Mindful Magazine October 2022 - Calm Your Anxious Brain

The PEACEFUL MIND issue

CALM YOUR

Anxious Brain

EASE STRESS • BEFRIEND YOUR DIFFICULT EMOTIONS • LEARN TO LET GO THE SCIENCE OF WANTING We’re all hooked on dopamine—learn how to find balance

OCTOBER 2022 mindful.org

LEARN TO DE-STRESS Bring Mindfulness Into Your Life BRAND NEW 15 day guided meditation course from mindfulness teacher Gina Rollo White

LIMITED TIME OFFER! ENROLL BY 12/31 and get a FREE 1 YEAR subscription to Mindful Magazine!

LEARN MORE

mindful.org/destress

CONTENTS

PHOTO BY MASTER1305 / ADOBESTOCK. COVER ILLUSTRATION BY BETELGEJZE / ADOBESTOCK

THE PEACEFUL MIND ISSUE

Let Your Light Shine In

Opening up to it all—to the glorious mess of our full experience and our most tumultuous emotions—is key to meeting ourselves and others with kindness. When you turn toward what hurts, you can begin to make peace with your emotions.

p.34 October 2022 mindful 1

contents

How to Be With How You Feel Caren Osten Gerszberg explores why meeting difficult emotions with kind awareness is so transformational.

46

The Science of Wanting Too much dopamine can lead to overindulgence and addiction.

Katherine Ellison reports on how we find balance and contentment in an age of instant gratification.

22

Befriend Your Difficult Emotions

28

Ease Stress

34

Calm Your Anxious Brain

46

The Science of Wanting

56

Learn to Let Go

STORIES

18 Mindful Living

One Step at a Time

22 Inner Wisdom

Invite Your Demons to Tea

24 Health

Interrupt Your Inner Critic

28 Brain Science

The Power of the Outbreath EVERY ISSUE

56

The Gentle Art of Letting Go To realign with our intention and become active creators of our own lives, writes Yung Pueblo, we need to begin to let go of the past.

2 mindful October 2022

4 From the Editor 7 In Your Words 8 Top of Mind 16 Mindful–Mindless 66 Bookmark This 72 Point of View with Barry Boyce

VOLUME TEN, NUMBER 4, Mindful (ISSN 2169-5733, USPS 010-500) is published bimonthly for $29.95 per year USA, $39.95 Canada & $49.95 (US) international, by Mindful Communications & Such, PBC, 515 N State Street, Suite 300, Chicago IL. 60654 USA. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Mindful, PO Box 257, Lincolnshire, IL 60069-0257. Canada Post Publication Mail Agreement #42704514. CANADIAN POSTMASTER: Send undeliverable copies to Mindful, 5765 May St, Halifax, NS B3K 1R6 CANADA. Printed in U.S.A. © 2022 Mindful Communications & Such, PBC. All rights reserved.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MASTER1305 / ADOBESTOCK, HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK, SISAPAGI / ADOBESTOCK

34

On the Cover

Taste

j

Organic Eden Sencha Green Tea is the first picked leaves of early spring.

Forty-six years of organic methods created vital soil, happy plants, and deliciously beneficial sencha green tea.

Real organic mint, ginger, rose hips and petals, and Egyptian chamomile.

©

2

20

en

d 2E

Clinton, Michigan (888) 424-3336 cs@edenfoods.com edenfoods.com

Fo

s od

7

51

11

from the editor

JOIN US

coaching Everyone deserves a coach who believes in them.

Sign up for Mindful’s new one-on-one live coaching program and discover what’s true for you. Developed in collaboration with leading neuroscientists, we’ve created a customized, one-on-one coaching experience to help you develop tangible, easy-to-apply habits that are tailored for your individual life.

Learn more at coaching.mindful.org Heather Hurlock is the editor-in-chief of Mindful magazine and mindful.org. She’s a longtime editor, musician, and meditator with deep roots in service journalism. Connect with Heather at heather.hurlock@mindful.org.

4 mindful October 2022

Two days after my dad’s funeral was the sixth anniversary of my mom’s passing. That pretty much sums up my summer. Now, randomly, I just start ugly crying without notice. My chest tightens, my breath gets caught in my throat, my eyes feel pressure—I think: Maybe I can hold it together? But no. These “cry bursts’’ don’t last long, but they are clear messages from the deep that grief is always with me. Grief I haven’t allowed myself to fully feel yet.

I have a complicated relationship with the word “allow.”

Maybe it’s my, let’s just call it “willfulness,” but I’ve always associated this word with permission or power being given or withheld, not assumed. During a recent meditation, however, there was a moment when I understood that “allowing” is actually always there. Always accessible. That to “allow” is to get in touch with our most natural selves.

The moment was fleeting, but it felt like a physical shift in my body, a revealing of space I was too stubborn to notice before. Space to feel without identifying fully with, or judging myself for, what I was feeling. All the feels were still there—the grief, the shame, the wanting to cocoon-up in bed with bad TV—but they weren’t alone.

Turns out, allowing feels more like awareness with a side of discernment, and a hint of intention and possibility. An expansiveness that offers the promise of choice and trust, with a heavy dose of kindness for yourself and others.

This issue of Mindful dives into the intersection of mindfulness and difficult emotions, illuminating the balance that can be found when we breathe and befriend.

On page 12, pulmonologist and mindfulness teacher Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang shares the 4-7-8 breath for moments when you’re feeling anxious or stressed. On page 34, health writer Caren Osten Gerszberg interviews world-renowned meditation teachers and researchers steeped in the transformational (and research-backed) art of turning toward difficult emotions. On page 46, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Katherine Ellison digs into the science of wanting and explores how we can take back our contentment.

And on page 56, author, poet, and meditator Yung Pueblo shares his wisdom on letting go, saying: “I’m not enlightened or anything, but I feel lighter.”

I hope you get to experience a little bit of the ease and freedom that come from allowing. Freedom to ugly cry when you need to, without judgment; freedom to watch bad TV and cancel plans. Freedom to feel how you feel when you feel it.

With Love,

PHOTOGRAPH BY CLAIRE ROSEN

The Space to Feel

SPECIAL EDITION

Gratitude Journal The Gratitude Journal by Mindful offers a rich journey into the heart of gratitude. Rooted in science, the Gratitude Journal helps you bring the practice of gratitude into every area of your life.

THE GRATITUDE JOURNAL INCLUDES • 15 guided meditations (plus accompanying audio practices on mindful.org) • 20 mindful writing prompts • Inspiring quotes • Gratitude tips • Motivational essays

Order today

mindful.org/gratitude-journal

Healthy Mind, Healthy Life

Welcome to

We are dedicated to inspiring and guiding anyone who wants to explore mindfulness to enjoy better health, more caring relationships, and a more compassionate society.

By reading Mindful and sharing it with others, you’re helping to bring mindfulness practices into the world where the benefits can be enjoyed by all.

Thank you!

Print magazine & special topic publications

30 Day Mindfulness Challenge

mindful magazine • mindful.org Editor-in-Chief Heather Hurlock heather.hurlock@mindful.org

Creative Director Jessica von Handorf jessica.vonhandorf@mindful.org

Managing Editor Stephanie Domet

Associate Art Directors Spencer Creelman Paige Sawler

Founding Editor Barry Boyce Senior Editors Kylee Ross Amber Tucker

Associate Editor Ava Whitney-Coulter

MINDFUL COMMUNICATIONS & SUCH Mindful is published by Mindful Communications & Such, PBC, a Public Benefit Corporation.

Chief Executive Officer Bill Corsten bill.corsten@mindful.org

President Brenda Jacobsen brenda.jacobsen@mindful.org

Founding Partner Nate Klemp

Vice President of Operations Amanda Hester

Chief Financial Officer Matt Hallgren

Vice President of Marketing Christine Fritz

Accounting Kyle Thomas

Director of Human Resources Lauren Owens

Director of Client Relations Monica Cason

Director of Coaching Zina Mercil

Manager of Information Systems Joseph Barthelt

Marketing Manager Abby Spanier

IT Coordinator Garang Thiong

Marketing Coordinator Beth Ross

Administrative Assistant Lydia Kajumba

Office Manager Deandrea McIntosh

Board of Directors David Carey, Bill Corsten, James Gimian, Brenda Jacobsen, Eric Langshur (Chair), Larry Neiterman

Mindful at Work • Well-being for modern workplaces

Mindfulness video courses

ADVERTISING INQUIRIES Advertising Director Chelsea Arsenault Toll Free: 888-203-8076, ext 207 chelsea@mindful.org

CONTACT / INQUIRIES

Visit online at mindful.org

Publishing Offices 5765 May Street Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3K 1R6 Canada mindful@mindful.org Corporate Headquarters 515 N. State Street, Suite 300 Chicago, IL 60654, USA

Get More Mindful 6 mindful October 2022

Editorial Inquiries If you are interested in contributing to Mindful magazine, please go to mindful.org/submission-guidelines to learn how.

Customer Service Subscriptions: Toll free: 1-855-492-1675 subscriptions@mindful.org Retail inquiries: 732-946-0112 Content Licensing inquiries@mindful.org

in your words

Lay Down Your Worries Mindful readers share what’s weighing heavy, and how they lighten the load.

How do you find moments of calm?

Sitting on the ground next to my beautiful backyard fish pond. Watching the graceful movements of my fish, enjoying the pink water lilies, and listening to the splash of the waterfall.

Corie M. By intentionally seeking to understand other perspectives that encourage empathy, compassion, and positive thinking for myself and others.

Megan W. I remember to stay in the moment and notice where I am and what I’m doing. I’m not in the past or future, I’m right where my feet are.

Kim W.

Next Question…

What are you most grateful for today?

Send an email to yourwords@mindful.org and let us know your answer to this question. Your response could appear on these pages.

Who do you reach out to when you feel worried?

What's worrying you today?

My partner. She is the calm in my life.

Each day brings a different concern, doesn’t it? Today, perhaps my worry is about not being mindful as I usually am.

So, I bring myself back to the present moment by allowing the worry, being kind and compassionate to it and myself.

“Don’t worry, be happy."

zweicappuccini Family mayasquilla My cat aslicy

mindfulinpractice

Do you worry about the future, past, or present?

I DON'T

8%

PAST

4% PRESENT

8%

FUTURE

54

%

Climate change, human rights, pandemic, gun control, racial injustice, war, famine, drought. But otherwise, life is pretty good. libbies.images Worry unchecked turns into anxiety for me. Today I’m not feeling well but I know that I’ve done what I need to do for my health at the moment. I just need to breathe and rest. If there is something really wrong it will make itself known. jeana_with_a_j

→ @ theconnectioncreator prompts us to remember how we saw the world as children, with playfulness and less judgment.

↑ @colormehappii reminds us of the power of a breath.

↓ @valentinodevasco finds a sense of openness and freedom on the road.

people socialize, where they gather.”

TOP OF

mind Keep up with the latest in the world of mindfulness.

BREATHE INTO IT Almost a third of those who contracted COVID may have longterm symptoms, according to a recent UCLA study. “Long

COVID” sufferers often receive little attention, partially because the symptoms are amorphous and treatmentresistant. To help manage common symptoms

identified with long COVID, including fatigue, disrupted sleep, and anxiety, UK-based Breathworks has developed Mindfulness for Managing Long COVID with University College London and professionals from the National Health Service. Breathworks cofounder Vidyamala Burch

says the course has been based on 20 years of experience in chronic pain and illness management and “centers on four key principles: Awareness, Relaxation, Pacing, and Self-Compassion.”

BEAUTIFUL DAY IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD People in five neighborhoods in Ottawa are able to get help finding jobs and housing, accessing financial assistance, mental health counseling, and other

resources, all provided by a diverse staff of healthcare professionals who speak a variety of languages and bring their own lived experiences to the table. These neighborhood wellness hubs are housed in local community centers. Hoden Aden is one of the project leads. He told CBC Radio that the hubs are a key way for folks to find the help they need. “The overall intent is to provide the right information, right where people live, where

EU officials working on green-deal climate policy are using mindfulness and meditation to turn toward feelings of overwhelm that arise from the climate crisis. Through the Inner Green Deal course, facilitated

by Jeroen Janss, officials participate in forest walks, meditation sessions, instruction on how to regulate difficult emotions, and tips for collaborating with a sense of agency— all with the aim of fostering a deeper connection among policy decisionmakers and negotiators. Deep sadness, frustration over lack of progress, guilt, and hopelessness often arose for participants, Janss told The Guardian.

Early results from the first participants suggest the course helped boost officials’ motivation to act on climate issues and overcome personal feelings of despair.

IT’S A GAMBLE A clinical pilot program in the

PHOTOGRAPH BY JAMES WHEELER / UNSPLASH, KOLDUNOVA_ANNA / ADOBESTOCK

A CLIMATE OF HOPE

PHOTOGRAPH BY DIDESIGN / ADOBESTOCK, ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPENCERCREELMAN

top of mind

UK uses mindfulness training to help young people observe, assess, and choose how to move forward when managing a gambling addiction. Though just 5% of kids between the ages of 11 and 16 are seen as problem gamblers, or at risk, 36% of the young people surveyed had gambled in a 12-month period. Designed by mental health professionals and people who have lived with gambling addictions, the Mindful Resilience Programme was launched by The Young Gamers and Gamblers Education Trust in partnership with Betknowmore UK and Bournemouth University as a resource for healthcare workers to better support kids and teens that come forward about gambling and similar concepts like pay-toplay video games.

TUNE IN Sue Hutton’s album of guided meditations, Mindfulness Meditations for a Neurodiverse World, released this past spring, offers a “buffet of options” for accessibility and inclusiveness. Hutton, a social worker and mindfulness teacher, says the practices were developed in conjunction with neurodivergent people she’s worked with individually and at the CAMH Azrieli Adult Neurodevelopmental Centre in Toronto. “It’s amazing how much we learn when we pause and really listen to how people are engaging with mindfulness,” she notes. The 16 tracks provide a range of sense anchors, visualizations, and ways to mindfully connect to the breath—for example, moving your hand in sync

with the breath, or breathing audibly and allowing the sound to be your anchor. The album is free to stream on major music platforms and Hutton’s website.

ENDURING RECIPES Among viral TikTok dances and trending audio you’ll find Rosie Grant (a.k.a. @ ghostlyarchive on TikTok) cooking recipes preserved on gravestones.

She learned about epitaphs through her studies as an archivist and decided to cook her way through the recipes people chose to leave behind. “It’s still a somber time, but it’s also a reflection of the beauty of their lives, of happy memories, of getting together over a meal or cooking together,” Grant told CBC Radio’s As It Happens.

ACTS OF kindness

by AVA WHITNEY-COULTER

KINDNESS CLASS

Kylie DeFrance spent hundreds of her own dollars on menstrual products so her students who couldn’t afford them didn’t have to miss school.

When she asked for donations on NextDoor, people sent thousands of boxes of product, which now stock many classrooms, and take-home kits for students.

FUR EVER

Pet photographer Lauren Smith Kennedy shared black-and-white portraits she’d taken of a dog’s last moments with his owners before being put down, and hundreds of people reached

requested a similar shoot. To meet the demand, Smith Kennedy launched The Tilly Project, a nonprofit (named after her beloved late cat) that connects people with photographers willing to take endof-life pet portraits at no cost.

KIND FLIES

In 1999, Tracy Peck gave two sisters on her flight who were fleeing then-Yugoslavia $100, a pair of earrings, and a note wishing them well. Ayda Zugay and Vanja Contino searched for Peck, and after their story was picked up by CNN, the three reconnected.

“Your generosity is still in me,” Contino told Peck, “because I’ve been paying it forward ever since.”

