, and the world in general.

Meditation and Mental Health—Part 4

It’s time for part four of the five-part series I’ve been exploring on meditation and mental health. So far, I’ve made the case for how meditation can support us by influencing how we relate to our thoughts, our emotions, and the people in our lives. This time, I want to examine the role that meditation plays in supporting our physical health. You see, a healthy body is associated with a healthy mind. That’s because our minds and our bodies are connected; the health of one influences and is influenced by the health of the other. Through our meditation practice, we come to understand and access the mind-body connection in ways that foster and expand our mental health.

One way to define meditation is as a committed practice of transforming the mind and connecting with the body. Through the practice, we learn to consciously follow the bridge of our breath, guiding our attention into the body and connecting with ourselves. Every time we find ourselves getting distracted or lost in our thoughts, we come back into our bodies and anchor our attention in the present moment. This not only serves us during our formal practice, it also aids us in every other area of our lives. Because the more practiced we are at bridging the connection between mind and body, the more aware of our physical selves we become.

With the awareness of meditation practice comes the capacity to mindfully choose how we treat our physical bodies. We start to think more carefully and be more intentional about the foods we eat, the beverages we drink, and the products we put into or onto our bodies. When our bodies are fueled and fortified in ways that support our physical health, we think more clearly, engage in higher levels of productivity, attend to our needs more efficiently, sustain higher levels of energy, and feel more alive. Improved mental health, in this way, becomes a natural byproduct of physical health—and meditation is one way to get us there.

The mindfulness we cultivate through a regular meditation practice gives us the ability to keep an ongoing awareness of our physical bodies. It enables us to be in contact with our hunger cues, so we know when it’s time to eat. It encourages us to eat and drink slowly, so we enjoy the process and realize when we’ve had enough. It let us tune into our intrinsic wisdom, choosing to eat what our bodies need instead of what our minds crave. All of this serves to reinforce the mind-body connection, thereby increasing our self-awareness, self-care, physical wellness, and mental health.

When we learn to connect with the breath and the body, we start to expand what’s physically possible for us. This is something yogis have known for centuries, which is no surprise, considering yoga is ultimately a moving form of meditation. Not only can we reach new levels of physical fitness through the foundations of meditation, we can also become highly intuitive about how we move our bodies. We can listen to the messages our bodies are sending, so we know when it’s time to be active and when it’s time to rest. We know when it’s a good idea to roll on some lavender oil and take an Epsom salt bath, or when a good old doctor’s visit is in order. To be this aware, this connected, requires ongoing attention. It’s a skill that we develop through practice, over time.

One of the coolest things about meditation is that there are endless ways we can use it to support our bodies and sharpen our minds. For example, many swimmers, basketball players, gymnasts, and runners regularly engage in visualization meditation to improve their performance. That’s because studies have shown that athletes who use visualization meditation to imagine themselves performing a certain physical activity improve as much as—or, in some cases, more than—athletes who practice actually performing the activity. How’s that for a testament to the mind-body connection?

Whether your physical health goals include losing weight, overcoming panic attacks, expanding your yoga practice, changing your physique, adopting a cleaner diet, cutting back your alcohol consumption, improving your athletic performance, reducing the intensity of chronic aches and pains, or just generally feeling more connected to your body, meditation practice can support you—and you get to enjoy the fun bonus prize of enhanced mental health!

As long as we’re enjoying this human experience, we’ll do so within the vessels of our beautiful, remarkable, wise, and resilient bodies. It’s a worthy activity, then, to connect with those bodies and treat them with love and respect. Meditation, which gives us entry to the present moment and guides our awareness within, is a gift we give ourselves in the service of our health. I invite you to begin exploring your mind-body connection through meditation, yoga, and any other practices that call to you. And I look forward to coming back to you soon with the final installment of this series!

Meditation and Mental Health – Part 2

a person sitting in a pile of hay.

Hi, everyone. I’m back for the second installment of this five-article series I’ve developed to uncover some of the most valuable ways that meditation can support our mental health. In the last installment, I described how meditation supports the way we relate to our thoughts. (If you missed that article, you can check it out here.) Next, I’ll explore the unique relationship between meditation and emotional health.

As it turns out, meditation and mindfulness can valuably aid us in developing an enhanced relationship with our emotions. They do this in two particular ways. First, they help us learn how to identify rather than identify with our emotions. Second, they help us more effectively regulate our emotions and self-soothe. These are critical skills that, when practiced regularly, can have a meaningful—even life-changing—impact on our emotional health. And it all starts with the fine-tuned awareness that mindfulness and meditation help us cultivate.

