Mindfulness and Meditation Quickstart Guide

Foreign. I'd like to welcome everybody. Today's presentation on mindfulness and meditation. Now, this is just a very high level overview. I have other videos on the YouTube channel that go through much more in depth information on mindfulness and much more in depth information on meditation. But today we're really just going to hit the high level overviews for people who are just getting interested or just getting started with the topic. We'll differentiate between mindlessness and mindfulness, understand where mindlessness came from, explore ways mindfulness can help, explore activities that will help people learn the benefits of meditation, identify the goals of meditation, describe how to get started with meditation. And then, like I said, we're going to explore a couple parts or a couple different types of meditation. There are literally dozens of different types of meditation out there. So it's important for people to recognize that if they've tried one type of meditation and it hasn't worked, you know, there are lots of others that can be tried and there are a lot of benefits to it. So let's start out with mindfulness or mindlessness as the case would be. Mindlessness is when we are operating on autopilot. We're going with the flow, doing what's always been done. We get up in the morning, you know, I'll tell you my typical morning. I get up, kind of stagger out of bed, go into the breakfast room, I make coffee, sit down, drink my coffee, read the news, get up, get dressed, you know, go to the gym. You know, it's pretty much the same routine every day. I don't think about it. I'm on autopilot. I'm not thinking, you know, how am I feeling today? I'm not thinking, you know, about much of anything. I'm just kind of going through the motions and that is being mindless. Other examples of mindlessness that a lot of people can relate to are getting home and not remembering the drive. You got into your car and you started driving home. Then you started thinking about the day and what you were going to cook for dinner and whatever else you were thinking about. And you didn't even really notice the drive home. You just went there on autopilot. Which also, you know, is interesting to point out what you missed when you were driving there. You may have missed some really awesome things. But it's also important to recognize that when we're mindlessly driving, we also tend to be less aware of what's going on around us. Other examples, eating without realizing it, or eating when you're not hungry. If it's Noon or dinner time, and you are eating because it's dinner time. That is mindless. That is doing what has always been done. Because that's just the habit or the routine. You're not stopping to think, am I hungry? Am I? Whatever? And having intense feelings or relapses come from out of the blue. And this can happen for a lot of different things. But when people all of a sudden have this anger outburst, for example, and it came from, quote, out of the blue, when we look backwards and we do some backward chaining, we can often recognize that it was building and there were a lot of vulnerabilities. Had they been mindful of those vulnerabilities, they may have been able to intercept it along the way. We learned mindlessness when we were growing up because we got messages like, because I said so. Which translates to don't ask why, just do it. Suck it up. Which translates to don't feel, just do. You don't like it, I don't care, just do it anyway. Nobody cares. Ignore it. Means don't trust yourself to trust your feelings and don't trust other people to be there for you. You're doing it because that's what everybody does. Means don't think about it, you know, everybody else is doing it. Just follow that herd mentality and then hurry, hurry, hurry. There's no time to stop and think or feel. You just need to do what is most expeditious. A lot of these messages are actually highlighted in Alice in Wonderland. So that's a cool movie that you can watch. When I was in residential on the weekends, we tended to have more low key groups, so we would pick a movie. I love Pinocchio. I love Alice in Wonderland. There are a lot of seemingly family or kid oriented movies that have a lot of really poignant concepts in them. Alice in Wonderland themes that you can pull out include mindlessness, impulsivity, identity crises, frantically trying anything. Things are often not as they appear to be. Time punishes by standing still. You know, there's a lot of different things in there. You just have to really look at it more in depth. So that could be a fun activity. And if you're locked at home right now, if you're on quarantine, that can be a fun activity for families to do. I'm sure you can, you know, find it for free or rent it on one of the streaming services. It could be a fun family activity or you could even do it as a group with a watch party. So that could be cool. Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment. It's encouraging us to stop, look, listen, feel, and guess what, interpret what's going on not only around us, but, but also inside of us, what's going on around me. And I know I use this example a lot when I drive home. I try really hard to be mindful when I'm driving home and notice the. And to work and notice the groundhogs, notice the hawks, notice, you know, I love nature, so I try to notice those things and I notice what's going on around me and how it makes me feel inside. It makes me feel happy when I see those things or unfortunately, when I was driving on the way to work this morning, there was a possum that had been killed on the side of the road. And that made me sad. And I noticed that I was mindful of those feelings. And it's important to recognize how you're feeling and what's going on with you. Mindfulness can help you transition from reacting to, to acting, being proactive in the moment. One of the things you can do with clients or with yourself is look back over the day yesterday. If you had been mindful, what vulnerabilities could you have prevented? That