Mindfulness Processes
Characteristics of mindfulness
States and traits
Mindfulness can be both a state and a trait. A state refers to a reaction to something, whereas a trait is a more enduring quality of mind. Mindfulness traits are thought to contribute to secure attachment in adults (Siegel, 2009). For some, mindfulness is a new practice that needs to be cultivated, whereas for others it signals a natural way of being (Baer, 2006; Siegel, 2009). In general, mindfulness enables us to adapt to the environment and recuperate more quickly from stress. With regular practice, mindfulness states can be cultivated through meditation (Siegel, 2009).
Our tendency to think our way cognitively through problems is a matter of survival. We scan the situation through preconceived judgments in case we may need to go into safety mode. But when this happens, we not only overlook other forms of knowing, like our intuition or a hunch, but we can also get caught up in destructive or unhelpful thoughts. As Thich Nhât Hanh has pointed out, we have choices: “The more mindful we are the more we can choose which mental formations appear on the screen of our mind” (2001, p.18).
Being mindfully engaged is characterized by an embodied sense of enquiry. In contrast to analyzing what we think or feel about a situation, we explore the nature of it through thoughts, feelings, sensations, and our five senses. As we learn to distance ourselves mentally from judgments or expectations, we begin to accept things as they are, without trying to change anything, anyone or the situation. Confronting challenging life experiences or things that are out of our control can teach us to respond with compassion, flexibility, and resilience (Siegel, 2010). This occurs when we become more conscious of present-moment experience.
Consciousness
Consciousness gives us access to the world (Van Manen, 1990). When we think of consciousness, we typically think in terms of conscious or subconscious thought processes. However, we experience other types of consciousness that we often take less notice of; for example, when we feel ‘downhearted,’ get ‘butterflies in our stomach’ or have ‘a gut feeling’ or ‘feel hurt.’ Becoming aware of internalized body states allows us to know from a deeper place how stress affects our outer world. These somatic markers are accessible through mindfulness and enable us to sense a connection between mind and body and the impact on our lives (Levine, 2010).
Negative emotions get stored in the mind and body. When faced with negative emotions, there is a tendency to suppress or avoid feeling them. This is a normal part of coping and survival, but eschewing emotional pain in this way doesn’t resolve it and can result in harmful or self-destructive behavior, or perhaps a tendency to overthink or distort reality.
As a preventive and corrective response to self-harm, foundational Buddhist practices can help to ease the burden of suffering and restore mind–body balance. For example, through breathing practices accompanied by simple mantras, or by establishing mental attunement through surrendered yogic breathing or nidra yoga that moves conscious awareness progressively through the body. Similarly, mudras (hand postures) are thought to hold energetic and conceptual meanings that restore physiological balance.
These age-old contemplative practices were designed to connect people with sensory experience and restore mind–body health through subtle forms of allowing. In everyday practice, they bring inner harmony and equanimity; during periods of hyperarousal, these techniques can raise consciousness and help foster regulatory effects in the mind and body. In secular mindfulness, we learn to allow awareness to happen as we move beyond the story rather than getting caught up in states of fear, guilt or anger. The deeper consciousness that connects us to present-moment experience is often mirrored in sensory experience. To coin a phrase, “the gift is in the present.”
Being present
Buddhist practitioner Bodhipaksa (2014) has explained that the kind of thinking that goes on in mindfulness meditation is about reflecting. Reflecting inward is more focused and powerful when not clouded by a barrage of repetitive thoughts we run over and over in our minds. Instead, we become present with our thoughts, feelings, emotions, perceptions, and internalized images as they arise, but are not caught up or defined by them. We just notice and allow them to be there as we get comfortable with the experience of being present.
Being present tells us how things are, whereas self-observation helps us better understand how our thoughts, feelings, sensations, and judgments affect each other. (Bishop et al., 2004). When we slow down and become present with what’s happening at the time, we can witness worry and put it to rest, despite anxious or depressive feelings still being there. Being present also means that we can let go of the need to control our thoughts or defend experience, and learn instead to just notice.
Being aware
Being present and being aware are distinct but overlapping states of awareness (Siegel, 2009). Being present is the experience in the fullness of the moment when one is fully engaged across a number of conscious levels (mind, emotion, bodily felt sense, and the five senses). We can name what’s going on in the internal world (sensations like feeling hot or cold, hungry, and so on). Being aware, on the other hand, concerns the experience of reflecting on being present. This involves self-observation such as reflecting on the experience that is happening in the present moment (I am putting on a sweater because I feel cold). But the sensory stream is the starting point of present-moment experience (Siegel, 2009). And so, I can observe myself putting on a sweater, but also feel the warmth it generates, the softness of the fabric, notice the color, and so on. As humans, we have the capacity to be present in our experience and reflect on it simultaneously. This involves meta-awareness (the ability to reflect on our cognitions, emotions, perceptions, and sensations simultaneously) and insight in addition to other characteristics of mindfulness (Dorjee, 2010).
