Written by: Tracy Renee Stafford, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
If you’ve ever felt time disappear while running, playing music, or even tinkering around the house or yard you’ve probably experienced some degree of ‘flow’. In flow, while effort is required to execute the task at hand, a relaxing, pleasing energy permeates the body & mind. You are focused yet there is also a kind of momentum that allows you to keep going with more ease than you might imagine possible.
My first experience of flow was as a young child in the dance studio. While the movements I was asked to produce were intricate & often exhausting I was able to practice for hours with total absorption & delight. Thoughts, worries, & opinions took a backseat to the music, the space around me & to how I could fill them both. Years later, pilates & yoga brought me to even deeper inner connection, paving the way for me to be able to settle into the stillness of formal meditation. It is with this practice that I began to grasp the full power of mindful presence.
Flow
The flow state is an excellent entry point to meditation. While the ‘flow activity’ may require a lot of physical or mental effort to be exerted, ‘being in flow’ triggers a large release of dopamine into our systems. Dopamine, the hormone of pleasure, concentration, focus, & motivation, is a big part of why being in flow feels so good even if the task that you’re doing is challenging.
So the next time that you’re cooking, practicing yoga, or writing in your journal, and you find yourself totally immersed, recognise this as a flow experience. Then, if you want to take it a step further, use this flow state in order to drop a little bit deeper into the body & mind. Notice the breath at the nostrils. Allow the belly to soften & move easily as you breathe. Relax the hips. Let kindness, patience, & curiosity be your guides as you feel the breath through the whole body. Sense the ground below you, and the feeling of the air around you touching your skin. This first step of meditation, ‘mindfulness of the body’, allows us to develop a sense of feeling at home & safe in our own bodies. This is no small thing.
Going Deeper
If you want to take it a step further, notice the thoughts & feelings moving through the mind & heart. Watch & listen. With a kind of ‘witness consciousness’ & ‘spacious perspective’ observe the stream of thoughts & emotions coming & going. You may have noticed that when you were following the breath just now, all sorts of opinions arose around it. You may have noticed that your mind jumped wildly from thought to thought, unable to stay focused on the breath, and that you judged yourself for this lack of focus. You may also have noticed that this tendency to judge yourself feels familiar.
Wisdom & compassion, aka the 2 ‘wings of mindfulness’ are vital ingredients in the mindfulness mix. A common stumbling block when moving from the flow state, where it’s very focused but also quite enjoyable, to deeper states of meditation, such as this ‘mindfulness of thought & feeling’, is that we’re often confronted with some degree of unpleasantness. We can become more aware of the stress, anxiety, & negative attitudes towards ourselves that are often hiding just under the surface.
We may become more aware of pain in the body that we’ve been trying to ignore. In eastern mindfulness traditions these unpleasant elements lurking in our unconscious are often portrayed as monsters that we must ‘face & embrace’ in order to truly relax into presence. Observing our judgemental, turbulent mind, and the uncomfortable feelings common to all of us - fear, anger, & jealousy - requires huge doses of self-compassion, spaciousness, & humour. In this regard, working directly with a meditation teacher or therapist specialising in mindfulness may be the most helpful.
So if it’s so hard, why bother doing any of this work?
It’s no accident that the flow state is so enjoyable. It gives us the energy & momentum to dive into the more challenging territory of cultivating focus & self-observation. Both of these are absolutely necessary if we want to grow & evolve into the person that we truly are. I’m not talking about becoming superhuman, but rather about becoming more patient with ourselves & others, and not getting lost in self-doubt & self-condemnation. I’m speaking about being able to celebrate the success of others, without getting stuck in jealousy, with the ability to stay focused & walk our own path to our own unique form of success. Flow can be a gateway to freedom.
Focus First
Focus is an increasingly rare commodity. This means that not only are we less effective & productive with whatever we’re doing, we’re also less present for those around us. It’s easy to become disassociated from life’s preciousness when we’re exhausted from constantly navigating an overcrowded mind. What’s more, a lack of focus means that it’s much easier for outside influences to affect us. When we can’t focus we lose trust in ourselves and rely instead on something outside to think for us. Having the ability to focus, to choose where we place our attention, is fundamental in having autonomy over our own minds.
There are many reasons why the breath is the most common tool used for developing focus. A crucial one is that by concentrating on the breath we can take our nervous system out of the ‘survival’ state (aka, fight or flight) and into the ‘thrive’ state (aka, rest & digest). With this state change, a whole cascade of positive health effects are triggered through the body: blood pressure lowers, digestion & metabolism improve, the immune system gets rejuvenated, & inflammation reduces - huge benefits in a culture where chronic stress, pain & inflammation, and other health issues due to chronic stress run rampant. What’s more, when the body is in a calmer, less reactive state the mind can then be more oriented towards curiosity & presence rather than looking out for threats.
Friendship
When we use focused breathing practices to train the body & mind that it’s safe, we are more able to see the opinions, reactions, habits of thought, & avoidance strategies within ourselves (& within others, for that matter) with less judgement & aversion. We can notice that the thoughts that we repeatedly tell ourselves are often not true. We can relax our grip on thoughts & opinions a little more easily, instead kindly observing & accompanying the ramblings of the mind without getting stuck in them. With practice we can learn to expand our window of tolerance to see the good, the bad & the ugly within us with an attitude of friendliness, humour, & humility. This allows our inner monsters the possibility of transforming into our teachers. Powerful stuff.
