The stillness of meditation – the key to stress-free stress management

Some people suggest meditation needs to be free of effort; that if we make an “effort” to meditate, then the meditation can become just another source of stress. Yet many people seem to work very hard at meditation.

So this week, let us examine how to make sense of effort when it comes to meditation; and the 3 main benefits that flow from stilling the mind, but first



     Thought for the day

To be nobody but your self

In a world which is doing its best, 
Night and day, 
To make you everybody else,

Means to fight the hardest battle 
Which any human being can fight;

And never stop fighting.


           e e cummings 





Some people would tell you that meditation is all about letting go and going with the flow. Some give the impression there is nothing to do; again, just let go and allow yourself to be.

My sense is that this is a bit like saying to a young athlete – basketballer, footballer, runner, whatever – just wish to be a great athlete, no need to work at it, just go with the flow. Look at the great athletes; they make it look so easy!

When I was a teenager, my chosen field was athletics and I marvelled at the natural talent of many of my fellows. While not greatly talented myself, I worked hard. Trained hard. Studied. Listened to my coaches. Did all they told me to do and more.

As the years went on, many of the "naturals", relying on their natural talents, felt little inclination to train hard. So in fact, as we became older, the hard work overcame the natural talent and I began to shine. However, I never became a great athlete. To be that you really need both great natural talent and the hard work.

My experience with my own meditation and with observing thousands of others meditate is just the same as this. Some do have a natural talent for meditation. It just seems to come easily for them. But maybe even more so than with athletes, with meditation, beginners generally benefit greatly from making concerted, intelligent, well-guided effort.

Now, to be clear, when speaking of meditation, I speak of learning to relax deeply in a physical sense and keep still, and then to go beyond the activity of the thinking mind into a deeper stillness. These skills  can be learnt. Reliably. When we work at it.

So why bother? Well one thing that meditation helps to make abundantly clear is that the mind has two aspects - the active thinking mind and the still mind.

The thinking mind is the domain of many skills, including stress. Most reading this post will identify with Shakespeare’s quote


There is nothing either good or bad
But thinking makes it so.

The thinking mind regulates how we perceive things, how we interpret things. It analyses, visualises, discriminates, categorises, conceptualises....etc. In doing so, the thinking mind determines the stress we may or may not experience.

The still mind is beyond all this. The still mind is calm and clear. The still mind is the domain of deep, natural peace.

How then to help the thinking mind let go of stress, to become clear and calm, to become stress free? Meditation! For meditation provides a reliable way to go beyond the activity of the thinking mind and to directly experience the stillness of our mind. And in doing so, meditation offers 3 major benefits: Profound Peace, Natural Balance, and the View.

Profound Peace speaks for itself. There is a natural ease, an inner clarity and confidence that comes with meditation that provides a profoundly effective antidote to stress.

Natural Balance is the inevitable product of this profound peace being combined with deep physical relaxation. This is how meditation diffuses stress and anxiety – with a return to a natural, healthy balance.

Physically our body chemistry and physiology regains its natural balance. But there is more! This natural balance flows on to be experienced as emotional balance as well as mental balance; there is even a deep sense of connectedness, knowing what is right for us, and a natural inclination to be more loving, compassionate and altruistic – a spiritual balance.

And perhaps even more profoundly, meditation offers a new perspective. We begin to see the world, and our life, not just from the perspective of the ever-changing “thinking mind” and it's emotional patterns, but also from a more profound vantage point –the calm, clear still mind.

The View describes our perspective in a very full sense of that word. The View is how we view the world, how we interpret what is happening in our life. What meaning and purpose we experience in this life. Our View is tied up with our values, our ethics, our habits, and our beliefs. How we live our life.

Often times it seems as if we can get stuck with a somewhat rigid view of ourselves, our world, and our place in it. However, when our View changes, there is the potential for everything to change.

If we have a problem, as we see it, and we fixate on it, it is like holding an egg to our eye. With an egg that is very close to our eye, we can see nothing. We cannot even recognise that it actually is an egg and it is obscuring our capacity to see everything.

However, if we change our View, it can be like taking the egg away from our eye and holding it at arms-length. Now there is the possibility that we may recognise the thing for what it is. It is an egg! And as we know, an egg has loads of possibilities, loads of potential.

So meditation offers three great gifts: profound peace, natural balance and the view.

Truly meditation offers a unique pathway to being stress-free.

NOTICEBOARD

Pre- EASTER MEDITATION RETREAT with Ruth and Ian Gawler

Meditation in the Forest   March 27th to April 2nd  2015   Yarra Valley

During this meditation retreat, we will be focusing upon the deeper stillness of meditation. We will explore the understanding, but moreso, the actual practices and techniques. A time to rest and rejuvenate.

All amidst the magnificent big trees of the Upper Yarra Valley.

