Weaken and Eliminating Problems with Mindfulness Meditation
I still have symptoms even though I have been taking my medications and have been in therapy?
Medications and the usual thinking mode psychotherapies often leave residual symptoms that can only be helped by using the experiencing mode of the mind of which mindfulness is an example. Using mindfulness made more powerful by meditating can weaken and eliminate these residual symptoms. Q and A: Getting Started Guide -Part 1. Switching into the Mindfulness Experiencing Mode
How does mindfulness meditation make symptoms like anxiety, panic, depression or anger decrease or be eliminated?
Unlike usual relationship and talk therapies that involve thinking and doing something, mindfulness meditation uses direct experience to make changes to symptoms like emotions, thoughts and physical symptoms like headaches, insomnia or stomach-intestinal problems.
What is the process simply stated?
Stay only in the present, don’t think or emotionally judge, and feel and sense as you allow and accept is the essentials of mindfulness direct experiencing, done over and over, made possible by the power of mindfulness meditation using breathing. Apply this to your problems and they will weaken, be easier to manage, decrease in intensity, and eventually will go away. BareBonesMeditation, Child Mindful Breathing to help anything
Why is meditation needed?
One needs the power of concentration by meditating to do three things, 1. make it possible for the mind to stay calm and not react to the emotions good or bad, but treating all emotions equally, 2. gives one the ability to keep thinking from the past or future, and emotional judgment in the background, and 3. to stay in the present moment as one allow and accepts, and feels and senses, over and over.Too Much Worry, Anger, Depression,Negative Thinking, Physical Pain, Mindfulness Can Help Q and A
How would one literally apply this something like anger or panic?
First learn how to do mindfulness meditation using breathing to develop the concentration, calm, quiet mind you need to apply the direct experiencing of mindful awareness. Then try the five step program outlined below. Applied Clinical Mindfulness Q and A
Should I wait for the strong emotions to occur to practice this, or is there some way I can practice ahead of time?
You will do better if you prepare yourself ahead of time using this five step program to help any problem:
1) Make a headline: This prepares the mind by leaving seed of “feelings and sensations”. First use your usual thinking mode analysis to try to focus on your problem , to get a general sense of what it is, how it makes you feel, what body sensations it causes, and what thoughts it generates, making a headline of sorts introducing and calling attention to the problem. For example “feel the anger and the panic, sense and feel what it is doing to your body
2) Meditate using mindful breathing: Second leave your thinking mode, putting the headline that is the feelings and sensations about the problem in the back of your mind, and enter the experiencing mode by doing mindfulness based breathing on a to develop calm, concentration and more powerful mindfulness,
3) Leave the meditative state and turn your headline into a story, a drama, a major movie, a miniseries: Third when you believe you have stable and enough concentration and calm leave the mindfulness mode and go back and use your usual thinking mode mind to expand on the headline about your problem, and make a story, a drama, a miniseries about your problem, think, think, and feel, feel, and sense, sense, what you can about the problem issue by bringing up the past, the future, think about the problem over and over again and again, and little by little you will start getting more and more emotions , thoughts and body sensations about the problem, hold on to these emotions and body sensations you have stirred up, build up the best story, drama, miniseries you can, when it has peaked, you
4) Meditate on your drama or miniseries: Fourth re enter the mindfulness mode with your breathing and now make your drama, the story , the miniseries, the feelings and body sensations your have stirred up become the new object of your focus as you now do mindfulness based breathing, do this as long as you can or need to, burning up the energy of the feelings and the body sensations.
5) Analyze what you learned about your story: Fifth, re enter your usual thinking mode and logically analyze what just has happened using what you have experienced and learned to better handle and deal with your problem issue.
Can you summarize what you just discussed at length?
Simply it is using both modes of the mind thinking and experiencing using mindfulness, that is being aware in the present moment of what you are doing while you are doing it, as you stay focused on your problem, and expand on it, going back forth between first thinking logically and secondly then just experiencing the by sensing-feeling. Then doing it over and over, by going from headline to story, and building on each, over and over. This is how our mind works anyway but usually on auto pilot, that is unconsciously out or our awareness. The five step program is a way of using mindfulness to stay aware intentionally in the present moment, step by step, to use the best of both parts or modes of our minds.
How does one set up such a practice?
Learn how to do mindfulness based breathing, do it when you can throughout the day, and set up some brief periods of sustained mindfulness based breathing which is all meditation is, starting with as little as 5 to 10 minutes at a time, two to three times a day, such as after you wake up, sometime in the middle of the day, and before you go to sleep. Do this on a regular basis and you will start getting some of the benefits. Try it and convince yourself.
Can you tell me more about the theory of the direct experiencing of mindfulness that could help these problems?
Every emotion, or thought, or physical problem is driven by feelings and body sensations that are directly experienced by sensing and feeling them over and over again. This must be done while in the experiencing-mindfulness mode of the mind and not be interfered with by the thinking-doing mode.
What is the theory about using experience in this way without using the thinking mode?
The theory of why thinking-doing mode is no longer helpful with these residual symptoms or problems is that it works to often on auto pilot, we are unaware on two levels, first of what feelings and sensations are behind our problems, and secondly we are unaware of their true nature in terms of how strong or weak they are, their duration, and their connections. The reason for the second level of unawareness is that the thinking mind works too quickly making a judgment about the sensations-feelings, as good, bad or neutral, and prematurely pulls focus off these in the present moment, and changes, distorts and complicates the original feeling-sensation by thinking based on past experience and on future concerns. On an even deeper level the thinking mode interprets the sensations-feelings not as a bundle of energy but personalizes an “it” circumstance into “my sensation or feeling”, a subtle and powerful form of distortion, giving it great symbolic power. All of this happens because of the auto pilot unawareness, the thinking minds emotional judgment, moving to quickly and complicating by bring in the past and future, and also making the problem “my problem”.
How does mindfulness using direct experiencing help these problems?
Mindfulness by definition keeps one intentionally and consciously aware, and aware only in the present, it doesn’t use thinking at all so you wont complicate things by bringing in the past or future, and you wont use emotional judgment, seeing things as bad, good, or as my or mine, but allow and accept what really is in respect to the feelings and sensations. It is this present moment only feeling and sensing, while allowing and accepting, over and over that weakens the feelings and sensations driving problem, while not fueling them further by thinking.