The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.
—Thich Nhat Hahn
In chapter 4, we described one facet of mindfulness as the ability to get into the present moment and simply observe, or be aware of, what is going on inside and outside your skin. We have already explained how mind wandering, rumination, worry, and similar lapses of attention are linked to depression. Our clinical experience has shown us that when depressed clients learn to stay present and control their attention in the moment, they are better able to process their distressing emotions and to solve the real-life problems that are producing them. If you think of depression as the result of unresolved personal pain combined with the avoidance of life situations that trigger pain, you can see why learning to get present, and stay there, is powerful medicine.
In this chapter, we will teach you to use the present moment as an anchor in the service of acting according to your values in each domain of your life, and creating a more meaning-filled life overall. The ability to focus and maintain attention is a fundamental skill in behavior change because being in the present moment allows you to make values-based choices about your behavior. It is also the place where you can connect powerfully to your values and use them to propel you to behave in new ways.
The ability to focus and sustain your attention on what you want to pay attention to (not what your reactive mind is telling you to pay attention to) allows you to access the space of wise mind. In that space, you are less influenced by the chatter of reactive mind, better able to gain perspective on your life situation, and better prepared to create action based on your values rather than your fears. To punctuate the importance of being here, now, consider the following words of wisdom from Agnes Baker Pilgrim, chair of the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers and spiritual elder of the Confederate Tribe of Siletz:
Yesterday is history,
Tomorrow is a mystery,
Today is our gift, and we better use it wisely. (Schaefer 2006, 16)
Take a minute to think about your personal experiences with just being in the present moment, an increasingly rare event in this day and age of fast-paced, autopilot living. You may have had brief present-moment experiences that occurred spontaneously, perhaps in a particular setting. Maybe you had an awareness of the present moment while in a garden or forest, or sitting on a bench at the park. Perhaps you experienced the present moment while studying the actions or speech of a child or grandchild while in a state of genuine love and acceptance. Children tend to spend more time in the present, and we can pick up on this. When we do, we may feel a sense of peace and well-being, and a freedom from the need to act. Maybe you have practiced meditation or prayer and had the experience of suddenly being free of something that troubled you, such as a negative evaluation of an event, situation, or interaction. Think back on such moments and remember the qualities of the experience. These may have included simply noticing your surroundings or how your five senses—touch, sight, taste, hearing, and smell—were engaged. Or, as you were playing with a child, you suddenly realized you are completely engaged in the act. Or maybe you’ve had feelings of expanded awareness, almost as if you were tuned in to a cosmic radio channel, as you felt a profound sense of clarity and well-being. Either way, the exercises in this chapter are designed to help you become more aware of the present moment more often. You’ll soon discover that the more space you give to intentional mindfulness, the less room there is for your depression.
Neuroscientists regard the act of paying attention as one of the most broadly distributed, complex functions of the brain. At every level of our evolved brain there are neural pathways to help us pay attention. Further, all levels of the brain interact when we pay attention, ranging from the primitive midbrain all the way up to the highly evolved neocortex.
There are two key principles to remember when thinking about attention. First, it exists on a continuum from simple to more complex forms and functions. Simple forms of attention evolved to support survival and procreation. Complex forms of attention are closely tied to higher-order symbolic abilities such as self-awareness, perspective taking, and social judgment. Second, you must realize that attention is a finite brain resource. We don’t have an endless supply of it and, under certain conditions, the ability to pay attention can be depleted very rapidly.
Depression tends to be associated with a very narrowly focused, basic form of awareness called bottom-up attention. Bottom-up attention originates in the primitive structures of the limbic system. It evolved to help us scan for immediate threats to our survival. In bottom-up mode you tend to focus attention on negative information and either ignore or disregard positive information. This is the type of attention that you might have to deal with when you are depressed—unless you consciously shift out of it. This is why people with symptoms of depression complain about being indecisive and less able to mentally process complex information. In essence, the problem is one of using a narrow, or lower-order, form of attention to perform tasks that require a higher form of attention. This mismatch contributes to the likelihood of making errors of judgment or reacting impulsively in stressful situations.
The good news is that there is another type of attention that allows you to remain flexible and effective, even if symptoms of depression are present. This mode is called top-down attention, and it originates in the higher-order brain structures of the insula and regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Top-down attention is much more flexible and dynamic in nature. It is sometimes referred to as the executive control system of the brain. Executive control is a process of deciding how much attention resources will be allocated to any particular task, thus helping you balance any competing demands for your attention. This allows you to quickly shift your attention inward or outward, depending upon what is needed in the moment. Your senses become more acute, so you might be aware of sounds or sights that you hadn’t noticed before. If you shift attention inward, you can observe how your body is responding to what is in the moment (for example, heart rate, respiration rate, muscle tension). Paying attention to these internal cues is thought to be a crucial step in the process of regulating negative emotions. You first have to be aware of how you are feeling before you can do something about how you are feeling.
The other benefit of top-down awareness is that it helps decrease activity in the default mode network by activating the task positive network, which activates the reward-anticipating motivational system. This means you will likely approach problematic life situations using values as your fuel, rather than avoiding them using fear as your fuel. Activating your top-down attention system has the effect of bringing you out of the fog of default mode network dominance and back into contact with values-based actions. Importantly, mindfulness practice has been associated with increased activation of the neural circuitry responsible for producing top-down attention.