October 2022 mindful 9

top of mind

Research News

by B. GRACE BULLOCK

Research gathered from University of Utah, University of Edinburgh, and Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences

DOWNGRADING STRESS A sample of 139 healthy students at the University of Edinburgh, 92% of whom reported feeling mentally distressed, were randomly assigned to either online mindfulness instruction or a control group.

Over four weeks, the mindfulness group viewed 10 interactive, 30-minute digital sessions including sitting meditation and body scan instruction, and tips for incorporating mindfulness into daily life.

Students were asked to practice between sessions.

Control group

participants viewed the BBC Ancient Worlds documentary series (six onehour videos).

Both groups provided saliva samples to assess for stress biomarkers at the beginning of the study. They also completed a series of questionnaires and stress-inducing tasks before and after training.

At study’s end, mindfulness group members reported less perceived stress than the control group.

Group differences regarding changes in biomarkers of stress and the relationship between stress reduction and improvements in mental functioning were inconclusive.

Additional studies are needed to better understand

10 mindful October 2022

the link between physiological and perceived stress.

REST WELL Sleep problems are a common complaint among menopausal women.

Researchers at Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences in Yazd, Iran, assigned 66 postmenopausal women with a diagnosed sleep problem to either two hours of mindfulness training weekly for eight weeks, or a two-month class on menopausal health.

All women completed questionnaires

top of mind

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPENCER CREELMAN

Find Your Calling:

a supportive psychotherapy group. The mindfulness group learned meditation, breathing, body awareness, and more. The psychotherapy group discussed strategies for coping with pain, and explored the negative impacts of opioid use.

Roughly 77% of mindfulness group and 86% of psychotherapy group members PAIN RELIEF https://mail.google.com/mail/u/3/#search/aspc+logo/FMfcgzGkZGfRBsqMsrtCcVPpkdQqqxWS?projector=1&messagePartId=0.2 attended four or A study by more training researchers at the University of sessions. Nine Get a taste for our training content with our months later, Utah explored researchers folwhether mind- https://mail.google.com/mail/u/3/#search/aspc+logo/FMfcgzGkZGfRBsqMsrtCcVPpkdQqqxWS?projector=1&messagePartId=0.2 1/1 FREE introductory video series from our lowed up with fulness practice program founder, Dr. Elliott Rosenbaum.

49 participants in the mindthecoachschool.org/free-videos fulness group, Results showed that and 43 in the 45% of individuals in the control group and learned that mindfulness group were 45% of those in no longer misusing opioids the mindfulness “Coaching is about helping others find their own group were no compared to 24.4% of longer misusing best solutions through control group members. opioids compared transformational listento 24.4% of control ing, powerful coaching group members. questions, designing an The mindfulaction plan and providness group also ing accountability. It is reported greater related health might reduce not about giving advice.” topics. At the chronic pain and reductions in Dr. Elliott B. Rosenbaum, pain severity and end of training opioid misuse.

Founder, ASPLC pain-related disand a month They randomly ability. Given the later, women in assigned 250 high number of the mindfulness adults to either study dropouts, group reported a mindfulness more research is better overall oriented needed. sleep quality program or immediately before and after the intervention, then again one month later. Each group had five participants that did not complete their assigned program. The mindfulness intervention was modeled after the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction curriculum, which includes formal sitting and moving meditation, breathing and body scan instruction, and daily practice.

The control group read books on menopause-

and less daytime dysfunction than control group members. Results suggest that mindfulness training that fits the lives of menopausal women may provide an effective, non-pharmacological path to better sleep.

Become a Life Coach

For more information, visit

thecoachschool.org

October 2022 mindful 11

BEGINNER’S MIND Q&A

BREATHE EASIER Q

When I’m anxious, I find awareness of breath meditation hard to do—but I know I need something to help calm me down. What else can I try?

Awareness of breath can provoke anxiety, and not just for the lung disease patients I see as a pulmonologist. The 4-7-8 breath can be used for situations where you’re feeling particularly anxious, stressed, and even if you have some difficulty falling asleep.

12 mindful October 2022

THE 4-7-8 BREATH It’s a simple and portable practice: You inhale for a count of four, then you hold your breath for a count of seven, and then you exhale through your mouth through pursed lips for a count of eight. The durations of these breaths aren’t as important as the ratio of the inhalation breath, breath-hold, and the exhalation breath, which is twice as long as the inhalation breath. This allows the lungs to completely empty of stagnant air. This type of breathing also activates your vagus nerve, which is your “rest and digest” nerve. Try going through four breath cycles in this way up to twice a day. If you feel dizzy or lightheaded, decrease the number of breath cycles, and build up slowly. (For more on the calming power of the outbreath, see p.28.)

Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang is a pulmonologist, cancer survivor, and mindfulness teacher.

She is Director of Pulmonary Integrative Medicine at Coastal Pulmonary Associates affiliated with the Scripps Health Network in Encinitas, CA, and founder of the Mindful Healthcare Collective.

She’s one of the teachers of this year’s Mindful30.

PHOTOGRAPH BY MOTOKI TONN / UNSPLASH, PROVIDED BY NI-CHEN LIANG

A

top of mind VOICES RISING • KENNETH BOURNE

The Biggest

“

Joy

by AVA WHITNEY-COULTER

PHOTOGRAPH PROVIDED BY KENNETH BOURNE

The biggest joy for me, and hope, came through once I really was digging into mindfulness with other people and helping them realize that they can find peace within themselves.

Kenneth Bourne’s pursuit of peace and joy for Black boys and men began when he was a kid growing up in Southwest Philadelphia.

“I was never a person that could withstand any kind of mistreatment toward a human being around me at all,” he says.

As a teenager, he took the long way to and from school to avoid fights. In class, he battled to succeed in an institution wrought with instability. At university he faced overt racism. He also learned that police would stop and question him, presumably, he says, because he is Black.

“Personally, I find just being Black in America is beyond stressful,” he says.

“I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired.” That exhaustion led to frustration and anger,

which brought Bourne to mindfulness. He says deep breathing and meditation helps him get out of a stuck mindset and “comprehend the goal, the purpose, or the bigger picture of life.”

After graduating from Rutgers with a master’s degree in social work, he committed to helping others not have to fight so hard, to helping them heal and know their worth.

“To be an educated Black man in this country is to always be angry, in a sense,” he says, echoing James Baldwin’s famous words from over 60 years ago. “And the more I learned, the more I realized that the systems that say they are there to help also further the oppression, they perpetuate the violence.”

“I realized that Black boys and Black men, specifically, we go through a lot of complex trauma that intersects a lot of systems, but there hasn’t been a space or a system that I ever felt was safe enough and actually helped with the complex trauma that I was dealing with. So I said, ‘I’m going to do that.’”

In 2019, he founded Bourne ANEW to bring resilience and healing talks and workshops to Black men and boys to help them overcome barriers to higher education. One of his jobs with Bourne ANEW took him back to his old school in Southwest Philadelphia.

“The biggest joy for me, and hope, came through once I really was digging into mindfulness with other people and helping them realize that they can find peace within themselves— because the world is crazy and is going to continue to be crazy, but you need some sort of peace and calm and stillness within your mind and in your body and in your heart to reduce the stress so that you can exist in a way that you want to. And that has been the greatest joy.”

October 2022 mindful 13

PRESCRIBING MINDFULNESS Researchers and doctors know that the social determinants of health—access to child care, healthy food, community, activities, and more— contribute to 80% of health and well-being. Social prescriptions are becoming more common, and here are three recent examples from the UK.

The Comic Will See You Now

ILLUSTRATION BY HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK

They say laughter is the best medicine, and in this case, it might also be just what the doctor ordered.

Angie Belcher, a comic with a background in psychology, has teamed up with the National Health Service (NHS)-backed Wellspring Settlement Social Prescribing unit in Bristol to prescribe comedy classes to patients.

The “comedy on referral” class is aimed at helping those suffering from postnatal depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, anxiety disorders, and more.

With group work, games, and one-on-one coaching, the classes are a way to remove the taboo around discussing mental health. The pilot has been labeled a success and has now won funding from the NHS to help men at risk of suicide in London, England.

14 mindful October 2022

top of mind

Debt Relief

A Walk a Day

Studies have shown that financial stress can have a significant impact on your physical health, and now a new program is looking to target both. Led by the Centre for Responsible Credit and funded by Impact on Urban Health, Financial Shield is a pilot program that aims to provide residents in Lambeth and Southwark with “more time and space, without the threat of debt enforcement, to address their financial and health problems.”

Research and experience reveal that spending time in nature can do wonders for your mental and physical health. A cross-government Green Social Prescribing project in the UK is trying out ways of improving health and well-being through connecting people with nature and green spaces. Seven projects— including ones that teach people the joys of swimming in open water, working in community gardens, and generally hanging out in nature—have received £85,000 to explore how nature can improve health and well-being.

SPECIAL EDITION

Your Guide to Difficult Emotions YO U R G U ID E TO S D IF F IC U LT E M OT IO N GET STARTED WITH

mindfulness

mindful SPECIAL EDITION

how to navigate anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, shame... and build resilience plus advice from

Sharon Salzberg, Patricia Rockman, Zindel Segal, and Jewel

Learn to calm anxiety, build resilience and listen to your intuition with this 100-page special edition from the editors of Mindful magazine.

Order your copy today

mindful.org/ guide-emotions

top of mind

MINDFUL OR MINDLESS? Our take on who’s paying attention and who’s not Green energy isn’t widely available in Nigeria, but a young entrepreneur in the city of Maiduguri hopes to change that.

Mustapha Gajibo has already retrofitted minibuses to run on electricity. His new challenge? Building a solar battery-powered bus from scratch, using locally sourced materials.

by AMBER TUCKER

Educators at a Brooklyn school aim to support students learning English—by studying the Star Trek language?! HIja’ (which means yes in Klingon).

A custom training program uses interactive exercises in Klingon to get teachers out of their linguistic comfort zone, building empathy for students’ challenges.

MINDFUL

16 mindful October 2022

Nala, a Labradorbulldog mix, achieved what her owner called “an all-time record for ignoring personal space” when she slipped her collar, snuck into another couple’s house two miles away, and snuggled up with them in bed. After the initial shock, the couple was able to reunite the extremely friendly pup with her family.

After her two-year-old ordered 31 cheeseburgers on DoorDash while she wasn’t looking, a mom in Kingsville, TX, was on the receiving end of some judgy online comments. She responded with good humor in a YouTube video, “That Awful Cheeseburger Mom,” where she serves herself over-thetop “parenting advice.”

Balenciaga has long trod the path of controversial trendiness. Recently, they announced a “full destroyed” [sic] sneaker, covered with tatters and stains. Price tag: US $1,850. Who would have guessed haute couture would one day embrace the “footwear that’s gone through 80 yard sales” look? ●

MINDLESS

ILLUSTRATIONS BY SPENCER CREELMAN

Who doesn’t swoon at the aroma of fries? If you can get your hands on Frites by Idaho, a limited-edition perfume by the Idaho Potato Commission, you might smell saltily irresistible to your date…but you might also get dive-bombed by seagulls.

Everyone deserves a coach who believes in them.

We all do better when we have someone rooting for us.

In collaboration with leading neuroscientists, Mindful has created a one-on-one coaching experience to help you develop tangible, easy-to-apply habits tailored for your individual life.

ARE YOU READY? SIGN UP AND DISCOVER WHAT’S TRUE FOR YOU.

coaching.mindful.org

Even when you’re going uphill, it doesn’t have to be a battle.

Physician and ultrarunner Christiane Wolf offers some of the tools that have helped her (both on and off the trails) to move through challenging moments, tame anxious thoughts, and uncover more of her inner resilience.

ONE STEP AT A TIME

PHOTOGRAPH BY LZF / ADOBESTOCK

by Christiane Wolf

18 mindful October 2022

mindful living

One step at a time... This one. This one. This one.

Another one. One more?

Yes, I can do one more. This one, too.

This is how I overcame the hardest inclines of a recent trail race through the beautiful mountains around Los Angeles, my adopted home. The run was filled with substantial climbs, one of which was over three miles long. I’ve been running since my mid-20s— when it was mostly jogging around my neighborhood in order to be outside and to get some exercise. But over the last few years, I’ve ventured into running marathons and most recently I morphed into an ultrarunner: Somebody who runs distances longer than a marathon, usually on trails in nature, often in the mountains.

Because I practice and teach insight meditation and mindfulness, people automatically assume that I also practice mindful running. When they ask me about it, my answer is: “It depends!” And often also, half-jokingly: “I try not to!”

Even though I love running, it can get strenuous, te-

dious, and boring, especially on long runs and races, and I usually prefer to be comfortable. I can completely relate to my running buddy who says that at times the best thing about running is when it’s over.

My own motto for running—and for life—is to have a well-stocked toolbox.

This equips me to savor the great moments, persevere through the unpleasant ones, and even surprise myself with how determined and resilient I really am.

Here are a few of the “tools” I’ve gathered on my journey with running—and, as I’ve discovered, this toolbox naturally applies to life’s other challenges too.

It’s exactly this up and down and hard and easy that makes the journey so worthwhile. that that one step is still possible, and then I restart the whole thing from the beginning. It is important to keep asking yourself the question honestly and not to let your mind drift toward the future: Yes, this one is still OK—but not 10 more miles!!

I wrote my latest book during the pandemic. I repeatedly hit days and even weeks when I couldn’t ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER When things get really tough during a long run or a race, I keep asking myself the question: “Can you still take this one step?” “And this one?” “And what about this one?” I have found out

Christiane Wolf is a physician turned mindfulness and compassion teacher and teacher-trainer. She leads meditation classes and retreats worldwide . She is the co-author of A Clinician’s Guide to Teaching Mindfulness and author of Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and SelfCompassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind.

get myself to write at all because the task before me appeared so insurmountable. Eventually, I pulled out another running lesson: The hardest part of the run is putting on your running clothes in the morning and leaving the house. So in the morning, I focused on opening the document on my laptop and setting a timer. My commitment was to write for 10 minutes and then stop, unless I wanted to do more. And just as with running, more often than not, after I started I was ready to keep going.

This “one step” practice can be transferred to any difficult life situation. No matter how challenging →

October 2022 mindful 19

mindful living

The hardest part of the run is putting on your running clothes in the morning and leaving the house.

the moment seems, we’re already in it and enduring it. And even if something feels like it can’t be done right now, it will usually feel more bearable a couple minutes later. Until it changes yet again!

BE STRATEGIC WITH YOUR ATTENTION Practicing mindfulness in daily life includes flexibility and receptivity, to be ready to respond, instead of reacting, to the present moment. This also benefits us while running.

To be fully in the moment while running is a wonderful thing, no question about it.

There can be flow experiences and “runner’s highs.”

It’s not that I don’t have moments like that, but they are just that: moments. A marathon, let alone an even longer distance—and the months of training it takes to get there—contains very many moments. So a bouquet of different strategies for the full range of experiences is asked for—for the beautiful, the boring, and especially the difficult moments.

20 mindful October 2022

Sometimes I am able to fully take in my surroundings, the beautiful landscape, the smell of damp earth and herbs.

Other times, I have to place all of my attention on not stumbling over roots and stones, or cutting off my fellow runners. Pounding down a steep narrow path in the woods will focus your attention and “empty” your mind like nothing else.

On other runs, especially on familiar routes, there is a certain monotony in the foreground, during which a good playlist or an audio book are very welcome.

While there are many runners who are mindful of their entire run—and they have my respect!—my strategy here is to focus on things other than the details of the run, especially a long one. Usually only when all of this can no longer distract me enough from the monotony or the increasing exertion and tired legs do I then concentrate fully on the present moment again.

