2 - Types of Mindfulness Practices Explained

Barbara Newell and Matthew Aldrich discuss informal and formal practices to help cultivate mindfulness.  Formal sitting meditation and its relationship with mindfulness is explored in depth.

Visit barbaranewell.com or thewaytowellbeing.com for more resources.  Also Barbara offers free initial consultations which can be booked here.

The Way to Well-Being is a collaboration between Barbara Newell, mindfulness + meditation teacher and a former Buddhist nun who trained under Thich Nhat Hanh, and Matthew Aldrich, mindfulness student.

This collaboration was born out of a desire to provide a more structured approach to developing long-term sustainable well-being through the cultivation of mindfulness.

As a newcomer to mindfulness, Matthew accelerated quite quickly and with relative ease in developing his meditation practice.  Upon reflection with his teacher Barbara, it became apparent that recent therapy focused on reducing emotional reactivity was extremely helpful and contributed to this benefit.  While Barbara had extensive experience and knew the immense benefit of addressing emotions in a mindfulness practice, she and Matthew noted that the traditional teachings were often missing or didn’t sufficiently explain the role of emotions.

While there are numerous books about mindfulness, the information can sometimes be conflicting, too conceptual, or just inadequate related to the actual implementation in a busy modern life.

It became apparent that a more structured approach with practical guidance and techniques could help numerous people find their way to well-being through mindfulness.

Transcript

spk_0:   0:16
welcome to the wayto wellbeing podcasts, where we explore a structured approach to realizing sustained wellbeing through the cultivation and integration of mindfulness into your life. This is Matthew Aldridge. I'm a mindfulness student,

spk_1:   0:33
and this is Barbara Newell I'ma, Mindfulness Teacher.

spk_0:   0:37
Today we wanted to dive down a little bit into mindfulness practice and get a little bit better idea of the various types of practices that help cultivate mindfulness. So with that, Barbara, can you give us a little bit more information about the various types of practices?

spk_1:   0:58
Yeah, what's the one broad category difference is what we often might call formal and informal practice. Formal practice does not mean that you have to put on a special robe or sit in a weird position, or it doesn't even have to necessarily mean chanting or sitting at an altar. Although those things can all be very fun and supportive. Really, formal practice just means a time in the day that you set aside. It can be very short if that's all you've got are if that's all you feel able to d'oh! But it's a time when you're just pausing in the activity of the day to just be instead of doing and bringing your as we said, um, mindful your your intentional presence to your experience and simply doing that and not doing any other activity at the same time. And often it's a mindfulness of breath for some people. They like to use mindfulness of sound if breath isn't a good anchor for them, just periods of the day when we completely pause and just come back to the moment and back to the movements of our sensations of our mind, of our emotions. So that's a formal practice, and that's often when we talk about meditation that's, Ah, choosing to sit down, sit quietly. Walking Meditation is also a wonderful way to cultivate mindfulness, and we might talk about that in a bit more detail in another. Another podcast, Um, those are two of the main ways that people can pause and please tune in to what's happening sitting meditation on walking meditation. And then there's this whole universe of informal practices, and I think I did touch on them a little bit in our last, her less podcast where, for example, when we're out driving, it can be really nice when we come to a red light to just drop in and see How are we feeling? Notice our breath. Instead of picking up our phone and scrolling through while we wait for the light detained, they're sending that extra text. Um, it can be, I think I mentioned before how we are when we're cooking, just really feeling our feet on the floor and being very present with our bodies were cutting the vegetables and choosing not to maybe play, um, political television while we're doing our cooking. Those are just a couple examples have informal practice there. They really can be as varied as as people who are.

spk_0:   3:47
And the informal practice is really just be present is that

spk_1:   3:51
it's often helpful to use your anchor. So, for example, when we when we're driving, there's nothing preventing us from having the radio off and being aware of our breathing. As we are also aware of holding the steering wheel and looking around, we can also have some awareness of our breath in the background. That's one example, um, or as we're as we're cutting vegetables, we can be aware of our breath and the cutting action of her hand. Um,

spk_0:   4:23
and you've talked about the anchor, Um, and very often, in a lot of mindfulness circles, that is the breath. But some people do twos. Different things. Um, and can you explain how a person might go through kind of selecting their anchor?

