Meditation Techniques for Anxiety Relief and Happiness with Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs register@allceus.com counselortoolbox Alrighty. Welcome to today's Recovery Month presentation on meditation techniques. I am Dr. Donnelly Snipes. In this presentation, you're going to learn the benefits of meditation and the goals of meditation. Describe how to get started with it so we can help clients get started and really benefit from meditation. And we're going to explore 15 different types of meditation. When I've worked in community behavioral health occasionally, well, a lot of times when we talk about meditation with clients, they are not necessarily on board. They think of meditation as the old fashioned. You know, what you see on TV with repeating a. Repeating a word, having to clear your mind. And that doesn't work for everybody. And it's really important for clients to understand that. You know what, there are dozens of different types of meditation out there. We're only going to talk about 15 types today. So it's almost impossible to f. To not be able to find a type that works for a particular client. What are the benefits of meditation? Why is this helpful in recovery from substance abuse and co occurring disorders? Well, you know, in that initial period after detox or even during detox, people are starting to feel feelings again and, and it can be very overwhelming and confusing and exhausting and all kinds of other things. Meditation can help people get grounded, can help them reduce some of their emotional symptoms. And when we get to mindfulness meditation, it can help them become more mindful and aware of what their needs and wants are at that particular time. Reviews to date have demonstrated that both mindfulness and mantra meditation techniques reduce emotional symptoms, including anxiety and depression and stress, and improve physical symptoms, such as pain, from a small to moderate degree, depending on the type of meditation you're using. Pain may or may not be affected too much. A lot of times pain can be caused by muscle tension and meditation can help reduce muscle tension. When we're talking about other sources of pain, we know that as people's anxiety and depression go up, as their serotonin goes down, their pain tolerance also goes down. With meditation, we're helping people increase their serotonin levels again and increase their GABA and their other, you know, calming chemicals that naturally help reduce inflammation, reduce stress, reduce pain. Mindfulness meditation was found to show moderate improvement for anxiety, 44% of people. I think that's more than moderate, but I'll take it for depression, 52%. And for pain 31%, which means that it's actually, with the exception of pain, it's actually at least as effective, if not more effective for people than pharmacological interventions. Kind of let that sink in for a minute. I'm not saying that there's nobody out there that's going to benefit from psychotropic medication. I'm not saying that at all. But I am saying that the research has shown that, you know, 30 to 40% of people respond well to medication and the other 60 to 70% don't. And we need to have some other tools in our toolbox that we can help people try out. Effects of meditation were seen during treatment and maintained at both the three and six month marks. This isn't something that helps for a little bit and then wears off. Obviously the meditation, in order for it to continue to have an effect, has to be continued. You can't practice meditation for three weeks and then expect to be cured and have the effects linger. But most people, if they start doing meditation and they find it's beneficial, they experience a reduction in their symptoms or reduced cravings or whatever else is going on with them, they're more likely to continue to do it. Eight weeks of mindfulness based stress reduction increase the thickness of the hippocampus, which governs learning and memory. And in certain areas of the brain that play roles in emotion regulation, there were also decreases in the volume of the amygdala, which is our primitive stress threat response area, which matched the participants self reports of stress levels. As the amygdala shrinks, decreases, then we can associate that with a reduction in stress and anxiety. What I really want you to take away from this study is the fact that meditation actually causes physiological brain changes. We're not even just talking about levels of neurotransmitters, we're talking about the weight, the size, the oomph of different parts of the brain. People who learned mindfulness were many times more likely to have quit smoking by the end of a training and 17 weeks follow up. Meditation helps people decouple the state of craving from the act of smoking. Well, it can be used to decouple the state of craving from the act of emotional eating, from the act of drinking. We are seeing that learned mindfulness can help people start addressing some of those cravings, which is really a helpful tool during, well, anytime, but especially during that first year when people are experiencing post acute withdrawal. You know, initially those cravings may be pretty strong, but we know with post acute withdrawal syndrome sometimes and it may feel like out of the clear blue, those cravings pop up again. And meditation is one tool that people have at their disposal wherever they're at. If a craving strikes them when they're on the subway, they've got the ability to meditate and decouple that craving. This is great resource for people to have. Is it going to completely make the craving go away? For some, maybe, for others maybe not. But it is one of those things that can help them get through that period. Mindfulness meditation has shown utility in the treatment of other