Similarly, when I’m writing, there are hard moments that need all my attention and focus, and there are

moments when I am in the flow of it and just enjoying the ride. And it’s exactly this up and down and hard and easy that makes the journey so worthwhile, especially when I finally hit a sweet spot after slogging through procrastination and writer’s block.

THE COMPLAINING MIND During hard runs, and other trying situations, we reach a point where the mind and body just don’t want to go any further. We are evolutionarily programmed toward energy control and comfort. Full refrigerators and the ability to keep foods fresh longer are still very new to history. Our ancestors did well to stuff themselves when they had the chance as well as slowing their burning of those calories. They had no idea when the next meal was going to be caught or found.

Our system is therefore calibrated not to simply squander energy. With very little exertion, the mind begins to whine: “This is too much! Too exhausting!

No, that’s just not possible!”

This whining becomes louder the greater the effort is or the longer it lasts.

David Goggins, author of the bestseller Can’t Hurt Me, trained by the US military and supposedly the fittest man in the world, says that if the mind is convinced that the body can absolutely go no further, then we have used up only 40% of our reserves.

That’s how strongly we are programmed to preserve energy. On the other hand, by never leaving our comfort zone, we accept limitations about ourselves that may not actually be true. For example, a new study out of Cornell shows that personal growth is bigger in those who seek discomfort. So when the going gets tough, can we negotiate with our biological urge to call it quits?

The clearer we are about our intention, our “why,” the more we are willing and able to “embrace the suck” (a favorite phrase of many endurance athletes). While writing my book, I realized that the writing process is not unlike running an ultramarathon in the mountains. It pushed me out of my comfort zone more times than I care to admit, dealing with deadlines and self-doubt: Why am I doing this to myself ? Isn’t there already enough out there on mindfulness and chronic pain? There is no end to this!

In these moments I remembered lessons from the trails, for example that those frustrated, anxious, and doubting thoughts and even bad feelings are impermanent, just like the bouts of doubt and nagging on a long run—or anywhere else in life.

Growing includes stretching and leaning in to the unknown. That inevitably brings unpleasant phases with it and at the same time also opens doors to more joy and connectedness. We can bring mindful awareness to the trails and bring lessons from the trails back to everyday life. ●

practice

Born to Run? Explore these three simple yet powerful tools for leaning in to challenges.

1 Zero In on the Present

For runners, joining a running group to train for a specific race or distance, or to avoid having to run alone all the time, helps most runners run regularly, and it’s more fun.

These benefits of keeping good company hold true in many endeavors! In what part of your life might you find (and provide) good company for mutual support in reaching a goal?

3 Talk Yourself Through It When things get tough, using a word or phrase can be very helpful. My favorites are any variation of “You can do this!”, “Trust your training,” or on a difficult downhill run: “Step. Step. Step.” Try inventing your own empowering phrases that can help support you in any challenges you are currently facing.

PHOTOGRAPH BY AMAHCE / VECTEEZY

When you are completely in the moment, what do you perceive? While running, feeling the rhythmically moving body or alternating steps— left, right, left, right—can be a good anchor of mindfulness and even have an almost hypnotic component. You can also pay attention to your surroundings and to the constantly changing sensory impressions. What can be seen, heard, felt?

This is easier in a beautiful or unfamiliar environment, but it can be practiced anytime and anywhere, whatever you are doing. Taking yourself somewhere new every now and then helps keep the mind fresh and in the moment.

2 Team Up

October 2022 mindful 21

inner wisdom

When it feels like a storm is brewing inside you—a potent mix of anxiety, jealousy, anger, and other difficult emotions—you might be inclined to turn away. But that rarely makes them dissipate, so you might as well invite them in and get to know them better.

m Zindel Segal, cocreator of the MBCT program, leads a 3-minute breathing space practice. mindful.org/ breathingspace

PHOTOGRAPH BY TK

by Elaine Smookler

AUDIO Breathing Space

PHOTOGRAPH BY GAELLE MARCEL / UNSPLASH

PRACTICE

It’s a dark and stormy night, and it’s only 8 a.m.

My demons are knocking.

I barricaded the door, but they slipped in through the cracks. They seem to be everywhere, and there aren’t enough blankets or beds to hide under. So I’m trying something novel—I’m inviting them in for tea, exploring what happens if I stop trying to avoid the little beasties that seemingly just won’t go away.

Demons can manifest in many dastardly ways. As the voices that whisper persuasively that you are destined to fail. Demons can grab you by the throat and shake you when you listen to the news, or they can be the fears that assail you when you leave the cozy cover of your bedroom.

For instance, if you pulled an all-nighter to prepare for a job interview, your exhaustion might be what gives your demons their ferocious fuel. Suddenly, your heart’s racing.

And then like freakin’ flying monkeys, the demons arrive: “They’re never going to hire me! I’m too old, too young, too tall, too me!”

Now you’re wondering why you were so foolhardy as to even apply for this job. As the demon forces gather strength, you look for ways to numb the effects of the threat-chemicals that are charging through your bloodstream. You want to run to the local bar, or leave the galaxy altogether.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Elaine Smookler is a registered psychotherapist with a 25-year mindfulness practice. She is also a creativity coach and is on the faculty of the Centre for Mindfulness Studies in Toronto.

Or perhaps the wildly cascading thoughts and feelings would just love a soothing cup of tea instead?

Doesn’t that sound nice?

It makes sense that you might not want to invite in distressing thoughts and emotions. But when they are already in, avoiding them doesn’t seem to do anything except to cause them to roar all the more.

Part of your tea party includes being a good host by recognizing which demonic thoughts have come for a visit, bombastically blaring their bullhorns. Who are they? Name them. They want to be heard, so hear them. Once they have spun their story, you could ask yourself if there’s any evidence that their stories are even true. Maybe they’re just spinning a tall tale and, like any tea party gossip, you can listen with compassion and understanding without becoming attached to every word.

Now, you can have empathy for the emotions that are arming those demons. Emotions also want to be invited in for tea. Usually, one sip is enough to settle them. You don’t have to get rid of these emotions. You don’t have to do anything except to notice what has been stirred up.

Then, you can welcome the sensations that are surging through your body: Feel the tugs and tightening, notice the numbness and sweatiness. Tenderly welcome the whole maelstrom in. Once you can make some small peace with the demons that come to call, you can explore creative ways to welcome what just keeps showing up, dammit. Earl Grey, anyone? ●

The Three-Minute Responsive Breathing Space The three-minute breathing space, developed as part of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), can help you manage monstrous moments. Explore it for yourself and see if you notice whether it helps you find calm when demons threaten to sink your spirits and squelch all hopes of joy.

1

2

3

Bring your attention to describing and identifying whatever is going on for you right now. What thoughts are distressing you?

What emotions are overtaking you? What kinds of stormy sensations are you feeling

in your body?

It might help to name any difficult emotions, body sensations, or thoughts as specifically as possible: “I feel anxious about this job interview.” “There is tension in my jaw.” “They’re not going to like me!”

Once you have noticed the thoughts, emotions, and body sensations that might be involved in your anxiety, gently use effort and energy to shift your attention and focus toward

feeling your belly breathing in and out, closely tracking this movement. Or you could choose to focus on your hands, or the soles of your feet, counting to 15, in and out.

Now, stop counting and expand your attention to the entire body. Feel where your body makes contact with the chair or the floor. You don’t have to get rid of your thoughts, just do your best to feel the whole

body, including your posture and facial expression.

(Pro tip: You can even do this while waiting for your job interview!) After this three-step exploration, what do you notice?

How has your anxiety shifted?

October 2022 mindful 23

mental health

t p

u r r e t In

r e n n I r c u i t o i Y Cr By

ta an

cu dy

fee gg

ltiv

ou

at

rr

Fo r l li

in g

ek

es

ma

ke a

alo

in d

ny

nx

ng

ne

pe

ie t

for

op

ya

th

le,

nd

er

es

se

pe

lf-

ci a

cri

ll y

th

os

M

er

ri

am

Sa

r

ci a

Sa

ew ide ith i s t ow tle m .H AD a ss ere ar re HD br d ’ c s on yo a in , it h o sta ur ca w . se yo n nt lf uc ly an

24 mindful October 2022

ss

t ic

u

e nd

rs

Just miles from my house in Northern California is a serene meditation center called Spirit Rock. It’s nestled in golden grassy hills away from the hustle and bustle—the perfect place to gather and ground oneself.

Spirit Rock has welcomed many renowned mindfulness experts, and I’ve had the fortune of hearing wise words in many contemplative talks. After listening to these talks, when it was my time to meditate, I was restless. I’d try to focus for a few minutes, but I just couldn’t do it. Invariably, I’d slip outside and spend the remaining meditation time walking quietly around the grounds. I thought that, because of my ADHD, I was cheating. Failing. Meditation was not for me.

In a nutshell, if mindfulness is a state of being where the mind’s constant stream of thoughts is noted with a gentle curiosity and politely set aside, then meditation is just one means to get there.

The paths to this place of gentle awareness are many, and none of them involves desperately trying to keep the mind clear at all times.

For a restless mind like mine—and perhaps yours, too—this is good news. Some meditations are long and require sitting; others are quick and can be done anywhere. Mindfulness meditation trains us to invite curiosity to our inner and outer world with compassion and openness—no silencing of thoughts required.

When I left the sitting meditation at Spirit Rock to walk on the grounds instead, I hadn’t failed in my quest to meditate.

mental health

I just changed the path.

As I felt the crunch of the gravel under my feet and drew in the sweet smell of the leaves, as I accepted the warmth of the sun and noticed my feelings of failure, I was practicing mindfulness, and my walk was, in fact, a meditation.

It’s Not All About Sitting Still The first time I was invited to Spirit Rock, it was for a talk by renowned mindfulness expert Jack Kornfield.

I nearly bolted when I was told it would be followed by a long meditation. The thought of sitting still and focusing only on my breath sounded boring and painful.

People with ADHD have notoriously wandering minds, so how could I be expected to sit still with a blank one—and why should I? At the time, I thought all I needed was therapy and medication, not meditation!

The go-to treatment for ADHD is a combination of medication and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

Also a leading treatment for anxiety, CBT strives to reorient the ADHD brain’s endless and distorted internal chatter. By cultivating an awareness of rigid, negative thoughts, such as I never do anything ABOUT THE AUTHOR Merriam Sarcia Saunders, LMFT is a psychotherapist and author of several books for children and adults.

She helps people all over the world with ADHD to uncover their strengths, is an adjunct graduate professor of psychology at Dominican University, and is mom to three wonderful young adults. She lives in northern California.

right or Don’t bother unless it’s perfect, we can reframe those thoughts as more positive, realistic ones, like Sometimes I do things right and Maybe less than perfect is OK. These reframes help shift our sense of self so we can see the possibilities of trying new, more productive strategies for executive functioning struggles.

An increasing number of studies show the efficacy of meditation as a treatment supplement for ADHD. But getting there can feel like a challenge. For people with ADHD, the notion of “paying attention on purpose” may seem futile, as it did to me years ago when I began this journey.

ADHD, Anxiety, and Your Inner Critic As psychology professor Kristin Neff explains, selfcriticism triggers the body’s threat defense system in the same way an impending lion attack does. So when the attacker is our own inner critic’s chatter—say, shame over forgetting an appointment or frustration over losing our keys—our brains and bodies respond with a similar cortisol and adrenaline rush. This may give our ADHD brains a good jolt and thrust us into action, but it has unhealthy long-term consequences for our bodies. Relying on this jolt can create too much chronic cortisol, which, in turn, can cause inflammatory disease, dampen the immune system, and damage the thyroid.

People with ADHD specialize in self-criticism.

The paths to this place of gentle awareness are many, and none of them involves desperately trying to keep the mind clear at all times.

m RESOURCE Inner Critic Learn how to recognize your inner critic with a guided meditation that helps loosen the grip of thought loops. mindful.org/ inner-critic

In an article in Clinical Psychiatry News, Dr. Michael Jellinek estimates that by the time a child with ADHD reaches the age of 12, they’ve heard upward of 20,000 more criticisms than their neurotypical peers.

The inner critic has been implanted in your head by the world around you, and the uphill battle against it is an understandable one.

It isn’t surprising, therefore, that ADHD rarely walks alone. According to the organization Children and Adults with ADD (CHADD), an estimated 47.1% of adults with ADHD are also diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is characterized by excessive worrying, and excessive worrying triggers a similar cortisol-release response in the brain.

Additionally, many people with ADHD report a cooccurrence of rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD), the extreme perception of being rejected or criticized. It can feel very real and cause tremendous emotional pain.

People with ADHD have a sharp radar for criticism but often misunderstand others’ intentions and assume they are being rejected, even if they aren’t.

When It’s Hard to Befriend Your Brain This overlap between anxiety and ADHD can feel challenging and frustrating, especially while trying to get an accurate diagnosis. A person who is anxious can have symptoms that are difficult to tease apart from other symptoms of ADHD →

October 2022 mindful 25

mental health

(this is especially true with children). We don’t always know whether the anxiety symptoms we’re feeling are being exacerbated by our ADHD, or how to navigate them if they are. And, for those seeking diagnoses as adults, the process is not always cut-and-dried— without a specific set of criteria for how ADHD presents in adults, a diagnosis may depend on remembering what your symptoms were like before you were 12. In a counterproductive way, facing these challenges can lead us to pile on the self-judgments.

Along with seeking the support of a doctor or therapist, it’s beneficial to remind ourselves that feeling anxious is (for better or worse!) an incredibly widespread human experience. Whatever its causes, we can still recognize it as simply a sign that we’re human, and we can offer kindness to ourselves whenever anxiety arises.

And the good news is, according to neuroscientist Richard Davidson, overall well-being is a learnable skill, rooted in our flexible brain circuitry. It can be improved with practice, much like the way you get better at playing a musical instrument the more you practice. The more we engage those brain circuits with mindfulness-based activities, such as noticing our habitual behaviors with a kind attitude, the more we disrupt the brain’s critical narrative and the greater our overall sense of wellbeing becomes.

When you breathe slowly and deeply, you send a

26 mindful October 2022

signal to your brain that it’s not necessary to prepare the body for fight or flight.

When you slow down and notice your distractions, sensations, and emotions with acceptance and compassion, you send a similar signal to the brain that all is well—otherwise, you’d be on high alert, looking outward for danger, or scrutinizing inward for something physically wrong.

Negative self-talk can trigger the threat defense system, but self-acceptance and compassion cause almost the opposite in the brain—the limbic system releases oxytocin, which creates calm, reduces cravings, and promotes sleep.

This area of the brain is also responsible for understanding social cues and forming attachments, which helps in combating rejection sensitivity. Win, win! ●

Excerpt from Mindfulness Meditations for ADHD,

by Merriam Sarcia Saunders, published by Rockridge Press. Copyright © 2022 by Callisto Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

mental health

NOTICE YOUR NEED TO FIDGET Merriam Sarcia Saunders Try this 10-minute practice to explore any anxiety you may be feeling and how you tend to react to it.

Stimming, short for selfstimulation, is a common behavior for most folks but a more frequent habit for people with ADHD. This might look like chronic hair twisting, finger drumming, or knee bouncing, among other things. For most, it happens in a state of hyperfocus or boredom. Some people stim to manage anxiety or sensory overwhelm. There’s nothing wrong with the need to stim, but bringing mindfulness to the habit can be a stress management exercise that also helps you understand why you stim, and if there’s something else going on that needs addressing.

