Part of my 11-day course “Mindfulness Made Easy”
It is a beautiful, cold, crisp afternoon, about thirty minutes before sunset. I have climbed on of my favourite hills on the island, right next to the sea. Surrounding me is a thousand-year old cairn or rocks, signifying the peak, and around this a beautiful tapestry of tawny browns, taupes and straw-coloured tufts that extends across the landscape—sleeping heather, reeds and grasses, whose spirits have receded back into the iron-hard earth for the winter. All of which is dusted with frost and peppered with ice.
Above me, a majestic sky of pre-dusk sunlit clouds arcs away like an infinite canopy. Clouds, holding onto their ice and snow, are waiting for just the right moment. The sea is all about me, stretching as far as the eye can see, reflecting hues of peach, aquamarine, ice-white and iridescent golds. Beyond this, perched on the horizon I can see the mountain ranges of Scotland and Ireland and Wales. All around me the Earth seems to stretch on and on forever, such is the coldness of the air that I can see much further than normal. And there isn’t a breath of wind. Everywhere is silent, magical, expectant—as if waiting for something to happen. It truly is a spellbinding moment. I should be elated. I should feel so lucky to be here in such conditions. But I’m not. I’m feeling cross, and frustrated, and resentful, and I feel it growing by the second.
It started out as one of those minor mishaps in life that don’t amount to very much but can be frustrating. Someone being inconsiderate towards you, or cutting you up on the road, or letting you down on their promise. These little incidents make you feel cross for a while, and crosser should you be feeling stressed. But now I feel cross that what could have been a beautiful moment is now being spoilt by the argument I’m having in my mind. On the one level, I can recognize the beauty surrounding me, but on another I am experiencing a negative feedback loop of emotions. Now I’m angry that I’m feeling angry. I just want to enjoy the sunset. I want to feel happy. I want to feel present.
This is what happens when our emotions get the better of us. When we cannot let go of events that have wound us up. When we begin to label these emotions as good and bad. Learning how to bring mindfulness into these situations can be very challenging, especially if we have run up a head of steam. Trying to find an off-ramp from these states of mind before they get out of control is a crucial part of mindfulness.
When it comes to mindfulness, one of the most profound lessons we can learn concerns the recognition and acceptance of emotions without judgment. This central facet of the practice gives us the means for cultivating genuine emotional intelligence and a resilience in the face of whatever life throws at us. In this lesson, students will embark upon an ongoing journey to hone and develop skills that will allow them to manage their emotions in healthy ways, fostering a deeper, more fulfilling relationship with their inner selves.
Understanding the landscape of emotions
Often in life, we may experience strong or persistent emotions, particularly in response to our personal triggers, without ever stopping to really examine them. This can become a problem if we act upon those emotions and then those actions precipitate wider problems in our life. We all are familiar with times when we have acted in a knee-jerk way. Often, when we have had time to reflect upon things, we realise that perhaps a different course of action would have been appropriate. By learning to recognise the emotions we feel, in all their complexity, we can begin to improve our emotional intelligence for a given situation.
A quick exercise:
Right now, try to reflect upon what you are feeling. How would you describe your mood? What feelings are at the forefront of your experience? Are there underlying feelings that are less fleeting or momentary? What has been your general disposition this last week?
Sometimes, we may think we are feeling reasonably happy in the moment, when in fact other, stronger emotions are just waiting under the surface, waiting to come out. For instance, perhaps you’ve been having a really bad day. You’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated by things going wrong. One thing after another. Then, you feel like the day is beginning to get back on track. Perhaps you’ve been sharing a joke with friends or family. Perhaps you’ve been enjoying your favourite activity. But then, another thing goes wrong. Maybe you drop a plate and it smashes. Rather than reacting in a way that is proportional to this isolated incident, you may find all that cumulative frustration and crossness come bursting out again.
