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How to Keep Your Mind from Wandering in a Yoga or Medi...

Mariana Caplan — January 30, 2019

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PHASE 1

Mind wandering is associated with the DMN (default mode network)—areas of the brain that are active when the mind is in its default state of rest. In this phase, the mind seems cluttered with thoughts and feelings all scrambling to be at the center of attention. The meditator may remain distracted by what seems like an endless barrage for some period of time. The brain remains in this state especially when it is not engaged in a specific task.

PHASE 2

Becoming aware of mind wandering occurs when we mobilize a conscious mind-body practice. This phase involves purposefully placing our attention in order to steer our practice, and this effort reveals itself as activation in the insula. As noted previously, the insula is characteristic of interoceptive awareness and self-awareness. In this way, cognizance of the mind’s habitual wandering is a form of metacognition—thinking about thinking—that sets the stage for neuroplasticity. Just to arrive at this stage of meditation is quite an accomplishment, as most people never cultivate any sustained awareness of how their mind meanders from one topic to the next. Practitioners should recognize the value of this second phase because it can take years to arrive here with any regularity. Without knowing this, beginners often become discouraged.

PHASE 3

Shifting out of wandering is like flexing a muscle or changing gears in a car. This phase involves the executive function of the brain, recruiting regions like the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and the posterior parietal cortex. The practitioner arrives at this phase through consciously and consistently bringing their attention out of unfocused wandering. Much like training a muscle, we go through high and low points of practice, and—as in the previous stage—it is easy to feel discouraged. Unfortunately, meditators can judge themselves harshly at this stage, lose interest, or give up entirely if they do not recognize just how important this phase is in training the neural muscles of concentration.

PHASE 4

Focusing means that the practitioner has gained some meditative stability and can remain for some time in a concentrative state. This achievement shows up as sustained activation in the dlPFC. At this phase, progressive layers of our mind reveal themselves—both within a practice session and “off the cushion” over time. When the mind eventually starts to wander again, the cycle begins anew, and the practitioner passes through the phases once more to regain focus. With practice, the amount of effort, time, and repetition it takes to go through the cycles decreases, with less time occupied in the earlier phases and more time spent in a focused state.

Excerpted from Yoga & Psyche: Integrating the Paths of Yoga and Psychology for Healing, Transformation, and Joy by Mariana Caplan.

Keep Your Mind from Wandering in a Yoga or Meditation Practice - Yoga and Psyche

Mariana Caplan, PhD, MFT, E-RTY 500, is a psychotherapist, yoga teacher, and author of eight books in the fields of psychology, spirituality, and yoga. She has been teaching workshops and trainings online, in yoga studios and universities, and at major retreat centers throughout the world since 1997. She is the founder of Yoga & Psyche International, an organization created to integrate the fields of yoga and psychology globally, and lives in Fairfax, California. Learn more at realspirituality.com and yogaandpsyche.com.

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How to Breathe With Your Whole Body

Clemens G. Arvay — January 24, 2019

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Spending time in the woods—or shinrin-yoku (“forest bathing”)—has been proven to significantly strengthen our immune system and increase our overall happiness. The forest air triggers our bloodstream to produce 40 percent more natural killer cells, which help fight harmful viruses, bacteria, and other illnesses. The tradition of forest bathing goes back a long time in Japan’s folk medicine, but it has its longest history in China and Taiwan and has been called senlinyu there for centuries.

Ancient knowledge about healing from nature is also found in traditional Chinese medicine. Numerous exercises from qigong are designed to “absorb the chi of nature” and are carried out mainly in forests or green areas with trees. Even the qigong masters of the past apparently knew that nature not only heals in the form of plant- and mineral-based pharmaceutical substances, but also by a person simply being present in a green space and breathing. In qigong, absorbing the chi of nature is always associated with breathing techniques.

Xiaoqiu Li, a two-time Chinese state champion in wushu (traditional Chinese martial arts), taught me the following exercise for “whole-body breathing.” This specific exercise helps you to take in the healthy forest air quite intensely and to release old air and harmful substances very consciously. You will especially feel the purifying effects of this exercise in your body if you are a smoker or live in a polluted city.