addictions as well. And we're going to talk a lot about mindfulness meditation as we go through today's class. Long term meditators had better preserved brains than non meditators as they aged. Like I said, the active meditation serves to increase the volume of certain areas of the brain and decrease the areas of other volumes like the amygdala. Those are all good things. We also know that trauma decreases certain areas of the brain, generally the ones that are increased with meditation. Therefore, experiences that we have that cause emotional upset or help us feel calm actually do alter the makeup of the brain. And meditation helps preserve that hippocampus and hedge against physiological, physiological changes due to stressors and trauma. Mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the area of the brain network responsible for mind wandering and self referential thoughts, otherwise known as monkey mind, which is so awesome. When people are in early recovery, a lot of times they have monkey mind, even early recovery from anything, depression, anxiety, whatever. And these self referential thoughts tend to promote anxiety. If we can help people start to tame that monkey mind, their thoughts are going to wander and that's okay. They just accept that their thought wanders and then they can choose to follow it or choose to say, you know what, no, I'm coming back to the present moment. I'm not going to be thinking about what I did two weeks before I went into detox. That's not going to help me right now. I need to focus on the present monkey mind. And those self referential thoughts are typically associated with being less happy, ruminating and worrying about the past and the future. Mindfulness meditation is really helpful with this because it encourages people to return their thoughts to the present. They don't have to clear their mind. You know, what we want them to do is be aware of what, what's happening in the now, to get grounded, as we used to say, and then decide from that point, radically accepting life as it is in the moment. How can I improve the next moment if I want to feel better? What can I do to make that happen. It's not that I shouldn't feel bad. I feel how I feel. But if I want to feel better, what can I do next? Mindfulness really helps people tap in and make reasoned decisions instead of reactive decisions. The goals of meditation are to reduce negative emotions, thoughts and behaviors and increase positive emotions, thoughts and behaviors not only towards oneself, but also towards others. It also has the goal of altering relevant physiological processes and pain perception. When we get stressed, our HPA axis gets activated, which is our stress response system. For lack of a more detailed explanation right now, when that happens, cortisol is released. When cortisol is released, norepinephrine and glutamate are released. Those are our excitatory neurotransmitters. Our body is preparing to fight or flee. When that happens, serotonin is reduced, our libido is reduced, and we go into that fight or flee state. The body is not concerned with immunity at that point. When cortisol levels are high, inflammation levels tend to be high, blood pressure tends to be high. We want to help people assist their body, not necessarily trick it, but assist their body into returning, into returning to that rest and digest state that we have right after we eat or when we take a bunch of calming, deep breaths and we practice, you know, deep breathing and meditation can also help us boost our ability to empathize with others. Part of that depends on the type of meditation you choose. However, depending on which type you choose or types, you can experience multiple of these effects. Getting started Meditation is really hard for a lot of people, and slowing down is really hard if they've got monkey mind, which most people in early recovery from anything do, and a lot of people who aren't in early recovery from anything do. Helping us tame that monkey mind so we can stay more focused can really help us start with two minutes a day. One of the things I didn't necessarily start this way. The way I started was focusing on my drive to work and home from work because I love critters and I love clouds and I love sunshine and, you know, I just. Nature sort of things. When I'm driving, if I am not being mindful, I am thinking about what happened at work three hours ago, what I'm going to make for dinner in an hour. You know, my mind is in the past and in the future, not in the present. I started by encouraging myself to pay attention while I'm driving to what's going on around me, the deer on the side of the road, the little groundhogs, and all that kind of stuff that makes me happy when I see those things, so that rewards that behavior, so I'm more likely to do it again. My drive from work to home is about seven minutes, you know, so, okay, I started with seven minutes a day. But encourage people to start with a small chunk of their day. They can do it first thing in the morning when they wake up, before they get out of bed, or when they are drinking their coffee, or right before bed when they're laying down and trying to focus on the present in some sort of way or clear their mind. Some people experience increased frustration if you are trying to get them to clear their mind. People that have a history of dissociation because of trauma may not want to clear their mind, and that might not be a helpful place for them to go, which is why you need to consider their history and what you want them to get out of the meditation and what benefits it will bring to them. Consider practicing or starting meditation with a friend or family member. You know, one of those things you can do when you are sitting at the table or, you know, for us, we have this porch