is what situations, you know, occurred that made you more vulnerable to stress? Did you let your blood sugar get too low? Did you not get enough sleep? You know what was going on? What stressful events could you have prevented? If you were being mindful, for example, were you running late, getting somewhere because you weren't paying attention and you got caught up reading the news and then you started running late for work or whatever it was? If you had been aware of your vulnerabilities, how might you have conducted your day differently? So if you woke up and you knew that you didn't feel well, you had a headache, you didn't sleep well, how might you have conducted your day differently than just your normal autopilot? Mindfulness makes more efficient and effective use of our energy by helping us make the right decisions the first time. And Covey refers to this as beginning with the end. In mind, we think about what it is that we want to get out of the day or out of the drive or whatever it is. We can have really short goals and know what we want to get out of it. When I get in my car to go to work, I want to get there safely. That is what I want to get out of the drive. So being mindful of what's going on, I am more able to make sure that that happens. Mindfulness encourages self awareness and compassion. It helps Us seek first to understand ourselves, recognizing why we feel or react the way we do. It also gives us empathy for others because we see, oh, you know, I know that when I'm stressed or when I'm sick, I tend to feel or react this way. And then we see somebody else reacting a certain way and we're like, you know, I wonder if they are feeling sick or stressed or whatever because I know that's what I do when I feel that way so I can empathize with how they might be feeling or what might be going on with them. Mindfulness reduces inefficiency through planning and prioritizing. If you are mindful of what you need to get done today, if you are mindful of how you feel and what your needs are, then you can plan and prioritize. Some days I get up and I am feeling 110% and I can plan and prioritize and plan out my day. Other days I get up, I didn't sleep well, I'm not feeling well, whatever the case is. And you know, I know that ahead of time. So I prioritize and I say, all right, I don't have as much energy as normal, I'm not going to get everything done that I planned today, most likely, so let me prioritize and figure out what things I have to get done. Reduces a lot of stress because I know I'm going to get the have to's done. Mindfulness helps us maintain our awareness to prevent or reduce discomfort and helps us balance and renew our resources, energy and health to create sustainable, long term, effective lifestyles. Covey refers to this as sharpening the saw. Mindfulness helps us recognize when we are getting dull. If you want to think about it that way. When we are reducing our effectiveness because we are worn out, we are worn down. If we're mindful, we notice these things and we can ask ourselves, what do I need to do right now? Perfect example. Yesterday I came in and I was gung ho, I did a few things and then all of a sudden I hit a wall and oh my gosh, was it a wall? And I was exhausted and you know, I thought to myself, can I try to push through? Is there something I need to do? Do I need to push through? What can I do right now in order to sharpen the saw? I got everything done that I had to get done and then I recognized that pushing further, I was probably going to make sloppy mistakes. You know, I was foggy headed and whatever else and so I decided to cut my losses right then and go home a little bit early, get a good night's sleep. So I had more energy today. And that's how mindfulness can really help us. Because if I would have stuck around and kept trying to do things, I probably would have made mistakes, gotten frustrated, gotten even more worn down. Looking at what options you have to meet your needs in the present while still moving toward future goals is also a benefit of mindfulness. When I recognize that, okay, I'm exhausted right now, when I'm mindful, I can say, what are my options? I can go to the break room and take a power nap, I can do everything I have to get done and then go home early. I can identify those things. Being mindful, because when we're mindful, we're able to see more options and get outside the box. One of the activities I call anchored mindfulness encourage people before each meal to just consider without judgment. And that's the key. Without judgment, we're not saying it's good or bad or they should or shouldn't. They're just noticing what is their mood and why? Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you angry? Why? Just curious question. How do you feel physically? And why is your attitude positive, ambivalent or negative? And why? How's your concentration? Do you have monkey mind? Are your thoughts bouncing all over the place? What vulnerabilities are or will be present today and how can you mitigate them? If you know that you didn't get enough sleep? If you know that you're getting ready to go into a situation that is inherently stressful, that's a vulnerability. If you know ahead of time you're getting ready to go in a stressful situation, you can mitigate that. Instead of going into it going, well, just might as well throw everything at it. And anchored mindfulness. You also ask yourself, what do I need to do right now to improve the moment? I feel this way right now. It is what it is. It is how I feel. How can I improve the next moment? What do I have planned power over? What do I have the control over to improve my situation so I don't have to sit here stuck in the mud core? Mindfulness, as Linehan defines them, include the reasonable mind, the wise mind, and the emotional mind. And I break them down pretty simplistically. The emotional mind is our impulsive, heart driven, reactive mind. It wants what it wants. The reasonable mind is the artificial intelligence or the data driven. There is no emotion there. It is looking at