Q and A: Getting Started Guide -Part 1. Switching into the Mindfulness Experiencing Mode
Start up Guide Q & A to Applied Clinical Mindfulness- Switching to the Mindfulness Being Mode
Why should I consider using applied clinical mindfulness help me with mental health problems, like depression, anxiety, negative thinking or psychosomatic problems like headaches, poor sleep, stomach and bowel problems?
When medications, and the usual thinking mode psychotherapies and counseling are no longer helpful, or there still are residual problems, symptoms, distress, impairment, pain and suffering, or you know on some level “I still am not feeling right, not back to my old self”, you may be helped by using applied clinical mindfulness.
What is applied clinical mindfulness?
It is applying the principles of mindfulness and its associated psychology to enhance your mental health and to deal directly with the feelings and bodily sensations that are driving and fueling your problem emotions, thinking and bodily discomforts.
How can this help?
These feelings and bodily sensations are often resistant to biological treatments like medications and thinking mode psychotherapies because their origins are at deepest level of the mind caused by and perpetuated by un mindful experience, over and over again, creating layers of thinking mode distortion held together by mental energy that results in tension, frustration and felt as an anxiety experiential and existential in nature. The layers of reality distortion and resultant anxiety caused by un mindful activities of the mind can only be removed by mindfulness.
What will I learn?
You will learn about mindfulness by practicing mindfulness in daily activities by using breathing as the anchor and reminder of mindfulness, using it both in and out of formal meditation experience. Meditation for our purposes is sustaining mindfulness long enough to switch from the thinking mode of mind to the experiencing mode of the mind and being able to stay in it for a period of time.
Why do I have to learn meditative techniques, and do meditation why aren’t just using the principles of mindfulness psychology enough to help?
The short answer is that you need powerful and stable concentration in a calm and alert mind not to be pulled over and over back into your usual thinking mode activities which can be accomplished by meditation.
What is the long answer?
The basic concepts are simple to understand and to initially apply but it is the nature of the thinking mode mind to interfere with mindfulness. The thinking mode mind likes to pull you out of conscious awareness and put you in and keep you operating on auto pilot, so you won’t even being aware you being unmindful, secondly it reacts too quickly to emotions, judging them good or bad or neutral, pulling you out of the present moment of an experience, as you are still trying to know the issue or problem, and brings in past experience and future wants and fears. To counter act these properties of the thinking mode you need to stay in the mindful experiencing mode which requires a clam, emotionally stable non reactive, mind which requires powerful and stable concentration, which will be developed by meditation.
How do you get into and stay in this state of sustained mindfulness or mindfulness meditation and get the needed concentration?
You will develop the concentration you need by exclusively focusing on your breathing with mindful awareness over and over, this exclusive mindful focus will develop both increasing concentration and make your mindfulness more powerful, and when your thinking mode distracts you with something, the concentration and mindfulness you are developing will make it easier and easier for you to return back to the breathing again, after you have deal with the distraction, which further increases concentration and mindfulness, and with each cycle as you breathe over and over, get distracted, return back to the breathing, the increasing concentration will induce you mind to be calm with more emotional stability, and as a bonus your body will stay relaxed yet staying very alert.
How will we go about learning all of this?
First we will discuss some theory about the nature of the thinking and experiencing modes of the mind, but mindfulness is an experience and must be practice best done by learning how to mindfulness based breathing. Through the practice you will convince yourself of what it is and how it can help you.
If you want you can go right to the practice of mindful breathing, BareBonesMeditation instructions and if you need help with understanding the fine points of how to do the actual breathing go to Techniques of Breathing. Technique of Breathing with Mindfulness the Fine Points
Two mode of mind, tell my about the thinking vs. experiencing mode?
There are two modes of the mind the thinking-doing mode is what we usually use to solve most problems and to enhance our mind, and there is the being experiencing mode of which mindfulness is an example associated with creativity and intuition, where being with the activity, becoming one with it helps like in the arts, dancing , certain aspects of sporting and athletic activities.
What is usefulness of knowing this when it comes to helping problems?
When thinking and doing mode of the mind is no longer helpful with strong emotions, switch to the experiencing-being mode , which is represented by mindfulness, by using mindfulness based breathing. Doing this will give your thinking mode a deserved rest, allow it to re charge, as you become more focused, calm and relaxed, and in the process the feelings and body sensations fueling your problems will be lessened , weakened, and may be eliminated.