where we can go out and we can look. We live on a farm, so we can sit on the porch in the morning or in the evening when it gets cooler and watch the critters and just be present in that moment. And it's definitely more enjoyable, in my opinion, when I do it and, you know, my kids come out and just sit and observe for two or three minutes quietly with me, and then we can talk about what we saw. Anything that helps people start redirecting their attention to the present moment is going to be helpful. Encourage people not to get caught up in how to do meditation, just to do it. Spend two moments, two minutes focused on the present moment. One technique that you can use is the five. Four, three, two, one. Identify five things you can see, four things that you hear, three things that you smell, two things that you feel, and one thing that you taste that helps people really stay in the present moment. Or they can identify five green things that they see in your office or if they're outside, whatever. They can pick any random color, and that helps them stay focused in the present. They can also focus on their breath or their heart rate for two minutes if they lay down or get in a reclining position where they're calm or seated in a position that's comfortable, focusing on feeling their breath. Come in for a count of four, hold for a count of four, and out for a count of four, feeling the temperature of the Air as it comes in through their nose and feeling it fill their lungs and the reverse as it goes out. Encourages people to focus on something. They're not thinking about work, they're not thinking about dinner, they're not thinking about all these other things. They're thinking about their breath. They're focusing on the sensations surrounding that which gives their brain a chance to just relax for a second. It's not going in six different directions. It's just right here. When people's mind wanders and it will, will even when with two minutes a day, that's okay. I can be sitting on the porch and I can be observing the animals on the farm. And then I suddenly remember, oh, we have those darn carpenter bees down at the barn. I need to do something about it. Okay, this is not the time. And I return my mind to the present. I don't get frustrated with myself. I just say, all right, you know, I'll handle that later. I want to focus on the present moment. Encourage people to develop a loving, non judgmental attitude towards themselves. When they start practicing meditation, how they feel is how they feel. If they're meditating and they feel frustrated, okay, if they feel happy, okay, it is what it is. And this is what I repeat, that's kind of my mantra when I'm working with clients, is to encourage them to just embrace themselves for who and how they are in the moment and the fact that they are survivors and they are here. Encourage people to not worry about clearing their mind. Just practice on focusing their attention. When they focus their attention on the present moment or on a candle or on their breath or on anything, then they are not going to be having as much monkey mind, which is what we're really hoping to do when we clear our mind. So focusing your attention on something is a way of clearing your mind without telling people, okay, now clear your mind. Don't have thoughts and that's too hard for a lot of people to stop thinking and pondering. Even when I'm watching, laying outside and I'm watching the clouds, I still, to this day, I'm 50 years old and I still make cloud animals. But my mind will wander when I'm doing that and I just bring it back to the present. I don't worry about clearing my mind. I don't worry about if I have this thought of, oh, that looks like a teddy bear, that reminds me of Pooh bear. Those are all thoughts. That's not my mind being clear, but it's okay. And I don't get judgmental. With myself about having those thoughts, I just kind of return to noticing. Instead of talking, you know, try to silence that voice in my head a little bit. And I'm like, tell the inner voice to be quiet for two minutes. People can do a body scan. This is another way to get started. Encouraging them to start at their head and just notice if there's any muscle tension, notice if there's any pain. If there's muscle tension, encourage them to, you know, relax that area. Encourage them to figure out how they feel. You can have them notice the light or sounds or energy. If they want to, you know, as I said earlier, focus on a candle flame or on, oh, what are those things? Those. The lamps with the little globs that go up and down. I can't remember what they're called, but my grandmother always used to have them, and they were mesmerizing to me. When my son was young, it was amazing how calming it was for him to go in and watch his fish tank. He only had three goldfish in there, but he would sit there and watch those fish swim back and forth and was just mesmerized by it. His mind was clear. He wasn't thinking about much of anything at that point. I really don't think he was just sort of in a zone. When people are meditating, encourage them to stay with whatever arises. Instead of avoiding feelings like frustration, anger, or anxiety, they can just stay and be curious. If they feel, you know, they notice I'm feeling kind of antsy or frustrated or however they're feeling, I wonder why. Be more of a detective, and that will help them start becoming aware, noticing when they're feeling that way, being curious about it, figuring out why they're feeling that way. Because once they figure out why, then they can start addressing it. Encourage people to get to know themselves, Learn how their mind works. By watching their mind wander, getting frustrated, or avoiding difficult feelings, they can start to understand themselves. When they. They see