As human beings, we are capable of adopting three different perspectives on our experience: participant, participant-observer, and observer. We spend almost all of our awake time shifting between these three modes. No single mode is arbitrarily better than the other; however, some perspectives work better than others in different contexts. To help you get a better feel for how different these perspectives are, let’s apply them to the experience of taking a roller-coaster ride at an amusement park. What is the rider’s experience?
The first perspective we can take is that of a participant. In this mode of observing, you climb into the front car of the roller coaster and take the ride with the sole intent of thrill seeking. You directly experience the thrills and terror of the ride; you are really not interested in anyone else who is riding the coaster with you; it is all about your immediate experience. The more you “get into” the ride in this mode of being, the better! In some life contexts, being a simple participant in your experience is highly desirable, for example, when playing with a child or engaging in sexual relations with a partner.
A second way to experience a roller coaster is in the role of participant-observer. In this approach, you once again hop on the roller coaster, but this time you are both riding the coaster and paying attention to the reactions of your fellow riders. Your attention is divided between the thrills of being on the coaster and at the same time noticing all of the different verbal and nonverbal reactions of your fellow riders. What you see your fellow riders doing might even influence your reactions, for example, throwing your arms in the air and screaming as you plunge downward. Again, this form of experiencing is highly useful, for example, in groups where the effort is to cocreate and build on the responses of others in an effort to come up with the best option for the entire group.
The third way to experience a roller coaster is in the role of observer. As an observer, you don’t actually ride the roller coaster but position yourself so that you can see all aspects of the roller coaster in a larger context (the platform and rails, the operator and ticket taker, the number of people in the cars, the sounds of the riders). As an observer, you want to see the whole picture without being drawn into any particular part of it. This perspective allows you to see where the riders have come from and where they are going, and to perhaps assess their emotion level by the volume of their collective voice. The observer perspective is useful when adopting a broader point of view is needed, such as when you get into an argument with a friend or partner. Adopting an observer perspective will let you notice your emotional responses while not reacting to them or being controlled by them. This nonreactive point of view might make it easier for you to better understand the perspective of your friend or partner.
As you can see, all three types of experiencing play an important role in helping you live a meaningful life. In depression, there is a bias toward adopting a participant perspective. On a roller coaster, that translates into getting lost in the thrills of the ride; with depression, it means getting you absorbed in rumination, worry, or self-criticism. The task is to learn which perspective is going to work the best for you on a situation-by-situation basis, and then learn how to shift flexibly among them.
Now that we’ve discussed the three perspectives you have access to, and you’ve learned the importance of paying attention, which perspective do you think is the focus of this chapter? You are right if you guessed being an observer. The observer perspective is a key component to being mindful and in the present moment. Now let’s discuss how to become a better observer.
There are three fundamental skills an observer must learn:
Centering: the act of letting go of whatever is demanding your attention and marshaling all of your attention on the present moment. Centering can involve an act as simple as slowing your breath, connecting with the sensation of your feet on the ground, and softening the focus of your eyes in an effort to shift your perspective so that it is larger and more spacious. The more often we practice centering, the more it tends to happen without much effort. Centering acts as an anchor to the present moment.
Focusing: a skill that kicks in after centering has happened. It involves selecting one thing as the focus of your attention. That thing can be an internal sensation, such as the temperature of the air as it enters and exits your nose, or it can be an external object, such as the flicker of a candle. When your attention wanders (and it will), you bring it back to the chosen focus. Focused attention is sharp and concentrated, and it allows you to zero in on the most important parts of your experience. For example, if you are feeling sad about something and are starting to experience an urge to distract yourself from sadness, you can focus your attention on where you feel sadness in your body. Maybe there is a sensation of a lump in your throat, as if you are about to cry. Focusing in, while remaining in the observer role, allows you to more fully contact and understand what is going on inside.
Flexibility: the ability to shift your attention from one aspect of your immediate experience to another without losing control of your attention or falling out of the observer role. It is like you are bird-watching, using a pair of binoculars to look at a number of different, rare birds. First, you look at one bird, and, without dropping the binoculars, you shift your view so that you see a second bird you are interested in; then you might shift to the first bird again. All the while you are in observer mode. The binoculars have never come away from your eyes.
Going back to the example of being an observer of your sadness, being flexible with your attention might include first noticing the lump in your throat and the urge to cry. Then you might become aware of a memory of another time like this in your life when you felt the same way. Then you might notice a picture on your desk that seems to have triggered sadness, followed by noticing the warmth of a tear running down your check. All the while, your attention to sadness is mostly centered and focused.
The reality for most people is that lapses of attention are common, because we don’t typically practice attention-strengthening skills. So an equally important observer skill is to learn to notice when you are no longer paying attention. You might have been sucked into a participant perspective without knowing it, and the type of attention required to be a participant is typically more bottom up than top down in quality. When you notice that this shift has occurred, you can consciously and gently reengage your top-down attention pathways to allow you to once again center, focus, and flexibly shift attention.