1. Take a few deep breaths and think about any chronic habits you have.

2. With your eyes closed, in a comfortable position, start the habitual behavior while moving through breath cycles.

3. Note any sensations that arise physically, mentally, or emotionally. Feelings that arise might be pleasurable or uncomfortable. Try not to judge either way.

4. Take a few more breaths, then open your eyes.

5. During your day, try to note when you stim. What was happening just before you began? Who were you with?

6. How does the stim make you feel in your body and mind?

7. Breathe through the feeling, positive or negative.

8. The goal is not to stop stimming or to judge the behavior, but simply to bring mindfulness to it to allow you to set intentionality.

m PRACTICE What’s Your Name?

Being stressed doesn’t mean you are the problem. mindful.org/ whatsyour name

October 2022 mindful 27

28 mindful October 2022

brain science

THE POWER OF

the Outbreath

By Leslie Garrett • Illustrations by Edmon de Haro

Most of the time, we don’t think about our breath at all—or notice what it may be telling us about our inner world. Now, the science of breathing shows that bringing attention to our outbreath can help us change our story around stress.

It feels, especially lately, that the world is releasing a emotional sigh.

A COVID-weary, climate-anxious, war-distressed sigh.

But a sigh is really just an outbreath, an exhale, the companion to breathing in. “When we inhale, it’s a very active process,” says Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang, a pulmonary physician, podcast host, and mindfulness teacher who gets to see the process play out in her students.

“The diaphragm actually has to pull itself down and flatten in order for

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Leslie Garrett is the author of more than 15 books for children, as well as a journalist whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Washington Post, Good Housekeeping, and Cottage Life. She currently works as co-editor of Bluedot Living, Martha’s Vineyard, which focuses on local grassroots solutions for climate issues, and aims to expand to locations around North America.

us to invoke an inhaled breath.” The exhalation, on the other hand, is much more passive, and consequently, says Dr. Liang, doesn’t get as much attention. But what’s important, she explains, “is that we can actually control the outbreath and harness our own physiology to help exhale out all of our residual breath.” In other words, only when we deeply exhale will we be able to deeply inhale. That outbreath, that sigh, matters.

An exasperated out breath, for example, may signal that we’re experiencing stress or processing trauma. Jasmine Marie is founder of Black Girls Breathing, which aims to create a safe space for Black women to manage their mental health through breathwork and community. She often includes a strong outbreath, “a forced sigh,” as part of the breathwork she teaches. A sigh is how we communicate to others

that something’s off or wrong, she says. It’s a chance for those doing the work to acknowledge their thoughts around anxiety or stress or worry and make them real in the breath with the aim to give those feelings room to shift, instead of keeping them stuck inside—a chance “to release what’s no longer serving us,” she says. A key part of Black Girls Breathing is addressing trauma, says Marie. “Individual trauma, collective trauma, generational trauma…” Using breathwork to process trauma is like cleaning out our closets. We go in and get rid of a bunch of stuff, and then, the next time we go in we discover there’s still more to get rid of.

“It’s like a constant reminder that this is a process,” she says. “Breathwork is a tool to help us navigate the hard things in life.”

Yet, in times of stress or anxiety, our body often does the opposite of →

October 2022 mindful 29

brain science

what’s helpful. Instead of deep, slow breaths, our breathing quickens, becoming more shallow, which helps short-term when our options are to fight or flee. It’s a response that might have served when there was a literal tiger at our door, but it doesn’t serve us when our stress is caused by an overdue work project or a pandemic or nothing we can exactly put our finger on. What can an exhale teach us about that?

Your Breath and Your Brain James Nestor, a science journalist and author of the book Breath, says that breathing is one of those things that most of us (including experts in the science of breathing) don’t really think about until there’s something wrong. “It’s shocking to me that we can prove how breathing affects us either in good ways or bad ways; you can feel it in the first few seconds of breathing in a healthy way, you can see it in studies done of people who have changed their breathing and dramatically improved their health,” he says. And yet…most of us don’t think about it.

Jose L. Herrero-Rubio isn’t most people. A childhood asthma sufferer, and now assistant professor at the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, Herrero-Rubio has carefully studied the interactions between physiology and brain functions: what’s happening in our body and our brain, both when we’re breathing mindfully and when we’re stressed.

Thanks to his research, we’ve learned that there is much communication between the brain stem—which is responsible for stuff that keeps us alive, like respiration—and the subcortical areas of the brain, which help with higher-order thinking. When we breathe, explains Dr. Herrero-Rubio, the somatosensory cortex, a brain region that processes sensations of

30 mindful October 2022

touch, detects that we have inhaled, and tells the brain region associated with movement, the motor cortex, that it’s time to stop inhaling and start exhaling. “They have to be sending each other neural copies,” he explains, “updating each other.”

This relationship between our brain’s movement and touch areas and the communication they send shapes how we breathe and when we inhale and exhale. “People who constantly feel breathless might have abnormal communication between these cortical circuits,” says Dr. Herrero-Rubio.

For instance, if the touch region does not update the movement region sufficiently, such as when CO2 levels are rising quickly during exercise, then your rate of respiration won’t increase. Conversely, if the movement region is too sensitive to tiny fluctuations in CO2—such as with asthmatic people or those with chronic anxiety—then it might constantly →

A strong outbreath is a chance to connect our thoughts around anxiety or stress or worry and make them real in the breath, with the aim of giving those feelings room to shift, instead of keeping them stuck inside.

A YEAR OF MINDFUL MAGAZINE A Mindfulness Guide for Complex Times

Every issue features world-class mindfulness experts, the latest mindfulness research, supportive meditations, practices, and much more!

Enjoy a year of six beautiful, inspiration-packed issues delivered straight to your door. Subscribe today!

mindful.org/mindfulmag

brain science

Somavedic The beauty of harmonized space Harmony is about creating a coherent, life-supporting space for the body and mind to thrive.

By using the outbreath to expel what we no longer want, we are then better able to welcome something new.

update its communication, leading to hyperventilation.

Even people with “normal” communication within these cortical circuits can find that, when we’re stressed, the areas of the brain that are much older, more involved in our fight-or-flight response, such as the amygdala, come online. So these two areas that have been communicating quite effectively—the somatosensory, or touch, cortex and the motor, or movement, cortex—are suddenly being interrupted by the amygdala.

The result, says Dr. Herrero-Rubio, is “noise.” Or, put another way, it’s as if a panicked person has crashed your super-chill breathing party.

A Mindful Exhale This is where mindfulness comes in, says Dr. Liang. It allows us to notice when our body is responding automatically to stress and gives us the opportunity to pause and choose our response.

In short, we can hack our brain to bypass or shortcut the stress response.

“There are unique connections between the lungs and the vagus nerve…responsible for the parasympathetic nervous system,” says Dr. Liang, which she describes as the “resting and digesting” nervous system. When we pay attention to our breath, when we take a deeper inhale and an extended exhale, this rest-and-digest system can override our fight-or-flight system, sending Find out more at somavedic.com

32 mindful October 2022

brain science

m AUDIO 4-7-8 Breathing Dr. Ni-Cheng Liang guides a practice to release stagnant air in your lungs and find calm. mindful.org/ 4-7-8

the message to parts of the body readying stress defenses that all is, in fact, fine.

She explains, “You can take advantage of your physiology and prolong your exhale…even two to four times longer than the inhale, and you exhale through pursed lips, as if you are blowing out birthday candles.

That actually can help you stent open your airways for longer to allow the exhale breath to complete itself in a more comprehensive way.”

It boils down to simple math. If you want to be able to take a larger inhale, then you need to have completely exhaled.

The respiratory pattern of people who’ve been practicing meditation for a long time is “very different” compared to other people, says Jose L. Herrero-Rubio. “The breathing rate is much lower, the exhalation is more pronounced, the inhalation/exhalation ratio is much lower because they spend more time exhaling.”

Breathwork is not a panacea, says Dr. Liang. But regular practice will help us better address stress and anxiety. She points out too that while “mindful breathing can include breathwork and breathwork can include mindfulness,” the two are not identical. “Breathwork refers to voluntary control of the breath, usually to achieve a desired goal such as decrease in shortness of breath or reduction of anxiety, for instance,” she explains—goals that may involve extending the outbreath. Mindful breathing, on the other hand, “is any type of breathing that you apply mindfulness to, which includes when one is simply noticing breath without trying to change it.”

By using our outbreath to expel what we no longer want, as Jasmine Marie puts it, we are then better able to welcome something new.

A sigh, after all, is an outbreath with a story attached to it. By expelling it, we make space for a new one. ●

October 2022 mindful 33

Learn More Today professional.brown.edu

peaceful mind

34 mindful October 2022

PHOTOGRAPH BY NEVODKA.COM / ADOBESTOCK

How to Be With How You Feel Mindfulness isn’t about pushing away tough emotions or making it so that we feel good all the time. Rather, it’s about opening up to it all—allowing all of our experience by fully inhabiting our glorious, messy multitudes. World-renowned meditation teachers and researchers describe why courageously turning towards and meeting difficult emotions with kind awareness and self-compassion is so transformational.

By Caren Osten Gerszberg

peaceful mind

I

n winter 2021, in the middle of the COVID pandemic, my husband felt a pain in his chest while at work that sent him to the hospital in an ambulance. I drove immediately to join him in the emergency room, only to discover that I wasn’t allowed to even enter the building. My husband's health issue, compounded with COVID restrictions, led me to a period of anxiety unlike any I’d ever felt. (Thankfully, he recovered and is healthy.)

Since then, I’ve experienced intense bouts of emotion—from sadness and anger to fear and grief—due to reasons both personal and global, provoked by war, raging domestic politics, the lagging pandemic, and the climate emergency.

If you, too, have had these sorts of varied and challenging feelings and are looking for some wisdom, please read on. Outside of my family’s support, my reliable superpower is my mindfulness practice.

“There is a lot to be depressed and anxious about and these are legitimate emotions,” says Dr. Chris Willard, a psychologist and author of the forthcoming book How We Grow Through What We Go Through. In the midst of both mundane and extraordinary struggles, Willard says, “Mindfulness can help you learn to tolerate, manage, and respond, rather than react, to negative emotions, but it will not get rid of them. We want to have our emotions be useful to us, not be overwhelming or destructive.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Caren Osten Gerszberg is a writer, certified positive psychology life coach, and mindfulness teacher. She helps clients find balance, resilience, and positivity. Also a contributor to The New York Times and Psychology Today, Caren writes about well-being, mindfulness, and education.

36 mindful October 2022

So how can you use your mindfulness practice to navigate the challenges and pain that accompany difficult emotions, causing you to feel saddled with stress, explode in frustration, or retreat into loneliness? And, in the midst of life’s inevitable challenges that we will all face, how can you respond with kindness for however it is that you (and others) show up in the world?

No Feeling Is Fixed Each one of us experiences emotions differently.

The first step is to bring a sense of openness to a negative emotion, an acknowledgment of what is happening, by asking yourself: What am I experiencing right now? The goal is not to clear or push away the emotion, but rather to welcome it and use mindfulness as a tool of exploration.

“Feeling emotions is a subjective experience, so if I’m feeling anxious, for example, I’ll explore what it is to feel anxious for me: that I feel tightening in my chest, feel jittery, and have rapid-fire thoughts about something impending happening,” explains Kimberly Brown, a meditation teacher and author of the forthcoming book Navigating Grief and Loss. “We don’t try to get rid of anything—not pain or bad thoughts—we try to receive it, to allow it, to open to it, to bring kindness.”

Focusing on the feeling itself with a sense of curiosity—What is this? What does it mean to feel mad? What does it feel like in my body? Hands are clenched, shoulders are raised, belly is tight?—is an effective way to cultivate awareness and can reduce the sense of being overwhelmed that often accompanies negative feelings. In these moments, offering yourself kindness can create the space to be with the emotions that are present. “When we bring a lens of awareness, we can often see that there are multiple parts to an emotion, and through direct experience we realize that they’re not monolithic—they are changing all the time, and that can help loosen their grip by showing that they’re more porous than we’d otherwise believed them to be,” says Dr. Richard Davidson, founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin— Madison. →

PHOTOGRAPH BY MASTER1305 / ADOBESTOCK

“We don’t try to get rid of anything—not pain or bad thoughts—we try to receive it, to allow it, to open to it, to bring kindness.”

KIMBERLY BROWN, MEDITATION TEACHER AND AUTHOR

PRACTICE

Befriend and Let It Be A powerful, science-supported method for turning toward difficult emotions with acceptance.

There’s no shortage of insights and practices from mindfulness teachings that can help us find the presence to navigate difficult emotions.

When we approach our pain with open-hearted kindness, we find we have the ability to turn toward whatever we’re feeling, the ability to see it and name it for what it is.

Making friends with any difficult emotion is at the heart of the handshake method, which is explained in detail in the forthcoming book Why We Meditate, co-authored by psychologist and science journalist Daniel Goleman with teacher and author Tsoknyi Rinpoche.

THE HANDSHAKE PRACTICE As the name suggests, the aim of the handshake method is to meet and make friends with upsetting feelings, to know them rather than avoid or fix them. “You tune in to the disturbing emotion mindfully, without judgment, and with full acceptance of whatever thoughts and feelings come

up,” says Goleman, who cautions against using the handshake practice if the emotion is related to trauma.

In a 2021 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), researchers at the University of California, Davis, found that the naming of emotions seems to activate a different part of the brain than the one that triggers the emotion.

When a group of volunteers with social anxiety was trained to observe their thoughts and feelings in an accepting, nonreactive way, they experienced a reduction in their anxiety and less reactivity of their amygdala.

The handshake method is made up of four steps: meeting, being, waiting, and communicating. The goal, says Goleman, is to let the emotions dissipate by making friends and accepting whatever comes. Paying attention to what comes up in the mind and body, without judgment, is the essence of mindfulness.

—Caren Osten Gerszberg

peaceful mind

In meditation, we are deepening calm and relaxation on the one hand, and on the other we’re increasing energy through curiosity and investigation.

SHARON SALZBERG, MEDITATION TEACHER AND AUTHOR

PHOTOGRAPH BY MASTER1305 / ADOBESTOCK

Mindfulness plays a beneficial role when it comes to acknowledging the judgmental thoughts that intensify negative emotion. Take the state of loneliness, for example. If you have the habit of piling on judgment when you feel a twinge of loneliness, it can grow into something that feels unbearable. If you rid yourself of the “add-ons” (I’m the only one who feels this way.

This is never going to change), you are left with the feeling itself, which you can then investigate.

“What’s behind the loneliness? Maybe boredom, self-loathing, feeling you have nothing to contribute, helplessness. You can see the different components and that every one of those parts is coming and going and shifting and changing,” explains Sharon Salzberg, a meditation teacher and author of Real Change: Mindfulness to Heal Ourselves and the World. “So the emotional state that felt so fixed is not.”

The practice of naming, or noting, can also be helpful in keeping our attention from getting lost in rambling thoughts. “By naming our emotional experience, we’ve begun to regulate our response in the brain,” explains Willard. “Is this anxious story I’m telling myself accurate and helpful right now, or just overwhelming? Once we name it, we can work with it.”

Regain Your Inner Balance Once you have noted the emotion you’re feeling (Grief? Loneliness? Confusion?), the next step is to explore where you feel it in your body (In the head? Stomach? An overall sense of discomfort?), and then soften the body around the physical sensation, explains Dr. Kristin Neff, an associate professor at the University of Texas at

Austin. “It’s what I refer to as ‘Soften, Soothe, Allow.’ Mindfulness allows us to let go of our resistance and helps us feel safe. We know that our emotions rise up, and if we don’t resist them, they tend to be digested, processed, and then just fade.”