facts, figures, rationale. The wise mind takes the emotion and the motivation and the impulse for what you want to do combines it with the facts and then tries to create the happy solution. It tries to compromise between what the heart wants and what the mind wants. Wise mind how skills, you can abbreviate them, nod non judgmental one mind and do what works. So when we're in our wise mind, we need to non judgmentally observe what's going on. And you know, going back here, remember, the wise mind observes what the emotional mind, what the heart is saying and what the mind is, what the head is saying and tries to combine the two because your heart and your and your head have to live within the same body. So the wise mind is sort of your mediator. So non judgmental, observing what's going on. One mind is focusing on the task at hand and clearing your mind of everything else. So focusing on what am I doing right now. If I am teaching, it's what I'm doing. If I am eating or drinking coffee, focusing on what I'm doing, if I'm driving, that's what I'm doing. And the wise mind encourages us to stay in that moment as much as possible. It's kind of like the cattle dogs that try to corral our monkey mind and then doing what works, noticing what's going on and making a choice about what's the next step that we can do. The wise mind also has what to do skills, if you will. And in your wise mind, you want to observe, be a detective, take in the whole situation. Ask questions like what's going on? You know, I feel anxious, for example. Okay, that's how you're feeling right now. What's the big picture? What's going on that is contributing to, to that anxiety? What is triggering those feelings? What might I be missing that is contributing or could be contributing to that anxiety? Did I drink too much coffee this morning? So I've got stimulants just kind of ramping me up too. And how might someone else perceive this situation? A lot of people are feeling anxiety right now because of coronavirus and economic shutdowns and everything else. So where I might be feeling this is abnormal, other people might look at it as a completely normal reaction to a situation. So it's important to be a detective, look at the situation and get sort of an objective viewpoint of what's going on and then describe your experiences, exploring that emotional mind, saying things like this situation is, you know, terrifying, or I feel anxious because encouraging people to describe what's going on so they can start putting their finger on, you know, exactly how Am I feeling? And then participate by being actively involved in the moment, thinking about, what can I do to improve the next moment? If I feel like my heart is racing because of that anxiety, what can I do to improve the next moment? Can I try belly breathing? Maybe that will help slow my heart rate down so I can get further into that wise mind and use some more cognitive behavioral skills to address whatever's causing the anxiety. But the first thing I need to do is slow down my heart rate. Clients can practice wise mind skills by watching tv. A lot of people love watching tv, so this is not punishment in any way. Encourage them to find scenes in TV shows where somebody gets upset, Observe, be a detective, taking in the whole situation, looking at what's going on, thinking about, okay, what might this person be missing that, you know, they're getting all upset or they're getting, you know, anxious? What might they be missing and how might someone else perceive this situation? I'm re watching Blacklist right now, and there's a lot of situations in there where Lizzie gets upset about different ways that Red's behaving. And, you know, Red has very different reactions, but curious to try to observe what's going on and maybe try to get into their head to figure out why are they reacting this way, what is triggering this reaction, what might they not be seeing? You know, because theoretically we see more than they do. Being observers. Describe, name the person's experiences. So getting in that person's head, if you will, describing how they might, using words to articulate how they might describe the situation. This situation is so exasperating. She feels betrayed because Red keeps changing the story or whatever it is and then be actively involved in the moment. What could, sticking with the Blacklist metaphor, what could Lizzie do to improve the next moment to help her feel less frustrated and trapped by Red in this situation and what's the best choice of action based on her goals? So it's an analysis that I think a lot of us actually do do when we're watching television shows. But encouraging people to, you know, once they get good and they feel confident doing it with television, then applying it to themselves. Things that get in the way of observing adrenaline, anger or fear. Whenever that HPA axis is on high alert, our threat response system is in overdrive. We are in fight or flee. We are not going to be noticing everything that's going on. We tend to have tunnel vision when we're in fight or flee. That's just the way we are wired. Our brain is not supposed to say, okay, let's sit back and observe the situation for a few minutes. It says, get the heck out of here. Encourage people to practice distress tolerance skills and focused or belly breathing to help them tone down that HPA axis response to get their heart rate to slow down a little bit, trigger that rest and digest opposing response. People who have a negativity bias, they tend to just view things through a negative lens. Have difficulty observing and seeing the positive and the negative. Encourage them to practice hardiness, commitment, control and challenge. And there are videos on resiliency skills and hardiness on the YouTube channel. So I'm not going to go into that a lot right now, but hardiness is a great skill for addressing negativity bias. Gratitude, developing that, forcing themselves to develop that attitude of gratitude or and or dialectics, which means embracing the positive with the negative, recognizing, just like yin and