As an observer, you can center, focus, and shift your attention around or choose to stop paying attention at all. Just for fun, try it. Find something in your immediate environment that interests you, and keep your attention focused on it. Notice what happens. Do you have the urge to look at something else? Does your reactive mind distract you into thinking about something else? If you notice this shift of attention happening, can you redirect your attention back to what you were first looking at? This is a very simple attention strengthening exercise you can practice anytime—at work, school, or home.
Timeline
To help you learn how to get into the present moment and stay there as much as possible, let’s do an exercise to find out what time zone—past, present, or future—you are inhabiting at the moment. Think of time as a continuum ranging from your most remote memories of early childhood to future projections that go all the way to the moment of your death—and possibly beyond. There is nothing good or bad about where your mind goes, so try not to think in those terms. The goal is simply to get to know your reactive mind and better understand its preferences.
In the time continuum graphic, the present moment is the middle of the line. Go ahead and place your index finger there, and then read on or listen to the guided audio instructions.
The first step of this exercise is to close your eyes, take some deep cleansing breaths, and put the cares and concerns of the day to one side, as best you can. Just try to clear your mind so that you can stay in the present moment for a few minutes. If you notice your mind wandering, simply notice that it is wandering and begin to move you finger. Slide it to the left if your mind is drifting into the past. For a distant childhood memory, your finger would go all the way to the left. More recent memories would bring you finger closer to the present-moment notch on the timeline. If your mind heads way into the future—say imagining your life at a very old age—your finger would go all the way to the right; a more immediate thought of the future, like what present to buy for a friend’s birthday next month, would move your finger toward just right of the center of the timeline.
Just let your mind drift in whatever direction it wants to drift, without forcing it to change course. See if you can just notice where your mind is on the timeline at any moment in time. If you suddenly realize you got pulled out of this exercise, just recall the time orientation of the last thought or memory you had. Gently put your attention back onto just noticing where your mind is traveling when you give it free reign. When you are ready to come back to your normal waking state, take some time to complete the written timeline that goes along with this experience.
How often did you find yourself in the present moment (for example, noticing the sensation of your finger on the paper, or your breathing)?
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Where on the timeline did your mind tend to take you when you left the present moment?
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Did particular thoughts, feelings, memories, or sensations lure you out of the present moment more than once or on an ongoing basis? If so, describe them:
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Further Exploration. Did you find it hard to stay in the present moment during this exercise? For most people, this 2- or 3-minute exercise seems like ten! In modern society, we hardly ever take the time to just sit and explore the present moment. Did you have the experience of suddenly realizing you weren’t in the present moment at all, almost like you woke up and found yourself somewhere else? We all do. The process of fusing with our thoughts, emotions, and memories happens automatically and often. This is why practice and intention are fundamental to shifting attention back to the present moment.
Remember what we know about the reactive mind? It isn’t designed to be in the here and now. Its job is to look backward, try to make sense of what has occurred, and then look forward and make predictions. It likes to evaluate, analyze, and solve problems. In moment-to-moment terms, you will notice that your reactive mind darts back and forth along the time continuum. Some minds like to hang out in the future, and the most common symptom of that future orientation is problems with worrying. Other minds like to hang out in the past, and the result is falling into a pattern of rumination. Some minds are really hyperactive and like to move back and forth between the past and the future. The result is a double whammy of both rumination and worry, a common feature of depression.
Most people find it very difficult to stay present because there’s really not much for their reactive mind to do there. As you learn more and more about how to use the present moment as your anchor, you can change where your mind tends to hang out on the timeline of your life. This is when mindfulness practices that allow you to access wise mind come in. Over time, you can learn to access your wise mind when there’s no problem to solve and you simply want to be. So what do we mean by just being?
Almost every meditative and mystical religious tradition uses some type of mindfulness practice to create a “doorway” to more expansive forms of conscious awareness. The main mechanism here is the ability to pay attention, on purpose, and to avoid becoming entangled in the ongoing chatter of reactive mind. As the Dalai Lama notes (Dalai Lama, Lhundrub, and Cabezon 2011), the reactive mind functions like the clouds in the sky, always creating new weather systems for us to be preoccupied with. All the clouds that appear will eventually move out of view, and new clouds will be formed to take their place. Whatever happens with the clouds, the clear blue sky that contains them is consciousness itself. You are the conscious being that is there looking at the clouds of the conceptual mind. The act of being aware of your awareness is sometimes called simple awareness.
Along with helping you bring your attention into the present moment, simple awareness frees you of the need to form judgments or construct attachments. This is a place where you can experience whatever arises in your reactive mind and just notice that it is you who is doing the noticing. This is the you that you have known since you became aware that you existed. This part of you has never changed since you first became aware. It is not influenced by the trials and tribulations of life. It is the lens through which you experience what you experience. It is your clear blue sky. When you practice exercises that help you cultivate your ability to experience simple awareness, you will begin to see that this mental space is a place of safety and sanctuary for you.