The allowing, or accepting, our emotions is what gets at the root cause, says Dr. Judson Brewer, director of research and innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center and author of Unwinding Anxiety. “An emotion like sadness isn’t the issue; it’s how you relate to the sadness, and mindfulness helps with the relationship piece.” In fact, a 2018 study published in The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology examined the mental health of people who accept, rather than judge, their negative emotional responses to daily stressors. The research concluded that acceptance of negative emotions was linked to better mental health six months later, as well as greater resilience to daily stress.

Nurturing a sense of curiosity is an important element when facing difficult emotions. Brewer recommends substituting curiosity for whatever negative emotion you’re feeling. Ask yourself: “Am I holding on to this? ...resisting it?” This practice fosters curiosity, allowing you to explore whether it feels better to worry, in the case of anxiety, or to get curious about the feelings of worry. Then you can tap into what Brewer calls “the bigger, better offer”—because awareness of worrying feels better than worry itself.

While we know that it’s appropriate to feel sad in response to a tragedy and experience fear in times of threat, it’s often challenging to let go of the hold these emotions have on us. “What’s not appropriate is the perseveration of those emotions beyond the point where they may →

October 2022 mindful 39

peaceful mind

be useful,” says Davidson, “and this is an area where a mindfulness practice can help.” The brain circuits for regulating emotions, particularly disturbing emotions, are strengthened by mindfulness practice, according to Davidson, who contributed to a 2018 study looking at the impact of mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity.

Because there is no one-size-fits-all response to a negative emotion, you can experiment with what may bring you a sense of balance. Salzberg explains that in meditation, we are deepening calm and relaxation on the one hand, and on the other we’re increasing energy through interest (curiosity) and investigation, and those two things don’t necessarily occur in equal measure.

The experience of a challenging emotion can offer an opportunity to experiment with creating a sense of equilibrium. “If you’re feeling sensitive to something painful, the purpose is not to be crushed by it, but to have a balance of interest in response to the pain,” said Salzberg. “If you’re exhausted and overwhelmed, you can’t do that.”

It may be wise at such times to turn away, she says, to move from pain to something that’s easier. “The important thing is that you haven’t failed, you’re just trying out different things to help with balance. Out of the state of balance, we find insight and love.”

How to Turn Toward Painful Emotions If you find yourself feeling disconnected or lonely, loving-kindness meditation cultivates connection with ourselves and with others and can be a salve for a variety of emotions, including loneliness, fear, and anger. “With loving-kindness, you may be connecting with the memory of the person who helped you in the supermarket; they are real and an actual being, so it fosters a different sense of connection,” says Salzberg. “You don’t feel like you’re in a rigid world of us and them.”

Using phrases that offer wishes of happiness, health, safety, and ease—first toward yourself

40 mindful October 2022

and then to other people and all living things— loving-kindness practice can prompt you to see that you are not alone. “Just to be walking outside is to be surrounded by life and can act as a reminder that we are always connected,” says Kimberly Brown. “When we forget that, we get further disconnected from ourselves and each other.” While it’s not necessarily easy, engaging in loving-kindness practice is something you can always take with you, anywhere or anytime, to nurture a sense of connection. “In a public place like the subway, you could be very closed off and defended, or you could be quietly looking around and wishing phrases of loving-kindness—not to be nice, but to feel connected with each other and our good hearts and to wish everyone, including yourself, safety too.”

Another practice to add to your toolbox is selfcompassion, which can have a profound impact during a difficult experience. In a study on the psychological impact of COVID-19 on mental health, researchers found that self-compassion— including self-kindness, mindfulness, and social connection—is linked to an increased sense of peace and meaning. “Self-compassion is really a way of relating to any moment of difficulty or pain, being mindful of what you’re feeling, giving it space, remembering you aren’t alone, that there’s nothing wrong with you, and adding some emotional tone of friendliness, support, kindness, care,” says Dr. Kristin Neff. “A meditation practice can be helpful to develop self-compassion, but even people who don’t meditate can effectively use the skill of self-compassion.”

Neff believes that self-compassion can act as a much-needed shift in mindset when facing pain or difficult emotions, and that mindfulness is at its core. “Without awareness, you haven’t got anything to work with. You have to be able to turn toward uncomfortable emotions and feelings and be willing to experience what’s uncomfortable,” Neff explains. “For the compassion part, we’ve seen that our suffering feels so isolating and we tend to feel disconnected from others by our pain and think, ‘It’s just me.’ When you reframe it as ‘Hey, we’ve all been here,’ it reduces feelings of isolation and loneliness.” →

“Is this anxious story I’m telling myself accurate and helpful right now, or just overwhelming?”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MASTER1305 / ADOBESTOCK

DR. CHRIS WILLARD, PSYCHOLOGIST AND AUTHOR

m AUDIO Difficult Emotions Find a collection of guided meditations from teachers featured in these pages. mindful.org/ difficultemotions

42 mindful October 2022

PHOTOGRAPH BY MASTER1305 / ADOBESTOCK

peaceful mind

But awareness of our pain doesn’t necessarily mean connection to others. “If one of the three components of self-compassion— mindfulness, common humanity, and selfkindness—is missing, it will still be very challenging. You need all three,” says Neff. One of the easiest ways to prompt self-compassion is to ask yourself: “What would I say to a good friend who’s feeling what I'm feeling?” It’s about being a good friend to yourself, while recognizing that each experience is slightly different. One friend may come with a breakup, another got fired, and one has cancer, and the way you relate to each will differ. It’s the same with diverse emotions. “What you say and focus on might vary depending on what you need in the moment,” she adds.

When it comes to self-compassion, Neff suggests trying out different things: “What do I need for my self-compassion practice?” You can use mindfulness meditation to create space, supportive messages (You did the best you could; It’s OK to be imperfect), and physical touch, such as placing a hand on the heart or on the face in a supportive way. “Our thoughts and emotions are where the suffering is, and the body is a bit more tangible, so for me it’s most effective to get out of the head and into the body,” says Neff.

The physical touch also works on the level of the nervous system, she explains, increasing heart rate variability (linked to better heart health and stress management), decreasing inflammation, reducing cortisol, and reminding us that we are there for ourselves, literally, when we touch our body.

What Grief Can Teach You Tuning in to your experience in each moment can also help when dealing with grief. A balance between mindfulness of sensation, lovingkindness, and compassion—an element of which

is a willingness to be with your struggle and not look away—will again vary, depending on your subjective experience. “If grief has you feeling like your mind is scattered, I may suggest sitting down and using a practice that requires a gathering of attention, focusing on the breath to create relaxation and stillness and offering loving-kindness to slow down thoughts,” explains Kimberly Brown. “And if you can’t get out of bed, I may use mindfulness to have you pay attention to everything arising in the moment—the car horn, itch on your foot, weight of your body, sound of the birds.”

Grief can also bring up reactions, such as fear and anger. “We don’t often talk about what it looks like if you’re present when someone else is dying, and what feelings may arise,” says Brown.

If fear comes up, she recommends taking a few breaths to notice if you’re getting overwhelmed, and offering kindness to yourself in the moment, allowing in all the support you’ve had in your life, which can be steadying. Losing a pet may bring up a feeling of gratitude for all the things this animal brought to your life. And when anger accompanies grief, which is not uncommon, the antidote here is patience, explains Brown. “Most of the time with anger, you want to discharge it somewhere, use words or throw something. But if you sit with what’s coming up, you can hear hurt, or fear, and then you don’t have to act out of it.”

The idea that I can actually welcome the feeling of anxiety, or any other difficult emotion, sit with it, and allow it to hang around— knowing it will, with time, become less acute and likely fade away—has been life changing.

Mindfulness has gifted me a skill where fear no longer determines my emotional landscape; rather, I’m guided by curiosity and acceptance.

Life will continue to deliver its inevitable challenges and painful moments. And I, with my mindfulness as my inner superpower, will face them with an open hand. ●

October Fall 2022 2020 mindful 43

PRACTICE

Explore What You Need Right Now Powerful emotions aren’t just emotional events—they are rooted in our body, in our physiology. Here’s a tool to check in with yourself and help to discern what you need in difficult moments.

By Caren Osten Gerszberg While mindfulness practices are helpful in many circumstances and with many emotional states, there are limitations to what mindfulness alone can do.

“Mindfulness is not a panacea for everything,” says Dr. Chris Willard. “Thinking it can ‘fix’ you or the people around you can set you up for disappointment.”

It’s also important to exercise caution when very intense feelings are a part of your experience, suggests Dr. Richard Davidson. If emotions are really extreme—if you’re feeling overwhelmed or unable to self-regulate— mindfulness can make things worse and introduce harm, Davidson says. “That’s why in any contemplative tradition, there are many kinds of practices using different emphases at different points in time.”

The H.A.L.T. practice may be helpful to determine whether something other than mindfulness meditation is what you need when feeling difficult emotions, Willard suggests. It focuses on the basic physical needs that also affect our emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. H.A.L.T. is a way to explore what factors may be adding to an already challenging time, so that we can respond with a measure of insight and kindness toward ourselves.

The acronym is a great reminder to check in with yourself—your biological and emotional states—and stands for: H - hungry A – angry/anxious L - lonely T – tired

With this practice, you simply address each letter and ask yourself the following questions.

H

PHOTOGRAPH BY NEVODKA.COM / ADOBESTOCK

Am I hungry?

Would it be helpful to feed myself something healthy and nutritious rather than turn to junk food?

Willard explains that tuning in to your body’s hunger signals can impact impulse control and decision making.

A

Am I angry or anxious? What can I do about my mood? Strong and negative emotions activate our sympathetic nervous system and can affect our ability to think clearly and rationally. Some deep breathing and mild to moderate exercise—even a few times a week—can be effective to diminish negative emotions, says Willard.

L

Am I lonely?

Would some level of connection feel good to me in this moment? Is there a friend or family member I can reach out to for an emotional boost?

“Spending time around people is like medicine,” says Willard. “Even just being out in the world has health and mentalhealth impacts.”

So if you’re feeling lonely—an emotion most of us have felt in the last few years—contacting a loved one or even going to a place surrounded by people can remind you that yes, we are all connected.

T

Am I feeling tired? Have I been working too many hours or been getting too little sleep?

Fatigue affects our emotions, explains Willard, especially our degree of selfregulation. And we also know that there is no making up for lost hours of sleep. The answer may lie in creating daily habits (such as turning off screens a few hours prior to going to bed, and turning in and waking up at the same time as consistently as possible) that improve our sleep hygiene.

October 2022 mindful 45

46 mindful October 2022

ILLUSTRATION BY HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK

neuroscience

THE SCIENCE OF WANTING Dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain that helps motivate us to fulfill our basic needs, but in our modern age of plenty, it can also lead to overindulgence and addiction. So how can we find balance and contentment in an age of instant gratification?

BY KATHERINE ELLISON

neuroscience

A

nna Lembke’s gateway drug was Twilight, the young-adult vampire-romance novel.

“I was at my kids’ elementary school and heard a bunch of moms talking about it, and one of them was saying she couldn’t put it down,” Lembke recalls. “I thought, gosh, that sounds good! And it was true: It totally transported me. It was just the right drug at the right moment.”

The Stanford University psychiatrist was so enthralled by that first sweet hit that she went on to reread Twilight four more times, always trying, in vain, to replicate the high. In the meantime, she devoured every other vampire bodice-ripper she could find, soon moving on to erotic novels involving werewolves, fairies, witches, time travelers, soothsayers, and mind-readers.

Undeterred by tortured syntax, worn-out plot devices, stock characters, or typos, Lembke read instead of cooking, sleeping, socializing, or spending time with her husband and kids. It took a full year for her to hit bottom, catching herself awake at 2 a.m. on a weekday, reading Fifty Shades of Grey.

Of course Lembke should have known better.

Her day job, as chief of Stanford’s Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic, is all about helping other people cope with self-destructive cravings. Yet her journey down the kinky-lit rabbit hole provides the wry compassion that informs her book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. The question at its heart is custom-made for our restless, anxious era, namely: How can we find contentment in an age of instant gratification?

Addiction Is Everywhere Craving, addiction, and the damage they do are all around us these days—in stark relief to the

48 mindful October 2022

purported universal ideal of a lasting sense of balance, satisfaction, and ease. Nearly four in ten Americans say they’ve eaten too much or consumed unhealthy foods in the past month because of stress. Overall, more than three in ten premature American deaths are due to behaviors supposedly within our control, such as excessive drinking, smoking, and physical inactivity. “If you ever had enough money, sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, power, possessions, could you recognize it?” asks a bumper sticker on a car in my neighborhood. Dopamine Nation suggests many of us couldn’t.

Dopamine is a neurotransmitter—a chemical messenger in the brain—that has been hyped so much in recent years that some people sport tattoos of its chemical signature. It’s important to note that scientists agree that no single neurotransmitter is responsible for an emotion.

Human behavior is vastly more complicated than our yearning for simplicity would have it, and indeed, both Lembke and even the psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, co-author of the extravagantly titled The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, acknowledge their books oversimplify science to make their arguments.

There has also been lots of confusion about dopamine, which for years was falsely portrayed as “the pleasure molecule.” Scientists who study dopamine say it’s more about wanting than liking: It appears to play a key role in unleashing motivation, getting us out of bed and out the door to look for food and mates.

All this would suggest that dopamine makes the world go round. Yet by many accounts, it is also the root of much evil. Dopamine, says Lembke, helps explain why we so often yearn for that second piece of chocolate the instant we’ve swallowed the first. The first bite releases a surge of the chemical in our brains, but because →

ILLUSTRATION BY HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK

We are fully capable of taking back our contentment.

neuroscience

our brains tend toward homeostasis, we almost immediately afterward feel a deficit, which manifests as the sensation of craving.

The more we chase pleasure, the more we invite its opposite. That’s an old lesson from the Stoics, who warned against the hollowness of hedonism, and the Buddhists, who teach that attachment leads to suffering. Still, the ancient Stoics and Buddhists couldn’t have imagined what humanity was in for. Today, temptation is always within reach.

“One of the biggest risk factors for getting addicted to any drug is easy access to that drug,” Lembke writes. “When it’s easier to get a drug, we’re more likely to try it. In trying it, we’re more likely to get addicted.” Thus compulsive shoppers one-click their way to bankruptcy, while marijuana fans surrender to the ease of having vape pens, tinctures, gummies, and chocolates legally delivered to their doors.

But Lembke reserves special loathing for the all-too-ubiquitous smartphone, which she calls “the modern-day hypodermic needle, delivering digital dopamine 24/7 for a wired generation.”

Early in her career, she says, she shied away from focusing on addiction. Having grown up with an alcoholic father, she feared it would lead to countertransference—too personal a connection with her patients. Yet she says she soon found that some sort of addiction lay behind most of her patients’ troubles. “I wasn’t asking about addictions, and they weren’t telling me, so they weren’t getting better,” she recalls. “But once I started asking, they were eager to talk about it, and when we addressed the problem, their lives improved.”

ILLUSTRATION BY HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK

The Caveman Conundrum It’s a painful truth that has become a truism: Adapted for life on the empty savannah, our brains are sorely challenged by our modern abundance. In The Molecule of More, Lieberman and co-author Michael Long contend our “ancient brains” are being flummoxed in particular by the speedy progress of technology, so much that “we neglect emotion, empathy, the joy of being with people we care about,” they say. Our prehistoric ancestors were rewarded by dopamine bursts upon finding small clusters of ripe berries. But today the berries are everywhere, and we’re constantly bingeing—even

when the berries aren’t nutritious, a demonstrably bird-brained predicament.