yang, there is always positive with negative. So it's raining today that you may see that as a negative, but you can also embrace the fact that it's going to water the plants and help the grass grow and help things green up so it's not so brown and giggy anymore. Don't you like my words? But encouraging people to force themselves to balance out when they see a negative, also try to find two or three positives. People may have difficulty observing because of their prior schemas. They expect something to happen, so they have difficulty accepting or taking in information that doesn't fit into that schema. Encouraging them to use cognitive processing therapy, especially focusing on facts and, you know, my expectations are that this is going to happen. What are the facts supporting my expectations and what are the facts against my expectations? And trauma can prevent us from observing because it can remind us of situations from the past that were threatening or traumatic to us. So we may have difficulty observing the present moment clearly because we're projecting what happened in the past onto the present situation. Encouraging people to identify the ways that, okay, this situation is similar to the past and I can see how it may be triggering me, but also how is the situation different from the past? Maybe how am I stronger? How do I have more resources? How am I safer than I was back then? Things that get in the way of describing include being on autopilot. If you are on autopilot, you get in the car after work and you drive home on autopilot. Totally don't even really notice what's going on because you're too busy thinking about what happened during the day. Can you describe what happened on your way home? Can you describe what you Saw. You saw things because you were driving and clearly didn't run into anybody. But can you describe it? And the answer is no. Autopilot keeps us from being able to describe. Some people have a lack of words to describe, either because they're too young or. Or maybe they just aren't used to talking about things. Taboo is a great way to do this. The game taboo, because you have a word that you're trying to get somebody to guess, and then there are a bunch of other things that you cannot say as hints to get them to guess that word. So it encourages people to creatively try to prompt someone else to say grief or depression or anxiety or whatever else is going on. Frustration. So taboo can be really fun. You can also do rhythm around the circle. I do that more with younger, like kids, where you talk about different. We're gonna go around the circle. And each time we come to you, as we're going around the circle, I want you to say a different feeling. Feeling. And it can't be the same word somebody else has used. So if somebody else has already said afraid, then you need to find a different word for fear. Worried, for example. Encouraging them to find those synonyms. And cognitive distortions can also get in the way of describing. If we're personalizing something, if we think it's all our fault, then we're going to describe it through our interpretive lens. We're going to describe the situation as all our fault. We see this happening because my boss walks down the hall and he gives me a dirty look. I personalize it. I think I must have made him angry. So how am I going to describe the situation? Well, when I passed Richard today, he gave me a dirty look because I did something to make him angry. That's my description of what happened. Now, that may not be at all true. He may have just gotten out of a meeting and, you know, he was on autopilot and didn't even hardly notice me when he walked by. But that grimace he had on his face was related to something else. So I may not be accurately describing the situation. I'm just describing my perception, which is based on a cognitive distortion. Things that get in the way of participating, that is making a choice to figure out how to improve the next moment. Well, not knowing what you want, not knowing your destination, what is going to make me happy. So I'm angry right now, but if I don't know what I'm angry about or what would help me feel better, then I'm going to have a hard time taking the next step, because I don't know where I'm going. Encourage people to figure out, you know, if I'm angry about a certain situation, the first thing they've got to say is what would make me happy in this situation? What would be a good resolution? And then the next question is, what is the first step I can take toward that resolution? Fear of rejection or inadequate social support can also keep people from participating. If they are afraid that someone isn't going to like what they say, then they may not participate at all. If they're afraid that if they do what they want that will make them happy, that they will be rejected, then they may not participate. They just stay unhappy for fear of rejection, Fear of being wrong or that their needs are wrong. Lack of self efficacy. If people don't believe that they have the ability to do anything that's going to help them to feel better, then they may not. They may have a sense of learned helplessness and they just sit there think feeling helpless. An unawareness of tools. Encourage people to identify what has worked in the past for them or somebody else to deal with similar situations and then depression. Sometimes people can identify how they're feeling, they can identify what the next steps might be, but they may just not have enough gas to actually take those steps. And we need to identify if somebody gets to that point of participating, but then they don't follow through. We need to understand why and, and we need to help them understand why and address those hurdles to participation. Activities to help people develop mindfulness. The five minute focus. I want them to practice observing. Encourage them to go into a room for five minutes. And at first it seems like an eternity. Five minutes seems like a really long time. Have them write down everything that they see, everything they smell, everything they