The Path to Change: Mindfulness and Self Awareness

Foreign. I'd like to welcome everybody today's presentation of integrative behavioral health care. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. And today we are talking about mindfulness and self awareness. Mindfulness can be super helpful at improving our physical as well as our emotional health. Physically, when we are more mindful, we can prevent pain and illnesses. For example, if you notice that you are sitting in a chair that doesn't have good ergonomics, then you can take steps to remedy that before you start having low back pain. If you are more mindful, you can notice early signs of pain and discomfort or illness coming on and take steps to intervene sooner, preventing hopefully a worsening of the situation or condition. Mindfulness also helps with better regulation of our HPA axis. If we notice when we are feeling in pain, exhausted, hungry, scared, angry, anything that would set off that HPA axis, then we can attend to it more quickly. Identify if it's an issue and if it is, take steps to remedy it before it becomes a big deal. Before it causes our HPA axis to go into overdrive. When we're more mindful, because we are better at regulating our HPA axis, we are also able to pay more attention to our body, to our body's needs, which often improves our sleep. We also are better at improving our physical needs. A lot of times when we are operating mindlessly, we may confuse signals of hunger and sleepiness or hunger and irritability. When we're being mindful, we are checking with ourself and going, okay, I have the urge to eat right now. Is it because I'm hungry? Because I'm sleepy? Because I'm bored? You know, for what reason do I have this urge to eat? Mindfulness encourages us to check in with ourself so we're actually meeting the relevant need instead of just kind of throwing something at it and hoping it makes us feel better. Effectively, when we're mindful, we we don't deny our emotions. We recognize them, we accept them non judgmentally. And then we figure out, okay, what can I do to improve the next moment? Which tends to make us happier. Cognitively, when we're mindful, we recognize that reality is ever changing. We recognize that what is right now doesn't have to be a moment from now or an hour from now. We recognize that distress will come and it will go. Happiness will too. And it's important to notice everything for a rich and full life. Just like when you're listening to music, you don't want to listen to music. Probably that is all Treble or all bass. You want to have that blending of the two. It gives it a lot more richness. People who practice mindfulness tend to just be more curious because they're noticing different things, which prompts them to ask, where'd that come from? Children tend to be very, very mindful because they are experiencing the world for the first time, you know, a lot of times. So they are aware of things and they're noticing things, and it makes them curious. We want to harness that curiosity, harness that inner child again to help us become more aware environmentally. When we're mindful, we're more aware of the beauty in the world, both the small things and the large things. Instead of just hustling out to your car, you may walk out and notice that the flowers next to your driveway are blooming, and there's a bumblebee that is in there, you know, pollinating flowers. You wouldn't have noticed that if you weren't being mindful. You also can start seeing that good and bad can coexist. Life's never going to be perfect. But when you're more mindful, you are encouraging. You're training your brain to notice the good instead of only focusing on the potential threats. And interpersonally, when we're mindful, we're more aware of other people's thoughts, wants, and needs and how they're feeling. And we're more aware of their impact on us and our impact on them, which, you know, when we are more aware, we're more able to be empathetic and compassionate and consistent and all of those things that we talk about in good relationships. So how do we do this? Mindfulness is awareness of the present moment and yourself in the present moment. So being aware of what's going on around you, but also being aware of how you feel, what you need, how the environment is impacting you, and how you're impacting the environment. So think for a minute about how often you are aware of your thoughts, wants and needs. And if you're like the average person, probably not very often. A lot of us operate on autopilot and then we, quote, suddenly realize that we are famished or we're exhausted or we're irritable. But if we had been more mindful, we probably would have noticed, you know, when we started to get hungry, we probably would have noticed when we started to feel fatigued. So we could have done something to prevent it or to deal with it instead of waiting until it was so palpable that we couldn't ignore it anymore. Remember, your presence impacts the environment and vice versa. Think of an environment that increases your stress or irritability. How does your mood impact others in that environment, including children and animals? Children and animals tend to have very poor boundaries. So when you are upset, they sense that and they start to feel upset. They will often reflect your emotions, whether it's irritability or sadness or whatever it is, but they will often start to become agitated themselves. If you're in the emergency room, for example, that stresses a lot of people out and you can get frustrated and irritable. Then you go up to the charge nurse and you take an attitude with the charge nurse and the charge nurse would often responds by taking an attitude back. So you can. Your irritability, your unhappiness can impact others and cause sort of a boomerang reaction. It's important to pay attention to that. Same Thing's true at work. If you're