their mind wander, they're like, okay, where did that come from? Why did that thought suddenly pop up? When they get frustrated and they notice I'm frustrated right now, what's causing that? Oh, okay, I see that there's a connection when I get frustrated. This is a common theme. Encourage people to become friends with themselves with a friendly attitude instead of one of criticism. Especially in early recovery from addictions. A lot of people have guilt, grief, anger, self hatred. A lot of you know, just really negative stuff. And it's important to help them. Yeah, they're going to have to deal with that. Stuff. But it's also important to encourage them to look at themselves as human and a person who wanted to survive and a valuable addition to this world, and encourage them to become friends with themselves, their, their sober selves, as we say. Now we're going to move on to focused or types of meditation, and the first one we're going to talk about is focused attention meditation. In these, this group of meditation techniques, you. You focus the attention on a single object during a whole meditation session. It could be the breath, it could be a mantra, a word that you or phrase you say over and over again. It could be a visualization, some sort of guided imagery that you just envision in your head. It could be a part of the body or an external object. As I said earlier, you do want to use caution in people with a history of dissociation, because this can trigger a dissociative episode. Zen meditation is a type of focused attention meditation in which the person sits and keeps their back completely straight from the pelvis to the neck. Their mouth is kept closed and eyes are kept lowered with their gaze resting on the ground about 2 or 3ft in front of them. They start focusing on their breath, focusing all their attention on the movement of the breath going in and out through their nose. People with postural issues, with spine issues, back issues, may not like this. People who have difficulty just focusing on their breath because, you know, their minds going a million miles a minute may have difficulty with this. People who have ADHD may struggle with this type of meditation as well as people who are gifted. People who are gifted, their mind tends to go really quickly, which makes it look kind of adhd. Like, if clients have difficulty with this type of meditation or don't want to partake in this type of meditation, cool. There are other types. Vipassana meditation. Vipassana is a Pali word that means insight or clear seeing. And the person starts with mindfulness of breath to achieve concentration, practicing and getting, becoming mindful of that breath. So we're building on the Zen meditation. The object that is the focus of the practice is called the primary object. A secondary object is anything else that arises in your field of perception through your senses or through the mind. Sounds, smells, feelings, itchiness, thoughts, memories, feelings. Anything that comes up that is not the breath is a secondary object. If a secondary object grabs your attention, the person notes it with a label like thinking, memory, hearing, desiring, and moves on. You know, it's not something that they're going to hold on to. They just note that it happened. Just like if they were sitting there taking an inventory of the birds that flew onto their, onto their porch. They wouldn't get stuck on it. Cardinal flies in. Okay, cardinal, check that box. Cardinal flies out. That's, that's what we're doing here. We're not holding on. We're not going to be trying to chase that cardinal and hold on to it so we can remember it was there. We just check the box and let it go open. Monitoring meditation is a little bit different. Instead of focusing the attention on any one object, the person keeps their mind open, monitoring all aspects of their experience without judgment or attachment. I particularly like this one because it is kind of like what I do when I sit on the porch and just watch the critters. You can do it when you're sitting, you can do it when you're out, if you're taking a walk through the woods, if you're out hiking. Just openness to the moment, monitoring all aspects. How do I feel? What, what am I hearing? What am I seeing, what am I smelling? And it keeps people in the present moment and aware of all of the richness that's surrounding them at the moment. We talked earlier about mindfulness meditation and we're going to talk a little bit more about it now. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of intentionally focusing on the present moment, accepting and non judgmentally paying attention to the sensations, thoughts and emotions that arise. It is what it is. Encourage people to just embrace that mantra, I feel how I feel. It is what it is. The person again pays close attention to the movement of their breath. We know when people start to get stressed out, their breath tends to become more rapid and shallow. As they pay attention to the movement of their breath, they're keeping it slow and deep. When we do that, we're maintaining that rest and digest state of mind. We're sending feedback to the nervous system that we're all calm here. We don't need to get stressed out, which helps people reduce their cortisol levels, calm that HPA axis down and, and rebalance a lot of the neurotransmitters. In mindfulness meditation, the effort is not to intentionally add anything to our present moment experience, but just to be aware of what's going on without losing ourselves in anything that arises. When you get distracted, recognize it and bring the attention back to breathing. There's a big difference between inside the thought or sensation, simply being aware of its presence. I can dwell on, you know, if I have a pain or a cramp and be stuck and