As I’ve already mentioned, meditation and mindfulness help us learn how to identify our emotions, rather than identifying with them. This happens as a function of our ability to notice what we’re experiencing in the moment. When we practice meditation and mindfulness, we connect to our experience in the here-and-now, noticing what’s bubbling up within us. We experience our emotions in real time, witnessing their arrival and watching them move through us. This turns out to be a really useful skill—one that can change the way we relate to emotionally charged experiences. You see, research shows that people who can identify their emotions are more capable of coping with them than people who aren’t aware of what they’re feeling. The more understanding we have of our emotional experience, the more effectively we can manage it. When we know what we’re feeling, we’re more capable of being with that feeling and responding to it in ways that support our mental health.

This experience of identifying our emotions is quite different from the experience of identifying with our emotions—something that’s painfully familiar to most of us. Let me use an example to clarify the distinction. Imagine that you’re driving along the highway on your way to work, and another vehicle cuts in front of you unexpectedly. You have to slam on your brakes to avoid a collision, and your treasured morning coffee takes a spill as a result. Instinctively and immediately, anger arises within you. It courses through your body and stirs up a stream of anger-inspired thoughts. You become angry. You are angry. There’s no distinction between the anger and you; you’re identified with the emotion, and it’s taken over your experience. In that moment, your identification with anger might have you react in particular ways. You might curse loudly, scream obscenities, decide that your day is now ruined, or even attempt to seek revenge against the offending driver. With anger in the driver’s seat of your experience, you might say or do a number of things that you might later regret.

When we’re identified with and consumed by an emotion, our thinking is clouded and our actions are limited. We’re in full-on reaction mode, without much consideration for consequences. This is where identifying with our emotions can get dicey—dangerous, even. Where meditation and mindfulness step in and support us is by allowing us to experience our emotions without becoming consumed by them. When we’re present to our in-the-moment experience (a skill we develop through committed and consistent practice), we can lengthen the space between action and reaction. We can deliberately respond to our experiences with a sense of clarity, instead of emotionally reacting based on impulse. When we learn to identify our emotions through meditation and mindfulness, we can notice what we’re feeling, let ourselves experience it, and then intentionally settle ourselves before responding. This challenging practice is remarkably empowering; it can allow us to more masterfully navigate through our lives and manage everything that comes at us.

Meditation and mindfulness have another significant impact on our emotional health: they improve our capacity to manage and regulate what we’re feeling. There’s a common phrase among therapists that you’ve got to feel it to heal it, and there’s a lot of wisdom in that. Denying, resisting, and suppressing emotions is a recipe for disaster. When we refuse to face our emotions, we wreak havoc on our mental, emotional, and physical health. But as I stated earlier, allowing our emotions to consume us is equally unproductive and unhealthy. So how do develop a relationship with our emotions that allows us to feel them without becoming attached to them? Well, that’s where mindfulness and meditation come in. You see, these practices expand our ability to manage our emotions, regulate their expression, and soothe ourselves when we become distressed. But how do they do it?

When we practice meditation and mindfulness, we get present to our experience in the moment. We notice our emotions as they’re coming up, and we allow ourselves to feel them without impulsively reacting to them. We get familiar with the sensations in our bodies associated with certain emotions, and we learn to sit with the discomfort of feeling what we’d rather not feel. This is a remarkably useful practice—one that allows us to more capably manage our emotions. The capacity to self-soothe—in other words, to work through our own difficult emotions and calm ourselves down instead of relying on outside sources (other people, food, substances, etc.) to do it for us—is an important marker of mental health. The more we practice it, the better we become at it; and the better we are at self-soothing, the more capable we are of managing ourselves under even the most difficult of circumstances.

We humans are extraordinarily complex emotional creatures, and our ability to understand what we’re feeling is one of our most adaptive and advantageous features. As you journey through your own meditation and mindfulness practice, consider how you can increase your emotional attunement, thus improving your ability to identify your emotions and self-soothe. Though practice may never make perfect, in this case, it will most certainly boost your mental health and allow you to move through life with more mastery and grace.

I’ll be back soon with the next installment of this five-part series. Be well until then!

Meditation and Mental Health – Part 1  

a person standing on a beach at sunset.