having a bad day or if you are that person who is the grumpy person, who is the naysayer at work, you will notice, or hopefully you can start to notice how your attitude and your presence impacts others. You may find that people don't want to be on teams with you. They don't really go out of their way to interact with you if you are persistently negative. The same thing can be said if you go to your in laws. And I will put the caveat here, I have wonderful in laws, so this is not a subtle hit at them. They are awesome. But some people don't get along with their in laws and when they go there, they feel like they're walking on eggshells. And it can create an air of tension in the environment because other people pick up on it when you don't like them. You know, we pick up on non verbals and, and verbals and so it can create a tense dynamic. Likewise, think of an environment when you feel relaxed and comfortable. How does your mood impact others in that environment? You know, if you're at home and you're totally relaxed and, and you're in a good mood, how does that impact everybody else in the house? You know, in our house, y' all know we've got a whole pack of dogs and when one of us is upset, the dogs notice. And the dogs become much more animated in their presentation because they don't like it when the humans are upset or when you are at a park, you know, walk, going on a hike or. One of My favorites is being on a boat. I love just sitting on a boat and hearing the Water lap against the side of the boat. As, you know, as we're floating along or as we're going along. It doesn't need to be anything else. But I am completely and utterly relaxed. So I am more likely to be, you know, receptive to other people, not defensive, those sorts of things. It's important to figure out what kinds of environments work for you, what you can do in your environment in order to set yourself up for success. So let's talk about some activities in order to start building your mindfulness. Breath awareness and heart rate awareness are both activities that can be great activities at night for you alone, or if you've got kids, it can be a great activity for them to start training them to be more mindfully aware of themselves at night. We want to slow our breathing, we want to slow our heart rate so we can relax and get to sleep. We want to trigger that rest and digest with breath awareness. You know, it's like we've talked about multiple times. You breathe in slowly for a count of four to eight, whatever your lungs can handle. And you notice as you're breathing in, you notice your chest and your belly expand. You notice the temperature of the air, it goes into your nose. You notice how it makes you feel. And then as you exhale again, you notice the air leaving your body. You notice your belly starting to compress, encouraging people to just start becoming aware of their breath. When you slow your breath, you trigger that rest and digest. So that's a good thing. And this can be something you do two or three times with kids. You can even have them tell you, you know, what color air are you inhaling. You know, have them envision inhaling blue air or have them envision inhaling air with, with sleepy dust in it. So they're envisioning bringing in the relaxation. Heart rate awareness is the same thing. And you can do it with a heart rate monitor, but you can do it just as easily laying in. When you lay on your back, if you put your hands right under your rib cage, you can feel your heartbeat, you can feel the, the rhythm of your heart. And just noticing how that feels, noticing it, trying to slow it down. In order to slow your heart rate, you're going to have to slow your breathing. So the two of them go hand in hand. That can be another activity that can help you relax. And if you're focused on that, if you're being mindful of your heart rate of your breath, then your mind is going to be less likely to wander off somewhere. If it does, that's fine, just bring it back and go, no, you know, I'm focusing on my breath right now. Got that? Blowing bubbles is another great activity for kids or adults. And you can do it with bubble gum, but it's better to do with, you know, bubble stuff. When you blow bubbles, if you blow them too hard, they're going to pop. If you blow them, you know, the goal is to see how big of a bubble can you blow. And blowing bubbles again encourages you to be aware of your breath and slow your breathing. So that can be a very relaxing activity. You can also just take a big old breath and blow a bunch of bubbles and chase them around. And that can help you focus on having fun in the moment. If you're not worried about calming down, if you're just trying to have fun, blowing bubbles can be one of them. If you focus on trying to pop all the bubbles before they touch a surface and pop on their own, that takes your attention. You're very aware of what's going on right in front of you at the present moment. Gratitude journaling. We've talked about this one before, too. Spending 20 minutes or 10 if you just can't muster 20, but preferably 20 minutes each day focusing on what you were grateful for and what went well that day. Focusing on the positives. It doesn't mean that the negatives didn't happen. But this is a time when you are going to train your brain to notice and focus on the positive. That will allow you that 20 minutes to down regulate your HPA axis and down regulate your cortisol levels and all those other things. When you're finished with your 20 minutes, focus on whatever you want. But gratitude journaling encourages you to notice the positives. Remember, our brain is wired to protect us. Our brain is wired to give more emotional valence to negative things, to threats. So too often we tend to notice the threats. We're just constantly on guard and that keeps our HPA axis revved. We don't notice the wonderful things. Staying