Accompanied by high-quality organic meals and juices, optional Yoga or Feldenkrais.

Deep, natural peace. A calm and clear mind. Deeply regenerative. So many possibilities follow…..

FULL DETAILS Click here 



A REMINDER

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Beautifully presented in a raw silk lined box, easily rechargeable, elegant mini MP3 players complete with their own earphones and specific meditations.





       Calm Pearl for stress management



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Meditation’s 3 great gifts

For some reason most probably to do with those delightful but mischievous creatures known as computer gremlins, this blog dropped out of the ethers, so I am re-posting. Apologies for any inconvenience to those who have read it already, I think it one of the better ones for those yet to read it!

Why do so many people meditate these days? What is really on offer? Are you missing out? Or are you experiencing meditation’s 3 major benefits?

This week, we go Out on a Limb, go to the heart of meditation and seek to understand why it is so reliable as a stress-free way to manage stress.

Also, more details on the tour of New Zealand that starts with an evening public talk in Auckland on Thursday 14th November and includes workshops and retreats around the country – details CLICK HERE.

Then breaking news with a very important piece of research examining the effects of taking multi-vitamin/mineral supplements on the lifespan of women with breast cancer, but first

Thought for the day:
In meditation the mind keeps wandering.
We keep bringing it back, and it wanders again.
And we bring it back again, and so it goes on,
Maybe for months and years, until at last the mind becomes stabilised . . .
Thoughts go roving around in the head,
But if we bring them down into the heart, that is, the centre of the person,
They come to rest.
Fr Bede Griffiths. River of Compassion: A Christian Commentary on the Bhagavad Gita.

Being asked to speak at the Happiness and its Causes conferences in Brisbane and Perth this week on the topic of stress and anxiety set me to think deeply about why meditation is such a reliable and all-encompassing antidote to both. This led to understanding meditation's 3 great gifts.

Now to be clear, when I speak of meditation, I speak of learning to relax deeply in a physical sense, and then to go beyond the activity of the thinking mind into a deeper stillness.

In fact, meditation introduces us, or perhaps just makes abundantly clear, that the mind does have these two aspects; there is the active thinking mind and the still mind.

The thinking mind is the domain of stress – how we perceive things, how we interpret things. Clearly a great deal of stress is to do with how we think. To a large extent it is the thinking mind that determines the stress we may or may not experience.

The still mind is beyond all this. The still mind is calm and clear. The still mind is highly creative, highly productive, but it is the domain of deep, natural peace.

How then to help the thinking mind let go of stress, to become clear and calm, to become stress free?

First an analogy. If we were interested in the true nature of the sky but had never seen it before; and went outside on a cloudy grey day, we could form the view that the sky was this grey fluffy stuff that filled the space above us.

However, those of us who do have a little more familiarity with the sky; we know of course that clouds as we call them are only one part of the sky. There is a second part, a second aspect – that big blue canopy we are so familiar with and that is so evident on a cloud-free day.

Those of us that are more familiar with the sky know that clouds come and go, the blue canopy is always there. So even on the cloudiest, stormiest, wildest of days, sooner or later the clouds do clear and there it is. It was always there of course, that clear blue sky, it is just that sometimes the clouds obscure it from our direct sight.

So, the analogy is good. With our minds, thoughts come and go all the time; they are ever-changing and impermanent. Happy thoughts, stressful thoughts. They come and they go. But sooner or later they will clear, and reveal this deeper stillness, the more fundamental enduring, stable aspect of our mind.

So there is the active and the still mind. Meditation provides a reliable way to go beyond the activity of thinking mind and directly experience the stillness of the more fundamental or true nature of our mind. And in doing so, meditation offers 3 major benefits: Profound Peace, Natural Balance, and the View.

Profound Peace speaks for itself. There is a natural ease, an inner clarity and confidence that comes with meditation that provides a profoundly effective antidote to stress.

But more, this profound peace, coupled with deep physical relaxation brings Natural Balance to our whole being. Physically our body chemistry and physiology regains its natural balance. It is like meditation resets our factory settings and recalibrates the physiological changes we know accompany adverse stress, and over time becomes our default setting.

So this is how meditation diffuses stress and anxiety – with a return to a natural, healthy balance. But there is still more! This natural balance flows on to be experienced as emotional balance, mental balance; there is even a deep sense of connectedness and a natural rise of love, compassion and altruism – a spiritual balance.

And perhaps even more profoundly, meditation offers a new perspective. We begin to see the world, and our life, not just from the perspective of the ever-changing “thinking mind”, but also from a more profound vantage point – that of the still mind, the true nature of our mind.

The View is a word that is used to encapsulate how we view the world, how we interpret our life. What meaning and purpose we experience in this life. Our View is tied up with our values, our ethics, our habits, and our beliefs. How we live our life.