In the 1940s, the Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen, who later won a Nobel Prize, played some cruel tricks on various species of birds. In one of his experiments, he found that songbirds would abandon their pale blue, gray-dappled eggs to nest, fruitlessly, on bigger, brighter, blue plaster eggs with black polka dots. He called the imitations “supernormal stimuli.” More than half a century later, the Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett extrapolated from Tinbergen’s studies to try to explain why humans might, for example, prefer pornography to real-life sex or spend billions on ever-more-sophisticated weapons of war to solve complex international problems. Any larger or sparklier version of something we innately desire seems to stimulate our hunger for it, potentially releasing more dopamine in the process. She titled her 2010 book Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose.

We might reasonably fear that the odds are stacked against us, wherever we stand on the apparently inevitable continuum of addiction. But Barrett and others argue that we’re fully capable of taking back our contentment.

“Humans have one momentous advantage over other animals,” she wrote in an email: “a giant brain capable of overriding simpler instincts when they lead us astray.” Many experts, including Lembke and Lieberman, argue that mindful awareness can help.

Some Secrets of Self-Control In Dopamine Nation, Lembke extols the virtues of awareness in general and “radical honesty” in particular. “Telling the truth about things large and small, especially when doing so exposes our foibles and entails consequences” is essential, she writes, to finding balance amid dangerous abundance. Even though it’s often not easy.

There was that time, for instance, when she lied to her kids about eating their chocolate Easter bunnies, and took three shame-filled days to confess. Telling lies comes naturally when we’re in the throes of addiction and craving, as she notes, but radical honesty holds us accountable and strengthens our ties with others.

Hardy relationships are vital for the next step toward a more balanced life, a process →

October 2022 mindful 51

neuroscience

With patient and deliberate practice, we can free ourselves from the painful trap of limitless wanting.

52 mindful October 2022

Still, opinions among experts in the field differ when it comes to prescribing abstinence for addiction treatment. Psychologist Judson Brewer, who specializes in habit change and mindfulness, finds that the majority of patients struggle and ultimately fail when they try to use willpower to maintain abstinence. “The main precipitants of relapse (e.g., stress, anxiety, etc.) make the willpower-based part of the brain (the prefrontal cortex) go offline, so it is even less dependable when we really need it,” he said in an email.

Likewise, Lembke warns that we can only get so far with “Just say no.” “I don’t think the trick is to try to stop yourself from wanting,” she says.

“To desire is to be human. Rather it’s to realize that our desire is infinite.”

“We have to learn to sit with that infinite desire and realize it never goes away,” Lembke says. “Once we accept this pain as an inevitable part of all of our lived experience, it mysteriously loosens its grip on us. Still there, but not there. Still surrounding us, but with a little room to move.”

Managing a Craving Mind While like so many of us, Lembke has trouble sitting still, she maintains a practice of early-morning, unplugged walks before she heads to her office. “I take it so for granted that mindfulness is necessary that I almost forgot to mention it in the book,” Lembke told me. “For me it’s a given that if we don’t have that mindful awareness, then we won’t be able to see that pleasure-pain balance.”

m COURSE Break Bad Habits Explore the science behind triggers, cravings, and habit loops— and how to build habits that serve you. mindful.org/ healthy-habits

ILLUSTRATION BY HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK

Lembke calls “pro-social shame.” Whereas your garden-variety destructive shame can make an addict feel cast out and alone—and more likely to lie and try to hide the behavior—pro-social shame conveys acceptance and forgiveness of honestly expressed human foibles. Lembke describes Alcoholics Anonymous as a model for pro-social shame, offering acceptance and empathy as incentives for radical honesty.

Once you’ve acknowledged your addiction, Lembke says, you can fight it with a form of abstinence she refers to as “self-binding.”

The Greek hero Odysseus provided an early example of this technique when he had himself tied to his ship’s mast, with his ears plugged, to prevent him from responding to the Sirens’ song by steering his ship off-course.

More recently, the novelist Jonathan Franzen reportedly wrote his 2001 mega-best-seller The Corrections while fighting potential distractions by wearing noise-canceling, pink-noiseemitting headphones on a modified computer with the Ethernet port sealed with superglue to block access to the internet. And in recent years, Silicon Valley techsters have been indulging in “dopamine fasts” during which they ignore their devices, and even in some cases also food and music, for periods of time.

They do so in hopes of—no surprise here— improving productivity, even as there’s no clinical evidence that such fasts are affecting their dopamine levels.

Lembke says she counsels her patients who are struggling with addiction to abstain from their chosen drug for at least one month, adding that this was how she finally conquered her cravings for vampire novels.

neuroscience

Mindfulness is particularly important at the start of a dopamine fast, she says. If you’re truly abstaining from your drug of choice, all the painful emotions it helped you avoid come streaming back into your brain, obliging you to find another way of tolerating them. With mindful awareness, “the pain is still there, but somehow transformed,” she writes, “seeming to encompass a vast landscape of communal suffering, rather than being wholly our own.”

There is a growing body of evidence showing that mindfulness may help people navigate cravings and maintain recovery from addiction, including substance use disorder. Yet there’s a dearth of research showing that a mindfulness practice provides benefits specifically related to dopamine. In what may be the only even remotely relevant study, published in Cognitive Brain Research in 2001, a group of researchers compared PET scans of the brains of eight Scandinavian meditation teachers involved in two different states of consciousness. In one trial, the participants actively performed a Yoga Nidra meditation. In another, they simply closed their eyes while listening to someone speak. The results were impressive, albeit hard to parse: While meditating, the teachers on average released 65% more dopamine.

“This is the first in vivo demonstration of an association between endogenous neurotransmitter release and conscious experience,” the authors proudly wrote. But if any other scientists have tried to replicate this small study in the past two decades, they haven’t yet published the results. It’s also hard to know how to interpret this finding. For one thing, there’s a big difference between mindfulness and Yoga Nidra, a specific technique to achieve a state between sleeping and waking. It may also, at least initially, seem counterintuitive that the meditation teachers could enjoy that burst of dopamine while retreating from the outer world of infinite desire. What should we make of it, given dopamine’s fame as a signal of wanting?

Could the meditation teachers, under the PET scans, be secretly longing for a snack?

“It seems like a paradox, doesn’t it?” agrees Lieberman. But he has a ready explanation. As he describes in The Molecule of More, and as neuroscientists who specialize in studying dopamine confirm, dopamine has different effects in the brain depending on where it is acting. Urges and cravings are a function of dopamine’s influence →

October 2022 mindful 53

Q&A

TECH FOR THE SOCIAL GOOD Aden Van Noppen, founder of compassionate tech company Mobius, answers our questions about how technology hijacks attention and how we can foster a healthier relationship with our screens.

WHAT MOTIVATED YOU TO FOCUS ON TECHNOLOGY THAT’S USED FOR GOOD AND SOCIAL WELL-BEING?

Q

A

When the 2016 election happened and it was clear how much technology was dividing our country, I decided to focus on the intersection of my work with tech for social good and my firsthand understanding of going on meditation retreat and putting aside technology. The experience of being with myself, being present with what is around me and tasting that deliciousness, offers a contrast to what it’s like to constantly be plugged in.

On the last day of a retreat at the Insight Meditation Society, when people were asking questions about integrating back into the world, a primary concern people had was, “I’m terrified of my phone, and I’m terrified of my email, and I’m terrified of these technologies that bring me out of presence.”

WHAT ARE SOME WAYS TECH AND SOCIAL MEDIA INTERRUPT OUR PRESENCE? At every level, employees at these companies are being rewarded for doing whatever they can to keep us on the products, keep us engaged with the screen. Another piece of it is the way that our brains work and that what we get hooked on can be

things that are really unhealthy for us.

In order to value our well-being over the fastest route to a profit, these companies need to also measure and incentivize design choices that actually prioritize our well-being, even if that means unplugging.

MOBIUS IS A COMPANY COMMITTED TO HELPING CREATE A WORLD WHERE TECHNOLOGY FOSTERS LIBERATION AND THRIVING FOR ALL. WHAT DOES THAT LOOK LIKE? What we found is that there is a lot of good work happening in the big tech companies, but it’s like swimming upstream, so we shifted to focusing on people who are creating new solutions. We started to place more of our focus around supporting people who have been most marginalized by the existing tech sector. People who often have the knowledge and wisdom around thriving don’t necessarily see a seat at the table for themselves.

WHAT CAN WE DO AS CONSUMERS TO SUPPORT A MORE HEALTHY TECH LANDSCAPE? Technology policy is a really important piece of that puzzle. People can help push different policies forward by writing to their representatives.

A lot of people also don’t know that most of these companies have a well-being or responsible innovation team. Working on these teams is a good way to get involved.

There are also more and more alternative platforms for us to be on, whether it’s social media platforms or video call platforms that are really built with ethics at the center. It takes some research to figure out which those are, but they need our support. Marco Polo is a great one for keeping in touch with loved ones, and Whereby is another option for video conferencing.

WHAT CAN WE DO AS INDIVIDUALS TO CULTIVATE HEALTHIER RELATIONSHIPS WITH OUR TECH AND SOCIAL MEDIA? So much of it is taking a moment to breathe. The impulse to check my phone is a red flag for me in terms of my mindfulness practice. I ask myself, “What am I trying to avoid?”

“What am I not looking at?” Our use of technology in and of itself can become a mindfulness practice, and that can be really, really powerful.

One other practice that I have started doing before opening my computer is taking a moment to do a brief centering practice, like a body scan. Sometimes it’s just two breaths, but honestly, it’s been really transformative to just take that moment.

—Ava Whitney-Coulter

ILLUSTRATION BY HURCA! / ADOBESTOCK

neuroscience

on the mesolimbic pathway, which includes the nucleus accumbens, important in pleasure and reward. But dopamine also acts on the mesocortical pathway, which involves the more recently evolved prefrontal cortex, which is key to more adult sorts of behavior, such as planning and decision-making.

Hence, while dopamine might contribute to your wasting time stalking your old boyfriend on Instagram, it might also fuel the part of your brain that can visualize yourself cultivating healthier habits. This may suggest those meditation teachers were experiencing a burst of impulse control, which would square with several studies suggesting that some sort of mindfulness practice can fortify attention as well as some measures of self-control. “It’s like exercising a muscle,” notes Lieberman, citing a familiar paradigm.

Once again, however, it’s complicated. Some recent studies support the promise of mindfulness in combating addiction by reducing craving and improving mood, at least in the short term.

Yet there is still no conclusive research-based evidence of long-term benefits, while some research has been discouraging. A 2019 report in the journal Nature said a study of 105 participants introduced to meditation with an eightweek course in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and a smaller group of long-term meditators showed no improvement on a basic measure of impulsivity, a “Go/No-go” task. (The participants had to push the spacebar on a keyboard when they heard a certain syllable but abstain for other sounds.) There was also no significant improvement on a questionnaire that asked respondents to score themselves on matters such as whether they did things without thinking or were restless at the theater or at lectures.

Those findings were a surprise, said the neuroscientist and mindfulness expert Richard J. Davidson, one of the authors, although he added that addictive behavior is multifaceted and that “there may be other mechanisms by which meditation will be beneficial.” By increasing awareness, for instance, a mindfulness practice may help people become more conscious of their cravings in time to substitute other behavior—like more mindfulness—rather than indulge them. Context is also key, Davidson

noted, adding that research is still in progress.

An ongoing study may determine if people battling addictions can be helped with a GPS program providing a beep of their phones to remind them to practice mindfulness if they approach a place where they’ve previously indulged.

Mindfulness alone is no panacea for addiction in particular or the search for contentment in general, Davidson warns. His nonprofit, Healthy Minds Innovations, Inc., has created an app that schools users in what he describes as the “four pillars of the science of training of the mind,” namely: awareness, insight, connection, and purpose.

Scientists remind us, as they do, that more and better research to understand both dopamine and mindfulness still needs to be done.

Meanwhile, Lembke and others keep providing anecdotal evidence of what teachers have tried to teach us for centuries: that with patient and deliberate practice we can free ourselves from the painful trap of limitless wanting. To be sure, if mindfulness can help our ancient brains evolve along with the multiplying lures all around us, it might spare humanity all sorts of problems—not least losing sleep over Fifty Shades of Grey. ●

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Katherine Ellison is a Pulitzer-Prize-winning investigative journalist and author most recently of Mothers & Murderers: A True Tale of Love, Lies, Obsession...and Second Chances. She lives in northern California.

October 2022 mindful 55

ILLUSTRATION BY SISAPAGI / ADOBESTOCK

compassion

The Gentle Art of Letting Go Our perception is always colored by our experiences and emotions from the past, and this keeps us stuck in cycles of tension and pain.

To realign with our intention and become active creators of our own lives, we need to begin the process of letting go.

By Yung Pueblo

October 2022 mindful 57

t

here is a common misconception that the real you is only seen through your unfiltered thoughts and words, the you who emerges without any thoughtful processing.

You hold up your immediate reaction on a pedestal.

As a result, you believe that it defines your identity and reveals the core of who you are. In reality, this is completely untrue. The real you is not your initial reaction. The real you is your response that comes after your reaction. The real you is the one who can weave out of the grasp of the past and produce an authentic response that is based in the present.

Your initial reaction is your past revealing itself.

Whether or not you are aware of it, how you felt before has been largely bottled up inside you. Your perception will measure everything you encounter in life today by its similarities to what you have felt in the past. If you see or feel something associated with a negative reaction, you will react in the same way in the present, even if

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Yung Pueblo is the pen name of the writer Diego Perez and means “young people.” The name is meant to convey that humanity is entering an era of remarkable growth and healing.

58 mindful October 2022

your assessment of what is happening is exaggerated and incorrect. For the vast majority of us, our perception is completely colored by our past and our reactions seek to repeat themselves endlessly.

The mind moves so rapidly that it feels as if we are being authentic, when in reality we are letting our past experiences dictate how we feel in the present.

Sometimes when we are triggered, we feel justified in expressing our anger by yelling or by loudly acting out our frustration, but this is not a sign of authenticity.

This just reveals that we are caught in a cycle where our minds are overloaded with tension that keeps trying to feed its own fire. This is why slowing down and pausing will help us regain our footing in the present, process what is happening and align our actions with how we want to show up in the world. This is a much greater signifier of who you actually are than the random things your mind blurts out. Let go of the idea that who you are is whatever you impulsively do and recenter yourself on the fact that authenticity is a quality that requires strengthening and cultivation. Also accept that your authentic self can change and mature over time—you are not stuck in old ideas, patterns, and identities.

Being intentional is the same as being authentic.

Staying in alignment with

ILLUSTRATION BY SISAPAGI / ADOBESTOCK

compassion

the river of life wants to move you toward embracing change.

your values and with the version of yourself you are cultivating is the fundamental aspect of authenticity. Without intention, you would be aimless. Through intention, you reveal your truth. To simply let past self dominate your present-day thoughts, words, and actions is to miss out on fully living your life. Doing this means you are stuck in a loop where you are repeatedly replaying the past and strengthening patterns that don’t necessarily support your happiness.

Reinforcing the past keeps you stagnant, which may be easy in the moment because the past is familiar, but ultimately does not serve you well. The river of life wants to move you toward embracing change.

Letting Go Takes Time To be able to chip away at these old reactions that keep coming up and chart a new course in our behavior is a long road to travel. Often, the conditioning that we accumulate becomes dense and packs into the mind like hardened sediment from times long ago. Unconsciously, we carry these thick layers of concrete as patterns that keep affecting us in the present. It is completely possible to heal and let go, but it serves us best to be realistic about how much →

October 2022 mindful 59

if the pain was deep you will have to let it go many times

ILLUSTRATION BY SISAPAGI / ADOBESTOCK

compassion

we carry inside us and how long it will take to fully rewire the mind. To be able to take on a fresh perspective and reframe old problems does not happen quickly. Healing is not possible without patience. And we must accept that letting go is a gradual process.