present in the moment can help us notice those wonderful things. Another activity that can be really fun. You can do it on your own. You can do it. You can encourage everybody in your family to do it, and then they can share it at dinner is what I call an emotional scavenger hunt. And again, too often, we don't notice our feelings throughout the day. If you asked somebody tonight at dinner what did what happened today that made you feel awestruck, they may look at you like you had lost your mind. They're like, I don't know, I went to work, I came home. It's important to infuse happiness, to pay attention to life, because there are things all the time that can encourage positive emotions. So I call this an emotional scavenger hunt. Because each day people are supposed to find at least one thing during the day that can help them feel each one of these emotions. And sometimes the same thing may make them feel a bunch of different emotions. Like seeing a. A rainbow may make somebody feel happy, awestruck, and curious about, you know, maybe it's a double rainbow. How did that happen? You know, so you can have the same thing, prompt multiple emotions. But this encourages people to really notice those moments, fleeting as they may be, of happiness that were actually speckled throughout the day. Other emotions, you know, happy, awestruck, curious, excited, compassionate, and supported or encouraged. I encourage people to, you know, try to infuse those, each one of them into their day every single day. And, you know, that may mean on your way home from work, you're thinking, all right, what am I going to see? That's going to help me feel awestruck? But that encourages you to open your awareness and notice things that are going on. Feelings journaling. Well, if you don't experience those feelings, then the feelings journaling is going to be very frustrating because you're going to be going through, going, well, yeah, nothing really was all striking today. Nothing really made me curious. You know, this is kind of a boring activity. But if you do the emotional scavenger hunt, if you get yourself in the habit of infusing positivity into your life, then at the end of the day, you can go through and you can do feelings journaling, identifying what made you feel, what prompted the feelings of happy, awestruck, curious, excited. But you're also, in feelings journaling, going to notice the things that triggered feelings of sadness, irritation, anger, or anxiety. Those feelings exist, too. We don't want to ignore them. And part of mindfulness is embracing all of our feelings. Just like I talked about with the music, the treble and the bass, we want to embrace it all so we have a full, rich experience of life. When we notice, when we start noticing what triggers us to feel dysphoric emotions, unpleasant emotions, then we can start being more mindful about addressing those things in our life. Open awareness is another activity that can be really fun to do with significant others. You can sit down and do it stationary. You know, you can go outside, sit down for two to five minutes and notice what you see, hear, smell, feel. Or you can do It. When you go on a hike and just notice these different things, and people can. When I used to do it at uf, we would go out into the. Into the quad and we would sit down. I'd have my, My. My staff. Gosh, my students write down everything that they saw, heard, smelled, felt, tasted. Didn't factor into that one. And then they would come inside and they would all share their lists. And it was always interesting to notice what certain people noticed and notice also what they overlooked, what they filtered out. And by having everybody list what they. What they experienced, you got a much richer picture of what was actually going on out there. You can also do two minutes of open awareness, just like we were talking about, followed by two minutes of sight elimination. Put on a blindfold. And a lot of times in that two minutes of open awareness, people are bebopping along and they're noticing different things, but they're only noticing a fraction of different things. So when you eliminate one of your senses, and in this case you put on a blindfold and eliminate sight, a lot of times you will notice smells and sounds that you hadn't paid attention to before. So you're going to do this in the same place. Start by two minutes, you know, unobstructed, and then put on the blindfold and see if you become more acutely aware of more things that are in that environment, you can do a body scan. And this is one of the Mindfulness 101 activities, preferably. I encourage my clients to do it at breakfast, lunch, and dinner and at bedtime if they can. So four times a day, minimum. But just scan from head to toe and ask yourself, you know, how do I feel physically? Am I tired? Am I hungry? Am I tense? Am I in pain? Or do I feel great? You know, how do I feel right now? Once you notice that, then you follow with the word the next question of what do I need to improve the next moment. Now, if you are energetic and you've got a full belly and you're relaxed and there's no pain, then great, keep doing what you're doing. But if you check in with yourself periodically, you're more likely to notice things before they become a big issue. I've shared with you guys before. I've got a bad back and I've got really bad posture, and I will periodically do a body scan and I will notice that, oh, hey, you know, my back's starting to get twingy because I'm not sitting correctly. And I will take steps to rectify that so my back doesn't end up, you know, becoming really painful and distracting me from my work. Body scans are great. Kids can do them. Kids can do all of these things. And when I'm talking kids, I'm talking, you know, knee high to a grasshopper kids. You may have to alter the words a little bit, but it can be really fun to do it with