hear and how they feel emotionally and physically. You know, during that five minutes, just have them just keep writing down everything that they notice. And at the end of five minutes, especially if you have people do it in a group, you can compare what people have seen, smelled, heard, etc. I used to do this with my class at UF. We would go outside and do this for five minutes. And it was always interesting to compare notes for people of what they did or did not notice when they were outside. Because rarely, I don't think ever did people have the exact same list. Everybody noticed something a little bit different. There were a lot of overlap, but there were also a lot of differences. Another activity that people can do on their own, I call it three minute thoughts. Have people take three minutes and Write down or record. If they don't want to write it down, they can just do it on a voice recorder. All of the thoughts that they have. You know, Freud used to do this all the time where he would just free associate at the end of three minutes, review your thoughts, identify how many were negative. If you recorded it, you can just make a sheet and a tally. So you have how many thoughts were negative and you just put a hash mark every time there's a negative thought. How many thoughts were about the past, how many were about the future, how many were about the present, and how many were just completely irrelevant. This encourages people to notice how often their mind is going in success, different directions, and not necessarily focused on the present moment. Another thing people can do for mindfulness is what I call a vulnerability checklist. These are things that when unchecked, can cause low grade stress, making people more vulnerable to stronger reactions. And you can do a variety of different ways. Draw a card is one of the ones that I do. You can also write these different vulnerabilities, emotional, physical, social and environmental on a beach ball and toss the beach ball around. When you catch the beach ball, you look down, whatever word is facing you, you've got to identify a type of vulnerability in that area and why it would make you vulnerable to stronger reactions. So for example, guilt. If I am feeling guilty, that is a vulnerability because I am already feeling stressed. So if I'm feeling guilty, that means I might be more vulnerable to stronger negative reactions to other things later in the day because I'm already using a lot of energy for guilt. Another fun activity is colors of emotion. This is for more creative people and remembering that most colors evoke emotion in people and colors remind us of memories. We also have a lot of things associated with color. I mean, if you just do an Internet search for purple and what purple means, a lot of times purple is associated with royalty, with wealth, with intense passion. There are a lot of different things. Red is another one that's associated with passion, whereas pink is associated with friendship. But those colors don't necessarily just mean those things. Having people identify how they feel and you know, what color they feel like can be a fun activity. Just get a big box of crayons and have people pick up a crayon and look at the color and go, what does this make you feel like? You know, there are, you know, the pukey green colors that may make you feel nauseous and sick. There are the, you know, periwinkle is one of my favorite colors that's sort of a cheerful blue. But there are a lot of. You can talk about a lot of different things by using colors and encouraging people to note how they're feeling in terms of colors and in terms of the intensity of colors can also be a fun activity. Smells are one of the strongest memory triggers. So we can affect our environment, we can affect our situation by changing the smell. And if you have people who are willing to do it and, you know, not super sensitive to smells, yada, yada, you can do what I call scent stations. And you can get little baggies or little, you know, yogurt cups that you've cleaned out. I'm always about reducing, reusing, and recycling. And put a cotton ball in there with a couple of drops of essential oil or some herbs. You know, you don't have to have essential oil. You can use rosemary herbs. And have people go from station to station and smell the different aromas and identify how it makes them feel. That is very personal to them, but it also helps them understand how different smells can trigger emotions, but also how they might trigger memories. I know when I smell pine, it reminds me of my grandmother's house and, you know, happy, happy feelings from them. Rosemary, vanilla, lavender, clove, basil, oregano. You can get a whole bunch of different smells through different wax tarts, pine trees, pine sol, cinnamon, white ginger. You know, the list goes on. And a lot of these things you can find in nature, like I said, you don't have to go out and buy a bunch of stuff that's expensive. I love doing daisy chains for mindfulness. If you remember when you were a little kid, you may have done these. You cut little strips of construction paper and you glue them together in rings, and you make sort of a wreath or a daisy chain. What I have people do for vulnerabilities, and this can be, you know, thinking about, you know, leading up to them getting sick or having a relapse of their autoimmune issue or their depression. Every green strip that they put on there, they write down something that they did positive. You know, I got plenty of sleep, I'm drinking plenty of water, you know, listing those and linking the chain together. But then when they get to something that they did along the way that was not helpful for their recovery, that becomes a red strip. And then they can look at that daisy chain and see where the weak point points are in their recovery process and figure out ways to prevent those from happening. It helps you observe past relapses, whether it's depression, anxiety, addiction, autoimmune Whatever it is, and describe triggers and events leading up to it so you can