Our natural ability to be mindful can be reinforced with practice (Kashdin, 2013). Relearning to become aware and reflexive can help clients learn to detach from painful emotions and moderate their relationship to suffering. For example, by learning to stop and notice what depression feels like, being present with it and accepting of it without judgment or expectation, clients can gain new perspectives. The key is to learn to shift from the contents of the mind to the process of the mind through appraisal and reappraisal (Hayes and Wilson, 2003). Shifts in perspective can be liberating for clients when they detach from over-involvement in the mind and instead begin to notice and explore what’s happening in the moment. Through this, clients can learn to regulate emotions, or identify less with the judgments or stories that keep them stuck.
Breath work
Taking the time to be conscious and intentional with our breathing enhances mind–body health. Breath work is an integral practice in meditation, yoga, and qigong practices. It involves conscious breathing designed to center the heart and mind, and foster equanimity. From a functional viewpoint, conscious breathing connects us with direct and vital bodily experience that opens us to the senses, and connects us with inner mental life (Siegel, 2012). Conscious breathing increases oxygen saturation in our brain and body cells. Slow breathing increases heart-rate variability and enhances alpha brainwaves for relaxation and mental clarity. As a strategy for calming, the breath helps us gain composure, interrupt mind chatter, and refocus our intentions. The more practiced we are in calming down through the breath, the more familiar and attuned the calming response will become to the nervous system (Hanson, 2013; Siegel, 2009).
Although maintaining present-moment awareness can be a lofty ideal when we are hijacked by the emotions, a single, conscious, intentional breath can be grounding. For example, in stopping to take notice of what stress feels like, and then pairing it with a simple calming breath. This profound but simple strategy is effective in helping clients who tend to get caught up in strong emotional reactions or are affected by the aftermath of trauma. It’s also portable; conscious breathing can be done anytime, anywhere, in real time.
Somatic markers
Learning to notice body sensations related to stress can interrupt a tendency to overreact to such stress. For example, when feelings trigger anxious or depressive states, we can teach clients to notice and stay with bodily sensations and ultimately distinguish across unique streams of awareness in the mind and body (Farb et al., 2007). Being able to notice and be present with what a strong emotion feels like—fear, for example—can interrupt the cycle before it runs rampant. This entails the development of reflexive skills. For example, in stopping to breathe (calming hyperarousal) and becoming present with fear, we can turn toward it and name the sensation (heart is pounding, palms are sweating). By naming the sensation, we engage a more coherent response between various parts of the brain that are activated by fear (the amygdala), and those which help us to recover from it (the prefrontal cortex) and make sense of it. As we conceptualize, we streamline a coherent response to what is happening (sensation), whether fear is real or imagined (appraisal), and how best to be with it (intention).
Ogden, Minton and Pain (2006) have contributed a framework for therapy through “the five building blocks of mindful attention.” This includes an awareness of body sensations (much like Gendlin’s ‘felt sense’ (1981/2007)) that turns one’s attention to both fine and gross movements in the body, such as our heart beating, or our posture. Next there is a shift in awareness toward internalized sensory perception (taste, touch, smell, sight, sound), then toward a shifting array of moods and emotions, and lastly toward our thoughts. Although these building blocks were developed for trauma sufferers, they are highly illustrative of what mindfulness is as a therapeutic method: a means of choosing to direct our attention in adaptive and life-giving ways.
Mindful intentions are about becoming aware (Siegel, 2012). When we set mindful intentions in keeping with the changes we want to make, we can begin to pay attention on purpose. For example, by setting intentions to be safe, healthy, and well, we may choose to drink less alcohol, eat healthy food, and exercise several times a week.
Intentions have purpose but they differ from goals that seek an endpoint which we may or which we may not reach, or may or may not be satisfied with in the end. Intentions are choices we make about behaviors that we continue to do to stimulate ongoing change. In contrast to striving to achieve an outcome, intentions are more about directing consciousness toward the desired change. They come from a deeper place.
As Siegel (2012) has pointed out, when we pay attention with intention, we stabilize our awareness and strengthen the mind and neural circuits of the brain. From a structural viewpoint, we set down new neural pathways that guide us toward health and wholeness. From a functional viewpoint, we are better able to access the inner resources required to accomplish tasks, stabilize moods, or regulate emotions.
