Hi all

I'm new to the site, and noticed this forum for 'Top Tips'. I read a blog today by Ruby Wax, about being Mindful. It really is worth a read for anyone that suffers from anxiety and/or depression.

Anyway, the full post is copied below, just on case they decide to move it and break the link! I can't post the actual link because I'm new to the site - but the text link is: h t t p://blackdogtribe.com/rubys-blog/mindfulness-and-our-brains-ruby-wax



MINDFULNESS AND OUR BRAINS - BY RUBY WAX

So when I had my breakdown the reason I couldn’t get off the chair is because the voices were so loud I couldn’t hear myself think. Which seems odd since it was my thinking that was making all the noise. But the noise was so loud and giving me the worst reviews I’ve ever received. Now we all have those critical negative voices and again for the sake of survival it warns you I don’t know anyone who has a voice in his head that says congratulations you’ve done a wonderful thing and by the way you’re looking great. No we all have negative proclivity because a million years ago if we were too happy we’d be picked up and eaten like a finger food.

So ok this is how we are but what I had tipped from normal to seriously mental, I was being carpet bombed by my own thoughts. So I thought this has got to stop, which I couldn’t so I started to study mindfulness I heard it could give me some sort of braking system and get me off the chair.

I was reticent about doing meditation, I thought it was a Buddhist thing where you have to use words like shumanana brahman sudiah muti satis an explosion of meaningless letters. I was also not going to worship some elephant with a thousand arms. I always want things to be tangible, things I can see or taste or touch or see or I’m not paying.

If someone ever waves a crystal at me or even starts on about my star sign, I continue politely the conversation, smiling nodding my head, but inside I know they are dead. Relationship, over and out. So when you get that demanding voice it’s from a part of your pfc called the anterior cingulate cortex, this is where you drives intention call to action is. It’s the part that makes you feel I gotta get up I gotta eat I gotta go I gotta something. This is us in our high alarm mode to do something. Fear driving us. The way to override this system is to use another part of the brain you can intentionally switch to, another part of your brain and you don’t have to order it on amazon it’s something you use every day but not intentionally.

If you just focus on one of your senses, go on listen….or feel feet on the ground or the muscles on your face you do that because you are using your insular, it gives you feeling of your senses. This area has no voice you just experience sensation. The mind cannot be in 2 modes at once. If your attention is on touch, sound, sight, taste, the amygdala can’t be on, your cortisol levels come down, your heart slows. You’re in a sense tricking your body out of its automatic mode. While you take it off piste you’re creating new habits, new pathways, new behaviour. You also are in the present because you can’t sense something in the future or past, the feeling is right now.

Just by switching intentionally to the insular, from the part that gives the instructions you’re uncoupling them. Like doing sit ups and strengthening the insular so when you really get overwhelmed by the voices and the fear levels are up you can use an alternative and switch to your senses and bring you to the present out of automatic pilot. So if you want to work to the max you can focus and if you want to switch to the present cause your kid wants to show you his hamster you can switch gears and be there with him. Like driving a Ferrari. From 100 miles to neutral. This is what mindfulness does.

Your brain will want you back it is so addicted to the doing mind it will trick you and tear you back but you simply take the focus back to the sensation. Each time you move from the mind back to the sense you’re strengthening the insular so that when you need it it’s strong enough to pull you away from the negative voices.

Another trick you’re playing on your mind is that you’re using the insular on the right side of your brain. The left side focuses on language logic, analyzing details the ability to think in the future judging automatic pilot this is literally where the voices are working to figure out the world. When you focus on sensation not only using the insular but now working the right side of your brain which has no language, just in charge of the overview, the feelings pure awareness. Again because we have limited resources of attentional focus if we shift to feelings we cannot at the same time be in the left side. You swing to the right, The chattering subsides.

So we’re going to practise going from the mind to the body. The mind will constantly take over which is how we are and what minds do we’ll just very gently you don’t want to be hard on yourself that’s why we’re screwed up in the first place but really kindly refocus on the sensations; neither state is right or wrong, it’s the noticing that is the mindfulness not one state or the other there is no state of bliss just noticing. And in the noticing there’s a gap where you can choose to react one way or the other rather before you have an amygdala hijack where you just let yourself rip which only drains you. this isn’t repression. This is just noticing where your mind goes.

Ruby Wax