Be Mindful of Meditation and Mindfulness Practices

Digging into how while meditation and mindfulness practices can enhance our ability to self regulate and improve our self-compassion, they are not helpful for everyone.  This level of internal focus can bring on panic attacks, anxiety and enhanced trauma responses causing us to escalate in behaviors which are meant to keep us safe. 

Transcript

Be Mindful of Meditation and Mindfulness Practices

Meditation has become, over the past 60 years or so, a ubiquitous component of not only spiritual community, but secular life as well. It has become a staple of self-care and wellness programs, a gateway towards work/life balance, a means for team building as well as facilitating better corporate productivity, and a metric we can use to measure whether or not we are fully, competently participating in our spiritual path or struggling in one or many aspects. It's cousin, mindfulness, is quickly moving into a similar role, not yet achieving the status of spiritual staple, but highly recommended for anyone who is "really serious" about being their best self.

This means it is fairly common for me to hear from clients and students about the state of their meditation/mindfulness practice. Sometimes it's just to let me know they are good/really enjoy it/find it facilitates "___" amount of good things in their life, which I appreciate and validate. More often it's to tell me, with guilt, shame, resignation or a mix of all three, that they are failing to meet their meditation/mindfulness expectations or are working to ramp things up so they can fit this into their lives which is intended to solve and/or improve things.

I therefore say, with a bit of regularity: Meditation is not a virtue.

And it's not. Meditation and/or mindfulness are not goals to achieve, they are not the equivalent of taking your vitamins daily nor are they like flossing your teeth as recommended by the American Dental Association. 

Meditation isn't even solely defined as stilling your body and your mind. This is just one form and one of the hardest to practice even for the most skilled practitioner. Meditation is a category the same way Automobile is the category for four wheeled vehicles which includes both Mazda Miatas and Rolls Royce luxury sedans. The category of spiritual practice called Meditation, beyond being still, includes repetitive movement, chanting a repeated phrase, toning, whirling in place and so much more. And mindfulness practices have almost as much variety.

Both of these are amazing tools which can be used by the individual or group to facilitate, support, and enhance most spiritual practices. But as such they should be honored for what they are and what they do best. For example, a screwdriver can be used as a prybar, but not well and with the high likelihood of either failure to achieve the goal or damage to property or both. For the best results we should use a screwdriver on screws and a pry bar to pry up things, if we have the resources and the option. Although, when in doubt, pretty much anything can be used as a hammer. 😊

Unfortunately, due to the way in which successful meditation is seen and taught as something everyone can and should do as a staple of a spiritual path, people take this on as a goal to be achieved. This becomes mixed with the Western Culture notion that success is something achieved through a number of factors including luck, synchronicity, community, and hard work, while failure is due to personal failings. This can turn meditation or mindfulness practice into a hurdle to be overcome and a person's inability to do so into brokenness and wounding.

"Just try harder. You'll get it." This is the advice most often given by meditation or mindfulness facilitators when someone says they are having difficulty in the moment or with their practice in general. Sometimes this is the correct response, but as I have found with most things in life, one solution does not fit all and one of the most important things to be mindful of in any situation is context.

And, if you'll pardon the pun, with these types of practices, it's important to be mindful of the effects they can and do have on us in general and specifically on those who are experiencing or suffering from trauma.

As Pat Ogden states in Sensorimotor Psychotherapy: Interventions for Trauma and Attachment 

"Trauma refers to any threatening, overwhelming experiences that we cannot integrate...Trauma can be a single event (e.g., an accident, rape, crime, or disaster) or repeated events. Trauma can also be a chronic condition (e.g., child abuse and neglect, combat, ongoing violence, death camps). When trauma occurs repeatedly early in life, especially if there was no safe person to turn to, or if it was perpetrated by an attachment figure, the effects can be difficult to resolve. It is important to note that any experience that is stressful enough to leave us feeling helpless, frightened, overwhelmed, or profoundly unsafe is considered a trauma. After such experiences, we are often left with a diminished sense of security with others and in the world, and a sense of feeling unsafe inside our own skin."

No matter how or why someone has experienced trauma, and hopefully one day we can stop judging people on whether or not they deserve to experience trauma or whether their trauma is good enough to be valid, "Traumatized people...do not feel safe inside. Their own bodies have become booby-trapped. As a result, it's not OK to feel what you feel and know what you know, because your body has become the container of dread and horror. The enemy who started on the outside is transformed into an inner torment." Bessel Van der Kolk Overcoming Trauma Through Yoga: Reclaiming Your Body

Meditation and mindfulness practices can be like a megaphone. As David Treleaven writes in Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness: Practices for Safe and Transformative Healing.