As you learn to touch your simple awareness, you increase the ease with which you can shift between reactive mind and wise mind. This allows you to access the mode of mind best suited to demands of the moment. At the start, you will notice that reactive mind continues to have the upper hand, as it will quite effectively interfere with your practice of just observing what is present and staying inside simple awareness. As you develop a daily practice routine and your wise mind grows stronger, the predominance—or at least the speed—of your reactive mind will change, making it easier to access the spaciousness and slower pace of wise mind. These skills pave the way for more creative and meaningful experiences in key areas of life.
Once you learn how to step back from your reactive mind and access the sanctuary of simple awareness and wise mind, you can pursue wellness and vitality in relationships, work, leisure, and health without fear that you will somehow be consumed by emotional pain if things don’t work out the way you had planned. Just as there are no edges to the blue sky, there are no edges to your consciousness. Just as the clouds form in the sky, unexpected life events, setbacks, and personal losses may temporarily cloud your existence. These events are both inevitable and transient. The one thing that doesn’t change is that you are the one who is there to be conscious of each and every life moment as it unfolds.
In a state of wise mind and using the present moment as your anchor, you can initiate new life activities or engage in familiar activities in new ways. As we mentioned in the last section, contact with wise mind instantly puts you in contact with what matters most to you in life. Wise mind has a direct link to your heart. This link will help you steer toward your true north, rather than rule following and emotional avoidance. Wise mind also provides you with a new perspective on knowing and understanding the world around you. It will help you balance logic, reason, and verbal forms of knowing with intuition, imagination, inspiration, and compassion. We often tell clients that, although the quest to transcend depression often begins in the head, it almost always ends up in the heart.
Moonrise Mountain Meditation
This exercise is designed to test your ability to remain in a state of simple awareness, even in the midst of something that might seem more like fantasy than reality. But is it? When your consciousness is simply “on the loose,” lots of interesting things can and do happen! According to Native American thought, the sun is a symbol for male energy and the power to make an effort. Similarly, the moon represents female energy and the ability to relax, perceive, imagine, and allow. Balance in living comes from having both sun and moon energies present in our lives. There is a great deal of conflict in the world today, and a great deal that modern society expects of us, which brings with it a tendency for us to push ourselves to action. When life presents contradictions to us, it’s important to create a space that is large enough to hold them and, from that space, take action.
In preparation for this meditation, take a moment to reflect on contradictions in your life. What is it that you feel the urge to fight or get away from? Is it an injustice at work? Is it some type of social inequity? Do you want to fight or just get a break from worrying about problems with your health or the health of the planet? Is there a relationship problem that brings you a lot of pain but also love? Accessing wise mind through simple awareness can help you with this, as it has the ability to find a still place where a new perspective can emerge. Before starting this exercise, go back to the end of chapter 3 and review the workability questions you generated related to any of the four life domains. You can take all of these questions with you on this journey, all the way down to just one or two that really have you concerned.
To complete this fantastic journey, please download the fully guided version at http://www.newharbinger.com/38457. Alternatively, you might make your own recording by reading the following passage and then playing it back when you’re ready to meditate.
Take a moment to focus on your breath. Allow it to slow and deepen naturally and easily. Follow it and feel the rhythm and the ease of its motion, in and out, up and down. Your breath is a constant, a foundation, and place from which you can travel. Now focus on using your attention to create a dream, a dream that can help you better understand yourself. With better understanding, you will have more compassion for yourself. With the ability to care for yourself and trust your wise mind, you can perceive new possibilities in your life and say yes to them. This is the spirit of this, the Moonrise Mountain Meditation. In and out, your breathing continues effortlessly as you begin to imagine a warm summer day.
Yes, days are long now and you’ve been walking with friends. They go on ahead to pursue another trail, and you choose to stay by a creek. You like the way you feel as you stand beside the creek and breathe. You are tired from a long day’s walking and you sit down. You take off your shoes and walk into the creek. The cool water is refreshing, and you reach down and cup your hands to draw the cool water to your face and neck. Then you lie down on a flat, warm rock beside the creek and listen to the movement of the water, the rustling of the leaves in the trees, and the birds. They sing for you, and you listen and breathe.
You are aware of the transitory nature of your experience, and this makes it all the more precious for you. The birds, the trees, and you—all have a beginning and an end. Only the rock you lie upon will live forever. You consider the warm rock and the strength it offers as it holds you lightly, confidently, and endlessly. Perhaps you doze off for a few moments, knowing that you don’t have to hold yourself now; the rock will support you.
Rested, you are drawn to walk back into the forest you came from. You’re filled with new energy and your senses are heightened. You smell the forest—the rich earth and the green trees. You come to a fork in the trail, and you decide not to take the path that will lead you back to your car. You are drawn to take a new path, a path to Moonrise Mountain. You quicken your pacein anticipation of being there for sunset. Your legs move easily and effortlessly, and your breathing is slow and deep. Then, you pause for a moment in your walk because something catches your eye. You understand that the forest is offering you something to help you remember this moment and the trust you feel in your future. Look closely. What is it? Go ahead and pick it up; it’s yours and you can take it with you. It will help you remember this moment and your ability to be fully present and connected—connected with your silent mind, the rock, the water, and now the forest.
