Neuroplasticity mindfulness based stress reduction meditation

In this session everybody completes 3 surveys which are provided by the University of Oxford- quality of life, perceived levels of stress and mindful awareness and then we return to complete the exact questions in 2 months time. See previous results from other courses that  Dawn has delivered. 

We delve into what exactly is meditation and mindfulness and the origin of these practices. This is not a course on religion or spirituality, it is taken from the practices of Bompu Zen- which is purely about improving health and the science of neuroplasticity. 

We talk practicalities and the need for committing to the meditation as a daily practice for form a healthy habit.

This week and next week are all about the bodyscan meditation. We discuss why this is so important and then everyone goes off and listens to the audio bodyscan for a week and then return for the following week.We start to explore stress. The biggest killer and why doesnt need to be. 

The foundation of working with stress is about listening to your body and becoming aware of sensations. 

How the Autonomic Nervous System is the key to mitigating any harmful effects of stress.

Understanding the science of stress and the evolution of the autonomic nervous system - the ultimate survival machine.

Changing our reaction to response is a skill and takes practice. This is why the body scan is crucial. It helps us to become familiar with thats happening in the body - this sensitivity helps us to notice when we are slipping into stress reaction or getting activated. 

We discuss how posture is so important  – we are working with gravity entering the body which relaxes the muscles and organs, encouragement of diaphragmatic breath and how we hold our bodies has a direct impact on the mind. How this is not just about relaxation but about training which overspills into our everyday lives- how our relationship to our thoughts changes which has a huge impact on the quality of our lives.

The key element here is about awareness, acceptance and allowing. When we are willing to accept and allow our emotional pain that’s when thing start to heal and lives change. This work is not for the faint hearted; it takes courage, patience and loads of self-compassion. 

One of the biggest barriers to this is our unwillingness to see things as they really are. We so much want things to be different. The unwillingness creates the suffering.

We can approach this by using one of the four different foundations of mindfulness. It’s much easier to practice mindfulness of the body and so that’s what we focus on in this course- and in our yoga practice too. With training and practice cultivating a relationship with the body helps us in so many ways. In relation to emotional stress, we are training ourselves to become aware of bodily sensations related to thoughts- EMOTION= energy in motion; it just wants to move, but life often doesn’t allow that and also its too much and so we generally suppress these emotions. Neuroscience is now confirming what these ancient teachings have been saying for nearly 2500 years- this suppression and repression of emotions is causing illness.

Key takeaways: When emotion arises instead of going to the story instead focus on the feeling. Tune into the body. Stop identifying with thoughts and emotions. Become the observer- create the gaps. This is the path of our meditation practice. 

Everyone now goes off to continue with counting the breath meditation and also seeing if they can practice each day just being with each emotion- feeling in the body and letting it pass. 

We will have several roles in this life that we are required to play. We can often develop very fixed views and expectations of what’s appropriate in these roles and this often doesn’t harmonize with who we really are. These roles then can then turn into what feels like prison. We discussed how it’s not the role per that causes us the stress but our relationship to it. And no, we are not talking about running to the hills to live in a cave. That is not realistic nor is it was is necessary to have a good life. 

That’s why these skills are so important what we learn here. They are tools and training that integrate ancient wisdom for modern day. 

We discuss time pressure and the opposite of being in flow and how it’s important to incorporate more activities that allow us to access this flow state. Typically, people who practice meditation and mindfulness are far more able to access and stay in flow states.

In our break we drank some raspberry, blackcurrant and apple kefir before we went onto a new zen meditation practice of following the breath. 

Homework for this week- do your following the breath meditation each day with the audio. Take some time each day to carry out a task in mindfulness. THIS IS SOOOOO UNDERRATED BY THE WAY!! 

 We start the session off by re capping on the gratitude practice. This practice of gratitude really is incredibly powerful. By writing it down it creates a mind- body coherence that when embodied creates a release of feel good chemicals and hormones that have a positive impact not only on mood but also the immune system. Energetically too we get back what we put out- think in terms of frequency, energy and vibration.

We covered some of the amazing research that’s coming out about the benefits of these practices including; Focus and concentration, psychological wellbeing, increased empathy and creativity and problem solving. For all those out there who want to delay the aging process ; There is research now that those practicing meditation for 5 years were physiologically 12 years younger than their non meditating counterparts!!!

So far on this course weve covered how the practice of mindfulness & meditation is good for our health on many different levels. But how can we go beyond this? How can we use these practices to boost or elevate the function of our body-mind.

In Japan theres a long tradition of people going to zen temples to learn and practice meditation to equip them for success in their life- many of these people are from politics, the arts, business leaders and sports. How can we in sunny Blackburn do the same we ask??!!!

We talked about how when people embark on this course they are generally feeling a bit off , theyre looking for solutions to help them feel better. Around about now or week 7 people often notice a difference in their mood and by the end of the course some can stop their practice because they think the are “fixed”. We talked about how to not let this happen for this to be part of daily life to maintain that sense of wellness but also to go beyond that

So we looked at areas of life we would like to excel in. Choose one and focus on that with awareness and intention.

Only one more week left now and we now also move onto the practice of presence meditation.

At the start of this course we talk about how habits are formed, taken from research from University College London and Dr Philippa Lally.  According to this research it takes on average 66 days to form a habit. Whats a habit? Something that’s weirder to not do? For mindfulness and meditation to work and  the benefits of this to manifest it must become a formed habit.

 How long does it take to form a habit? | UCL News - UCL – University College London 

If done daily, the meditations and daily mindful practices of this course takes people to 56 days. So we had a discussion about how each person would remain with their practice to take them to this point and beyond to 100 days and how the group can support each other moving forwards. 

Working in collaboration with the University of Oxford, Zenways embarked on a research project some years ago to collect results data for this 8 week course. As teachers we continue to use these these tools  to assess results.  At the start and at the end each participant is asked to complete 3 surveys  around quality of life, stress levels and mindful awareness. 

You can see what results i am achieving above.