kids, especially if you can try to become mindful through their eyes and see what they see. Another activity you can do. And we used to do this back before cell phones and tablets and all those things when there was nothing to do in the car and we were on a long car trip. You would look at the billboards and you would find the different letters of the Alphabet, or you would look and you would try to count the number of red cars. You know, there were a lot of different things that our parents used to have us do to occupy our minds. So we would quit saying, when are we going to get there? And we can do this now. You can do this in the car, you can do this at home, you can do this at the park, wherever. Pick a quality. Notice all of the things. How many things can you notice that are green or. My. My. My daughter's professor a couple semesters ago had them go through and they all went on a walk and they had to notice how many things that they could see that had triangles in them. And they were looking at the architecture on campus and, you know, flowers and various other things to find triangles. And they were amazed at all of the different places that they found a triangle. And once you see something, sometimes you can't unsee it. So now they are. She is more aware of shapes when she's walking through life. Food sensations. Notice food when you eat it, when you drink it, as if it's the first time you're tasting it. Notice what it color it is, what the temperature is, what it feels like, what it looks like, what it smells like while you're eating, Especially if you're eating something like, you know, spaghetti. You know, there's lots of different seasonings in there. Notice what it tastes like, unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it. I'm one of those cooks who does a dash of this and, you know, a handful of that. So my recipes are never exactly the same. So when I'm eating them, you know, I'm tasting them. And if I have a particularly good day, I'm like, oh, wow. You know, I can really taste the parsley or I can really taste the basil in this. I like that. And noticing the seasonings and the smells that are pleasing to you can be helpful. It also helps you slow down your eating and become more mindful of what you're eating. And can it improve the experience so, you know, it helps you be happier instead of just wolfing down food while you're reading the news or something. You can also focus on things that are. And sort of stationary, you know, something that's going on, sitting there and just watching a candle flame. You know, I've done that sometimes, especially when I'm sick or something, I may just sit at the. At the dining room table and watch a candle flame go back and forth and be mesmerized by it. I used to do that when we had a proper fireplace. And when I say a proper one, I mean one that burns wood. Bumblebees. If you go out, we used to have this plant called wisteria on our fence line in Florida. And when it was in bloom, I would go out there and I would just sit and watch the bumblebees just go crazy over. Over this plant. And when I say bumblebees, I mean the really big, fluffy furry ones. Uh, not the honeybees, because I like them better. They look like little teddy bears, but that's just me or even just sitting there. And I remember one day my son was just watching ants, just sitting there, watching them do their thing, and he was mesmerized by it very much in the present moment. How many times do you walk past an ant hill where they are busily doing stuff, doing ant stuff? So be being more aware can be awesome. I love lizards and jumping spiders, and I'm kind of a weird person that way. So being mindful when I'm walking around the farm, when I'm walking in and out of the house, helps me notice some of those little creatures that I may not necessarily notice. And it makes me smile, you know, seeing a. A skink on this, on the windowsill, you know, they're beautiful. It makes me happy. It may not be, you know, for an hour, but it brings a smile to my face for that moment. And that's where mindfulness can really help us with our mental health because it adds in some of that happiness. Bird watching. My son, when he was little, used to love bird watching. And we would go out into, you know, the forest, into a park. And bird watching is interesting because you walk into a place and most of the time you hear the bird before you see it, but sometimes you see it. And so it's more about open awareness and trying to figure out, okay, I hear a bird. Now I need to find the bird, and then I need to figure out what kind of bird it is. And he used to be able to identify most birds by their calls. Even, you know, he was, like, 8 years old. He was just phenomenal with it. But bird watching is an exercise in extreme mindfulness, because you are having to focus on what's going on in the moment, locate sounds, and, you know, find the birds. So that can be a really fun activity for people. If you like birds, and I'm sure there are other activities, other critters that you can do for mental health. You can spend, you know, two minutes focusing on the moment and saying, what do I have control over right now? And, you know, if you're feeling great, then you have control over continuing to feel great. If you are feeling unhappy or unpleasant for some reason, what do you have control over? You can spend two minutes looking around your current environment, wherever you are, and identifying 10 things that you see that make you happy. And as I say that, I notice my little grumpy cat stuffed animal that I keep on my desk. And I will tell you, I haven't noticed him, you know, probably for days. He's just been sitting there. But as I was saying that, it turned my attention to noticing the things that make me happy. And. And I noticed him, and it made me smile. So 10 things that I see that make me happy. You can do this multiple times