Advice on mindfulness

[Cheesemonster13]

I'm doing it when I find I really can't concentrate on what I'm doing. I stop for a while and meditate, and this seems to bring everything back into focus. I find it quite difficult, but I'm assuming it's like anything new that you learn, if you do it regularly, it should get easier.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Instead of starting a new tread thought I would just ask in here. Is there a set amount of time you should do a formal mindfulness meditation? I am trying to do it daily but I think I will have trouble sitting for longer than 10 minutes. Would I have to do more to see the benefits or would this be ok?

Also do you have to do all the different types of mindfulness meditations, for example, in mark Williams book? Like the full course he reccomends. Or could you just do the mindfulness of breathing meditation without any of the others?

Sorry PB, I've been off NMP for a month so missed this.

Mark Williams book is aimed at a gradual approach, you don't need to do that at all, it's just how his method works. The same with Jon Kabat-Zinn.

You can spend a minute on Mindfulness, it's just a question of whether it benefits you. I believe that it is very hard to get into and this means that until you can literally enter that state quickly, you need to spend more time on it.

When I started I was doing about 20 minutes. It took me months before I really could do it well. I had ups and downs with it and as time progressed, my experiences of it changed and I had to make alterations e.g. changing breathing inductions.

You want to be able to just do it, live it e.g. walking down the street and just deciding to focus on something, truly take it in and cut out out everything else. This does start to happen but it's a skill and has to be learned.

Going back to Mark Williams approach, I only had one guided meditation and I found after a month or so that it was becoming a routine. This is a problem for me because I struggle with routines and I find that if I do something that is positive for too long, it ends up as a negative pointless routine. So, I firmly believe that you need variety to stop this, but it could just be me.

So, see where something takes you and if you don't feel it's enough, try another one. Sometimes you just can't get into it because of the voices, the noise, the theme isn't for you, etc. So, you have to try some and decide what works best and if this changes over time, just go with it.

Going back to your original question, 10 minutes may be fine, 5 minutes may be fine. I would say that if you struggle to sit still, and I can remember that horrible stage, start small and build up. So, try to do your 10 minutes and work towards making it a bit longer. Have a look at the length of the guided meditations and work up to them if you aren't there yet. I've seen ones that last up to 30 minutes but I don't think I seen anything beyond that. Anything too big, and it becomes an issue, hence these are usually shorter.

Mark Williams has some interviews around, such as on BeMindful so maybe that will explain it better.

Eventually, you want to be able to enter this state quickly and reduce it substantially. There are books like 1 minute mindfulness that deal with short meditations, however with an anxiety disorder, you may need more time on it until you feel more able to understand it. You want to be able to just quieten your mind, whether watching TV, sitting waiting for the dentist, etc.

It's an odd concept and I really struggled with it at first. I had my first breakthrough with it when I was out walking and I felt the urge to sit in the grass on the edge of a hill. I don't know why, I just felt like it...which was strange because my walking is part of the obsessive routine. I just sat, started feeling the sun, was feeling the long grass, watching the birds, the insects and really...listening. It felt like I was listening with my mind, rather than my ears. I was quite strange but it felt great.

So, I think once you start feeling things like that, you are getting into to it as it is affecting your subconscious. I don't know if that is how it goes for everyone, but maybe it makes sense to those who have felt this way and not known why. I remember telling my therapist after several sessions of "I'll try it as I need help but I really can't see how this is going to help me".

---------- Post added at 06:33 ---------- Previous post was at 06:30 ----------

I'm doing it when I find I really can't concentrate on what I'm doing. I stop for a while and meditate, and this seems to bring everything back into focus. I find it quite difficult, but I'm assuming it's like anything new that you learn, if you do it regularly, it should get easier.

Yes, it took me months. Since it's from Buddhism, it's part of their lifetime journey so we have to accept that it could take us some time and persevere with it.

Are you learning from a guided meditation? This might help you get into it because I find it easier to listen than read about it. It makes more sense to me now but reading means using the conscious functions and it's easier to drift with someone else explaining it and you not having to think about it as much.

---------- Post added at 06:42 ---------- Previous post was at 06:33 ----------

Thanks again Terry. Few question: So with mindfulness practise would you recommend starting off with just the breathing meditation and not anything else, e.g walking, etc? Also, if one did just the breathing meditation daily would that be enough to have any effect or do you have to go into the everyday mindfulness as well? Or would that part just come naturally after a while?

Sorry again PB, not been on here for a while so I'll answer this now as I'm just checking in on a few things until I come back next week.

I started with a guided meditation that had 3 breathing inductions and it helped me, especially with my OCD. My goal is to expand my Mindfulness into walking, everyday, etc but I reckon it's a matter of stages and progressing when you feel ready so you really take it in. The sitting/breathing is what my CBT therapist recommended and it came from their organisations most senior therapist who is trained it in so I took that as a sign that it was the right place to start.

I would suggest a sitting meditation first so you can concentrate on breathing, drifting and refocussing. Once you feel you can do this, move on. If you can't seem to get into it, maybe try a different first step such as everyday or walking (or movement based like tai Chi, Qi Gong, etc) but the sitting tends to be where most people begin.

The everyday will come with practice. I found that I did them without thinking. I've got loads to learn myself on this, but I'm ok with the sitting version now. I've tried everyday here and there and I find it harder when my mood is suffering or I'm quite anxious about something, so I know there is a way to go with that. But I think everyday Mindfulness is like an ultimate goal because if you can just live it, and enter that state without much effort, you should be quite advanced at it.

