The Usefulness of Mindfulness During a Stressful Time

On March 15 we received a phone call at 6:30 in the morning from our son-in-law, Christian, saying that our 38 week pregnant daughter, Emily, was in intense pain and they were going to the emergency room. Their neighbors would stay with our two year old grandson Ollie until we got there. We sprang into action and got to their house within an hour. Soon after, Christian called again: they were going to do an emergency C-section. Then no call for three hours!

How does one bring mindfulness to terrified thoughts which were coursing through my brain at that time? My conditioning from my parents is to expect the worst and hope for the best. Until we got the call that Emily and the baby were OK, I found the best response was to turn on the TV and watch Curious George with my grandson Ollie. He sat contentedly in my lap, my arm wrapped around his body. Whenever the terrified thoughts came, I acknowledged those parts of myself that were terrified, and then I looked at Ollie and gently hugged him closer. Even after Sophia's birth I had to deal with fears about her and Emily's health. From Richard Schwartz's Internal Family Systems, I have learned that those parts of me that expect and fear the worst are parts that were formed in my childhood and that those parts are trying to protect me. Rumi's famous poem The Guest House tells us that it is important to welcome those parts. Thich Nhat Hanh taught me how to welcome those parts: "hello old friend fear, come sit with me." During those three days when intense feelings arrived, I was able to welcome them. If I was in the middle of something, especially with Ollie, I would simply acknowledge them. If I had more space, I would feel the places in my body where they resided and take a few mindful breaths. Sometimes, I would radiate loving-kindness phrases to myself and our family: may I/you have moments of happiness, moments of peace, moments of freedom from suffering.

After the birth, Yvette and I realized we might be there for a few days, so we settled into watching Ollie. All he knew was that mama, dada, and baby sister were at a place called hospital and that he couldn't see them now, and he is two and we are seventy-four. Welcome to a marathon. So how did I practice mindfulness now that the worst had not happened?

First, I made the intention to pace myself. Three years after the aortic dissection which nearly killed me, I do not have the amount of energy that I had before, partly because of pills I take daily to lower my heart rate and blood pressure. I have learned during this time how to monitor my lower energy levels so that I don't crash. So I made the intention to be aware of moving more slowly throughout the day. I was often aware of taking a few breaths mindfully, and I made sure to take breaks when I realized that my energy was getting dangerously low.

I also identified situations that would likely trigger some reactivity on my part, for example, walking into the kitchen and their big golden retriever jumping up on me or walking in my path, and times when I was more likely to feel challenged by Ollie, like meal times and other transitions. Because of my intention to remember these situations, I was able to generally make appropriate responses-not yelling at the dog or being irritated with Ollie.

While Yvette and I are generally in agreement about how to deal with our grandchildren, we don't always agree. As the days wore on, we were more tired and there were moments of irritation with each other. In those moments, it was so helpful to remember the four questions the Buddha encouraged people to ask before they spoke: Is what I am about to say true? Will it be helpful? Can I say it kindly? and Is this a good time to say it? Most of the time, I could not answer yes to all four questions, and so I kept my mouth shut in those moments. Fortunately, Yvette also knows Buddhist psychology, so my silence was understood.

The only times during those three days that I actually meditated were when I was putting Ollie down for his daily naps and at bedtime. As I was lying in bed and he in his crib, I would sometimes simply breathe in and breath out for a while, sometimes I would practice a body scan, and sometimes the loving-kindness phrases, directed to him, Emily, Sophia, and Christian: may you be happy, moments peaceful, free from suffering.

On the evening of the third day Emily, Sophia, and Christian came home. Yvette and I drove back to Keene and collapsed, relieved that the worst had not happened and joyful for Sophia's arrival.

The next morning I was in the grocery store and realized how irritated I was. My wife and I had worked hard to keep it together during those three days and now was the predictable letdown. When someone was in my way, I was able to remember to feel that space between stimulus (they are in my way) and reactive thought (get out of my way), and I remembered that I had choices about how to respond. While I could have asked them to move, I realized that I was really irritated and that I probably couldn't make that request without irritation in my voice. I decided they didn't need to feel that irritation directed toward them, so I chose to move on or go down a different aisle and then come back later.

I used other practices and strategies, but this is already long. However, it gives a sense of what mindfulness looked like for me during these four days, and I know that there are many other practices and strategies that were also available.