Look for a place in the woods that appeals to you and that has an even surface to stand on, and then follow these steps:

Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart and as parallel to each other as possible, with your knees slightly bent and arms relaxed at your sides.
“Open” your chest cavity by lifting your arms up in the air away from your body, in the form of a circle overhead, as if you were a tree revealing its mighty crown to the sky. Take a deep breath in while doing this, starting in your stomach and continuing to fill up your chest with air.
When your arms meet over your head, guide them down in front of your body, holding them together and parallel to each other. Simultaneously begin to breathe out, making fists with your hands while squatting down.
At the end of these movements, slowly press your elbows against your body at stomach level. This pressing of the elbows and curving of your body help your lungs to empty themselves entirely.
Repeat these movements slowly and mindfully and try to make everything as smooth as possible.

Excerpted from The Biophilia Effect: A Scientific and Spiritual Exploration of the Healing Bond Between Humans and Nature by Clemens G. Arvay.

Born in 1980, Clemens G. Arvay is an Austrian engineer and biologist. He studied landscape ecology (BSc) at Graz University and applied plant sciences (MSc) at the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences in Vienna. Arvay examines the relationship between humans and nature, focusing on the health-promoting effects of contact with plants, animals, and landscapes. He also addresses a second range of topics that includes ecologically produced food along with the economics of large food conglomerates. Clemens G. Arvay has written numerous books, including his bestseller The Biophilia Effect. For more, please visit clemensarvay.com.

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Mindful Kids in Context

Mark Bertin — October 30, 2018

Mindful eating, mindful burgers, mindful sex . . . pretty much everything is mindful lately. Paying attention has value, but what’s the goal of all that mindfulness?

Defining mindfulness exactly is like trying to define psychology or exercise in one line; you can do it, but it never quite captures everything. To summarize, mindfulness means aiming to be more aware of our immediate experience, with less reactive habit. Even that language may feel abstract to the average parent or child trying to find some peace and happiness. More than any single definition, what matters most is that there’s an intention. We spend an awful lot of our lives reacting to things we like or dislike in ways that aren’t always useful. When we break patterns and handle the uncertainty of life more easily, that’s beneficial. However you define it, mindfulness means living with less mindless habit and more ability to manage the fact that life is awfully hard sometimes.

So what does mindfulness with kids mean? Another way of framing mindfulness is as a group of mental traits. It’s not that anything specifically gets fixed by a practice of mindfulness; it’s guiding children toward long-term skills that make life easier. We teach children to become more attentive, less reactive, more compassionate, and resilient. From that perspective, mindfulness is a way to build life management abilities, but far from the only one. We offer children tools to handle the challenging road ahead through any means that fit.

When we say that mindfulness means “paying attention to what we’re doing,” we transfer this to our children by paying more attention to them when we’re together. “Staying calm under pressure” means taking a few breaths and not blowing a gasket when homework falls apart. When we say to treat others with compassion, that starts with how we speak to the frazzled guy at the airport dealing with our flight cancellation. Acknowledging honestly and openly that no one is perfect, we also recognize that we won’t stick to our own intentions all the time. We make mistakes and learn from them and keep going. Drawing our children into that part of life teaches them something too.

When it comes to teaching mindfulness, focus on the skills you want your children to develop. That matters more than whether they commit to a “mindfulness practice.” We build resilience by developing EF (Executive Function) and attention, emotional awareness, self-confidence, self-compassion, positive relationships, and all the rest that comes from being raised in a mindful, aware household. That doesn’t mean specifically meditating, but it does mean emphasizing a balanced lifestyle.

Mindfulness implies living with clarity in a certain way. We guide kids to pay attention every way we can — by taking moments to pause and look at a sea shell or by prioritizing activities that build attention (like reading, chess, and board games) over those that disrupt attention (excessive screen time). We discuss emotions and describe our own emotions. We live compassionately, read books that reflect other people’s perspectives, and generally immerse kids in compassion, while gradually considering if they’re ready for a compassion-based mindfulness practice.

