5-Minute Mindfulness (3 page)

Noradrenaline
is a hormone produced by your adrenal glands, cousin to the adrenaline that your body releases in times of stress to give you that extra chance at survival. Noradrenaline is related to your daily cycle of energy. Too much stress can disrupt your body’s production of noradrenaline, leaving you with a profound lack of energy and motivation. It’s that feeling you get when you just want to sit and stare at the television even though you have a long list of things you absolutely have to do. If your noradrenaline production is disrupted, you’ll probably just keep sitting there, watching television. You simply won’t have the energy to get anything done.

Dopamine
is a hormone linked to the release of endorphins in your brain. Endorphins help kill pain. Chemically, they are related to opiate substances, such as morphine and heroin, and, if you are injured, your body releases endorphins to help you function. When stress compromises your body’s ability to produce dopamine, it also compromises your body’s ability to produce endorphins, so you become more sensitive to pain. Dopamine is responsible for that wonderful feeling you get from doing things you enjoy. It makes you feel happy about life itself. Too much stress, too little dopamine—and nothing seems fun or pleasurable anymore. You feel flat. You feel depressed.

MAXING OUT ON STRESS

We already know that stress causes your cerebral cortex to begin a process that results in the release of chemicals to prepare your body to handle danger. But, what else goes on in your brain when you are under too much stress? At first, you think more clearly and respond more quickly. But, after you’ve reached your stress tolerance point, your brain begins to malfunction. You forget things. You lose things. You can’t concentrate. You lose your willpower and indulge in bad habits, such as drinking, smoking, or eating too much.

The production of the chemicals from the stress response that makes the brain react more quickly and think more sharply is directly related to the depletion of other chemicals that, under too much stress, keeps you from thinking effectively or reacting quickly. Eventually, any positive effects are overwhelmed by the negative. Remember the last time you took a particularly stressful exam? At first, odds are the answers to the test came to you without hesitation. However, three hours into the test and you could barely remember which end of the pencil to use to fill in those endless, little circles.

STRESS ON YOUR MIND

Lions aside, stressors affecting us in today’s world are seemingly endless. Some of the most stressful include:

• Work pressure

• Impending important events

• Relationship problems with a spouse, child, or parent

• The death of a loved one

Any major life change can result in mental stress, depending on how the mind interprets the event, and even when an event is positive—a marriage, a graduation, a new job, a Caribbean cruise—the change it represents, even if temporary, can be overwhelming.

Mental stress can result in low self-esteem, a negative outlook on life, cynicism, or the desire for isolation as the mind attempts to justify and, in any way possible, stop the stress. (If you’ve ever had an extremely stressful week and want nothing more than to spend the entire weekend alone in bed with a good book and the remote control, you’ve experienced the mind attempting to regain its equilibrium.) Allow stress to continue for too long, and you could suffer burnout, panic attacks, severe depression, or even a nervous breakdown.

Take This Job

If your job stresses you out, you are not alone. According to the American Institute of Stress:

• One million people miss work every day due to stress-related complaints.

• Nearly half of all American workers suffer from symptoms of burnout or severe job-related stress that impairs or impedes functioning.

• Job stress costs U.S. industries $300 billion every year in absenteeism; diminished productivity; employee turnover; and direct medical, legal, and insurance fees. Between 60 and 80 percent of industrial accidents are attributed to stress.

• Once rare, workers’ compensation awards for job stress have now become common.

• Nine out of ten job-stress suits are successful, with an average payout of more than four times the payout for injury claims.

Mental stress can be particularly dangerous because you can ignore it more easily than you can a physical illness. Yet, it is just as powerful and just as harmful to the body and to your life.

MINDFULNESS TO THE RESCUE

As we have seen, stress really is all in your mind—because that’s where the stress response begins. Right or wrong, when your brain reads danger, the fight-or-flight response kicks in.

Become mindful, and you can short-circuit that stress response. You can learn to step back and see your thoughts and emotions like the weather—constantly changing but ultimately not very important. You can wean yourself off the roller coaster of the stress response and find a more level state of being, increasing your energy level and state of overall health. Initially, this may be disconcerting if you have lived with inner turmoil for years or decades. Having a peaceful state of mind may even feel irresponsible because you have come to think of out-of-control emotions as somehow productive.

Fear and anxiety don’t solve problems. Unconsciously, you may be using powerful emotions as a substitute for constructive action. Mindfulness takes away the worries and, with them, your defenses and excuses. You can see problems and the resources needed to face those problems more clearly. While many exaggerated claims have been made about the potential of mindfulness to generate worldly success, it is true that a sensible program can help you achieve and maintain a more relaxed state of mind; over time, this can lead you to a greater quality of life, including greater productivity and quality of work.

SYMPATHETIC AND PARASYMPATHETIC BALANCE

To understand how mindfulness works, you should understand the connections between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. When you sleep, your nervous system shifts back and forth between sympathetic-dominant and parasympathetic-dominant states about every 1½ hours. Rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, the state that induces vivid dreaming, is a sympathetic-dominant state. In this part of the sleep cycle, your mind remains very active, much as it is in your waking life. By contrast, the parasympathetic-dominant state is typically characterized by dreamless sleep; this is when the rejuvenation of brain and body takes place.

In deep sleep, the rhythm of breathing synchronizes with brain waves. Breathing slows and so do your brain waves. Without inducing actual sleep, meditation mimics what happens in dreamless sleep. Your
blood pressure and pulse go down, stress hormones are inhibited, and conscious awareness goes into a more subdued state.