Now you arrive at the foot of the mountain at sunset. You see a steep path that will take you up to a good viewpoint, and you take it. Again, it is amazingly easy to walk this path, and you breathe in and out, slowly and deeply, as you climb up and up and up. You arrive at a large red rock with a smooth, warm surface, and you sit down. You watch the sunset and reflect on your life—what you have done, and what you wanted to do. You understand the things that have impeded your actions. You accept your fears, your sadness. The sunset is long and beautiful, and the clouds make it all the more interesting and unpredictable. There’s really nothing to control or avoid, no problems to solve as you consider your life and this precious sunset. It just is.
Now darkness is falling upon you and the mountain, and you decide to look around for a place to stay the night. You walk a little farther along the trail, and you notice a cave in the side of the mountain. You go there and find a bed of pine needles. It is soft and warm. Someone has stayed here recently, and it is an inviting place to rest. You feel protected and ready to rest. Before you lie down, you step outside and look toward the sky. There it is—the rising moon. It is full, and it is huge. You look at the moon, and the moon looks at you. You look for the edge between your looking and seeing, between the moon and you, and this edge blurs. You are the moon, and the moon is you. You feel a pulsing, and with this pulsing a sense of rising or falling. Your silent self has something for you, something to help you with the conflicts and contradictions that concern you at this time in your life. What is it? Pay attention. It might be an image, a thought, a verse. Listen and learn. If you experience strong emotions at this time, allow them. Remember your gift from the forest and continue to pay attention.
When you are ready, go back into your body in the cave and rest. Your understanding of what your silent self offers you may deepen as you descend into sleep. Caves are special places for dreaming, and your dreams here may be particularly helpful for you.
And soon, the morning light wakes you slowly. Although you have not slept long, you are rested and ready to see the sunrise. You walk to the entrance of your cave, and you see the moon setting and the sun rising. A butterfly rests on a nearby tree that grows from a small indentation between the rocks. The butterfly spreads its wings so that you can enjoy its colors. You are ready to return, and you walk down the mountain path and through the forest. You remember the secrets that silent self revealed to you, and your gift from the forest. You know you can return here whenever you want, and you thank your mind for allowing this. Now allow yourself a few minutes to savor this moment in your life journey. And when you are ready, return to the book for further exploration of your experience on Moonrise Mountain.
Further Exploration. Take a few moments to make notes on your experience during this meditation. Did you experience some type of new intuition or insight about any workability question you took with you? Did the question seem as “serious” and life changing during your journey as it seems to feel in your daily life? Very often, the perspective of wise mind to tends to soften the hard emotional edges we create around more important workability questions. There is a great deal of variability in what people experience with this meditation, and if you repeat this exercise, your results are likely to be quite different from what they are today. You might consider creating a Moonrise Mountain journal, wherein you write down insights or intuitions that occur to you during this meditation. If you found this meditation emotionally helpful, you might want to repeat it periodically to help keep you focused on what matters to you in life.
Leslie’s Story
Leslie, a hardworking and proud single mother, had raised her son, Sam, without support from his father, and Sam was the center of her life. He was accepted into a good college with some financial aid, but attending would still involve considerable expense. Leslie took a night job to support Sam in getting the best education possible, and he moved to a distant town to attend college. Leslie missed Sam and tried to call him daily during the break between her jobs. If she didn’t reach him, she had trouble sleeping.
Sam was ambivalent about his mother’s frequent calls; he missed her and only felt more down after they talked. Although he maintained average grades, he started hanging out with a group of students who drank excessively on weekends. Halfway through Sam’s second semester, Leslie received a call from the emergency room. Sam was being treated for an alcohol overdose. In an effort to calm herself and find direction in this difficult situation, Leslie used the Moonrise Mountain Meditation, asking, “How can I help my son and support him now that he no longer lives with me?”
In the forest, Leslie discovered a rare blue butterfly; she’d read about this type of butterfly but had never seen one. At moonrise, Leslie had an image of a beautiful horse racing around a track. The horse was wet with sweat and gasping for breath. She saw herself mounting the horse and slowing his pace to a canter, a trot, and then a walk. Finally, he relaxed and then stopped altogether. She dismounted and began to groom him, and he allowed this. In fact, he accepted her attention lovingly, as it was offered freely and without reservation, and Leslie began to cry.
After the meditation, Leslie felt as if a burden had been lifted. Although she wasn’t sure what she would do differently, she knew she was better prepared to perceive her own needs, as well as her son’s. She understood that being in the present moment was as elusive as a rare butterfly, and that if she relaxed her grip on Sam, he would settle in and find his way in life. She saw that she couldn’t control him and didn’t need to. If she simply expressed the fact that she loved him, and would be there for him, that would be enough.
Strengthening your ability to adopt an observing, self-aware stance will be an important ally in your quest to transcend depression and pursue a more vital life. Any number of daily practices can help you develop the ability to be here and now, and we encourage you to experiment with and find those that work the best for you, even if you come up with them on your own. For example, one of us (PR) likes to develop her observer skills through daily yoga and meditation practice. The other (KS) enjoys a daily practice of morning yoga and a viewing of the sunset while accepting private events, ranging from familiar disparaging stories about himself to random moments of unexpected laughter.