Now, our View of course is radically affected by our perspective. For those whose perspective does happen to lead them to think that all they are is just this body, it is easy to imagine how they “over-identify” with their body image and their physical health and in doing so become highly stress-prone.

For those whose perspective or View is such that they conclude life is all about relationships, and in so doing over-identify with their partner or children, or even their community, it is easy to imagine how the ups and downs of life will make them particularly vulnerable to chronic stress.

For those whose View is that life is all about mental reason, and as a consequence over-identify with the rational, logical, scientific aspects of their mind, it is easy to imagine how the mysteries of life, the unexplainable, the new, the challenging makes them significantly prone to stress.

So, one elegant definition of stress is “over-identification with the wrong part of our self”.

Body, emotions and mind are very important, but they are not who we really are. Over-identifying with them will mean we are bound to be stressed, maybe even full on anxious.

When we change our perspective, everything changes. If we have a problem, as we see it, and we fixate on it, it is like holding an egg to our eye – we can see nothing. It is a big problem and it obscures everything. However, if we hold the egg at arms-length, we recognise it for what it is. It is an egg with loads of possibilities, loads of potential.

So meditation introduces us to who we really are, what is in our heart’s essence. And in doing so, meditation offers three great gifts Profound Peace, Natural Balance and the View.

Truly meditation offers a unique pathway to stress free stress-management.

RELATED BLOGS
Meditation in 4 easy steps

NOTICEBOARD
Ruth and I will be presenting a range of public talks, workshops and retreats around New Zealand
in November/December.

We start with an evening Public Talk in Auckland on Thursday November 14th (which will be followed up by a weekend in Auckland on November 30th and December 1st), then there are a range of other events.

We are delighted to be including our first meditation retreat in New Zealand (which quite a few Aussies have also booked for already!) - December 2 -8.

Please do let anyone you may know in NZ about the visit -  all the details are on my new public Facebook page: Dr Ian Gawler,    or the website.

NEWS
An important new study has shown that taking a regular multivitamin and mineral supplement (MVM) significantly reduced mortality for women over 50 with breast cancer.


Given how contentious the supplement issue has been in cancer medicine for years, and how often people tell me that their oncologists have told them MVM will reduce the benefits of treatments and give advice not to take them, this study adds weight to a growing body of research that does support their use.


Here is a short summary of the abstract and the reference for the full article.



This prospective study followed the effects of MVM use on breast cancer mortality in postmenopausal women diagnosed with invasive breast cancer. It included 7,728 women aged 50-79 at 40 clinical sites across the United States and followed them for a mean of 7.1 years after breast cancer diagnosis.



In adjusted analyses, breast cancer mortality was 30 % lower in MVM users as compared to non-users (HR = 0.70; 95 % CI 0.55, 0.91). This association was highly robust and persisted after multiple adjustments for potential confounding variables and in propensity score matched analysis (HR = 0.76; 95 % CI 0.60-0.96). 



The results suggest a possible role for daily MVM use in attenuating breast cancer mortality in women with invasive breast cancer but the findings require confirmation.



Wassertheil-Smoller S et al, Breast Cancer Res Treat. Multivitamin and mineral use and breast cancer mortality in older women with invasive breast cancer in the women's health initiative; 2013 Oct; 141(3):495-505. doi: 10.1007/s10549-013-2712-x. Epub 2013 Oct 9.

For the full reference, CLICK HERE

Ian Gawler Blog: Tahiti’s top 5 stress management tips

Maybe it all began with the florid yet languid images of Paul Gauguin. But maybe it was the exotic tale of sailors in Mutiny on the Bounty risking all for the romantic allure of the tropical paradise known as Tahiti that lead to this boy’s life long yearning to visit.


So just back from fulfilling a dream, lets go Out on a Limb once more, share some amazing photos and learn what Tahiti can teach us about stress management. But first


Thought for the day
The mind is a universe 
and can make a heaven of hell, 
a hell of heaven.

                              John Milton, Paradise Lost

My karma with this particular slice of heaven finally ripened courtesy of my older sister and her husband who have been sailing around the world for the last 8 years. Tahiti seemed the perfect place to join them and to experience cruising around paradise. In the process of going somewhere so beautiful, so different, so warm!, some dramatic stress management lessons became crystal clear.

Tahiti’s top 6 stress management lessons

1. Wherever you go, stress is ready to greet you

Here I am floating around, all at sea.


Am I ? A. Blissed out – feeling totally enamored with the opportunity for a real holiday in such a divine setting. Aware of relaxing and letting go while floating on warm and tranquil water, marvelling at the amazing light as the sun settles, and feeling really grateful for the experience.