Mindfulness is a tool kit for a different way of living, one that provides kids skills to manage life on their own one day. The good news is, kids don’t even have to practice it themselves to get there. They learn from watching us and from the overall way they live themselves. Of course, they eventually can learn from their own practice of mindfulness too. As you practice yourself, you’ll know exactly how to encourage your children to join you (links to books supporting mindfulness in kids can be found at howchildrenthrive.com). But it’s the big picture of how they are raised that counts most.

Consider This:

Imagine yourself from your child’s point of view. How would your child describe you to a friend? What’s fun and easy about you, what are your strengths, and what areas might you want to change?

Excerpted from How Children Thrive: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids.

Mark Bertin, MD, is a bestselling author who specializes in integrating mindfulness with other evidence-based neurodevelopmental care. His previous books include Mindful Parenting for ADHD and The Family ADHD Solution.

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Rhonda Magee: We Are Embodied and Embedded: Bringing M...

Rhonda Magee — September 18, 2018

Rhonda Magee is a law professor at the University of San Francisco, a longtime mindfulness teacher, and a fellow of the Mind & Life Institute. Rhonda is a featured presenter in Sounds True’s Waking Up in the World—a 10-day online event showcasing prominent voices who embody the meeting between social action and spiritual exploration. This special episode of Insights at the Edge is drawn from a previous presentation given by Rhonda as part of our Mindfulness Monthly subscription program. Here she explores how mindfulness practice can be used to uncover our biases and help us understand any privilege we carry in our interactions with others. Rhonda encourages us to fully consider how aspects such as race, gender, and economic background have come to shape our perception of the world. Finally, Rhonda leads us in a guided meditation to inquire deeply into how our environments have guided us to this moment in our lives. (63 minutes)

Tami’s Takeaway
We often hear how mindfulness can help us discover our common humanity. Here, law professor Rhonda Magee helps us embrace what is unique about each of us: our embodied experience as a particular person with a specific human inheritance, residing in a particular place, with a particular position, skin color, gender, and sexual orientation. We are applying mindfulness to what makes us different. And what a critical skill this is if we are going to learn to take a different person’s position and work together to bring mindfulness to what Rhonda calls “the cutting edge of mindfulness”—shifting our institutions and social structures to reflect our deepest values.

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Nataly Kogan: Happier Now

Nataly Kogan — May 1, 2018

Nataly Kogan is a public speaker, author, and the founder of the training organization Happier. With Sounds True, she has published the book Happier Now: How to Stop Chasing Perfection and Embrace Everyday Moments (Even the Difficult Ones). In this edition of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Nataly about redefining happiness not as a state where we experience no negative feelings whatsoever, but as a skill we must constantly hone. Nataly shares some of her life story, including her childhood experiences as a refugee and why she spent much of her life chasing the unattainable goal of “I’ll be happy when . . .” Tami and Nataly also discuss the benefits of maintaining a regular gratitude practice, then walk listeners through a five-minute “happiness workout” that can be done on the spot. Finally, they talk about how personally fulfilling creative activities can actually make us more productive and help us practice the everyday skills of happiness. (67 minutes)

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Mark Bertin: How Children Thrive and the Developmental...

Mark Bertin — April 24, 2018

Dr. Mark Bertin is a pediatrician, mindfulness teacher, and the author of regular articles for Mindful.org, Huffpost, and Psychology Today. With Sounds True, he has published How Children Thrive: The Practical Science of Raising Independent, Resilient, and Happy Kids. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Mark discuss his research on executive functioning—those mental processes that allow us to organize and responsibly manage our immediate environment—and how this develops in children. Drawing from his extensive work, Mark explains the healthy stages of executive function development and why a supportive, open-minded, and fun-promoting environment is what kids actually need to thrive. They talk about Mark’s previous work with childhood ADHD and how it led to his current focus, as well as why attention disorders can be interpreted as delays in executive function development. Finally, Mark and Tami speak on setting boundaries around technology use and how introducing mindfulness practices early in childhood leads to healthier, happier lives down the road. (64 minutes)

Category: Mindfulness

How to Keep Your Mind from Wandering in a Yoga or Medi...

How to Breathe With Your Whole Body

Mindful Kids in Context

Rhonda Magee: We Are Embodied and Embedded: Bringing M...

Nataly Kogan: Happier Now

Mark Bertin: How Children Thrive and the Developmental...

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