 

On October 10, 2017—recognized as World Mental Health Day—I presented a talk on meditation and mental health at Innergy Meditation in Miami Beach.  What follows is the first installment in a five-part article series I’ve written to convey the major points of this discussion.

As someone who works with and believes in the power of meditation and mindfulness, I find it heartening to see the world of modern psychology catching up to the ancient wisdom behind these practices. Meditation and mindfulness have clear applicability in the world of psychology and mental health, with abundant support for their effectiveness. My intention behind writing these articles is to offer a compelling testament of these practices that might inspire you to explore how they can strengthen and expand your mental health.

Before I go any further, I want to start by outlining two distinctions. First, when I refer to meditation, I’m referring to the formal practice of sitting in meditation, irrespective of the particular form or tradition being practiced. Whether you’re into sound bowls, mantras, or guided meditations on YouTube, the information in this article applies. My intention is to talk about the functional aspects of meditation practice that support mental health, regardless of how it’s done. Secondly, though meditation is associated with many spiritual and religious traditions, it can be practiced in a secular way. It’s possible, therefore, to gain all the mental health benefits of meditation without having to subscribe to any particular ideology, approach, or tradition.

You’ll also notice that I regularly use the word mindfulness in this discussion. I use it to refer to the fundamental facets of meditation that we carry off the cushion and into the rest of life. To put it even more specifically, I’ll use Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s definition of mindfulness, which is simply a practice of paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, with a spirit of acceptance and non-judgment.

Both meditation—formal sitting practice—and mindfulness—a walking, moment-to-moment practice of centering our attention in particular ways—have been demonstrated and validated by scientific study to offer a host of mental health benefits. Some of these benefits include decreased anxiety, decreased depression, decreased stress, increased attention and concentration, increased sense of empathy, and improved overall sense of general wellbeing.

To expand on some of the particular benefits of meditation and mindfulness, I’ve decided to examine their impact on five key areas of mental health. Each article in this series will focus on one of these five mental health domains, the first of which is thoughts.

Any conversation about mental health, has to include some reference to thoughts. Of course, we’re thinking beings, so much of our experience occurs in the domain of thought. And while our minds can do many forms of thinking, there are two in particular that matter significantly to our mental health. First, our minds have a remarkable time-traveling capacity. At any given moment, our thoughts can carry us into the past or the future—and, in fact, this happens all the time. While you might appear from the outside to be cooking dinner or brushing your teeth, you’re likely to be time traveling inside your mind, perhaps thinking about how awful your drive home was or how terrifying it will be to grow old. Life is happening in the present moment, right here and now, but you’re time traveling and missing all of it.

Although it can be pretty neat to hop into the time travel machine in our skulls whenever we please, it doesn’t always turn out to be so pleasant. Depression and anxiety are associated with, among other things, recurring thoughts about the past or future. When our minds insist on pulling us out of our experience and into the time travel machine, our mental health can easily be compromised.

In meditation, we practice sitting with the intention to anchor our attention in the present moment. But inevitably, our thoughts carry us into the time travel machine, and we become distracted. What our practice helps us do is notice when we’ve wandered away so we can gently bring ourselves back. This practice of noticing that we’ve drifted and intentionally bringing ourselves back is like doing brain push-ups. It conditions a mental muscle that, if we utilize it in our daily lives, can help us do less time-traveling and more connecting. Because the truth is, the present moment is usually more pleasant and manageable than where our thoughts tend to take us.

Even if your practice supports you in staying present in the here-and-now, there’s another function of your mind for you to contend with: It’s what I call the storytelling mode—the function of your mind that runs an endless stream of commentary about whatever’s happening in each moment of your life. As humans, we’re meaning-making machines; we interpret everything that happens in our lives, telling ourselves a story about it and making it mean something. And while this isn’t an altogether bad thing, if it goes unchecked, it can dampen our sense of wellbeing and threaten our mental health. Let’s say, for example, that I have a conversation with a colleague. What’s actually happening, in concrete terms, is that my colleague and I are exchanging words with one another. No big deal, right? But if my mind is so inclined, I’ll start to tell myself a story about that conversation. I might tell myself things like, “Gosh, I sounded so stupid when I was talking about this morning’s meeting. I always say the wrong thing at the wrong time. Sooner or later, they’re going to realize I’m not cut out for this job. Then they’ll fire me, and nobody else will ever hire me again. I’m going to end up jobless and alone, because everyone will think I’m a failure. I’m going to die homeless on the streets.” This dramatic, self-deprecating spiral of thoughts can run through the mind in mere seconds. It’s the kind of thing our storytelling mode does—take us from a conversation with a colleague to destitution and ruin in no time at all.