Freedom
Who wouldn’t like to be more dialed into their intuition, the wise inner guide? If we’re living in a stressed, survival state, most likely all of the messages we’re receiving from our gut will be coming from the mindset of fear & protection. We can’t control all of the outside variables that life brings us, but we can control what we bring to ourselves. The outside world is not always a safe & friendly place but when we’re able to relax our bodies, hearts, & minds and cultivate a safe, friendly, & focused attitude within we can learn how to distinguish the inner voice of fear from the inner voice of insight. From there we can learn how to truly build trust in ourselves.
Meditation also gives us the resources to cultivate & nurture the attitudes & intentions that are meaningful to us. Loving-kindness, compassion, & gratitude are common qualities that have been encouraged in traditional meditation, but more recently it has become common to work with cultivating the attitudes of abundance, confidence & vision. Meditation provides powerful tools to keep us pointed in the direction that we want to go in our lives. Starting with flow, then working with focus & friendliness, we can eventually make our way to freedom.
It’s important to underline that meditation is by no means a cure-all. It can, however, play a major role in helping us connect more deeply to ourselves and to the world around us, in a safe, systematic, & empowering way. It can also boost the effects of other treatments & therapies so that instead of relying solely on external sources of support we have some inner tools to help us live the kind of lives that we want to live. Meditation is being applied in schools, addiction treatment centers, & in elite athletic training, amongst many other environments, because of its demonstrated effectiveness.
How to Practice?
Starting your own sitting practice does not need to be complicated. You just need a few minutes, ideally at the same time of day, starting with 3x a week, or in some regular rhythm that you can sustain. Start with a 5 minute practice and stick with that duration for longer than you think. Put the priority on consistency rather than length. Once you feel comfortable with 5 minutes, extend it to 10 and stick to that for longer than you think. My recommended meditation time is 20 minutes a day and is something you can work towards over time.
Here are some very simple meditation tips:
1. Sit in a posture that allows you to be awake & relaxed simultaneously - either sitting in a chair, or supported on cushions or blankets if you are sitting on the floor. Focus on being comfortable. You don’t want to be distracted by sore hips or knees. It’s equally effective to sit on a chair as on a cushion.
2. Once you have settled into your posture, take the first few moments to get ‘grounded’. Feel where you are making contact with the chair or cushion and relax those points of contact. Notice the sounds & smells around you. Notice the feeling of the air making contact with your skin. You could also use these first moments to do some simple movements to get a bit more comfortable such as rolling the shoulders back or gently rolling the head from side to side.
3. Once the posture has been established gently bring your attention to the breath. There is no need to change the breath, however, you might find it helpful to take a few slow, deep breaths to start as a way of relaxing and settling into the practice. Then allow the breath to relax into its natural rhythm. Notice where you feel the breath most easily in the body: at the nostrils, chest, abdomen, or anywhere else where you might feel the breath. Let the attention rest on the sensation of the breath in the body. When the attention gets distracted (which it will; it’s absolutely natural & ok), simply notice that as kindly & non-judgmentally as you can. Then gently return the attention back to the breath. Do this as many times as you need.
4. You can increase presence, relaxation, & body connection by doing a scan through the body. Relax the forehead, eyes, & jaw. Then gradually work your way down the body in as much detail as you like. This can give the busy mind something to ‘do’ and can be a great way to release unnecessary, unconscious tension, further calming the nervous system.
5. Once a degree of focus & settling has been achieved, you could begin to open up to a more expansive awareness. With that quality of ‘witness consciousness’ that I described earlier, you could check into the general quality of your thoughts, feelings, & physical sensations - checking into the head, heart & belly respectively. Without getting lost in the stories behind it all, you could just notice the coming & going of thoughts, feelings, & sensations. Invite the support of the 2 wings of mindfulness: wisdom & compassion. This is the time to practice non-judgmental, compassionate self-observation.
6. Use your final moments to cultivate the kinds of qualities that you want to feel for the rest of your day, such as gratitude, ease or confidence. Take time to let the feeling of those qualities spread through the whole body. You might also choose to close your practice by sending out well wishes to someone who you know could use your good energy.
That’s it!
Once you have begun some of these practices, you might want to see if you can notice some benefits! These can be subtle initially but you might notice that you’re able to be more patient with yourself & with those around you or that you’re a better listener. Maybe it’s a little bit easier now to honour your feelings without becoming overwhelmed by them. You might notice that you are able to respond mindfully to situations rather than react impulsively. It may not happen all the time. Even if these things happen just a tiny bit more in your life, you know you are on the right track.
If you are interested in more tools to cultivate mindfulness, click here to receive the 5 Day Introduction to Fully Embodied Living. Each day includes guided stretching, breath practice, meditation, & support for mindful eating & personal growth.
Tracy Renee Stafford, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Tracy Renee Stafford is a coach in Fully Embodied Fitness — a weave of yoga, pilates, dance, & functional exercise - and in Fully Embodied Living based on 4 Pillars of Well-Being: Connection to Body, Nourishment, Presence & Growth. Her mission is to help people discover how they can make self-care a celebration, rather than an obligation, & enjoy the body for how it feels, rather than just for how it performs or looks. She ran her own studio in the Canadian Prairies heartland for 20 very rewarding years - where she taught various forms of fitness, with a specific interest in injury prevention & rehabilitation and empowering students with information on HOW the body works best. She is a Mindful Movement, Holistic Living & Nutrition Coach, weaving together all of her expertise into her Fully Embodied Living Programs. She currently lives in Buenos Aires and keeps her passion for dance alive by studying Argentine Tango.