see the green things. You know, I was doing all these right things, but then, you know, I had five reds in a row. You can also have them do the same thing. Create a daisy chain for past remissions and describe triggers and events, maintaining that. What were you doing that was keeping this chain green for so long? What things did you keep doing every day? You can have people take this information and develop a checklist of their relapse warning signs and review it daily to prevent relapse. So going through and identifying each one of the red links in that chain so they know that these are the things that I do that lead up to my relapse. They can also use this information by looking at the green chains or the green links and figuring out ways to enhance that so it can be stronger to help maintain their remission. And you can also look at the chain and plan how to deal with relapse triggers when they arise. You know, sometimes you may be going along just fine and dandy, and all of a sudden you hit a holiday or some other trigger that you can't eliminate. And you know, that was a red thing right there because you started feeling a lot of stress because you were coming up to Thanksgiving or something. And it helps people plan. Operating on autopilot causes us to push through until we've exhausted our resources or neglected to maintain balance. You know, kind of all work and no play. We do need to sharpen that saw. As Covey says, mindfulness encourages us to constantly check our energy gauges to see what's requiring more attention and decide how to balance those demands. You know, what do I need to do so I can be as happy and healthy as possible in this moment right now? That doesn't always mean going 100% full bore at the gym or at work. Mindfulness can help reduce emotional and physical distress and pain, improve sleep, and improve relationships. When we are more aware of what's going on inside of us, we are more aware and was going on around us. We're also more aware of the impact we are having on others and others are having on us, and we can adjust more flexibly. So now that we've talked about mindfulness, let's talk about meditation. And there are. There is mindful meditation. Reviews have demonstrated that both mindfulness and mantra meditation techniques reduce emotional symptoms such as anxiety, depression, and stress, and improve physical symptoms like pain from a small to a moderate degree. And a lot of us who experience chronic pain are happy for any level of relief, if it can help, we are there. Mindfulness meditation was found to show moderate improvement for anxiety at 44% of people reporting moderate improvement, 52% of people with depression showed moderate improvement, and 31% of people with chronic pain effects were seen during treatment and maintained at 3 and 6 month marks. As long as they were continuing to meditate. If they quit meditating, you know, the effects kind of wore off because they started going back into, you know, old habits and ways of being. So it's important to continue that they continue the practice. But it does seem to have a continued effect as long as people are doing it. Goals of meditation include reducing negative emotions, cognitions and behaviors. When we reduce those, we're reducing some of the unnecessary overactivity of the HPA axis, which means when the HPA axis is activated, highly active norepinephrine is going through our system, serotonin is depleted, and pain threshold tends to be lower. So if we reduce negative emotions, we're going to increase our pain threshold. So we'll reduce some of that chronic pain, not all of it by any means. When we reduce that HPA axis activation, we are also potentially helping to reduce stress, which we know is a trigger for autoimmune issues. Meditation also hopefully increases positive emotions, thoughts and behaviors towards self and others, alters relevant physiological processes such as immune system responses and inflammation and blood pressure. You know, there are a lot of activities that we can do. And when we meditate, if we are breathing deeply, which almost every form of meditation starts out with, noticing your breath, then we're going to reduce our physiological arousal, which also can help reduce HPA axis, can reduce blood pressure, etc. And it boosts our ability to empathize with others. Some people say, I can't meditate, it's too hard. Well, I think everybody can meditate. They just have to find the type of meditation that works for them. So encourage people to start with two minutes a day, and if that's too long, even one minute a day, being focused and mindful, they can do it first thing in the morning or right before bed, or they can even try doing it with a friend or a family member. Some people prefer to do it alone. That's cool. It's important that they don't get caught up in how they don't think about, okay, I need to sit in this certain posture and I need to do this certain thing. Just spend two minutes focused on the present moment. While you're eating breakfast, while you're drinking your coffee, you Know, I like to sit out on the porch in the morning or by the window when it's cold outside and watch the birds, you know, and I'm focused on that. Noticing the birds that are coming to the feeder, noticing the clouds in the sky, noticing those sorts of things. Just spending two minutes focused on the present moment. Focus on your breaths and your heart rate or your heart rate. I like to do both. Sometimes when I meditate, I will lay down and I will put my hand on my belly so I can feel it rise and fall. And I can also feel my heartbeat when my hands are resting on my belly. And it is kind of a game for me. I don't know why, to see how. How much I can slow my heart rate. And, you know, if I can get it to that resting, steady state for five minutes. You know, we all have our little games, but that is my. One of my little games. I don't know why. If your mind starts to wander when you're getting started with meditation, that's okay. Just bring it on back. You know, it's kind of like when you're walking