intertwined with that, or I Could just be aware of, oh, yeah, you know, my knees kind of twingy today, and let it go. Think about when you've had pain before. If you focus on it, a lot of times it tends to hurt a lot worse. If you. If you acknowledge it and say, okay, you know, it is what it is, and what can I do? You know, maybe you can't do anything about it. So what else can I do to improve the next moment? And that's the next step after mindfulness meditation. You become aware, and then you move on to improving the moment. Loving kindness meditation is one that I love. The person sits in a meditation position, whatever's comfortable for them. I don't get really caught up, especially in when people are initially learning this. I want them to find meditation to be beneficial, not rigid. So encourage them to sit in a position that's comfortable, ideally with closed eyes, so they can envision. Not everybody's comfortable with that, especially people with trauma histories. That's cool. Encourage them, if they're not going to close their eyes, to find a spot on the wall or find something that is blank or benign that they can stare at. You don't want them looking at something that's going to trigger memories. You want them to just be able to direct their focus. Encourage them to generate in their mind and heart feelings of kindness and benevolence. One of the things that you can put up there on the wall is maybe a picture of a heart or the color. You know, a color swatch that's red or pink or some color that reminds them of kindness and benevolence. Encourage the person to start by developing loving kindness towards themselves. Then progressively they're going to go towards all other beings. Initially, they just focus on the sense of kindness and benevolence, and it's a good place to be, and I'm a good person. And they say to themselves, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be safe, may I be peaceful and at ease. And they just keep repeating that until they feel it and they believe that they deserve these things. With a lot of our clients initially, they don't believe they deserve these things. They don't believe they deserve to be happy. They believe that maybe they should be, you know, punished for a while. Maybe they have never been safe or don't think they deserve to be safe. These are all things we can address in therapy. But we do want to get them to the point where they start recognizing that they deserve all these things. One thing you can do when you're introducing loving Kindness meditation is point out to your clients, what would you want? Your best friend or your child or anyone else? Can they say these things? Of course. You know, I would want my child to think all these things. I think all these things for my child. Okay? Now, if your child did the same things that you did, you know, whatever those things are, I don't know what they are, but if your child made the same choices that you had up until this point, would you tell them that they should not be able to say those things? Would you tell them, no? Since you made those choices, you should not be happy, you should not be well, you should not be safe. And so far, I have never had somebody go, well, of course not. I would want them to feel like they could start over or grow from their experience. And I'm like, exactly. Let's start embracing that nurturing attitude of, you know, maybe you made mistakes, maybe you made some unfortunate choices, however you deserve. You're a wonderful human being, whoever you are, who may have made bad choices, and you deserve to be happy, well and safe and peaceful and at ease. Once they can wrap their heads around this, you move down to a good friend and have them envision that person at all times. You know, envision that person and saying them, may you be happy, may you be well, may you be safe, may you be peaceful and at ease. That one's usually pretty easy. As a friend and you know, we want the best for our friends, then you pick a neutral person, like the cashier at the grocery store and envision them in your mind and say that same set of things. May you be happy. Well, safe, peaceful and at ease. Until they envision that and they feel like they are in their mind, they are telling that to that person and they're seeing the goodness and benevolence in that person. And then comes the hard one. They need to find a difficult person, maybe a co worker they don't get along with or somebody that is challenging in their life. And it could be somebody from the past and envisioning that person and saying the same mantra and believing the same mantra they deserve. You know, may they be happy, well, safe, peaceful and at ease. Once they get the hang of this, they're going to want to be able to develop the ability to feel kindness and benevolence toward all four people equally. You know, themselves a good friend, a neutral person, and a difficult person. I find when people start this, it's easiest to have a high level of kindness and benevolence toward their good friend, a moderate to High level toward a neutral person and then the difficult person and themselves, you know, those two are harder and they usually jockey for which one is more difficult. But we want them to be able to wish themselves and everyone else happiness. Why? Well, wishing them ill will probably doesn't do any good. When people get stuck and have difficulty with this loving kindness meditation, then you know, that's a therapeutic issue that they can start to address eventually. We want people to start feeling this loving kindness meditation and envisioning it toward the entire world. So having them practice when they're out shopping periodically, when they see people keeping that mantra in their head, thinking to themselves, I'm sending you good energy. May you