spk_1:   4:42
Yeah, sure. So, yeah, the breath is a very, very popular one. It isn't the only way to anchor ourselves in the present moment or to cultivate mindfulness, but it is a very convenient one. Um, it's always with us, and no one even needs to know that we're doing it. If we are out and about, we don't have to make a big deal about it. We can just come back to ourselves, particularly in a conversation. For example, it can just be really helpful to just I feel the breath, particularly as things may get a little stressful sometimes. Uh, yeah. Some people find that this is particularly people who tend to have perhaps panic or really strong anxiety. They find that tuning into their breath actually makes them more anxious, so they may find it more useful too. Ground themselves in the sensations of their feet or perhaps the sensations of the hands, because again the sensations air happening in the present moment. And when we're grounding in the breath, that's of course, sensations of breath as well. So some people, other places in the body, are more helpful. And some people like to use sound just coming in and going out of sound as a way to be in the present moment, not grabbing on but just aware of sounds passing through.

spk_0:   6:06
So it's a sensory experience. Your

spk_1:   6:08
senses are always present moment.

spk_0:   6:11
Okay, is always related to the body. Yeah, okay, got it. So now just toe touch. Now on the formal practice is that something that you think is required really to cultivate mindfulness? Or could you just primarily focus on informal practices?

spk_1:   6:32
It's incredibly helpful if we can just set aside even a couple of minutes, all the better if it's five or 10 20 or even 40 minutes. There are people who sit for an hour, and I think each one of us has to just sense into what makes sense for us. First of all, in terms of our our ability to concentrate how much time we're able to take in the day. Um, yeah, I mean, each increments often has its own kind of deepening of attention and kind of clearing the space for habitual things like rumination or, um, yeah, habitual emotional patterns, too dissipate and make room for fresh insight or fresh action or or fresh clarity about the nature of things. I like to think of it sometimes as a pond like our kind of like, our life is a pond, and they're all different kinds of things In this pond, there might be, um, rocks in the pond. There might be dangerous things, like a broken sharp piece of glass. And maybe, and there is also, um, you know, our house keys that we lost yesterday. And when the mind is moving, moving and the body is moving, it's like the settlement of the pond is getting continually stirred up and we're reaching in trying to find the thing we're looking for. And we might cut ourselves on the glass because it can't really see for about what we're doing in that state, and we practice meditation. It's like the the stirring is slowed or even almost stopped. The sediment can go down and the pond becomes very clear. And then it's very easy to see and put her hand directly on the thing that we want or to remove the sharp thing that we don't wanna have in there.

spk_0:   8:38
So it's really that calming of the mind that's really required.

spk_1:   8:42
Yeah, and I hesitate to say, calming the mind like, uh, you know, we need to calm our mind because that can almost be counterproductive If we're like, I gotta I gotta call my mind Coming like it can make us be have kind of a suppressive approach to the mind. And that isn't actually mindfulness. So there's almost a paradoxical quality that when we attend with this larger sense of ourselves that isn't caught inside the different movements of the mind that the anxious thoughts orthe e um, the anger or what have you, then that's when it's able to relax. So when we try to tell ourselves I shouldn't be angry, it's bad to be angry. I don't want to be anxious in a way. We're just It's like they say what you resist persists. So yeah, Carl Rogers said, The curious paradoxes that when I accept myself completely just the way I am, then I'm free to change, and that's that That's almost this alchemy that mindfulness does. If we just are willing to sit with something and allow it to be there and even have a a kind, compassionate, like, friendly curiosity toward it, it will often loosen and relax. But when we try to fix it or improve ourselves, it just hangs on and kind of bubbles up somewhere. Help decide I

spk_0:   10:08
got it. And I think that za hard thing to grasp for a lot of people because people really want to try hard to accomplish this. And I think it's It's a very important point that you have to go in with minimal expectations and just be with yourself and experience what happens. I know personally. When I started, um, and one of the reasons I sought your help, Barbara was because meditation with daunting I mean, I did try doing it for five minutes. I think by the time I had talked to you, I was up to about 10 minutes. But this concept of like 45 minutes or an hour just seemed like, Whoa, I can't imagine being with myself that long. How would you recommend people approach it?