down a path in a park and your attention gets distracted, maybe yours doesn't, and you start wandering off the path because you see a chipmunk or you see something just off the path. All right, you're not supposed to leave the path, but you did. No big deal. Just come on back to the path. No harm, no foul. Develop a loving, nonjudgmental attitude. And don't worry about clearing your mind. Just focus on practice on focusing your attention. If you are focusing your attention, your mind is going to clear. You know, you can't do both at the same time. So instead of trying to push everything out, just put something else in its place. And, you know, then it won't be able to be filled with all the. All the other random clutter. Have people do a body scan. Now, you don't have to do all of these, but any of these things are things that people can do during that two minutes. And, you know, two minutes feels like a long time at first, but once you start getting used to it, it really isn't that long at all. So doing a body scan from head to toe. How am I feeling? Where's the tension? Do I have any pain? If you feel muscle tension, try to feel yourself relaxing and letting that tension flow out. Notice lights, sounds, and energy. Stay with whatever arises. Instead of avoiding feelings like frustration, anger, and anxiety, just stay with it and be curious. If you're sitting there and all of A sudden you start feeling irritable. Cool, you noticed it. So what is it that you're irritable about? You're just sitting here. Get to know yourself. Learn how your mind works by watching your mind wander. Get frustrated. Avoid difficult feelings so you can start to understand what's going on, why you react a certain way when certain things happen. And become friends with yourself with a friendly attitude instead of one of criticism. Instead of being critical about. You should be able to focus or you should be able to. No, just be friends. Notice. Appreciate the fact that you're trying to be mindful. So basically start with two minutes and spend that two minutes trying to be focused on the present moment in one way or another, either body scan or noticing what's going on around you, but staying with whatever arises. Focused attention meditation focuses your attention on a single object during the whole meditation session. I remember when I was a little kid and I think a lot of us are fascinated by candles, by fire. And I would sit at the table. I remember my mother used to light candles a lot. And I would just be entranced watching the flame flicker back and forth. We also had, and this probably dates me quite a bit, a lava lamp in the house. And I remember being transfixed, watching the little lava bubbles go up and down. And if you don't know what a lava lamp is, just Google it. But it amused a lot of us back in the 70s. Other things you can focus on include your breath, a mantra, a visualization, a part of your body, finding something that you can focus on and just, you know, look at and notice and try not to put a lot of words with it instead of, you know, when I'm watching the flame, I'm not thinking it's flickering, I'm just watching it dance about in the air. Open monitoring meditation. Instead of focusing on only one object, it's keeping your attention open, monitoring all aspects of the experience. And, you know, I do this open monitoring meditation, if you will, or mindfulness, or when I'm driving, I'm noticing all aspects. You can do it when you're sitting. For people who have difficulty sitting still, you can do open monitoring meditation when you're hiking, just noticing everything that's going, that's around you, the sounds that you hear, the, you know, the chipmunks, whatever. Mindfulness meditation is the practice of intentionally focusing on the present moment, accepting and nonjudgmentally paying attention to the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that arise. With mindfulness meditation, you pay close attention to the movement of your breath with the intention to not add anything to the present moment, but just to be aware of what's going on without losing ourselves in anything that arises when you get distracted, recognize it, bring the attention back to your breathing. Recognizing that there's a big difference between being inside a thought or sensation or simply being aware of its presence. If I am having this feeling of anxiety noticing it, you know, like a cloud that's passing in the sky, there's a difference between seeing it pass by like a cloud and being completely entangled with it. Like I'm in quicksand. Loving kindness meditation. Now, I, I included this one in this presentation because every time I've done a meditation presentation, people really like the loving kindness meditation. So I figured I would share with this one. You sit in a meditation position, whatever that is for you. And if somebody has a history of trauma, they don't have to close their eyes, but sitting in a position where they're relaxed and they're able to focus and generating in their mind and heart feelings of kindness and benevolence. And you know, for me, I think about bunny rabbits and kitty cats and, you know, little, little animals that I want to help that mean no harm to me, that are very non threatening. That helps me sort of tap into that kindness and benevolence. And then you move by developing loving kindness towards yourself, then progressively toward others and all beings. So with yourself, you start saying to yourself, may I be happy, may I be well, may I be safe, may I be peaceful and at ease. And you have to start believing that, believing that you deserve to be happy. Well, safe, peaceful entities. Once you start feeling that loving kindness towards yourself, then expanding it to a good friend, it's easy to expand loving kindness to a good friend, thinking for that person, may you be happy. Well, safe, peaceful and at ease. Okay, that one comes even easier sometimes than the one towards yourself. Getting used to being able to do those, you know, and really feel that loving kindness. Then towards a