HARNESSING THE POWER OF MEDITATION

The mindfulness tool we use to settle our monkey mind is meditation. Meditation, combined with deep breathing, can reduce the everyday effects of stress—it can even prevent and treat chronic disorders. Physiological benefits include:

• Reduced heart rate, blood pressure, and cholesterol levels

• Lower stress levels

• Less anxiety and other emotional disorders

• Increased concentration and spatial memory

• Pain reduction

Mindfulness works by balancing the fight-or-flight response with parasympathetic activity, getting the body to go into a rest and recuperation mode. Meditation and deep breathing induce this resting state through two principal means: slowing the rate of breathing and generating nonjudgmental thought patterns.

MONKEY MIND–BODY LOOPS

When we’re caught up in monkey mind, we often start chasing “loops” that eventually take over by chasing us. These loops rob us of our sense of well-being; they keep us going back and forth, round and round. Since the mind and body are connected, stress that starts in the mind affects the body. Following are some of the monkey mind–body loops you may be struggling with.

THE STRESS–LETHARGY LOOP

The continual demands of your responsibilities may have you racing to resolve every crisis. This stress is followed by periods of depletion that allow only enough time and energy to recuperate to meet the next demand. In time, you may feel that crises beset you at every turn—and you have no time for relaxing or doing the things you really want to do. You alternate between overwork and oversleep. If you’re often wondering “What if?,” you may be caught in the stress–lethargy loop.

THE ANXIETY–FEAR LOOP

You may have faced serious disruptions in your life, and they confirmed your worst fears. You expect those disruptions to rear their ugly heads again, and you’re not sure you can handle them when that happens. You alternate between hesitation and restlessness. If you’re often worried about the future, you may be stranded in the anxiety– fear loop.

THE PANIC–CONTROL LOOP

You’ve had everything in your life pretty well managed the way you wanted, but now little things seem to be slipping out of your control. The more this happens, the more you try to find ways to get things back on track—often by trying to control and/or micromanage the people around you. You alternate between feeling overwhelmed and feeling frustrated. If you’re asking “Why me?” a lot, you may be in the panic–control loop.

THE ANGER–DEPRESSION LOOP

You’ve had to deal with some menacing people and situations, but you didn’t do anything about it. Now you feel defeated; you simply cannot marshal the energy to act. You alternate between irritability and sluggishness. If you find yourself frequently saying “No way!,” you may be in the anger–depression loop.

THE BITTERNESS–ISOLATI ON LOOP

You’ve made it through some difficult times in the past, and they’ve left their mark on you. So, you avoid people and places that remind you of the past, although you’d like to return to the way you used to be. You alternate between mistrust and lack of motivation. If you find yourself frequently referring to the past, you may be in the bitterness–isolation loop.

Wring Out Your Brain

All day, every day, you absorb information and impressions from the outside world like a sponge—not all of it beneficial. Meditation is one way to wring out the sponge, squeezing out whatever you don’t want or need. It is preventive medicine for the spirit, a refreshing pause for the mind, and a reservoir of calm for the emotions.

GETTING OUT OF THE LOOP USING MEDITATION

How does meditation help you break out of the monkey mind–body loops? All of these loops have their basis in the sympathetic/parasympathetic balance. Meditation helps you cut the looping short by hitting the “reset” button. The restorative functions of the parasympathetic system counterbalance the active energies of the sympathetic nervous system. On an emotional level, the sense of well-being you feel counteracts the negative emotions that feed into the loop.

THE LOOP RX

Meditation allows you to stop running around the hamster wheel of the loops and regain your perspective. While you can benefit from all the various meditation techniques, certain approaches are more effective in fighting some loops than others. The following list will help you isolate the approach that will work best to quiet your monkey mind:

Transience—Easy Come, Easy Go:
See the inevitable ebb and flow of all things. Problems—and their solutions—are transient: They come and go like the rising and falling tides. When you see this rhythm in life, you’re less likely to fall into the stress–lethargy loop.

The Transience exercise:
Watch the clouds passing overhead, and imagine that each cloud is a problem in your life. Tag each one—unpaid bills, tight deadlines, piles of laundry, etc.—and watch it float across the sky and out of view. You can do this any time you find yourself stressing out over having too much to do or deal with—just close your eyes wherever you are, and imagine those clouds moving in and out of your mind.

Compassion—Love Really Is the Answer:
Develop an appreciation for life in all its aspects. Going through life with such an appreciation encourages generosity and compassion. When you focus on loving-kindness toward yourself and others, anxiety and fear will no longer dominate your feelings.

The Compassion Exercise:
Close your eyes; draw your attention inward to your heart center. Picture your tender heart, and say to yourself,
May I be brave and wise and happy
. Repeat this a few times in your mind. Next, think of someone you love whose courage and compassion you admire. Picture that person in your mind, and repeat this thought:
May you be brave and wise and happy
. Then picture someone you find challenging or difficult, and address this person in the same way:
May you be brave and wise and happy
. Finally, broaden your statement to include everyone:
May all beings be brave and wise and happy
. Try this whenever you feel overwhelmed by fear or anxiety.

Surrender—No More Control freak:
Let go of your belief that you must be in charge of everything and everyone. The more persistently you hang on to your control issues, the more other people will resist—and resent—you. By abandoning this approach, you also abandon the panic–control loop.

The Surrender Exercise:
The next time you’re about to panic over the imperfect state of your life, stop yourself before you start trying to fix anything—or anyone. Find a quiet corner away from the source of your panic—the messy kitchen, the uncooperative colleague, the unruly kids—and sit down. Make a list of the things you want to change: your roommate’s untidiness, your colleague’s bad work ethic, your kids’ tantrums. Cross out whatever you cannot change. Hint: You can’t change others; you can only change yourself. Now, close your eyes, and repeat the Serenity Prayer:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference
.