The following brain training exercises are designed to help you learn to pay attention in a focused, flexible way and to make contact with the more expansive qualities of simple awareness. If you practice any or all of these exercises on a regular basis, you will notice that your ability to organize, focus, and shift your attention is getting better and better, as you are literally creating new neural pathways as well as strengthening existing ones in your brain. As we have discussed, neuroscience studies have shown that practicing such strategies regularly for as little as a month can have a positive impact on your ability to be here, now.
All of the following exercises are supported by very specific, detailed audio instructions. The audio component will make it easier for you to follow along and practice the skills that we want you to learn. We recommend you take the time to download them now from http://www.newharbinger.com/38457, so that you can use the one(s) you like the most as part of your daily brain training routine.
The Breath of Life
In order to foster present-moment experience and expand awareness, you must learn to control and deepen your breathing. The breath is the center of your being. It controls not only your respiration but also your heart rate, brain waves, skin temperature, and a host of other basic biological functions. Coincidentally, deep regular breathing of the type we have you practice has been shown to help downregulate the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis, which controls the brain’s fight-or-flight system, and is a source of negative energy for the reactive mind. So what we call belly breathing actually optimizes the neural pathways responsible for calming the nervous system and producing a state of wise mind.
Indeed, the Buddhist term for this type of deep breathing practice is pranayama, which literally means “the breath of life.” How powerful is pranayama? Research shows that people who can be aware of each breath report improved ability to pay attention in real life, report less daydreaming and mind wandering, and experience more positive mood with lessened depression (Levenson et al. 2014). The benefits of this breathing practice were observed to occur within two weeks of starting!
Find a comfortable place to sit and make sure the clothes you’re wearing aren’t tight so that you can breathe very deeply. Get your body in a comfortable position and close your eyes for a few minutes. Begin by focusing your attention on your breath. Just notice your breathing for a while without trying to change it in any way. Take your time to get present with your breathing. This is the present moment in your life, and there is no reason to rush through it. Just allow yourself to breathe in and out however your body wants to do it.
Now imagine there’s a balloon in your belly that you want to fill with the air you inhale. As you breathe in very slowly and deeply, you’re filling the balloon in your belly. When you are filling the balloon, you will notice that your belly is pushing out and down. When the balloon is full, pause for a second and then gradually let the air flow out of the balloon. When you empty the balloon, you will notice that your belly pulls in and up slightly. As you inhale and exhale, your chest and shoulders should remain almost still. If you notice that your chest and shoulders are rising and falling, try to send your breath into your belly and allow your chest and shoulders to remain still and relaxed.
Now, as you inhale, purse your lips and breathe in through your nose. Notice the sensation of the air coming up through your nose and down into the balloon in your belly. Imagine this flow of air as an upside-down umbrella handle. You start at the crooked end of the umbrella handle, then bring your breath up into your nose and back down the handle into the balloon. As you exhale, open your lips and reverse the umbrella handle. Your breath leaves the balloon, comes up the long, straight handle, then travels over the arch and out of your mouth. Now, as you continue to focus only on your breathing, notice any sensations you experience as the breath goes in through your nose and back down to your belly. Do you notice the temperature of the air as you bring it in? What does it feel like as it goes through your nose? And as you exhale, does the air seem warm or moist as it passes your lips? If you notice your attention shifting away from breathing, just gently redirect it to what you have come here to do. Continue to fill and empty the balloon for 5 minutes.
Further Exploration. What experiences did you have when you practiced this basic breathing exercise? Were you able to consciously fill the balloon in your belly? Did you notice your mind wandering while you were breathing? Were you able to bring your attention and focus back to the task at hand? Don’t get frustrated if this exercise is difficult at first. The simplest things, like breathing, can seem like a big mental task when your reactive mind tries to get in the way. We strongly recommend that you practice this or another breathing exercise that you like at least once a day—even better, several times a day, morning, noon, and night. The more you practice pranayama, the more accustomed you will become to using the present moment as an anchor on your life journey
Tone-Guided Pranayama
In this breathing practice, you will hear two distinctly different chords. The first chord is the signal for you to breathe in, and you’ll continue to do so as long as you hear the chord. Wait until you hear the second chord before beginning to slowly breathe out, and continue breathing out as long as you hear the chord. The silence in between chords is a signal to do nothing with your breath and simply notice the quiet space of non-breathing The pattern will continue for 5 minutes, until you hear a bell ring. That will be the signal for you to slowly bring yourself back to your normal state of awareness.
Inside and Outside
Using pranayama as a platform, this exercise will let you practice the three main observing skills (centering, focusing, and attention flexibility) using your body as a primary focus. When you practice this exercise, you develop the ability to direct your attention and awareness from the inside to the outside and back again.
Begin by downloading the guided audio version of this exercise from http://www.newharbinger.com/38457. (Alternatively, you may record the following passage in your own voice to play back later.)