Letting go is not a onetime event; it is a habit that requires consistent repetition to become strong.

Sometimes the reaction to the pain is so deep that we have to observe and release the tension repeatedly to fully cleanse the wound.

Patterns for specific types of behaviors can be so firmly rooted that during our healing process we may feel that the same issues keep coming up for us to work on. We may even feel like we aren’t making progress because of these persistent patterns, but in reality we are just getting the opportunity to release deeper layers of the same material.

The purpose of letting go is not to erase emotions, but to acknowledge their presence and transform your relationship to them. Before I began healing, my fear was that the sadness would always remain, but once I started embracing the truth of impermanence it became clear that, yes, the sadness had emerged and may stay around for some time, but it simply would not last forever. Understanding that

it was only passing through made it more tolerable and less of a factor as I navigated my daily life. Being able to let go while a tough emotion is passing through helps us be OK with not being OK. Letting go reaches deeper levels when your observation of what is happening inside you is done with total acceptance and when you remember that every part of life is impermanent. Especially in the mind, adding more tension to the tension that is already there will not make things better.

When tension is met with unconditional acceptance, it has the space it needs to naturally unfold and release. Unloading and facing the mental weight of past hurt is never easy, but it is possible, especially when you feel ready for a great transformation.

When you put yourself through the process of letting go, you gain greater access to the here and now.

Ultimately, letting go is a mental state of clarity, where you no longer cause yourself extra suffering.

Understanding that you can benefit from letting go is critical, but the next step is finding your practice so that you can start your own deep healing work. Wanting to let something go and having the tools to support you in this process are two very different things. ●

From the book Lighter: Let Go of the Past, Connect with the Present, and Expand the Future by Yung Pueblo. Copyright © 2022 by Diego Perez Lacera. Published by Harmony Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. All rights reserved.

October 2022 mindful 61

INSIGHT

5 Things to Consider When Letting Go

A common fear is that letting go might make you passive. We are often so driven by our pain and fear that it is hard to conceive of any other way of existing. The reality is that letting go will not make you dull, and it certainly will not turn you into a pushover. What it does do is reconfigure your mind so that you are no longer carrying the heavy weight of the past into the present. If you are seeking to reclaim your power, one of the essential steps is realizing how much of your power you have given up to the hurt of the past and your fears of the future. Here are five things to consider when letting go:

62 mindful October 2022

ILLUSTRATION BY SISAPAGI / ADOBESTOCK

Reclaim your power and stop doubling down on the past.

The heavy mental weight that you carry consumes a lot of your energy.

Resisting, suppressing, or fighting your emotions on a regular basis quietly eats up your reserves. Living in a constant inner battle and treating yourself like an enemy push you far away from living at your most optimal level. Any mental tension will automatically consume energy, and when the added tension is removed, you’ll feel a new vibrancy for life.

Letting go actually sharpens the mind by cleansing your perception. Letting go helps you see the moment you are in without the lens of the past dominating the way you perceive reality. A lighter mind and clearer eyes make space for wiser decision making. Your ability to act intelligently and authentically improves greatly the more you let go.

Letting go does not mean you give up on your goals. When you are able to relinquish the past and stop fearing the future, you gain a greater sense of awareness in the present moment, which will help you focus and think more effectively.

Your best strategy to attain your goals will be more accessible when the weight of the past is no longer limiting your creativity. Letting go of craving quick results helps you get comfortable with the process of accomplishing new and difficult things. If you want to attain something great, you need to be ready for the long journey and able to adjust your strategy along the way.

Letting go does not erase the tough things that have happened. The key is to release the heavy attachments you have to these thoughts. The memories will still appear from time to time, even after deep healing has happened, but you know your effort has made a difference when you no longer react to these old memories with the same intensity as before. As a sign of victory, you can let tough thoughts and emotions pass without allowing them to dominate your mind or control your actions.

Letting go does not make you coldhearted. Letting go actually decreases self-centeredness and allows love to come forward much more unconditionally and with greater strength. It is hard to love yourself and others well when your mind is consumed with tension and craving control. ●

October 2022 mindful 63

Q&A

The Power of Lightening Up Yung Pueblo talks with managing editor Stephanie Domet about how acceptance helps us move forward and why he still sees himself as a student.

STEPHANIE DOMET: You talk a lot about self-acceptance in this book.

Why is it such a powerful force?

YUNG PUEBLO: If you really want to open the door to wisdom or open the door to peace, it all begins with acceptance. And I find that in my daily life, or even when I’m meditating, things get rough when I’m not accepting.

Just accepting what is can help you flow with life a lot better than getting tossed around. But acceptance doesn’t mean that you’re going to lay back and let whatever happen to you— you’re just accepting what’s actually happening in the moment. And then through that acceptance, you get a lot higher quality of information so that you can then act, and act skillfully, so that you can maneuver the situation in a good way.

And it’s tough because the habit pattern of attachment is so thick and we want to control things. But the great lesson of being alive is that you have to learn how to go with the flow and accept what’s happening for you to even, like, have a chance at happiness.

Can you take me back to a time that you personally felt lighter? What do you remember?

After I meditate, and that’s what I wanted to highlight and what I like about the title Lighter—you know,

64 mindful October 2022

like I’m not enlightened or anything like that, but I feel lighter and this is good, I feel like I’m moving in the right direction. And I think that’s something that all human beings can share. The potential of enlightenment is inside of every single human being.

But it’s hard, right? I’ve met some people who are incredible, who are incredibly wise, but to get there, it takes a lot of work. But what we can do is get ourselves to a place where we feel lighter than before because we’re carrying so much heavy stuff.

Last time we talked, you told me you’re not a meditation teacher.

You stand by that?

Yeah, I do stand by that. I really enjoy being a student. One thing I noticed when I would have events, even though I would position myself as a writer, too quickly when it’s one person on a stage and 300 people watching, the dynamics become a little strange. I’m grateful to the people who get a lot from my work and the symbiotic relationship that we have with each other—I’m supporting them and they’re supporting me. I think it’s quite beautiful, but I don’t think it’s good when people sort of put me on a pedestal, like, I’m not better than you dude. I’m struggling with all the same stuff that you’re struggling with.

I feel sadness. You feel sadness. I have

mental tension, you feel mental tension. And I’d much rather put myself in positions where we’re existing in a circle and we’re in the same place as opposed to someone on stage and someone watching. I don’t think I’m special like that.

So what do you learn from your audience?

I get so inspired. I get messages from people all the time who have been really impacted by the books that I’ve written. And I’m grateful, because part of the challenge I give to myself is may I write something that’s useful, not even something that’s artistically beautiful, but useful. And hearing about people overcoming divorce or the loss of a family member or friend and they find some solace in the books that I’ve written—I can’t really ask for more.

Why is that service orientation so important to you?

Oh, service is everything. You’re not going to move forward on the path of liberation without being deeply ingrained in service. It helps develop that quality of selflessness and that quality of loving-kindness. Living compassion and trying to help people when you can—especially if you’ve been really fortunate in life—it’s a duty. ●

ILLUSTRATION BY SISAPAGI / ADOBESTOCK

BOOKMARK THIS read…listen…stream

by AMBER TUCKER, AVA WHITNEY-COULTER, STEPHANIE DOMET, BARRY BOYCE, and KYLEE ROSS

GENERATION DREAD Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis Britt Wray • Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Feel it all. Connect inward to transform oneself. Connect outward to transform the world.

These are Britt Wray’s reminders (and the aptly titled sections of her book) as we “shore ourselves up against what’s to come” in facing the climate crisis. At a glance, these calls to action may make mitigating eco-anxiety and effecting change seem like individual pursuits, akin to recycling our way out of planetary disaster. But Wray, a writer and broadcaster who holds a PhD in science communication, explores how tending to each of these calls to (inner) action is indeed connected to collective action.

Wray’s voice is refreshing and rooted in the realities of the world we live in. Naming a fear many of us struggle with, that “the world is ending,” she describes living in a wildfire zone as part of her way into the terrifying yet hopeful awareness that “life is by nature impermanent and in a constant state of flux…we are not in full control.” Accepting this doesn’t mean that we should despair, but that our decision-making can be guided by a clearer perspective.

A few key takeaways from the very first chapter: Climate anxiety is especially visible where racial and class privilege intersect. Colonialism is inextricably linked to the climate crisis. But Wray is clear: “This book is not a manual for how to take effective climate and environmental action.” Instead, it’s an ode to changemakers who are driven by emotion. It’s a nod to the truth that “lasting change is propelled by inner clarity, meaning, and purpose.”

Most of all, it’s an exercise in balancing hope, fear, and grief to support us in finding a way forward. – KR

66 mindful October 2022

MIND & BOWL A Guide to Mindful Eating & Cooking Joey Hulin • Laurence King Publishing

Mind & Bowl was first written as a pocket guide for guests who practiced with Joey Hulin on retreat. Now expanded into a more comprehensive guide with a handbook feel, readers get an easy-to-follow roadmap for creating their own mindful eating practice. Each chapter addresses questions beginners may have about mindful eating and suggestions for

taking a closer look at our relationship with food and our role in mass consumption.

Hulin’s tips and practices are immediately applicable to daily life with lots of room to tailor anything to each of our experiences or needs. As an added bonus, the last chapter is dedicated to plant-based, one-bowl recipes to cook, share, and savor. – KR

PAUSE, REST, BE Stillness Practices for Courage in Times of Change Octavia Raheem • Shambhala

“Now is no ordinary moment in time,” writes Octavia Raheem in her book’s introduction. “Now is a place of startling individual and collective endings. Now is the space before something else becomes.” Through the lens of three restorative yoga postures, she offers poetic and compassionately grounded reflections on endings (Corpse Pose), the space in-between (Side-Lying

Pose), and new beginnings (Child’s Pose). Raheem encourages us to slow down and be present with the emotions and stress that arise during times of transition and transformation. Detailed instructions and photos guide us into each pose, and her personal stories and prompts invite us to root deeply into our own insight and courage within the storminess of change. – AT

read, listen, stream

TUNE IN TO

THE ANATOMY OF ANXIETY Understanding and Overcoming the Body’s Fear Response Ellen Vora, MD • Harper Wave

In The Anatomy of Anxiety, Ellen Vora does not promise the most effective life hacks for more peace and calm. She invites the reader in, offers an honest and uncomplicated account of the ever-changing and incomplete knowledge we have about anxiety, and then asks the reader to trust themselves and go deeper. “Whether it’s the consequence of our habits or a missive from our inner psyche, anxiety is not the final diagnosis, but rather the beginning of our inquiry,” she writes.

This book offers a reframing of anxiety not as something that is wrong with those who suffer from it, but as our body’s “check engine” light that often points to another cause—like inflammation due to diet, a thyroid condition, unhealthy habits, or a strong sense of justice struggling to cope in an unjust world. “In other words,” Vora writes, “physical health is mental health.” That doesn’t mean that lessening our anxiety is always going to be a simple matter of cutting a certain kind of food from our diet, though. In fact, it will be much more complicated for most, she says, but listening to the body is the foundation for deeper healing.

Each chapter of the book explains a different type of anxiety, how this kind of anxiety has been perceived by academics and societies throughout the centuries, the current science, and possible avenues to discover and treat the root cause. Vora is a holistic psychiatrist with a broad background of training in conventional medicine and psychotherapy, yoga, hypnosis, acupuncture, and more. “I consider the whole view of my patients’ lives—from what they eat; to how they sleep; to the quality of their relationships; to where they find meaning, purpose, and refuge in life.” As anxiety can show up in unique ways for each person, she offers readers a smorgasbord of information and options that reflect her eclectic background. If we can sit with the discomfort, listen deeply, and stay present, we may be able to take our anxiety as a nudge toward re-alignment. – AWC

mindful Visit mindful.org for featured meditations from Aden Van Noppen, Mark Coleman, and Boo Boafo 3 GUIDED MEDITATIONS TO FIND BALANCE DURING MOMENTS OF PANIC 1

Find Stability

with Aden Van Noppen

The breath is the most common anchor used in meditation because it’s always with us. Our inhales and exhales may change in cadence or depth, but we can rest in assurance that another cycle will follow. In this meditation on impermanence, Aden Van Noppen reminds us that when the outside world feels overwhelming, we can often find inner calm by coming back to the breath.

2

Be in the Moment

with Mark Coleman

The breath may be the most common anchor in mindfulness practice, but it’s not our only option.

“Listening is a beautiful doorway to the present moment, a tuning in to what’s here,” Mark Coleman says. Whether your soundscape is comprised of birdsong and waterfalls or the hustle and bustle of city life, this guided nature meditation invites you to let go of worries and plans. Instead, attune your attention to the soundtrack of the present moment.

3

Connect With Your Brave Heart with Boo Boafo

Moving our bodies can often help shift focus away from our busy minds by releasing pent-up jitters and helping us reset with a bit more clarity and ease. We don’t have to run a marathon: A walk around the block or a full-body stretch can shake things up enough to help us find calm when we feel overwhelmed. Tap into the wisdom of your body with this 20-minute practice to nurture, strengthen, and give courage to your fearless heart—no yoga mat or exercise clothes required. – AWC

October 2022 mindful 67

PODCAST

reviews

I define boundaries as clear limits...so that you can keep yourself and your relationships safe and healthy.

INNER GREEN DEAL PODCAST Episode: “What role do mindsets play in sustainability and climate action?”

Christine Wamsler, Professor at Lund University Centre for Sustainability Studies, joins host Liane Stephan for a hopeful conversation on how mindsets (cognitive, emotional, and relational capacities) can support sustainable climate action. Why are mindsets relevant to climate action? “The simple answer is they can be seen as so-called ‘deep leverage points’ for change toward sustainability,” says Wamsler. Initial results

from Wamsler’s research projects identified five skills that could support transformation toward sustainability: openness, self-awareness, relational awareness, compassion, and empathy.

“These qualities inform our view of ourselves, our life, our society, nature, and the world around us,” says Wamsler.

“So these perspectives, ultimately, underpin and inform our life choices, actions, and interactions.” – KR

WE CAN DO HARD THINGS WITH GLENNON DOYLE Episode: “Why Grief—Like Love— Is Forever With Marisa Renee Lee” Marisa Renee Lee is a grief advocate, entrepreneur, and author of the upcoming book Grief is Love. In this conversation with Untamed author Glennon Doyle, she names her own experiences with loss, and how grieving requires that we let go of expectations and control. “Because grief is forever, and because it’s also highly unpredictable, I have to be pre-

pared to regularly extend grace to myself, and…to other people who deserve it when they don’t show up the way that I expect them to,” says Renee Lee. For those navigating grief, and those wondering how best to support someone grieving, Renee Lee offers honesty, empathy, and the understanding that grief (like love) is a lifelong part of who we are. – AT

MEDITATIVE STORY Episode: “How I Found Kindness as My Compass with Sharon Salzberg’” For those who love to learn by listening to personal stories, Meditative Story offers both first-person narratives and guided meditations. This episode features Sharon Salzberg telling how she came to meditation as a 17-yearold who’d suffered a lot, in a family that never talked about suffering. Salzberg tells her story with humility and humor,

68 mindful October 2022

and host Rohan Gunatillake periodically invites listeners to reflect along with Salzberg, and at the end, leads a meditation in the style of S.N. Goenka, Salzberg’s first formal meditation teacher.