spk_1:   10:58
How did you approach it

spk_0:   10:59
I I think, uh I mean, for me, a lot of it was getting the support, Um, and kind of just guidance to say, Hey, this is what you can expect as you go through this process. Yes, it seems daunting in the beginning, but what I experienced waas it over a number of sessions that changed, it became easier. I think what I've heard before is a description monkey brain is that your your thoughts bounce around, and so when you approach it, you're like, Oh, my gosh, I can't imagine living with my thoughts for an extended period of time because they're going everywhere, just like a monkey would bounce around the room. You just discovered that all of a sudden the thoughts aren't occurring at the same pace. They're slowing. There's larger and larger gaps in the thoughts. And I think it is really important you're not trained to stop thinking That's not the point. The point is that you're observing what's happening.

spk_1:   12:06
Yeah, and using that anchor, really, just it's coming back over and over. And even if we do have expectations, that itself can be something that we just bring this kind of curiosity too Oh, okay. I really want to not be like this. Isn't that interesting? Can I just allow that? Part of me wants to improve myself and, uh, is pushing away another part of me. Okay, that's how it is right now.

spk_0:   12:36
And it evolves over time. I mean, if you would have told me when I started that I could sit through three Daves of pretty much nonstop meditation, it would be like, What?

spk_1:   12:48
What I remember when you came to me is that, um you were you were already pretty comfortable in your sitting, And you were would I recall about as you were sort of curious about what? Where you should go next. And I remember when I said, you know, how about sitting longer? 20 minutes and you really Okay. And then I start to talk to you about 40 minutes, and you said, Well, really, my recollection is that you didn't even know people would choose to sit for that long. I think

spk_0:   13:17
I I definitely had heard about it, but it just seemed so daunting. Um,

spk_1:   13:23
And then you tried it.

spk_0:   13:24
Yeah. And then I tried it, and I was like, Oh,

spk_1:   13:26
and it wasn't that hard for

spk_0:   13:27
you know, it wasn't And I think that's the important point is everyone has a different experience. Um, you can definitely work upto longer periods of time. It takes a commitment.

spk_1:   13:40
And what from your own experience, What would you say is different between sitting for 10 minutes versus 20 or 20 vs 40 for you?

spk_0:   13:49
I'll just go back to your analogy is the water's become clear and especially if you're sitting for multiple days, you're in a silent retreat. I mean that those waters totally settled, um, it. And from there you start to see things differently. And I think the Insight piece is extraordinarily important because that's when very often we talk about clear seeing. You're starting the seed through the water now into yourself, but also into the nature of things.

spk_1:   14:25
Yeah, you start to see the relationship between things differently, were clearly and it just becomes it just becomes easier. T kind of pick up the thing you want and to put down the thing that that's weighing you down.

spk_0:   14:39
Because one of the things that we've talked about this a number of times is that just wilfully saying I'm gonna be present. Um, and and I was very much there. I mean, I had study mindfulness for several years, and I was kind of like, OK, well, I'll just be present and you can. That informal practice can occur. Really? The only what I would say sustainable way being more present that I've experienced is is when I dedicated myself to a meditative practice on a daily basis and foreign experts extended period of time.

spk_1:   15:16
Yeah, And so, as I think we've been talking about in other times, how How does someone sort of do that progression? And each person is going to be a little bit different, but mainly just to start with what feels doable. And if that's one minute, maybe you just pause said, Ah, a bell or an alarm on your phone, Um, and just three come back to whatever is your anchor for one minute. I think we have a one minute practice we just recorded. Um, and when that feels comfortable enough, you can go double to two minutes and I mean, I say that a little bit facetiously, but really, it's kind of cool to think that often for many people in a pretty short period of time. They can double the amount of time that they're able to be present to themselves and just be with their experience without grabbing or pushing away. And then, um, five minutes. So just each each one of us, maybe a week or a few days, like as one would do with weights, right? You do it until you feel like you can do whatever is that number of reps at that weight, and then you go to the next. The next piece of the next no increments

spk_0:   16:35
very much is the daily exercise. And I know in terms of the research has shown it, that's those longer periods of time are really what starts to change your brain, Um, and the way you react And that's what I think is most important. That, I noted, is your reactivity just, um, dissolves.