[Paul H]

The ultimate goal with mindfulness is to be mindful all of the time without it being an effort at all. This is difficult when mindfulness teaching centres around the idea of stopping whatever you would otherwise be doing in order to be mindful.

I do teach my clients that method but I also encourage them to learn Gestalt zones of awareness. Fritz Perls was heavily influenced by the Orient and his zones of awareness were a route by wich one could learn to be mindful in such a way that you don't have to stop anything. You can be mindful driving, eating, digging the garden or anything else.

Worth a try, perhaps.

Paul

[cheshirecatqee]

Mindfulness does not teach you to stop what you are doing to be mindful. Rather we should be mindful all the time and not be on auto pilot.

The best way to learn is through doing a course, that is what i did as I thought I could read a book or watch youtube clips but it wasn't working.

The course I did was a free 8 week online course, mainly because I couldn't leave the house also they are a bit expensive.

This is the course i did for anyone who is interested -https://sites.google.com/site/mindfulnessonlinecourse/Home - also feel free to pm me for more info. I am going to write a post for the success story section too.

[littlebutterflygb]

I completed my Mindfulness Course over 2 months ago. This was done via NHS CPN who trained in Mindfulness. As im agoraphobic, she came to my home.

It wont help you in a panic attack and this was made clear to me: thats not what mindfulness is for and you need to use other breathing techniques or relaxation techniques or just ride it out. Mindfulness is more for the long journey and hopefully stops you getting to the panic attack.

Its not easily mastered, but it is easy to learn. I would say that the biggest benefit was that it slowed down and sometimes stopped thoughts going round and round in my head. I do find it difficult to find time to do it, which is rubbish really as its only 10 minutes a day. For best results, you should do it three times a day. If you do it when you wake up and before sleep, then you only have to find time for one.

I think it is a curious thing that those who suffer mental health tend not to take their 'medicine' of relaxation, mindfulness, etc. its probably to do with the fact that doing them reminds you of your problem!

[MyNameIsTerry]

The ultimate goal with mindfulness is to be mindful all of the time without it being an effort at all. This is difficult when mindfulness teaching centres around the idea of stopping whatever you would otherwise be doing in order to be mindful.

I do teach my clients that method but I also encourage them to learn Gestalt zones of awareness. Fritz Perls was heavily influenced by the Orient and his zones of awareness were a route by wich one could learn to be mindful in such a way that you don't have to stop anything. You can be mindful driving, eating, digging the garden or anything else.

Worth a try, perhaps.

Paul

I think that is a common view of Mindfulness, but it is incorrect.

It's true that it is often taunt as a form of meditation, it's just easier to learn to do something by relaxing and following instructions to learn it. Once you understand this, you can more easily apply it to anything you do.

The other method is to take simple tasks and be Mindful such as the eating exercise Mark Williams uses at the start of his book. It's just a way to take a simple exercise and get you to follow a pattern of behaviour which you expand into more complex tasks.

Either works, but it's all about the willingness to accept it for what it is and persevere with it. It will make changes, but you may not realise that at first. I found my attitude changed and I was more willing to let things pass me by as opposed to reacting to them. This was just one change I noticed.

Mindfulness is well respected thesedays so it's worth a go. NICE endorse it for depression I believe and it is growing in respect for anxiety.

[littlebutterflygb]

I was never told to be mindful "all the time" and that would appear to be an impossible goal; it would be too introspective and utterly tiring.

[MyNameIsTerry]

Yes, it would be tiring.

It's simply a matter of being in the BEING mode more than the DOING mode. The more, the better. You can't not be in DOING mode at some point and it's impractical in our society...thats for the committed Buddhist monks.

The basic issue is that in our society we are rushing from one deadline to the next. We need to slow down and experience things in a deeper manner, which is where Mindfulness comes in because you learn how to feel, taste, smell in ways that make you examine things deeply e.g. you examine texture of an object (in hand or eating) and you turn it around to feel other sides.

The raisin eating exercise at the start of Mark Williams 8 week programme is a good example of this. I posted it in a thread about Mindfulness on the GAD board a few months back.

[littlebutterflygb]

I dont know which guided mindfulness from Mark Williams you have, but I got the free one from my mindfulness CPN and bought one from iTunes. It has some different exercises and longer meditations.

I have to say though the recording quality on it is rubbish! There appears to be no attempt made to reduce background noise and consequently, the tracks suffer from background hiss. Some tracks are than louder than others and Id be very surprised if this was recorded in a studio, or even professionally. Its more noticable if you use headphones.

Its called Mindfulness Meditations with Mark Williams.

[MyNameIsTerry]

It might be a copied version. My therapist gave me a CD that their head therapist had recorded and the quality was much the same as you say. After using it a few times I found I could turn it out of my mind but it was very unprofessional.

I think that sometimes this can happen if they are making endless reproductions from copies instead of originals but I doubt it would have been ok in the beginning with the amount of hiss I had on mine.

It seems less of an issue if there is background music as I have a couple of others that don't seem fully professional, but the background music does a good job of covering things up.

The ones I have from Mark Williams are from one of his books.

Is yours any good aside from the quality?

It's interesting how his name is appearing across other services, mine was a charity providing therapy for GP referrals and received NHS funding to cover the city. My therapist was very complimentary of Mark Williams when I mentioned purchasing one of his books.