Simple Tips that Really Work
Modern life is stressful. We often get so wrapped up in that stress that our poor coping mechanisms turn into bad habits. Today, Kim and Tonya discuss simple tips to stay mindful, release poor patterns and start healthy ones.
Habits help us survive, but they can also cause us to crave what’s unhealthy. Can mindful awareness help us break free?
A perfect episode to wrap up 2019. Happy Holidays, Couragitarians!
Meditation- a map of meditation land. By now we all know how good meditation is for us, the science behind it yet we still self-criticize that we don’t know how, aren’t good at it, etc. We start with this overactive brain surrounded by a bay of doubt. Then we have our bodily sensations of a camp cold nose, a forest of knee pain, itchy foot beach, I need to pee keys, weird smell islet, thirsty shore, the hunger island. From there our mind goes into, the daydream archipelago, boredom cove, river of impatience, a mountain of worry, a mountain of guilt, the mountains of work that I should be doing, the sea of distraction, stress atoll. Well, you are getting the point. Really you just need to sit and do it and observe what is coming up for you. Part of being mindful is understanding the power and privilege you have acquired on your journey and remember where you started.
When in doubt, zoom out!
Breath- by finding the space to reflect, reconnect with your breath increases the impulse of caring and compassion. Can you go through your day aware of your breath? Can you be listening to someone and still feel yourself breath? Being aware of your natural breath teaches you a lot about your emotional state and the state of your nervous system.
Episodes future self #21 and Chronic Pelvic Pain #14
Journaling!
Habits help us survive, but they can also cause us to crave what’s unhealthy. Can mindful awareness help us break free? Eric Kandel won the Nobel Prize in Physiology in 2000 for demonstrating that even the lowly sea slug hardly a big-brained cousin to humans employes a two-option approach to raise its chances of survival move toward nutrient or move away from toxins. Judson Brewer points out in the Craving Mind, laying down memories (pathways to return to) is as ancient and ingrained as life itself.
If there is an open patch of lawn at a cornered child will cut through the grass on their way to school and in time it becomes hardened ground. Ancient people created paths walking from one place to another, horses and oxen widened them, today we have paved roads. When we want to go someplace, we choicelessly take these well-trodden paths.
It is the same with our brain and muscles and organs that respond to its commands. As neurons keep firing in a particular configuration, a path is created and it’s just easier to go there. Neurons that fire together, wire together”. It’s how we learn to talk, to play, to learn an instrument, to paint, to overeat, etc.
The habit is reinforced, and the increased salience points us to more cues and triggers that keep the wheel spinning round. Mindfulness can break this well-worn cycle, as we see illustrated by Judson Brewer in the article that I have linked for you in the show notes. In her example, she uses looking at your smartphone. For today, let Kim see if she can articulate it here. What is your drug of choice? It can be anything that brings pleasure or lessens pain can drive the habit loop? For many, it is overeating, self-criticism, shopping, smoking, love. Habits are formed and strengthened as we journey through a continuous loop seeking to satisfy our urges. In this habit loop there are cues and triggers, mind and body experience, effect, urges, actions, rewards/results, reinforcement/perception and it begins again. Mindful awareness is a form of curiosity that can act as a wedge to break the habit loop at various points and open up the opportunity for fresh choices.
Planning ahead/scheduling.
Discipline - tapas, Self-Study Swadhaya, Meditation - we are starting to see this in healthcare- the medicine of the moment- simple practice of paying attention is making inroads in medicine through habit change, stress reduction, self-care, and decreasing burnout.
Resources:
https://www.mindful.org/constant-craving/
https://www.mindful.org/30-days-to-the-same-old-me/
Passion planner https://passionplanner.com/?gclid=Cj0KCQjwr-_tBRCMARIsAN413WTAOsjD-HvOfnO9Iq-ZXaF80TKQVag6-JQZDo5lgpGXbbXtyTMtQYsaAvbMEALw_wcB