For this moment, simply breathe in and out, filling your lungs and emptying them slowly. Notice the sensation of air flowing through your nose and throat and into your lungs, slowly and effortlessly. Feel your chest and abdomen rising and falling with each slow inhalation and exhalation, creating the feeling of a wave endlessly ebbing and flowing over your body. In and out goes the wave, and upward and onward goes the energy outside the skin of your chest and abdomen as it moves to accommodate the rhythmic flow of your body in response to the flow of air in and out of your body.
Notice your heart. Can you feel a pumping sensation? Can you feel a pulse? If you like, place your fingers lightly on one of the carotid arteries in your neck or on the inside of your wrist. That’s your pulse—the rhythm of your heart’s moving the oxygen in the air you breathe to all parts of your body, your blood’s flowing like a river with many tributaries, all so perfectly designed, all of this happening with your awareness and acceptance.
Now shift your consciousness to the edge between your body and what it is touching. Feel your clothes on your skin, your shoes on your feet. If you are lying down, notice the places of contact between your body and the floor, bed, or couch. If you are sitting, notice the places of contact among your body, the chair, and the floor that supports your feet and the chair. Describe these points of contact to yourself.
Now focus your awareness on the space you are in, the room that holds you and the things that surround you at this moment. Listen for small sounds in this space—a fan, a bird just outside the window. Hold these in your awareness and then move beyond them to the larger physical spacearound you, the entire house or building that holds the room that holds the chair or bed that holds your clothes and all your things—and you. What is this building like? What are its sounds and smells? Are there cars passing by? If so, notice them and hold them in your awareness—their noise, their smell, the people they carry. You can be aware of this, and so much more, as you pay attention to the points of contact between you and the objects and events occurring in your awareness.
Now, if you are willing, shift your attention to the city, town, or geographic area that holds the building where you are. See it from an eagle’s-eye view. There it is below you, the building you’re in; the other buildings; and the parks, dogs, cats, and people—young and old. They are there, and you are watching, allowing all of this as you continue your approach to a larger and larger experience of the context of your experience. Now you are seeing the entire world and looking deep into space, where many stars look back at you. Stay here as long as you like and see the edge of your consciousness.
When you become aware of something smaller, like a thought or sensation in your physical body, say hello to whatever it is and let it go. Allow yourself to expand back to the edge of your consciousness, where your experience is inclusive and accepting. And when it is time for you to return, allow yourself time to retrace your path of expanding awareness. Go from the galaxy slowly and take in the beautiful colors of Earth as you approach your first hemisphere… your city or town… and then your building… and your room.
When your attention is back to your body, connect again with your pulse and feel the rhythms of your body. Feel the movement of your body as it takes in the air needed to sustain it. When you are ready, you can return to the book.
Further Exploration. What happened when you required your attention to shift back and forth? Was it easier to pay attention to some things than others? Did you lose control of your attention during the practice? Did something hook you? What? The better you get at moving your attention around in a flexible way, the more keenly observant you will become of what is happening in and around you. This sense of being in intimate contact with everything you are aware of produces a unique kind of serenity that is associated with expanded awareness.
Dancing with the Quiet
This exercise will give you a chance to be more tuned in to inner experiences that tend to draw you out of the observer role. There are two basic forms of inner experience that you will be concerned with: events inside of you—thoughts, memories, emotions, or certain kinds of physical sensations—and events outside of you—sounds, smells, and activities of other people, pets, and so on.
To begin, practice pranayama or the Breath of Life exercise for several minutes. Afterward catalog on the worksheet below any experiences you encountered that drew you out of observer mode.
Dancing with the Quiet Worksheet
Now take a moment to review all of these distractions. Then practice pranayama again. This time you will be vigilant for each distraction: pay soft attention to the distraction, then release your attention and put it back to simply observing your breath. The goal is not to eliminate these events but rather to learn to keep your attention under control in their presence.
Mindful Eating
One of the most ancient meditative practices is to approach a common everyday activity with mindfulness. An old Buddhist koan makes this point: Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. This means that you can practice being present with many daily activities, including preparing and eating food. Most of us are conditioned to take a “gobble, gulp, and go” stance toward eating, to get done with it and simply satisfy our hunger. Like breathing, eating is an everyday necessity for nourishing the body and mind, and part of this nourishment comes from the mental well-being that healthful eating creates.
For this exercise, get an orange, find a quiet place to sit at a table, then close your eyes for a moment and clear your mind of any concerns or attachments. Then, follow the guided audio version or, alternatively, read through or record the script below for yourself.
Sit with your hands in your lap and study the orange you have in your hand. Note its color and size. Can you smell it? Notice when your thoughts wander and you think about something you plan to do later or something you wanted to do earlier. Let those thoughts come and go, and return your attention to the orange. You will probably need to keep returning your attention to the orange; your reactive mind is likely to offer numerous instructions and concerns as you move toward the present moment with the orange on the table.
When you’re ready, place your hands on the orange. Touch it lightly and feels its texture. What words describe it best? Is it cool? Bumpy? Now hold the orange more firmly. Does it feel solid? Soft? As you are ready, place a fingernail into the skin to pierce it. Do you feel the oil of the orange skin? What does it feel like? Smell your finger and consider the smell. Notice the thoughts and feelings that come with smelling the orange oil. Look at these thoughts and feelings and let them go.