Addendum: This last paragraph is for parents and grandparents of young children. Ollie has had moments of what I would call acting out or terrible twos but which my daughter calls "having big feelings." Here is how she handled one situation differently than Yvette and I did 35 years ago. The whole family was in the king size bed and Ollie started hitting Emily. Her response was to ask Ollie: "are you feeling like hitting me?" When he nodded his head affirmatively, she said "you can't hit me because it hurts. Would you like to hit the pillow?" He smiled and nodded. So he hit the pillow several times until he didn't need to anymore. Interestingly, this resonates with Jon Kabat Zinn's training for teaching Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, where he used aikido to model a different way of responding to aggressiveness. The aikido response is to meet that aggressiveness by acknowledging it and working with it as opposed to suppressing it

Bringing Mindfulness to Pleasant and Unpleasant Experiences

“When we're not mindful [of our response to what is happening in the moment], pleasant feelings habitually condition desire and clinging, unpleasant feelings condition dislike and aversion, and neutral feelings condition delusion, i.e., not really knowing what is going on. Yet when we are mindful, these very same feelings become the vehicle of our freedom.” In this quote Joseph Goldstein is pointing out an often overlooked Buddhist concept, that in every moment our minds are labeling the information coming into our awareness as pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral (not important).

Two examples of the power of bringing mindfulness to this process
I was leading a body scan meditation to some Keene State College students. I mentioned that when you notice an unpleasant or even painful sensation, to see if you can simply observe it rather than hating it. Afterwards, a student said that she had gone to the gym the day before after having not gone for months. As a result, she was sore all over and hating it. After I made my comment, her experience of the sensations of soreness on her body went from being miserable and hating it to realizing that it wasn't that bad and that the soreness wasn't forever.

This is a snippet of a dialogue in a course I was taking after we had meditated for about 30 minutes.
Teacher: What did you notice?
Participant: I noticed that I felt sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I noticed that I didn’t want to feel sad.
Teacher: And then what?
Participant: I felt even worse.

The point in both examples is that while we can’t control what comes into our awareness, we can bring mindfulness to what we are adding to that experience. In the second case, sadness was the experience and the aversion to this unpleasantness was what was added. Over time we can notice when we are adding and realize that there are other choices.

Jon Kabat-Zinn operationalized this process in the well-known and researched Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. These were his instructions:
For one week, bring mindfulness to one pleasant event each day, e.g., receiving praise or hearing a bird song.
Specifically, bring mindful attention to:
1) your body, e.g., being aware of your shoulders relaxing, a smile...
2) your emotions, e.g., joy, contentedness...
3) your thoughts, e.g., “That was sweet,” “It’s so nice to be outside"...
4) what you noticed as you reflected on the experience, e.g., "It was such a small thing, but I’m glad I noticed it."

For the next week, bring mindful attention to one unpleasant event each day, e.g., waiting in line or worrying about something or a headache. As before, bring mindful attention to what you noticed in your body, your emotions, your thoughts, and what you noticed when reflecting on the experience.

If you are hesitant to do so, you might want to read some of the insights that participants (in the MBSR courses that I taught almost 30 times) noted in our discussions.

Insights from bringing mindfulness to pleasant events
• "Fully experiencing a pleasant event changed my attitude for the whole day!"
• "Those happy moments become elongated and they followed me throughout the day."
• There are actually many pleasant events almost every day.
• “I had an increased openness to so many other pleasant events that often go unnoticed”; we are so often on automatic pilot.
• "Seeing beauty in the ordinary"
• Focusing on the pleasant was helpful to balance the tendency to focus on the negative, which is so common.

Insights from bringing mindfulness to unpleasant events
• When you bring curiosity and non-judgment to something unpleasant, "I realized that it’s not as bad as I first thought."
• When being mindful, the experience went from intolerable to just unpleasant.

This reminds me of a comment my mom made to me when I was adding to an unpleasant experience: she told me I was “making a mountain out of a molehill.” I'm also reminded of a quote from Mark Twain: "most of the worst events of my life never actually happened."

When we bring curiosity and non-judgmental awareness to the unpleasantness, it softens, and our experience can go from highly unpleasant to mildly unpleasant to sometimes just “this is how it is now.” The now is important because we often literally contract in reaction to the unpleasantness because we lose perspective; that is, that this unpleasantness is impermanent.

I acknowledge that it is sometimes almost impossible to bring mindful attention to something that is extremely physically or emotionally painful. In those cases, distraction can be a more useful choice. I was aware of this several times during my stay in the intensive-care unit and during my recovery from the aortic dissection.

I end with the Buddha's actual words: "the uninstructed person does not know of any escape from unpleasant or painful feelings other than seeking something that is pleasant." One of my meditation teachers gave a personal example. She was relaxing at home and suddenly had the desire for a piece of chocolate. Upon reflection, she realized that just before that desire for chocolate, a sudden feeling of sadness had arisen. When she allowed herself to sit with that feeling of sadness for just a few moments, that urge for chocolate dissolved.

If you decide to try out this exercise, other readers and I would love to hear what you noticed.