be happy. Well, safe, peaceful and at ease. They don't have to say it out loud. Don't want to go around the mall and tapping people on the shoulder and saying, that probably wouldn't go over well. But if they do it in their own mind and they envision sending that positive energy, then it can help relieve them potentially of some negative energy. Because you can't send out positive energy and be negative at the same time. Sometimes seemingly opposite feelings, such as anger, grief, or sadness may arise with whatever patience, acceptance, and kindness the person can muster. Direct loving kindness towards those feelings. Anger arises. Okay, that's okay. You know, loving kindness means it's okay for me to have dysphoric feelings. It's okay for me to have whatever experiences I'm having. And it doesn't mean I am any worse or less of a person for doing that. Reminding themselves, you know, if they're angry at somebody, reminding themselves that this person too just wants to be happy and we all make mistakes. I don't understand what was going on in that person's mind when this happened, and maybe I never will. However, they just want to be happy. And for some reason, whatever they did seemed like the best choice for them. Encourage them to send. Loving kindness does not mean that we approve or condone all actions. It means that we can see clearly actions that are incorrect and still maintain a connection of kindness. Going back to your kids again, most of us have kids that make mistakes, and some of them make some doozies. Does that mean we love them any less? No. Do we dislike their behavior? Yeah, certainly. But we don't love them any less. We maintain that connection of loving kindness with them, maintain that connection of compassion, and we can still disapprove of a behavior. Another thing you can do is to challenge yourself. If you have a particularly difficult person that you're trying to direct Loving kindness toward is think about one good thing about that person. And I know I've had some clients in my 20 some odd years of practice that were challenging, you know, personality disorder, characteristic things. I understand that they were doing the best they could with the tools they had at that particular point in time. I had to adopt that belief in order to move towards loving kindness. Remind people that there is no need to judge themselves for having these feelings. And I put a link in here to a sample loving kindness meditation script that walks people right through it. Because I believe. I believe that this is one of those activities that can be abundantly helpful for just about anybody because it really helps them see that there is good in people and everybody instead of seeing somebody as a representation of something that's unpleasant or, you know, scary or makes them angry. The Mantra Meditation A mantra is a syllable or word, usually without any particular meaning, that is repeated for the purpose of focusing mind. It is not an affirmation. Guidelines for picking a Word if somebody wants to practice mantra meditation, the meaning is most important. Choose a word or sentence that represents something you want to develop more in your life, feel more, or connect to, such as love, peace, freedom, awareness, light, courage, etc. It's not an affirmation, it's just a state of being. The sound of the word needs to speak to you. The only way to realize this is by repeating it for a few minutes and observe how you feel before and after. For example, relax. That's one of my mantras that, you know, that's a state that I repeat and I can. That speaks to me. Peace. Not so much. But each person has their own responses to different words, so encourage people to try out different words. The repetition of the mantra Just like when we talked earlier about focusing on your breath, the repetition of the mantra helps people disconnect from their thoughts if they are saying that mantra over again and feeling how it feels when they say it, the vibrations in their mouth when they're saying it, and how it feels when they breathe. Encourage people to practice for a period of time or a set number of repetitions. Traditionally in mantra meditation, the number of repetitions is 108, which represents the ultimate reality of the universe. In order to remember this, some people use beads to practice, kind of like rosary beads. So they move a bead every time they say the word, and when they get to the end, then that's 108. The traditional progress of the practice from mantra meditation is start with verbal recitation, repeating the word out loud to engage more senses Making it easier to keep your attention focused. And then you move to whispering the word. It's a little subtler and deeper than the verbal recitation. Once you're comfortable with that, you move to mental recitation where you're just repeating the mantra inside your mind. You're not going to have those vibrations in your mouth or anything anymore. You're just hearing that word over and over again. And then spontaneous listening. You're no longer repeating the mantra, but the mantra goes on by itself in your mind. And this is another link that will take you to more examples of mantra meditation. There are a lot of different types of yoga meditations. We're not going to go into all of them. A couple of them. The third eye meditation focuses the attention on the spot between the eyebrows. Increase silent gaps between thoughts. Gazing meditation encourages people to fix their gaze on an external object, like a candle. It's done with the eyes open and then with the eyes closed to train both the concentration and visualization powers of the mind. So it takes it from just focusing on that candle flame to. All right now you're used to focusing on the candle flame. I want you to close your eyes and see