spk_1:   16:58
Yeah, not only reactivity to outside stimuli, but also our reactivity to our own being the self kind of critic, the self even loathing. Um, yeah. So what I would just emphasize about this, then, is that each person is going to have their their pace and their pathway and the number of minutes That's going to feel right for them. And so this is really an invitation to be experimental. Bi curious, tried. Try something. If it feels wrong, go adjust in the other direction and trust that you do have the the capacity and the wth e interest in waking up. Or you wouldn't be listening to this podcast so you can trust that you'll find your way is you experiment and learn about your own mind and your own life and what's right for you. There's no wrong way in Any amount of time that you give to this will benefit you.

spk_0:   18:00
Yes, because I think what you'll you do eventually find out is then you're really wanting to do it.

spk_1:   18:05
Yeah, exactly. It becomes like taking a shower, you know, are getting into a hot tub. It's just bathing in this, um, kind. Wakeful alert, relaxed presence and other people also notice the difference in being around a person who's was doing that

spk_0:   18:31
cast and in terms of, um, one of the things that I discovered also was the amount of stimulation you have in your life is gonna impact your practice, and that's not a problem. That's just the reality I mean, if you're under an immense amount of pressure at work, um, that's going to impact you and your thoughts might be a little bit more, um, jumping around the normal. That's okay. Um, longer term, As you practices, you're I think you're better able to. You may not have as much variability, but I think it is important for people to recognize that stimulation, And it could be a number of things that could be work. It can be personal relationships, just any kind of activity or stress that's impacting u. Um, is gonna impact your practice. And you? I mean, the reality is we have to learn how to integrate that and don't feel discouraged, because I think the the key thing to recognize him. What long term practitioners will tell you is it evolves, it changes. And so those things don't impact you as much. But you may also choose to change the stimulation in your life.

spk_1:   19:51
That's such a great point. Thank you for saying that, Matthew. Yeah, that to not ah you know, judge ourselves for having a busy mind, or even for having made all the choices we made that day. So that When we sit down, our mind is busy. Or if we do judge ourselves than not to judge ourselves for judging ourselves. Well, yeah, and then it's

spk_0:   20:15
just you have to be with it.

spk_1:   20:18
Yeah, and it's OK. It's not wrong. It doesn't You're not doing it wrong. Just because your mind is busy. That doesn't if you If you notice that your mind is busy, that is mindfulness. You're you're mindful of the activities of your mind. So it's not about, um, getting to a certain getting as close to zero thoughts as possible that maybe a that may be pleasant that maybe a side benefit. But it's just being with how it is right now and letting that be as it ISS and you you may choose. Then you may find as you as you start to like it. As we've said, maybe during the day you'll start to notice. Yeah, actually, maybe I don't want to go on Facebook for the fifth time now, like I'd rather just relax.

spk_0:   21:06
Hey, I think that's an important point about social media is it's fascinating to look at your responses when you do add or diminish that and that is very much. What you learned in mindfulness is you look at the activities that you're performing throughout the day and look at that impact. I remember asking you about drinking like one of the things I learned was that the next day. Actually, it impacted my practice and I drink. I had two glasses of wine, but I noticed subtleties and changes in my thought patterns. And and now I recognize that, yes, that's going to be an impact. That's part of the reality of it.

spk_1:   21:48
Yeah, And again. So this what we're this practice that we're talking about isn't about saying Okay, if you do this practice, then you'll see that you should stop all your drinking. That isn't what we're saying. What we're saying is you get to make a truly conscious choice, and if you want to have those two glasses of wine and rode up, it is d'oh! It's just getting to know better. What do you really want? It's a great way to find out what what you really want and what I often suggest to people around these kinds of things is, don't go in with a goal of reducing it or getting rid of it. Just all you need to do is notice. How do you feel before you do it? How do you feel as you do it, and how do you feel after you've done it?

spk_0:   22:35
That's great.

spk_1:   22:36
And just be true to yourself in your experience.

spk_0:   22:39
Great. Well, that's it for today that we had. We hope you found this very informative and insightful. We appreciate you listening to the podcast. For more information, go to our website at the way toe wellbeing dot com And for more information on how Barbara can help you visit her website at barbara Newell dot com. Thank you and have a wonderful day.