throughout the day, find the positive, even in distress. This morning, I brought Mojo to work with me, my cat. And when we're at home, he doesn't want to have anything to do with me. He wants to sit up on his little throne and just kind of watch the world. But when he comes in here, he tends to be very affectionate. And this morning, I was trying to get this presentation ready, and he was all up in my business, and he was typing and everything else, and I started to get frustrated. And then I thought to myself, you know what? I brought him here for this. He. The whole reason he's here is because it makes me happy when he is being affectionate. So, you know, you can't have it both ways. So I instantly turned my attitude. Back pain. I already talked about that. Well, back pain really sucks when you have it. However, I can find the positive in that, because I know there are things that I can do to alleviate it and even to prevent it. Sometimes identify one thing that you're looking forward to right now. Sometimes mindfulness is just remembering that there are things that you're looking forward to. And it can help you push through when there's something unpleasant. Like at the end of the day, if you still have a bunch of paperwork to do and you're like, oh my gosh, I don't want to do this. All right, Acknowledge, accept, embrace. But then say, how can I improve the next moment? And one of the ways you might be able to do that is to say, all right, as soon as I get this done, I'm going to be able to leave here and go have a wonderful dinner. Fabulous self. Check periodically to notice how you feel at that time in that context and what you can do to improve the next moment. Mindful listening includes non verbals. Too often when we say we're listening, if we're even doing this, we're only listening to the words. It's important to listen to body language. 80 to 85% of our communication is non verbal. So practice mindful listening. Start out with music. For example, you know that one doesn't have non verbals with it. Listen to the music. Hear the, the tone of the music, how it gets louder and it gets softer. Notice the words in the music. Notice how it makes you feel when you listen to that music. You know, I've shared with you guys before, I have, you know, power playlists and I have relaxation playlists and everything in between when you listen to and, and I'll jump down to television because that's easier. You can rewind if you want to. But when you're watching television, watching a movie, listen to what the person is saying. Notice their non verbals. Notice how it makes you feel. Same thing when you're listening to people. That can be a little bit more difficult because it's like right here in the right now. But it is important when you are mindful to be actually listening to that person. Not trying to watch the scores on the television behind them or pay attention to the dog or whatever else you're doing. Listen to what they're saying. Watch their non verbals. Listen to how they're saying it, not just what they're saying. Notice how it's making you feel. You know, if you're talking to somebody and they're, you're starting to feel irritated, notice that. And then you may need to figure out, you know, what you can do to improve the next moment. Now when we're listening, we're focused on, on that person. We're focused on what's being communicated. So this is not necessarily the time to start going, I wonder why I'm starting To feel irritated, notice how you feel. Accept it. Then when the person's finished speaking, you know, take a, take a minute to ask yourself or to explore curiously why you had the reaction that you did. Gratitude for the good moments and appreciation of the little things. And we talked about a gratitude journal earlier. Trying to do this just throughout the day, you know, having gratitude, stopping and going, what's one little thing I can appreciate right now? And asking yourself, what can I do right now to nurture the people and things that are important in my Drum roll please. Rich and meaningful life. So as you're sitting there, you know, being mindful is also noticing. Yesterday I was in the grocery store and I was standing there in line waiting to check out and I asked myself, what can I do right now? Because getting irritable about being in line isn't going to do any good. What can I do right now to nurture the people and things important in my rich and meaningful life? And I thought to myself, well, I have a friend right now who's struggling with something. So I texted her and we had a meaningful conversation for the five minutes or so that I was waiting in line. So that was a good use of my energy. It made me feel better, seemed to make her feel better, and all contributed to or came from being mindful and saying, how can I use. Best use my energy right now to nurture what's important in my rich and meaningful life. Mindfulness can help train your brain to notice the positive, pay attention to what you have control over, recognize the impact of the environment on you and adjust accordingly. If it's an unpleasant environment, how can you improve it? And recognize the impact of yourself on the environment. So if you are bringing the negativity, how can you adjust? If you're bringing the positivity, well, keep, keep doing it. All of these things reduce needless stress, help regulate the HPA axis and improve health and well being. Are there any questions about mindfulness self awareness? There are a lot of videos on the YouTube channel on mindfulness. You know, obviously I couldn't cover everything in, in 35 minutes, but I wanted to give you some tips and tools you could start using today. Using with your family, using with your significant others in order to improve mindfulness and help improve the energy and in in your environment. Okay everybody, I will see you tomorrow same time, same, same station.