Learning to work with the storytelling mode of the mind is essential to our mental health. If we believe all the thoughts that pass through our minds—especially those based on belief systems that frame us as worthless and life as hopeless—our mental health suffers considerably. If, however, we can develop a different sort of relationship with our thoughts, we can allow them to pass through our minds without becoming disturbed, convinced, or consumed by them. We can maintain and improve our mental health by adopting simple practices that shift the way we relate to the stories in our minds.

Through both meditation and mindfulness, we can learn to observe and bear witness to our thoughts, without believing, endorsing, following, or acting upon them. We come to understand, through our own direct experience, that our thoughts are just thoughts. They aren’t truths. They aren’t commands. They don’t define who we are. In other words, we are not our thoughts. At a literal, scientific level, our thoughts are just electrical impulses in our brains that carry data in the form of words. Just because they come up in our experience doesn’t mean we have to pay attention to them. If we can stay present to what’s actually happening around us in the present moment—like the conversation with a colleague I mentioned before—we can maintain our capacity to respond to life directly, instead of through the filter of the (sometimes terrifying) stories our minds weave. We can learn to notice that all of our thoughts do the same, predictable, thing: They enter our minds, and then they leave. If we do nothing about them, they come and go, all on their own. This ability to allow thoughts to pass without attaching to them is one of the most potent outcomes of meditation and mindfulness practice—one that can stand to transform the way we experience our lives.

Since our mental health consists largely of the relationship we have to the thoughts in our minds, utilizing meditation and mindfulness to transform this relationship is a worthwhile pursuit. I invite you to take the information you’ve read here and look for ways to shift the way you relate to and respond to your thoughts, seeing what new possibilities arise. I’ll see you soon with the second installment of the series. Be well until then.

The Making of a Mind Master

a silhouette of a bird flying over a palm tree.

In his bestselling book, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, author Robin Sharma wisely states: “The mind is a wonderful servant, but a terrible master.” The simple wisdom of these words speaks to the heart of the human experience, for to be human is to be in constant thought. It is to live inside an endless loop of inner chitter chatter about everything that is, was, and ever could be. Without the light of our awareness and the spirit of our conscious intention, we are bound to be the servants of our minds. And most of us know what it feels like to live this way, at the mercy of our own thoughts, consumed by the contents of our minds. But through subtle shifts in attention and the implementation of simple practices, we can enter a new relationship with our minds, becoming their masters and wielding their greatest potential.

Our minds are remarkably powerful, and they’re particularly good at three specific things: storytelling, meaning making, and time traveling. As a therapist and coach, I know all too well how heavily these functions of mind can impact people’s lives. When the mind is the master, the stories it tells, the meanings it makes, and the places it goes can create tremendous suffering. But I also know that while these activities of the mind can be enslaving, they can also serve as the doorways for liberation; they present an opportunity to become the mind’s master.

As storytelling machines, our minds run an ongoing narrative of everything that happens in our lives. The stories they tell us are captivating and distracting, holding our attention and heavily influencing our experience. Our minds can keep us from connecting with the present moment, because instead of attending to what’s happening in that moment, we’re caught up in the stories they tell us—either about what’s happening, or about something else altogether. It’s easy to feel disconnected when the mind is in control; while life unfolds right in front of us, our stories keep us trapped and unable to make contact.

To move from servitude to mastery, we must heighten our awareness of the mind’s propensity for storytelling. Through the development of practices like mindfulness and meditation, we can learn to notice when the stories in our minds are pulling us away from the present moment. The quicker we notice, the quicker and more effectively we can bring our attention back to our experience in the here-and-now. Becoming the master in this way means being more grounded, connected, and present to life.

Our minds are not only great at storytelling, they’re also pretty magnificent meaning-making machines. They interpret everything, filtering information through our personal biases and beliefs, and influencing how we make sense of the world. When we are servants to our minds, the meanings they make can blind and constrict us, keeping us stuck and limiting our perspective. We hold these interpretations—the meaning our minds generate about our experiences—as truths, and we get completely caught up in them. A great example of how this operates is a former client of mine, who came to me after suffering for 30 years from a sense of unworthiness. He shared with me that when he was in the 3rd grade, a couple of boys in his class teased him about his haircut, and a few other kids within earshot laughed along with them. The meaning my client made of that experience was that he was an “unlovable reject,” and he carried that with him throughout the rest of his life, until the point that we met. This example is as common as it is painful; we all know what it’s like to believe what our minds make up about some event or experience, and we know how limiting and damaging that can be.