Salzberg speaks movingly of the challenges and rewards of self-kindness, which, she says, is still her hardest mountain to climb. – SD

THE BOOK OF BOUNDARIES Melissa Urban • The Dial Press

That subtitle makes a heck of a promise, but for people-pleasers who struggle with the idea that “No, thank you,” can be a complete sentence, The Book of Boundaries, by Whole 30 cofounder Melissa Urban delivers a compassionate, practical, relatable roadmap to finding, articulating, and holding boundaries. Urban has become known for this work on social media, where she regularly offers mini-scripts for expressing boundaries (from I’m not drinking right now to Please don’t talk to me about my body or my food consumption to I won’t be letting inappropriate jokes in the workplace slide anymore), and here she expands on that work. There’s some introductory talk about her own journey to boundary setting, which began as she struggled with drug addiction, and a chapter on what boundaries are, how to notice when you might need to set one, and the feelings that might arise when you consider holding your boundaries.

Most helpfully, Urban organizes her framework into relationships—with parents, bosses, coworkers, spouses, friends, ourselves. Within those relationships she offers clear language for communicating about all manner of situations where we may need to hold space for ourselves— from unsolicited health or parenting advice to the expectation that we’ll check our work email while on vacation.

Urban’s writing is deeply hospitable—she writes with confidence, humor, and enough selfdeprecation to keep it real. She understands that for many of us for whom boundary-setting is not intuitive, a script makes it possible to actually start to do the work. While this book may not change your life (Urban is confident to a fault, perhaps!), it can certainly help you change your approach. And who knows where that might lead you? — SD

read, listen, stream

THE MINDFUL LAW STUDENT A Mindfulness in Law Practice Guide Scott L. Rogers • Edward Elgar Publishing

While the high stakes and complexity of practicing law cultivate an outward focus, Scott Rogers affirms that “the mindful lawyer is as attuned to themselves and their internal experience as they are to their client’s.” In this richly informative yet accessible book, Rogers—a teacher and leader with decades of experience at the intersections of law practice and mindfulness—gives law students the tools to develop inner skills that will serve them throughout their careers. In the book’s three parts, he explores the inherent abilities

honed by the practice (attention, relaxation, awareness, plus personal leadership); related aspects of well-being such as solitude, connection, and movement, and how to enhance listening, negotiation, judgment, and creativity through mindfulness.

Weaving in tailored exercises, the science behind them, and a host of interdisciplinary examples from lawyers and famed thinkers, Rogers grounds mindfulness not simply as a series of practices, but as a highly relevant and liberating way of navigating the world. – AT

TIMELESS • AUTHENTIC • TR ANSFOR M ATIONAL

Discover newfound freedom in life’s ever-changing flow of endings and beginnings with the wise words of Pema Chödrön, beloved Buddhist nun and bestselling author of When Things Fall Apart.

Essential reading for parents of grade schoolers through teens experiencing bullying, social exclusion, and teasing—with uplifting stories from young adults who have navigated those experiences and triumphed.

YOU ARE NOT A SH*TTY PARENT How to Practice Self-Compassion and Give Yourself a Break Carla Naumburg, PhD • Workman

A comprehensive and userfriendly guidebook including over 50 Ayurvedic health and wellness practices for children, ages 3–16, with healing plans

In Carla Naumburg’s bestseller How to Stop Losing Your Sh*t with Your Kids, she explored the triggers that cause us to snap so quickly, what’s happening neurologically behind those triggers, and how we can use mindful awareness practices to counteract the rapid onset of a sh*tstorm. Here she turns her attention to what we think of ourselves and why we beat up on ourselves so badly—in this case, for our supposed lousy parenting. During the early stages of the pandemic,

households turned into pressure cookers, and in Naumburg’s telling, “isolation, judgment, and self-contempt” buried parents right and left.

In nine short, easy-to-digest chapters she lays out how we get ourselves into states of self-loathing and hurricanes of stinkin’ thinkin’, and offers an antidote: self-compassion.

The pictures we paint of ourselves are not real, and with a little bit of attention, and a lot of caring, we can learn to be less harsh parents to ourselves. – BB

October 2022 mindful 69

for common ailments—co-written by an Ayurveda specialist with over two decades of experience in pediatric health.

Self-talk matters, but what methods of building healthy self-talk actually work? This how-to guide shares evidencebased techniques to go from being your own worst critic to your own best friend.

SHAMBHALA.COM

read, listen, stream

HEAL YOUR WAY FORWARD The Co-Conspirator’s Guide to an Anti-Racist Future Myisha T. Hill • Row House

Myisha T. Hill believes that transforming harmful systems and preventing future harm begins with healing ourselves. In 2018, Hill—a mental health activist, speaker, and entrepreneur— started Check Your Privilege, a global movement supporting people in becoming anti-racist.

With Heal Your Way Forward, she provides a roadmap guiding white “co-conspirators” to do the inner work of uncovering for themselves what allyship means. “When we choose to heal,” Hill writes, “we recognize the journey as a life calling, and when we heal ourselves, we help heal humanity.”

Hill pinpoints that many aspiring allies get stuck and end up “ghosting” (abandoning, as in dating lingo) our anti-racist journey, in part due to the shame we feel over our complicity in systems of harm. She emphasizes that the priority isn’t to become “perfect” allies overnight, but rather to accept our discomfort as an inevitable part of our growth. “That’s the call to this work; the embodiment, the practice, the giving yourself grace to get things wrong is how we heal our way forward and toward liberation.” Liberatory practice includes opening up to our grief, too: It is emotional vulnerability that lets us deeply connect with others.

And this often difficult inner work is crucial if we’re to unlearn performative anti-racism (such as the most visible activism in 2020 and 2021) and commit to this journey with authenticity, for the long term.

Among the contemplative tools Hill recommends are walking meditation, self-compassion, and radical listening, along with the reflection questions at the end of each chapter. And, she tells us, “Living into the work is essentially a journey into mindfulness.” As in mindfulness, our anti-racism healing journey invites us to accept that our path forward will not be linear or predictable. It’s a path of opening to many perspectives, many truths, instead of fighting to narrowly define and control. “As we begin to trust nuance and messiness,” Hill writes, “we make space to allow the middle to be a place of uncharted territory that helps us to lean in to our discomfort and trust the unknown.” – AT

70 mindful October 2022

BODY AWARE Rediscover Your Mind-Body Connection, Stop Feeling Stuck, and Improve Your Mental Health with Simple Movement Practices Erica Hornthal • Penguin Random House “If awareness is the key to change,” writes dance/ movement therapist Erica Hornthal, “then movement is the catalyst for awareness.”

This is the foundation on which Body Aware stands.

Hornthal writes of working with elderly clients, some of whom are asleep when she arrives. Soon, she has them sharing about the ways they’re moving—breathing, sneezing, chewing, hugging, laughing. All of it is movement, and all of it matters—so you’re invited to start where you are. The

book is divided into three parts—“Exploring How You Move,” “Movement Is a Catalyst for Change,” which explores how movement affects mood, and “Transformation through Movement.”

Throughout, Hornthal offers “Body Aware Breaks”—invitations to notice your body in the moment, and “Movement Rx,” with directions, recommended “dosages,” and likely side effects (generally positive). Hornthal’s thinking about movement is fresh, and her lens on how we move is wide and welcoming. – SD

AMERICAN DETOX The Myth of Wellness and How We Can Truly Heal Kerri Kelly • North Atlantic Books

In American Detox, wellness activist and community organizer Kerri Kelly offers a raw, honest, and compassionate exploration of the hard truths inherent in the booming American wellness industry.

She holds up a mirror, analyzing the foundations the industry is built upon (colonialism, capitalism, the American Dream), who it’s accessible to, who it excludes, and how it feeds on a society in turmoil and individuals socialized to seek validation and perfection. But she isn’t just

telling us all this. With a deep emphasis on real wellness as a collective, cultural endeavor, she walks her talk with vulnerability and skillful storytelling that asks the reader to join her in self-reflection and learning.

Throughout the book, Kelly holds a tricky line, naming the ways the wellness industry harms and fails us, while cultivating a sense of hope and imagining a tangible way forward. “American Detox is not a rejection of wellness, but a reclaiming of it,” she writes. – AWC ●

marketplace

WE’MOON

A 5-STEP NON-DIET APPROACH TO MANAGING YOUR WEIGHT

Cloud Meditation Bench Set

mindful marketplace

Welcome to Mindful Marketplace, our catalog of unique products and services for people who want to live with more awareness and authenticity. Marketplace also provides an affordable and elegant way for advertisers to reach and engage our highly committed readers.

To advertise in Mindful’s Marketplace, please contact us today!

Chelsea Arsenault 888-203-8076 ex. 207 chelsea@mindful.org

This best-selling astrological moon phase calendar overflows with women’s creative poetry, prose and art.

The Waxing Crescent Moon offers a curl of new promise, blessing and inspiring us each day in the coming year! ∞§¶

•ªº≠¡

™£¢∞§¶•

Meditation Bench supports a cross-legged posture.

ª

• More grounded than chair meditation • Includes 2" Cloud Bench Cushion and Zabuton Mat • Easy assembly, 7 lbs.

AVAILABLE ON AMAZON AND IN BOOKSTORES

Use the code CLOUDMKT at checkout to Save 5% on the Cloud Meditation Bench Set.

TAMEYOURAPPETITE.COM

1.800.331.7751 SamadhiCushions.com

NOW!

Use code Mindful23 for 15% off!

weorder@wemoon.ws wemoon.ws • 1.877.693.6666

Vermont-Made Meditation Solutions Since 1975

Experience. Expertise. Wisdom.

Let me guide you on the path to freedom and liberation from the tyranny of your thoughts.

• Learn how mindfulness is the key to transforming your difficult mental habits.

• Channel your mental energy for razor-sharp focus and concentration.

• Be inspired to create a daily practice of selfnurturance, compassion and acceptance.

Sign up for my monthly newsletter and receive a FREE 20-minute mindfulness meditation audio that will build your “mindfulness muscle.”

W W W. E L L E N PAT R I C K Y O G A . C O M

October 2022 mindful 71

point of view

A QUIET BRIDGE

by BARRY BOYCE, FOUNDING EDITOR

m

72 mindful October 2022

what I remember most is what he said when I asked him if people chat while they’re on the bridge.

“Good question,” he said. “Yes, some people do, but a feature that many officers greatly admire is what we call a quiet bridge.” He explained that a quiet bridge establishes an atmosphere of attentive calm that allows people to keep their eye on what they need to do more effectively.

After all, the stakes are high. You do not want to run aground.

My brother has since passed away, but a quiet bridge is a legacy he has left with me. For me, it has become a metaphor both for a particular quality

recently. Oxford is home to one of the finest mindfulness centers in the world, and I was able to have powerful discussions with several of the people there. Interestingly, our conversations focused in part on the rapidly growing competition for our attentional resources, and how our ability to tangibly touch in with our world, both inner and outer— our interoception, proprioception, and situational awareness—are at the heart of genuine mindfulness.

Being grounded in our bodies and surroundings undercuts the storytelling that transports us in time and space.

Being grounded in our bodies and surroundings undercuts the storytelling that transports us in time and space. of mind and for a contemplative atmosphere that can be fostered. In mindfulness meditation, we hone our capability to navigate life, to move through its ups and downs—including many inevitable turbulent waves—by discovering an inherent steadiness and stillness that underlies the chatter, chaos, and confusion on the surface of our lives. We can share that with others through our presence.

When times are tough and anxiety wants to command all of our attention and invite us to chatter incessantly inside and out, we can return to simple attention to our body and breath, letting the extraneous commentary drift away. In the quiet bridge of our mind, we make our way forward. Steady as she goes.

I was once again reminded of this principle when I had the good fortune to travel to Oxford University

While I was at Oxford, I managed to obtain a reader’s card for the magnificent Bodleian Libraries, reading and writing in the spacious sanctuary that is the Upper Reading Room. “Silence please” signs appear throughout the Bodleian. And yet, no one needs to run around enforcing it. In that temple of quiet, filled with over a hundred people deeply absorbed in study, over the course of four hours, I heard not one word spoken. If your eyes met someone else’s, they merely nodded or smiled.

In our noise-ridden age, we need as many oases of silence, as many quiet bridges, as we can find. ● ABOUT THE AUTHOR Barry Boyce is the founding editor of Mindful and Mindful.org and author of The Mindfulness Revolution. He has been an avid mindfulness practitioner for over 40 years.

ILLUSTRATION BY TOM BACHTELL

During his time in the US Navy, my brother Brian became adept at complex navigation and “rules of the road”— how large ships and tankers keep from running into each other at sea.

When he retired, he went on to have a part-time career that included being an instructor in a ship navigation simulator. Once when I was visiting him in Norfolk, Virginia, he took me for a spin in the simulator. Imagine the bridge of the Starship Enterprise, except that it’s more like the actual bridge of a very large ship. Where the wrap-around windows would be are television screens, and when you punch into the simulator’s computer one of hundreds of ports, it’s as if you are looking out from the bridge to that port.

Brian punched in my hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and at his direction—he called out the commands…LEFT 20 DEGREES RUDDER…STEADY AS SHE GOES… and I repeated them out loud—I steered this very large ship through the Halifax harbor EVENT and brought it Mindful30 alongside the Join Barry dock at the Boyce and bottom of the seven other street I live on. mindfulness As we pitched on teachers for the waves, I could 30 days of actually feel it in meditation my stomach. Very practice. cool. Though my brother and mindful.org/ I were the only m30 ones on “the bridge” that afternoon, a real bridge could be crowded. So,

RAMA SPEAKS THE TEACHINGS OF RAMA – DR. FREDERICK LENZ “A brilliant and wonderful distillation of Rama’s recorded talks.”

–James F. Chiles, Software Systems Consultant

This beautifully organized synthesis of Rama’s core teachings, with commentaries by long-time student Lawrence Borok, has just been published.

Print and eBook editions available both on Amazon and in bookstores

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING American-born Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz practiced and taught a radical pathway to Enlightenment. He adapted the venerable Eastern practices of Tantric Buddhism to a modernday Western setting. Larry Borok does a wonderful job of organizing and distilling Rama’s core teachings in a manner that preserves their original essence while retaining their nuance, depth, and humor.

– Andrew Jurkevics, Director, The Adi Da Foundation I was especially drawn to feeling the subtle energies of the actual words of Rama that are presented in each chapter.

Lawrence Borok’s comments act as a guide layered on top of a very large body of knowledge.

The combined effect is like riding a powerful ocean wave.

So, this meticulously rendered book has turned into quite an adventure for me!

– Jeff Cohodas, Meditation Teacher

The longer we can stay in the thoughtless state, the more the obscurations are washed away, because when we stop thought a tremendous amount of energy is released. That energy purifies the mind … _________________ A teacher shows you how to refine yourself until you’re able to enter into nirvana on your own. Then no more teacher. Guess what? Only Enlightenment everywhere.

— Rama – Dr. Frederick Lenz

WHO I S RAM A? Dr. Frederick Lenz (1950-1998), known to his students as Rama, taught Tantric Buddhism to several hundred Americans for nearly 20 years.

He was enlightened in the classic Buddhist definition of the term.

He taught how to become Enlightened.

As audacious as this may sound, it’s true. Enlightenment means the dissolution of the finite self into the infinite mind, but how is that actually done? It is quite a long and complex process. Rama explained to us, in detail, how the process works, with its many interdependencies and stages.

This book consolidates the material contained in 120 audio tapes he recorded into a single book. In these talks Rama teaches the pathway to Enlightenment, carefully breaking down the steps and how to do them in our modern world. While many of the things he taught can be found in spiritual books, many cannot, and none all in the same place.

The book is full of extended quotes from these tapes in which he discusses each part of the Enlightenment process in depth. As the title of the book says, the idea is to let Rama speak directly to you.