A Different Kind of Knowing: Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT)

a striking thing about the things we say to convey our emotional states is how often they refer to the body that really tickled me we say or my heart soared or my heart sank or my heart stopped or i just feel sick about what happened yesterday or i've butterflies in my stomach we use these metaphors for good reason the body and its infinite sensations are the repository of and the messengers for emotion joy pleasure or amusement can actually feel something like a tickle of course the heart doesn't move around the body when we feel uplifted or beaten down but some real physical sensations do occur that are captured by those descriptions the point is that the body has a lot to tell us about how we are feeling not just at peak moments but all the time yet we don't often hear its messages with any degree of wisdom because we are often too busy reacting to them in ways that immediately trigger a cascade of thoughts and judgments the challenge here is whether we can in the being mode actually open to know and befriend the very sensations and feelings we are experiencing the body whatever they may be and accept them with a new receptivity because they're actually part of the sensory landscape of our own body in this moment if we can listen with this kind of openness we will discover powerful new ways to be with what we are experiencing in any moment whether it is pleasant unpleasant or neutral we sometimes say i feel the weight of the world on my shoulders we may be more familiar with that sensation than many others and certainly more often than we'd like this is how many of us feel when depressed or unhappy as if a huge burden has been placed on the body making every normal action and effort as we discussed earlier physical sensations thoughts feelings and behavior all work together to create a state of depression let's focus for a moment on the way that sensations in the body can trigger negative thinking consider how you might feel upon waking up when you've been feeling down for a stretch of time perhaps the first thing you notice is how heavy and achy your body is maybe you don't even feel rested after a night's sleep your energy level is so low that you actually feel more tired than when you went to bed the night before in addition to these sensory aspects of your experience you have thoughts perhaps like i don't think i'm going to get anything done today or another wasted day and these thoughts may waft through your mind perhaps such thoughts lead you to feel frustrated and sad disappointed with yourself eventually you try to get out of bed but feel so heavy and tired that you drop back from the very effort maybe you try to put the thoughts of how listless you feel out of your mind maybe you're fed up with these daily battles with lack of energy you say to yourself i've got to get up and get going this is doing me no good at all when you finally do get up the listless feeling may well pass as you busy yourself with the day's activities but perhaps these morning struggles seem to be an increasing burden day by day by day this scenario illustrates how easily we can get trapped in a cycle in which our thoughts about our body sensations can drag us down into depression but what if we could open ourselves to the full panoply of direct sensory experience instead of simply getting carried away by the mind's reactions in thought and emotion to that experience if we can come to know sensations and feelings directly befriending the sensory landscape of our own body we will have a powerful new way to experience and be in wiser relationship to every moment including that moment when we first wake up the machinery that sets the cycle of unhappiness in motion may operate so smoothly that we don't even detect its workings but that doesn't mean that it's an unstoppable juggernaut every link that keeps the machine going body to thoughts thoughts to feelings feelings to body and so forth is an opportunity to redirect the sequence the cycle can be broken simply by bringing mindful awareness to its links and in particular to the body this may be hard to believe truthfully the only way to confirm it is through your own experience if right now you're thinking that you're already aware of your fatigue too aware of it in fact it may be helpful to recall that mindfulness is not just about paying more attention but rather about cultivating a different wiser kind of attention as we have seen in doing mode we see the world only indirectly through the veil of our thinking and labeling if we think about our bodies in the usual way from the perspective of our heads then as soon as we feel listless on awaking our mind fills with ideas about the body what is going on in our lives everything this way of paying attention will just make things worse if instead we begin to focus on the body from the perspective of being mode we open to a direct sensing of the body itself moment by moment we can become aware of body sensations but now in a new way a way that does not keep us so stuck obsessing in our thoughts about how we are feeling in the body this can help our feelings of sluggishness to fade on their own because we're no longer feeding them with incessant negative thinking in the process we shift from feeling powerless in their presence to having viable ways to be in relationship to them or anything else that arises as we've said doing mode and its thinking patterns tend to obscure the experiential quality of being mode for this reason mindfulness training involves extensive practice in getting in touch moment by moment with the direct experience of life unfolding the body is a great place to start to cultivate this new way of being and we do so by learning a practice called the body scan the body scan is a lying down meditation practice we introduce in the very first session of our mindfulness programs and then we ask people to practice it daily for at least two weeks on their own at home the body scan guides us in paying attention directly and systematically