that in your mind's eye again. The awesome thing about that is once people get used to visualizing it and seeing it in their mind's eye, then they can focus on that object anywhere. They can focus on it when they are on the subway, when they are. Hopefully not when they're driving, but anytime they don't have to have the candle with them. Sound meditation starts with the meditation on external sounds, such as calming ambient music. Then the person focuses all their attention on just hearing as a way to quiet and collect the mind. Focusing. You know, you have those nature sounds and different things focusing on just hearing what is being played, what sounds are occurring. Tantra meditations. Tantra is derived from the Sanskrit tan, meaning expansion and TRA meaning liberation. When one object is perceived, all other objects become empty, and you want to concentrate on the emptiness, not the fullness. Another activity for tantra meditation is to concentrate on the space which occurs between your thoughts. That's a hard one because for me, it's not tangible. I have a hard time doing that one. You can listen to the heart chakra sound. You can contemplate the universe or your own body as being filled with bliss. Or you can contemplate that the same consciousness exists in all bodies. So you're expansing, expanding, or liberating your mind, trying to break out of that box that we get stuck in. Sometimes with light meditation, people sit in a comfortable, upright meditation posture, bring themselves fully into the present moment by becoming aware of the sensations of their physical body and the movement of their breath. Then they focus their awareness on their right foot. Imagine that their right foot is being filled with golden light, and they visualize it. They feel the light filling each part of the foot, from the toes to the sole to the arch to the heel. As they inhale, they feel the body part filling with light and warmth. And as they exhale, they feel that light spreading throughout that part. So they inhale and it's filling, and as they exhale, it sort of, you know, oozes through that body part, and they gradually move up the body until the entire body is filled with warmth and light. Christian meditation can come in the form of contemplative prayer, which involves the silent repetition of sacred words or sentences with focus and devotion, such as the Serenity prayer or rosaries. Contemplative reading or simply contemplation involves thinking deeply about the teachings and events in the Bible or the religious script that the person chooses, and sitting with God. A silent meditation in which we focus all of our mind, heart and soul on the presence of our higher power. Obviously, you can do this with any religion. Do this with Hindu, with Judaism, with Islam. Any person who has a religious text and a higher power, you know, and probably implement these if that is what they choose to do. Qigong is a very common practice, and it's a type of meditation in which a person sits in a comfortable position and make sure their body is balanced and centered. They relax their whole body, breathing deeply from the abdomen and calm their mind. They place all of their attention in the lower dan tien, which is the center of all gravity of the body, 2 inches below the belly button. The thought is this helps accumulate qi, or vital energy in this natural reservoir. And then the person is encouraged to feel the qi circulating freely throughout their body. Qigong has a lot of forms and methods that are associated with it, but this is the very beginning, encouraging people to basically collect and harness their qi, if you will. Guided meditation, Guided imagery makes use of the imagination and visualization powers of the brain, guiding people to imagine an object, entity, scenery, or journey. Guided imagery can reduce stress and elevate the immune system and cell specific energy effects corresponded to white blood cells, neutrophils, or lymphocytes. They found that people with infections, when they used guided imagery and envisioned their immune system attacking a foreign invader, it actually increased their immune system. They found that people with HIV were able to increase the number of their T helper cells through guided imagery. There's a lot of really cool research that's come out over the past 20 years about that. They also showed that there were immunomodulatory effects of relaxation training and guided imagery in women with advanced breast cancer undergoing multimodal therapy, which is a good thing to know. You know this, as we help people figure out how to reduce their cortisol levels, we're going to help them have a corresponding increase in their immunity and reduction in inflammation, which can do nothing but benefit them for immune enhancement. One guided meditation activity is to have people put the flat palm of their hand over their thymus gland, with which is under the middle of their breastbone. Imagine the warm energy from their hand is slowly and steadily entering the thymus gland, filling it with energy, feeling it, creating white blood cells like popping popcorn. Progressive muscular relaxation also helps people achieve a deep relaxation in their whole body and is usually accompanied by soothing instrumental music or nature sounds. I used to teach my students how to do this when I taught at the University of Florida, and almost inevitably I'd lose about 20% of the students. They'd drift off to sleep while we were doing it. This can be really helpful because you'd be surprised at all the different places that you store muscular tension. Affirmations coupled with relaxation and guided imagery are also helpful for meditation, and the purposes of these meditations is to imprint a message in your mind. If you're saying meditations and envisioning