The shift from servitude to mastery with respect to meaning-making comes with identifying our core beliefs and recognizing the things our minds make up about what we encounter in life. Therapy and coaching are particularly effective ways to develop mind mastery in this area. The more aware we are of the interpretations our minds create—and, most importantly, the ways in which those interpretations affect us—the more we can distinguish the facts from the interpretations, and the less we suffer.

As I mentioned before, our minds are highly sophisticated time-travel machines. At any given moment, we can travel to the near or distant past, the anticipated or imagined future. And while this is, no doubt, a pretty cool thing, it can also get pretty ugly. Because the reality is, our minds let us travel to the past and future, but we have absolutely no control over either one of them. The past is gone, and the future hasn’t happened yet, so dwelling in either one can be an exercise in suffering. When the mind is the master, its time-traveling adventures can cause depression, by dwelling on what’s already happened, and anxiety, by agonizing about what could happen. And that’s not to mention the ways in which all that time-hopping robs us of our ability to be in the present, where life is happening. Many of my clients speak to me about how terrible it can feel when their minds take control and zap them back into an ugly past or zoom them forward into an uncertain future. There’s a reason the Buddha taught so much about being in the present moment; he was wise to the reality that the mind likes to travel, and when it takes us with it, we’re liable to suffer.

To become a master of the mind’s time-traveling nature is to acknowledge that there are some undeniable upsides to this capability. The past is full of rich material; it contains our memories, the lessons we’ve learned, and valuable information that can guide us through life. Thinking about the future can also be advantageous, as we can plan, get excited about upcoming events, and anticipate things on the horizon in order to prepare for them effectively. When we learn how to travel to the past and future with intention and be in the driver’s seat for the voyage, we can use this function of our minds to its greatest capacity and avoiding unnecessary suffering.

The human mind is magnificent. As John Milton so aptly put it, it can “make a heaven of hell, a heal of heaven.” To master the mind is to master life, so why not start moving toward mastery right here and now? As always, I wish you peace and love and am here to keep you company on your journey however it supports you.

How Doing Nothing Changes Everything

a close up of a bowl of water with a drop of water.

If you met me 10 years ago, you probably would have thought I was pretty scattered. You’d likely have noticed my fiery temper and the hurried, anxious way I’d do things. When spending time with me, you’d quickly pick up on the fact that I was never really present with you but distracted, instead, by my racing thoughts or the items in my mental to-do list. You might have—as many people in my life at that time did—described me as being “all over the place.” You would have seen that I didn’t know what I wanted and had no idea what I was doing with my life. If you were particularly intuitive, you would have recognized that I was lost and disconnected, functioning on autopilot most of the time. You would have known that I felt insecure and unfulfilled, completely uncertain about my future.

When I write about myself 10 years ago, it’s as if I’m writing about a total stranger. I no longer recognize or resemble that disconnected woman with her head in the clouds, rushing through life with no sense of direction. It’s hard to put into words how grateful I am for finding a path to clarity—a path that altered the course of my life completely. And when I think about what it took to get from where I was then to where I am now, I can’t help but smile at the simplicity of it.

What I learned back then that guided my journey from chaos to clarity was the practice of doing nothing. The formal term for this practice is zazen, the sitting meditation practice in Zen Buddhism. Through this practice I learned how to shift from a state of doing to a state of being, stilling my mind and grounding my awareness in the here-and-now. I learned how to extend my practice to all areas of my life by focusing my attention on the present moment and being with my experience as it unfolds. This simple practice of non-doing created a radical shift in my presence and personality. It also inspired me to become a therapist who incorporates Eastern principles and traditions into my work with clients.

As a mindfulness based psychotherapist and coach, I’m committed to supporting my clients in cultivating awareness and getting grounded in the present moment, the only place where life is happening. When my clients begin to adopt simple mindfulness practices into their lives—such as allowing themselves to experience emotion or paying attention to the small changes they’re making—they quickly begin to experience their lives differently. Their relationships with themselves and others begin to transform, and they get inspired to create solutions for the problems that brought them to my office.