"Mindfulness can enhance present-moment awareness, increase our self-compassion, and enhance our ability to self-regulate. But mindfulness can also generate problems for people struggling with traumatic stress. When we ask someone with trauma to pay close, sustained attention to their internal world, we invite them into contact with traumatic stimuli-thoughts, images, memories, and physical sensations that may relate to a traumatic event. As my friend experienced, this can aggravate and intensify symptoms of traumatic stress, in some cases even lead to retraumatization-a relapse into an intensely traumatized state."

This type of internal focus can bring on symptoms of anxiety or even panic attacks, can lead to impulsive behaviors which are meant to distract us from our pain or help redirect us away from what is perceived as a dangerous situation. It can lead to outbursts of seemingly random or source-less anger or deepen an underlying depression. It can also create an emotionally abusive cycle where we try to do this "very simple thing everyone else can do", fail, which brings on feelings of guilt, stuckness or brokenness, which then leads us to attempt to solve the problem, which ends up not being solved, leading us to feel more defeated and broken, etc. etc. etc.

David Treleaven brings up a very important point about all this: "It's important to distinguish between mindfulness the mental state and the way the state is pursued. Mindfulness doesn't cause trauma-it's the practice of mindfulness meditation, offered without understanding of trauma, which can exacerbate and entrench traumatic symptoms. "

So should we give up on meditation and/or mindfulness? No, not at all.

What we need to do is be trauma-sensitive about them, both for ourselves and for others. In other words, we need to deal with the megaphone in the room.

How to put the Megaphone Down

*Have an anchor into the physical body. - Rather than wait until the meditation is over, use wiggling your fingers and toes as a way to stay present and safe in your body and in this now. You can also hold something which feels good in your hands such as a smooth polished stone or a piece of velvet. You can have your feet on something comforting and grounding which you gently touch and move. You can keep your hands on your thighs and rub them gently or clasp your hands gently together and rub your fingers and palms. Doing this throughout the meditation will help you get the benefit of the practice while minimizing trauma reactions.

*Turn your senses outward to your surroundings. - like a dancer doing spins who looks at a spot to keep from getting dizzy, you can pick a spot to gently focus your attention. If at any time you feel the megaphone get too loud you can open your eyes and look at your item or spot and reground yourself in the bigger world. Focal point objects can often be more comforting than gazing at a blank spot on a wall or something far in the distance. You want to be brought back into a world which is supporting you, not feel small, insignificant and overwhelmed.

*Be flexible with your posture or position. - there is no virtue in holding one particular pose if it enhances your difficulties rather than the benefits of your practice. Allow yourself to adjust things as necessary in the moment. If you need to lie down, then do so. Sit up if it feels good or lean on something and feel the support if that works better. If you're too warm, take off a layer. If you're too cold, add one. Support your practice so it can support you.

*Dissociation is a signal you've had enough, too much, or need to take a break.

While the term dissociation is often used negatively, and with good reason as we learn more and more about trauma, it's actually a normally occurring feature of life which is meant to help us harmonize with ourselves and the world. As a part of our human survival strategies, it's a feature, rather than a failing. 

Befriending dissociation means learning to recognize when it's happening and looking around for the source. This could be: something which has triggered our trauma response, exhaustion, having had enough of something even though our logical mind doesn't recognize or validate this, and other things besides. When it comes to meditation, let dissociation, distraction, and/or irritation nudge you into doing something more in harmony with your soul in the moment. You can always come back to the meditation another time.

*Movement meditation

Instead of trying to quiet your mind and your body, to be still, you can give your mind something to do which is useful but distracting so the rest of you can get into the meditation.

Any repetitive movement like walking, swimming, bike riding, hiking and so on, even rocking in a rocking chair or washing dishes, will put us into a meditative state after 15 minutes. So choose an activity and make sure you have 45 minutes (15 to drift into the right state, then 30 for the meditation), do the activity for 15 minutes, have the audio ready to play and then start the audio while you continue the activity.

For example: If you're walking, have the meditation prepared on your phone or other device, walk steadily for 15 minutes until you feel your mind get loose and begin to wander. Then turn on the meditation and continue walking. This allows your conscious brain to be occupied with keeping you safe, upright and moving forward while your right brain opens to the Akashic process.

When it comes to meditation and/or mindfulness practice, we too often think we have a problem when we can't do it, struggle with it, or even find it difficult to make it any part of our spiritual practice. But instead we might not need it as much as we're told we should, may not harmonize with the way in which we're told to practice it, or may need to be trauma-sensitive for ourselves and those around us so we can turn off the megaphone and honor the divinity we are in this moment.