Can you tell me more specifically what each mode starting with the thinking mode does?
The thinking mode by definition primarily thinks using activities like comparing the past with the future, has expectations and goals, strives and likes to control things, and uses judgment based on reactions to three basic sources of stimulation, its own thinking, emotions, and sensations from the body and from the environment.
What about the experiencing mode?
The experiencing mode represented by mindfulness does not use thinking at all to evaluate and make changes, it uses only direct experience of body sensations and feelings, and rather than controlling, it allows, and rather than judging it accepts everything positive, negative or neutral equally, this being called equanimity, it does not compare past and future, but stays only in the present moment.
Are there any other differences?
Another major difference between the two modes is that the thinking mode works mostly on auto pilot, while mindfulness is intentional, purposeful, one being very conscious and alert in its activity.
How can this approach specifically help me?
Mindfulness used during the day can be used as a psychological model to help handle the stresses of daily living and when it is sustained by using meditative techniques it can lead to new insights to help you deal with your problems, and can literally burn and peel away layers of distorted experiential anxiety or tension caused by un mindfulness, and at the same time keep you from adding more fuel to the emotional fires that are driving your problems. Un mindfulness is caused by the usual activities of the thinking doing mode of the mind.
Why can’t the thinking mode, or why hasn’t it been helpful?
The thinking mode mostly working on auto pilot out of awareness, reacts strongly to emotions, wanting more of the positive, avoiding the negative and ignoring the neutral, as it simultaneously pulls you out of the present moment, and use past experience and future wishes, needs and fears, to deal with the problem, doing all of this, too quickly and prematurely before one can accurately really know and evaluate, the feelings and sensations which are driving the problem.
Why can this make matter worse?
The thinking mode approach can actually fuel the feelings and sensations as they are suppressed, repressed, denies, intellectualized, rationalized, converted to physical manifestations like changes in sleep, appetite, headaches, and stomach-intestinal problems, this all taking much mental energy to do this and keep them submerged, and make it more likely they will return with more fuel making them more and more powerful if this occurs again and again, which is often the case. It leads to the rumination of the depressive and obsessional worry of the anxiety prone person.
Why is the mindful approach more helpful?
A mindful approach to the problem would help you in at least two ways, allow you know the feelings for what they are and give you new ideas about them to process by the thinking mode, and if you sustain the mindfulness, which is the definition of meditation, you can actually change the mental energy of the feelings and sensations in a helpful way, so that they will be not be further fueled, but lessened, weakened so that they will be easier to deal with, and with enough practice may gradually be eliminated, and no longer cause problems.
How can I learn the mindfulness approach to mental health problems or just to enhance my health?
Mindfulness is best understood and learned by practicing it using mindful breathing in an out of meditation which can be done sitting, standing, walking or during any activity that is repetitive that would be conducive to increasing mindful awareness. Mindful awareness is intentional [PEALT] Present moment, Experiencing, with Acceptance and then Letting go, all done without using the usual activities of Thinking. This is best practiced using the training ground of breathing as the primary object of focus to start, with experience any neutral activity or thing could be used as the anchor and reminder of mindful focus.
How does one do it, can you outline it for me?
To develop mindful awareness using breathing use the 4F’s, Finding, Following, Feeling and Focusing only on the breathing and its associated physical sensations, using PEALT, as follows: Stop whatever you are doing and Find your breathing as a reminded to pull you into the present moment, no thinking, no controlling, no expectation, no past, no future, no judgment, not wanting, not avoiding, not ignoring based on emotional charge or how you are feeling, just you and the experience of your breathing, then Follow the breathing, one breath at a time, letting it control you, like a dance following its lead, over and over, again and again, Feel the breathing, Feel the associated physical sensations, not a hard thinking mode focus but as soft touch kind of gentle awareness, allowing it to rest on the breathing, continue to Focus exclusively only on the breath, one breath as time, being aware of in only in the present moment without thought, accepting, experiencing by feeling and sensing, allowing each breath to unfold, being aware of one and then letting it go, for the next, and repeating this over, and over, and when distracted pulled off focus, start over by Finding the breath again, and then Following, Feeling and exclusive present moment mindful Focusing over and over, again and again.
If I want to try it what should I specifically do?
Go to the Bare Bone instructions and the article on the Technique of Breathing for the finer points, and then practice , practice and more practice. BareBonesMeditation Technique of Breathing with Mindfulness the Fine Points