I’m regularly stunned by how much becomes possible through the astonishingly simple practice of being still and doing nothing. I’m amazed by how much power there is in a single conscious breath. In my work and my life, I’m committed to exploring the potential of mindful awareness and sharing what I learn with others—including you!

If you’ve ever been disconnected or dissatisfied with your life and unsure what to do about it, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever struggled to concentrate or sit still, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever felt detached from yourself and the people around you, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever thought that life is moving too quickly and you don’t know how to slow it down, this practice is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to explore your potential and the possibilities that exist for your life, this practice is for you.

The most beautiful thing about mindfulness and meditation is that you can practice anytime, anywhere—and now is as good a time to start as any! So before you close this page, give yourself the gift of a mindful moment.

Focus your eyes on a nonmoving object (not on the phone or computer screen) or allow them to gently close. Begin to shift your awareness to your breath. Focus on the sensation of breathing, perhaps finding a spot in your body where you’re most aware of the breath—it might be your nostrils, or your belly, or your chest. Breathe for a couple of moments with your attention fixed in this way. Any time a thought comes in or something around you tries to pull your focus away, gently bring yourself back to your breath. Do this for a few inhales and exhales. Then set an intention to carry this practice with you throughout your day, coming back to it—if only for a few breaths—any time you want to get centered and connected again.

If you’re eager to discover where else this practice can take you, call me for your free 20-minute consultation (305-814-4863), and let’s start exploring what’s possible!

 

Zen and Zoned Out Are Not The Same Thing

an image of a foggy forest.

 

As a spiritually minded psychotherapist, peace proponent, and student of Buddhism, I love watching the West wake up to the wisdom of ancient Eastern traditions.  It thrills me to know that people are getting intentional about creating more harmony and stillness in their lives, because I’m fully convinced that what the world needs now, above all else, is a more intentional, more finely attuned sense of awareness and presence among all human beings. When I see any indication that we’re moving in that direction, I feel gratified and hopeful. But here’s the thing: Owning a yoga mat doesn’t make you a yogi, telling people you meditate isn’t the same thing as meditating, and being Zen isn’t the same thing as saying you are. That might sound harsh, but I’m making this point for an important reason. In the instant-gratification-based culture we live in, it’s easy to confuse exposure with understanding. To truly understand something, you must immerse yourself in it, exploring it from multiple angles and seeking to gain as much knowledge about it as possible. And so it is with spiritual traditions and practices like Zen.

The most direct translation of the word Zen is meditation, but the true meaning of Zen can’t fully be expressed in words. Perhaps the closest we can come is to say that Zen is a state of being that involves a sense of connection to a power greater than oneself. It’s a way of living in the present moment and fully experiencing reality as it’s unfolding, with no preference for what happens. It means being aware of the interconnectedness of all living things, and flowing with the universe. Put simply, Zen is an orientation toward life that generates a sense of peace, equanimity, acceptance, and contentment. To be Zen is to be committed to maintaining clarity and remaining grounded in the present moment, no matter how challenging it is to do so.

In our culture, when people talk about “getting Zen” or “being Zen,” they’re usually referring to something along the lines of relaxing, reducing stress, slowing down, or finding peace. And that’s a wonderful thing. But calming down isn’t necessarily the same thing as finding Zen. The reason this distinction matters is that often, our efforts to relax and calm down involve checking out or numbing ourselves to what’s happening—and that isn’t Zen at all! To adopt a Zen mentality is to be at one with whatever we’re experiencing, without trying to manipulate or change it so we can feel better. When we experience Zen, we’re acknowledging and accepting what is, rather than attempting to make it something else.

Although there isn’t an explicit goal in Zen practice, the purpose is to generate greater awareness and appreciation for what’s happening in the present moment. When we confuse zoning out for Zen, we sell ourselves short of experiencing everything that can unfold and open up for us when we accept what we’re feeling instead of trying to OM it away. There’s a commonly used expression among therapists and healers that says, “The only way out is through.” This simple statement speaks to the difference between numbing out and knowing Zen. It’s easy to check out of the present moment by turning on a meditation CD or lighting some candles; but I challenge you to make your practice deeper than that. Don’t settle for artificial peace. Practice loving and staying present with whatever is occurring in the present moment—no matter how unpleasant it may be—and know that true peace awaits you on the other side.