neutral person, you know, somebody you see in a grocery store, you know, think about somebody you saw in, in the store yesterday, or your neighbor that was walking down the road thinking that you're sending them loving kindness. All right, that one's not so hard. Then comes the harder ones where you start thinking about a person in your life who is difficult and thinking to yourself, may that person be happy, be well, be safe, be peaceful and at ease. And you know, I can think of, you know, actually one of my neighbors who is a little bit on the difficult side. And I practice that, you know, when I See that person. I just practice saying that mantra over and over and in my head, reminding myself to send them sort of good vibes, if you will. And it helps me stay in a more positive frame of mind when I am dealing with them. And then gradually moving towards the entire universe, not just individual people, but thinking, you know, for everybody I see today, today, and for everybody that is alive today, may they be happy, be well, be safe, be peaceful entities. So it's a gradual progressive sort of thing that, you know, some people it takes a month or two to get to the entire universe. Other people doesn't take them so long, but it helps them really start recognizing that feeling of loving kindness. Sometimes when you're doing this though, opposite feelings like anger, grief or sadness may arise with whatever patience, acceptance and kindness you can muster for yourself and for such feelings. Just be loving and kind and non judgmental and it's okay. This person too just wants to be happy and we all make mistakes. So if you're having difficulty sending loving kindness and you're getting angry at this person, taking that breath and thinking, this person too just wants to be happy. Sending loving kindness does not mean that we approve or condone of all actions. It means that we can see clearly actions that are incorrect and still maintain a connection of kindness. Kind of goes back to that unconditional positive regard like Rogers proposed. Encourage yourself to think about one good thing about that person and remember that there is no need to judge yourself for having feelings of anger or irritability or whatever it is towards this person. They were just your feelings and that's okay and not judging them. There is here linked a sample loving kindness meditation that you can follow or send your clients to if they want to follow it. Qigong means life energy cultivation and it is a more mobile form of meditation. With qigong, people use slow, gentle movements that help warm their tendons and ligaments and muscles, tonify vital organs and connective tissues, and promote circulation of fluids. It is a very well researched approach to meditation as well as to recovery from a lot of things. They've shown a lot of effectiveness of this with people who are recovering from stroke and cancer and those sorts of things. If it's something that interests you, there are a lot of different approaches and there is even qigong that can be done from a chair for people who have mobility or balance issues. Guided imagery makes use of the imagination and visualization powers of the brain, guiding people to imagine an object, entity, scenery or journey. Some research has found that guided imagery can reduce stress and elevate the immune system. Using cell specific energy, people can raise their corresponding white blood cells, neutrophils or lymphocytes. And you can go to those articles and look at them. There was another one that was done in women with locally advanced breast cancer where they were told to put the flat palm of their hand over their thymus gland, which is under the middle of the breastbone. Imagine the warm energy from your hand is slowly and steadily entering the thymus gland, which is right there, filling it with energy, creating white blood cells like popping popcorn. And you know, how when popcorn pops, it just, you know, fills up the bowl. Interestingly enough, in this article, they did find that that had a direct impact on white blood cell counts. Progressive muscular relaxation helps people achieve a deep relaxation in their whole body. It's usually accompanied by instrumental music or nature sounds, but it helps people stay focused. You're not thinking about work, you're not thinking about the dogs or the bills or whatever. When you're doing progressive muscular relaxation, you're noticing from muscle group to muscle group, the difference between feeling it tensed and feeling it relaxed again. You can go online on YouTube. There are lots of progressive muscular relaxation videos out there that people can watch if they don't want to narrate it for themselves. Affirmations can be coupled with relaxation and guided imagery in order to help imprint a message in your mind. So when I do progressive muscular relaxation, when I relax my muscles, I note or I tell myself that it's okay to be relaxed or it's okay to relax to help me, you know, kind of let go of stress and energy and tension. Mindfulness means taking time to think before you act. Stopping to think takes time, but it usually takes less time than making needless errors and having to do it again. Mindfulness helps you observe, describe, and participate in order to prevent and mitigate problems. Which is why it's so important, you know, when you're driving to be mindful of what's going on and be open to noticing what's going on around you. So when the squirrel runs out in the road, you know, you notice that ahead of time. Mindfulness is the first step in emotion regulation and helping people get happy. Meditation has been shown to help people cultivate those happy feelings and can be used to help tame monkey mind, improve concentration and clarity. Meditation is also associated with reduced blood pressure, improved sleep, and reductions in anxiety, depression and pain. There are a variety of different types of meditation, and it's important for each person to find the type of meditation that fits for them. 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