Or B. Freaked out - aware I am really unfit when it comes to swimming; preoccupied that I am way out of my depth, have just jumped over the side of a yacht well off any shore, am unaware of any currents or even my capacity to get back to the boat and am stressing out?


Many people think stress is an external problem, something that is caused by things outside of them; outside of their control. Going to Tahiti made it crystal clear, you can find the catalysts for stress anywhere and everywhere.

In fact, this is the human condition. If you are alive, you have the potential to be stressed. Sure, some environments, some people can provoke stress more readily than others, but even being in paradise can do it for you.

2. An untrained mind is at the mercy of the currents


Here is Ruth steering the ship (OK you nautical types, I know it is a yacht).

How often do you hear people saying “He is the cause of all my stress”?

“If only we were not so busy at work I would be more relaxed.”

“Once the kids are a little older, they are bound to be easier to manage and life will be OK.”

“ Once we pay of the mortgage, we can relax”.


A trained mind learns that it is how I respond to “her” that determines whether I become stressed or not; how I respond to the work, to the kids, to the mortgage.

There is no need to take stress personally, as if we are the only ones affected. We all have potential stress. What we need to take personally is learning how to manage it.

3. A trained mind learns how to navigate life
Here I am helping to repair a sail (best use of my veterinary surgical skills for many years!)

Imagine taking all the essentials from your house, kitchen, bathroom, laundry, bedroom etc and squeezing them into a long, fairly skinny caravan that floats. Then take it out on the ocean to be buffeted by wind and tide, to have corrosion eat at everything and to find yourself regularly in exotic places where few people speak your native tongue and parts are hard to come by for the regular repairs that not surprisingly are needed fairly frequently.

Sprinkle all this with incredibly joyful times when all is working and the wind is coming from the right direction in the right amounts, and you have the life of the ocean sailor.

You could easily be stressed or blissful. Or alternate between the two. Is it up to the external events? Or is it up to how you manage them?


4. Stress is all in the mind; well almost

Here is an image of peace and tranquility.


Holidays do make sense. It can be very useful to take time out, change you external circumstances if they are proving very difficult.

But while managing our circumstances as best as possible is a vital starting point for effective stress management, the key point remains, doing so does not guarantee a stress-free life - as I am sure we all know.




5. Stress management requires learning and practice – as I am sure we all know.

Here is the vanilla orchard, precursor to the vanilla bean.



Study botany and learn how to grow vanilla.

Study the mind and learn how to grow a stress-free life.

It starts with the knowledge, then we put it all into practice.




My guess is you probably know what to do. I came back from my holiday deeply grateful to Sue and Ross for the privilege of sharing time on their yacht, and more aware than ever that stress is all in the mind! Meditation anyone?

RELATED BLOGS

In praise of tall trees

Mindbody Mastery

NOTICEBOARD
WORKSHOPS COMING SOON in NSW and Queensland 
Ruth and I love these events where we get to meet up with people we know, make knew friends, to remind ourselves and others of what works and to share the latest in our field of health, healing and wellbeing.

Please do forward the details to those you may know in any of these places and if you live nearby, we hope to see you at one of the events. Bring your family (we had 5 members from the same family share a day workshop recently), come with a friend, tell your colleagues.


These workshops are interactive, a great way to review what you already know, to be re-inspired and re-enthused, and to learn exciting new things, like the latest breakthroughs in epigenetics, the neurosciences, telomeres and nutrition. And we all get to meditate together!

Something for everyone really!

Brisbane
Thursday June 27; Evening Public Lecture: Health, Healing and Wellbeing
     Weekend workshop: A New Way of Living
Saturday 29th: Meditation and the power of the mind
Sunday 30th: Profound Healing and Sustainable Wellbeing

Coffs Harbour
July 6; Day workshop: Medicine of the Mind

Katoomba
July 9; Day workshop: Health, Healing and Wellbeing

Sydney
July 13 - 14, Weekend workshop: A New Way of Living

RESOURCES

BOOKS  The Mind that Changes Everything

Meditation – an In-depth Guide

The online meditation program: Mindbody Mastery 


RESEARCH ARTICLE
The brains of experienced meditators appear to be fitter, more disciplined and more "on task" than do the brains of those trying out meditation for the first time. And the differences between the two groups are evident not only during meditation, when brain scans detect a pattern of better control over the wandering mind among experienced meditators, but when the mind is allowed to wander freely.

Those insights emerge from a study which looked at two groups: highly experienced meditators and meditation novices, and compared the operations of the "Default Mode Network" -- a newly identified cluster of brain regions that go to work when our brains appear to be "offline."

"I think it's safe to say this is brain-training at work," says Yale University psychiatrist Judson Brewer, who conducted the study with psychologists from Yale, the University of Oregon and Columbia University.

"It makes sense," adds Brewer. "Anything you train to do, you do better."

Reference: Click here