Now remove the peel little by little. Notice any urge to finish quickly or “do it right,” and simply continue to slowly peel the orange. Once the skin is removed, hold the orange again and study the lines that reveal its sections. Look at their particular pattern; every orange is slightly different from all other oranges. When you are ready, open the orange at a section line. Look inside, to the center of the orange. Study how the sections are connected to one another inside the orange.
Notice any evaluative thoughts you may be having. Let them be there and let them go. Continue to study the sections. And when you are ready, choose one to separate from the others. Bring it to your nose and smell it. If you like, place it in your mouth. Hold it there for a moment and consider its history—what brought it to this moment. And then, when you are ready, chew the section until you are ready to swallow. When you swallow, feel the movement of the piece of orange from your mouth to your throat, then your esophagus, and then your stomach. You may continue to choose one section at a time to smell, taste, chew, swallow, and follow in its path to your stomach. Finally, take the peels in your hands and hold them for a while as you simply sit and observe. When you have completed your mindful eating, you can return to the book.
Further Exploration. What happened as you went through this exercise? Did you have moments when you were perfectly present with “orangeness”? Did you notice your reactive mind attempting to pull you out of this exercise? Did you notice a sense of wanting to hurry up and just eat the orange? Did your reactive mind tell you that this whole mindful eating thing is a big joke? That it won’t work for you because you have bigger issues to deal with? When your reactive mind showed up and tried to spoil the party, were you able to gently redirect your attention back to the experience of eating an orange?
If you like this type of observer training, you can repeat this exercise with almost any object—a raisin or a cup of tea, for instance. You can also try this exercise with a crystal, a flower arrangement, or anything else that would expand your contact with your senses within the present moment.
Choose Each Step
This exercise, which involves walking mindfully, can be done inside or outside. Before beginning, decide where you want to take your walk and how long you will spend. We recommend 10 to 15 minutes, but as little as 5 minutes will help you contact the present moment and move into the observer mode. When possible, it’s nice to do this exercise barefoot, as this allows you to better sense the contact between your feet and the ground. There are four points on each foot that need to be in contact with the ground to give you maximum stability. The picture below shows these four points.
Stand with all eight points in firm contact with the ground. Your task is to choose each step you take and then take that step consciously. Your reactive mind will want to race through this and, in its frustration, might even give you the urge to take a lot of steps quickly. Your reactive mind is not accustomed to having you, the human, observe, accept, and choose rather than allowing it to evaluate, struggle, and avoid!
In addition to choosing each step, you can also choose not to take a step; in so doing, you are choosing to stand in place. If that’s what you choose to do, notice how the process of simply standing feels. It takes conscious choosing on a second-by-second basis to hold still—the same type of second-by-second choosing it takes to walk mindfully.
As you stand or move, choose how many of the four points on each foot are in contact with the ground. Notice what it’s like to stand with intention and to make a decision to move or not to move. Notice what it’s like to have maximum contact between your feet and the earth or less contact. Maybe you’ll choose to lift two points off the ground on your left foot. What happens? Does it have an effect on your right foot? Are you going to take a step now? Toward what? Away from what?
Notice any thoughts about this exercise and its value or lack of value to you. Notice how the reactive mind runs on with suggestions and stories. It can be very hard for the reactive mind to accept standing still or moving slowly, feeling the earth, and choosing every step. Notice this sense of tension if it’s there and simply make room for it. Notice if there are unpleasant or pleasant sensations in your body. Where are they? What are they? What do they feel like? Are they hot, cold, flowing, pinching, itchy, or something else? Make room for those sensations and continue to choose to stand or step.
Notice how many points on each foot are on the ground at any moment. Can you feel each point as it leaves the ground and touches the ground when you take a step? As you’re focusing on and continuing your steps, do you notice a thought about needing to get someplace? If you do, that’s okay; just notice it and choose your next action in the moment. See if you can bring all of your attention in the moment so that it is completely focused on each step. Stop when you hear the bell and return to the book.
Further Exploration. How did you do with this exercise? The interfering effects of your reactive mind can make it extraordinarily difficult to make even simple choices, such as where to put your foot down. We’re used to walking toward something and doing it on autopilot. This is a reflection of the tremendous impact that turning your behavior over to the environment has on your sense of internal pace and purpose. Like so many aspects of developing a mindfulness-based lifestyle, it all comes down to consciously going off autopilot, showing up in the present moment, savoring what is there without the pressure of time, and taking back control over your behavior. That is a surefire formula for living in the depression-free zone!
A core mindfulness skill is to be an observer of your inner experience, and to participate in that experience when it pays dividends to do so.
Your wise mind is the source of true knowledge, intuition, and compassion.
When you learn to find the present moment as an anchor for your experience of life, your awareness expands and your ability to accept also grows.
Simple awareness is a special place from which you can look at all things with greater understanding and compassion.
Present-moment awareness can be practiced in seemingly mundane daily activities, like eating, walking, or breathing.
You can use daily brain training exercises to strengthen neural pathways in your brain that produce robust and flexible forms of attention.
Accessing wise mind through the portal of present-moment awareness will enrich your life on this planet in each moment as it unfolds and teach you about the bigger role you play in the universe.