it, I can do this. Somebody who is a golfer envisioning themselves going out and having the perfect golf swing and using the affirmation, I can do this, or somebody getting ready to go up and do a speech, I've got this. Encourage clients to identify images, visual images of what success looks like for them in treatment at this point in time, what is it they they want to envision themselves in recovery? Encourage them to really flesh out what that looks like. That is their guided imagery. And you want them to focus on that every morning when they wake up. They want to envision themselves being happy, healthy, courageous, energetic, whatever else is in there, and envision themselves successfully going through the day at the end of the day, encouraging them again to envision themselves as a person who successfully accomplished their goals. Meditation has been shown to help people cultivate happy feelings. Part of it is because it encourages you to focus on something that's right there. When I was driving to work, I'm sorry, not to work to the gym this morning, there were three little deer that were on the side of the road and you know, this kind of up the side of the hill and the sun was coming down and there was a mama deer with her little fawn that still had spots and they were like nose to nose. It was like mama dear was kissing the fawn. It was such a Norman Rockwell moment. And if I had been not mindful, I wouldn't have even seen that. Now, of course I was mindful and I, you know, said, oh, and my daughter who was happened to be driving at the moment, looked and she's like, what? And turned the car. But that's a whole different story. Being aware of what's going on when I drop her off at school. And on Mondays and Wednesdays, there's this groundhog. I think they're called groundhogs, woodchucks. Whatever they are, they are so cute. They're like oversized hamsters. Every morning he's sitting at this four way stop on his hind legs looking at the cars like he thinks he's directing traffic or something. I don't know why, but I think he's adorable. And that brings happiness to my life because I notice these things. I'm like, oh, that's awesome. I'm not just focused on that grind of got to get to work, got to write the class, got to do this, got to do that. It's appreciating what is around. Meditation can help tame monkey mind and improve concentration and clarity. A lot of our clients, as I said earlier, have a lot of grief and guilt and regret and energy tied up in the past. And their mind may want to periodically go there. Especially if they start to feel happy and they start to feel guilty about feeling happy, their mind may go back there and go, yep, let me grab a whole list of these memories for why you don't deserve to be happy right now. We want to help them leave those lists back there until it's appropriate to deal with them and tame that monkey mind. Help them develop thought stopping techniques so they can experience happiness in the moment. They are not going to be motivated or as motivated to pursue recovery if they're not feeling happy. If it doesn't feel like it's worth it, if it feels like, oh my gosh, this hurts too bad. One of the things they say in recovery is one of the greatest things about recovery is you can feel feelings again. And one of the worst things about recovery is you feel feelings again. You know, you have the highs and you have the lows and it happens. Meditation can help people Focus on the good things, not get stuck in the bad and appreciate the current moment. Reduce blood pressure and improve sleep, which, at least the sleep part. Most of our clients probably need to improve their sleep. Remember, there's a variety of different types of motivation, and it's important for people to find one that fits for them. They don't. One that they're willing to do. They try it and they're like, okay, well, maybe there's a benefit. Encourage them to keep a log for a week. Have them pick one type of meditation they're going to try and keep a log for a week of their tension levels or their anxiety or their number of anger outbursts and see if it reduces using that type of meditation or their happiness. You can also have them measure that when they can't be happy and, you know, angry and negative and dysphoric all at the same time. It can alternate, but generally you can't be both all at the same time. Remember, a note of caution is used with people with trauma histories to avoid recapitulating the traumatic experience. If they were involved in some sort of ritualistic abuse where maybe candles were lit, candles may be a trigger. If they were encouraged or, you know, maybe they were abused or whatever happened when they were in bed, you know, telling them they have to lie down may not work. Telling them they have to close their eyes may be triggering. It's important to work with the client and empower them to figure out how to embrace meditation in a way that's meaningful and helpful in their lives. Now, as promised, there's a link to the class here you can go. Between writing notes, filing insurance claims, and scheduling with clients, it can be hard to stay organized. That's why I recommend Therapy Notes. Their easy to use platform lets you manage your practice securely and efficiently. Visit therapynotes.com to get two free months of TherapyNotes by just using the promo code CEU when you sign up for a free trial at therapynotes.com. If this podcast helps you help your clients or yourself, please support us by purchasing your ceus@allce.com or getting your agency to sponsor an episode. A direct link to the on demand CEUs for this podcast is@allce.com podcastceus that's allce.com podcastceus to sponsor an episode of Counselor Toolbox and reach over 50,000 clinicians per week, go to allce.com sponsor. Thank you.