to each part of the body in turn it's sometimes challenging to bring attention to all the varied regions of the body for that reason we use the breath to carry awareness into each part of the body imagining or sensing that the breath could actually move throughout the body bringing with it a direct experiential sensing and knowing of the region of the body we are focusing on you might like to do this exercise yourself right now using the instructions on track two of the guided practice session or you might prefer to do it a little later if you can't do it immediately as we see from the instructions for the body scan the point of this practice is to be aware of your body as it is it's not to achieve a state of relaxation and yet deep states of relaxation often emerge so much so that people sometimes find themselves falling asleep why might we find it relaxing even though we're not purposely trying to relax when we cultivate mindfulness by paying attention to the detailed pattern of sensations in a particular part of the body in any and every moment we have a vivid and accessible object to anchor our attention in each moment just being able to focus on one thing at a time allows the mind to settle and we can experience a sense of calm that said it can be unhelpful for people to see the body scan as a form of relaxation training for the simple reason that it encourages the old habits of mind to start up again as with the breathing meditation we can inadvertently turn discovery into expectation we end up making relaxation the purpose and goal of the body scan wanting to experience relaxation so badly that it escapes us like a handful of dry sand grasped so tightly that it runs through the fingers so what can we do if we find the body scan peaceful and calming we can simply be aware of these feelings to experience feelings is to know that they come and they go they arise and they pass away the point is to be here for them to be directly aware of them as they are whether pleasant unpleasant or neutral and even if they are barely noticeable working like this is the basis of a profound insight when we stop trying to attain pleasant feelings such feelings are more likely to emerge by themselves with this insight may come another profound lesson we already have the capacity to experience peace and happiness deep within ourselves we simply have to learn how to skillfully get out of our own way getting out of our own way allows the deep reservoirs of peace and happiness within us to reveal themselves so that we may gain more ready access to them for those of us who have been fighting unhappiness for much of our lives this can be an enormously liberating change whether we've come to expect the relaxation or calm that may accompany the body scan or we tend to scold ourselves for letting our minds wander it's easy to attach goals to meditation and start to think of a particular session we've had as good or bad or as working or not working because of the aversion we feel for unpleasant emotion we may also be tempted if we felt impatient throughout restless uncomfortable itchy or irritable cold or hot or in pain to say we had a bad meditation we may never want to do the body scan again because obviously the meditation didn't work something was wrong maybe we blame the recording or the teacher or the method or we think of ourselves as failures and if we also imagine that meanwhile other people are having wonderful experiences with the body scan we will just have one more reason to think we're failing there's no such thing as failing at meditation as long as we are mindful of our experience whatever it is in fact this is precisely why the body scan is so powerful it gives us opportunity after opportunity to rest in or return to the being mode with its direct experiential knowing even in the presence of strong emotional thoughts or sensations like all the other meditation practices the body scan becomes a laboratory for our own learning and growing learning not to get stuck in self-perpetuating cycles of preoccupation and unhappiness growing into a greater intimacy and comfort with ourselves the body scan is aimed at freeing us from the suffering and mental anguish that arises through wanting things to be different from the way they are in this moment in the body scan as in life itself we are in a much stronger freer position if we can let go of the desire to feel calm or enlightened or at peace or filled with joy and instead can learn to be present with whatever we are feeling right now so let's return to where we began feeling and unpleasant heaviness and fatigue on waking in the morning for many of us dealing with this feeling can be quite difficult but if we have practiced the body scan for even a few days we will have begun relating to the body as it is and not as we may wish it were so on waking how might we approach the situation differently we will be able to recognize the early warning signs of what might become a vicious cycle and begin to practice inhabiting the being mode of mind we will focus our attention directly on our body sensations and rest in the awareness of them as they are this allows us to be with the uncomfortable sensations without trying to avoid them or making them worse through thinking about them even in the very earliest stages of the body scan practice this alternative to doing mind can have an impact on something as common and mundane as early morning weariness that sense of heaviness is greatly increased by negative thoughts but mindfulness in the same situation bringing a gentle and compassionate awareness to the body sensations themselves without trying to change them and letting go of thoughts about them or about ourselves or about anything can be immensely energizing once we have some experience with the body scan we can bring this kind of awareness to bear in a matter of moments we can even scan the body for one in-breath and one out breath or just breathe with the body as a whole for five minutes or so or even a minute or two before getting out of bed it might just change our whole day you