Psychological functions of art and mindfulness
The philosophies of art and wisdom traditions both support the view that there is greater hope for emotional recovery when people stop, turn inward, and access deeper parts of themselves. Although the philosophies differ, they share qualities of openness and how we come to notice, observe, and explore present-moment experience (Rappaport, 2009/2014). When people are guided by an inner focus, there is greater access to the energies that fuel anxiety and depression through awareness of emotional and sensory experience. As contemplative mindfulness deepens the inward turn, images act as an anchor and signpost for communicating deep-felt emotional experience. As these parallel processes are cumulatively woven, clients can become increasingly sensitive to the energy and life patterns that drive emotional pain.
Mindful-based practices serve three main functions: to relax the mind and body, raise awareness about present-moment experience, and regulate emotions (Bishop et al., 2004). The calming function of meditation aids relaxation, where decentering provides a psychologically safe context for exploring emotional pain. From within this active behavior of mind, we can gain deeper insights and awareness of how things are.
Drawing on inner resources through art has similar benefits: first, in helping people to access deep-felt emotions that may be difficult to harness or verbalize; second, in providing a means for cathartically releasing pent-up feelings; third, in providing a visual language resource for communicating such feelings; and fourth, in the power of direct experiencing that often results in inner mental shifts. In a remedial sense, engaging sensory experience, whether silently through mindfulness or art, or verbally through dialogical reflection, enables clients to capture and acknowledge the deeper essence of emotional life beyond the reasoning mind. In other words, we get to the heart of the matter, and what ails us.
In psychology, mindfulness is an intervention to calm the mind and body, increase awareness, and teach people to respond more adaptively and skillfully to physical or emotional distress. In art therapy, mindfulness methods overlap with the lowering of defenses and mental distancing by cultivating an open stance that enables direct experiencing through creativity. Taken together, the methods serve the psychological function of bringing inner and outer realities together into a tangible form (Silverman, 2001), for example when an image carries an emotional tone that a client can relate to, or conveys a visible benchmark for comparing other life experiences.
Art and mindfulness have been used throughout time to heal, restore, and teach people how to live. Traditional art forms have played a significant role in fostering cultural identity and a communal lifestyle. Australian Aborigines in the west Kimberley for example animate dreamtime myths at corroboree gatherings through art, story, dance, and cultural expression to enhance social-emotional and spiritual well-being. Contemplative practices similarly offer a recipe for living, for example Buddhist methods that attempt to bridge inner and outer realities and foster the potential for positive change. Over recent decades, contemplative methods and art-therapy practices have been introduced into medical, mental-health, educational and organizational settings to facilitate healing and enhance functioning.
Both art and mindfulness practices support the notion that there is greater hope for spiritual and emotional recovery if people stop, turn inward, and access deeper parts of themselves. As Solso (1994) has said:
It is being “at one” with the art; it is commingling a painting with universal properties of the mind; it is seeing one’s primal mind in a painting…It is a level of cognizance that arouses profound emotions and thoughts, and yet is itself inexplicable. It touches us. (pp. 256–257)
The overlap
Although mindfulness techniques have often been incorporated into art-therapy practice, Mindful Art Therapy (MAT) (sometimes referred to as Mindful-Based Art Therapy) has only recently emerged as a discipline. Growing interest through research, practice, and various websites, blogs and discussion groups are beginning to show its efficacy. In Western society where recent trends are shifting from a focus on illness to wellness, the transformative effect of art therapy has found its way into medical and mental health settings as a valid form of complementary intervention.
Translating inner mental life into a tangible form is a hallmark of art therapy. But when art is paired with meditative mindfulness practices, it assists clients to access emotional pain in a more detached, open, and curious way. When we still ourselves in meditation, we turn away from ordinary logic or defenses of the ego, and move toward inner mental life where we can harness our intuition and deeper intelligence. As the mind quietens, the body becomes calm and we begin to notice a shifting array of thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and sensations that present themselves. The mind often returns to whatever commands our attention at the time.
Direct experiencing occurs when we focus on something—a thought, feeling, idea, or sensation—and occurs throughout all phases of mindful art therapy, including when we contemplate, make art, or reflect on it. From a psychologically safe and deeper state, the combination of decentering (mental distancing) and tangibly expressing deep-felt emotions provides insights into emotional blocks that are often difficult to express in words alone. As one consistently learns to observe and express emotions in this way, direct experiencing functions as the starting point for understanding the deeper resonance that underlies emotional strife.
As we surrender to what’s there with openness and without judgment, we can begin to see things more clearly, just as they are. Sometimes we only need to acknowledge something, and without denying our anguish or sorrow, we can meet it mindfully and give voice to it through art.