In reality, your frustration, or your anger hadn’t really subsided, it had merely been masked by a temporary up-tick. Sometimes you can see emotions like a sea. Small ripples and wavelets skitter across the surface—little ups and downs that are related directly to the moment. However, these wavelets exist upon larger waves. Waves that represent longer-lasting emotions that reflect your general mood for the day. Beyond this, you may take in a larger portion of sea and notice big swells that undulate and roll—these represent your general mood for the week or month. You might be feeling generally stressed or strung out, or perhaps things are going well for you. These big swells form the basic backdrop to your moods and influence how you react to situations on a weekly or daily life.
Finally, there are the great tidal forces that move great masses of water with each cycle. You could think of this as being your general disposition as a person. The place you are at in life; the great events that are shaping your past and future. Perhaps you have experienced grief in the last year or two, and so everything else will be influenced by this greater tide of emotion. Or perhaps your formative years have shaped your general outlook; and until you move into a significant new chapter, with different relationships and life-conditions, your general palette of emotions may remain consistent.
Learning to identify emotions without judgement is key to mindful understanding. By acknowledging the complexity and fluidity of the emotional experience, we can begin to become skilled at savouring them as well as labelling them. Often it can be hard to put emotions into words, and we end up misascribing them. Feelings can be so complex and nuanced. The important thing is to simply notice them. Really notice your feelings in the moment you experience them. By doing this, you will become better at seeing the types of situations that are trigger points for you.
Whenever you decide to practice your mindfulness, remember to also place your awareness onto your emotional state. Moreover, when you are in a heightened emotional state that is beginning to cause you distress, step back, try your breathing techniques, and really try to describe to yourself what it is that you are feeling. Simply describe. Do not place negative or positive qualifications to that feeling, simply be honest with yourself and stick to the facts. No-one else need know what you are thinking, but it is crucial that at least you are recognising what is going on.
The power of non-judgmental awareness
Building on this idea of non-judgemental awareness is an important step when it comes to mindful emotional intelligence. Emotions, in of themselves, are not inherently negative or positive, they simply are. It is how we act on emotions that can elicit a qualitative judgement.
Emotions are simply responses to the intersection between internal and external forces. We bring to any situation our own personal filter. This filter has been developed and fine-tuned since the moment we were born. It is the way in which we perceive situations, using past experience to inform our reaction. This is why people can react very differently to the same situation. They bring to it completely different baggage.
Mindfulness can help us not only notice our emotional responses, but it can allow us the luxury of being non-judgemental. Recognising that emotions bubble up from our subconscious allows us to be kinder to ourselves. If our first reaction to someone else’s good fortune is a pang of jealousy, that is not a failing on your part, it is simply your subconscious responding in the only way it currently knows how. By observing this feeling, putting a label to it, and abstaining from casting judgement on it, we can better deal with the emotion at hand without complicating matters further and introducing feelings of guilt or shame.
It is a very common for initial emotions to cascade and grow into other, stronger ones. Sometimes, to spare ourselves from feeling pain, or embarrassment or shame, we quickly allow our feelings to transform into anger or righteous indignation or defensiveness. These emotions, from a non-judgemental perspective, are still neither good nor bad—they are simply natural consequences of allowing our initial emotions to go unnoticed and unchecked. But these, more powerful emotions may be harder to channel into positive actions.
It’s important to remember that emotions, such as anger, can be great motivators for positive change. So too are emotions such as a sense of injustice, or anguish or grief, or even shame. All these emotions can propel us to do good actions, if channelled properly—if noticed and given the attention they deserve. So we must refrain from immaculately casting judgement on them if we catch ourselves feeling them.
Often our feelings, like a child—like all of us—simply want some attention. They want you to acknowledge them. When we recognise them and shine our awareness on them, very often they will die down or soften. Emotions are one of the ways our subconscious tries to get the attention of our conscious self. It uses emotion to influence our behaviour in ways that may help with self-preservation, survival, social success, healthy habits or procreation. Whilst these instinctive cues suited our primaeval environments, often these very same reflexes can bring up conflicts or mishaps in modern day living.
For this reason, it is crucial not to ignore our feelings but to be mindfully aware of them and simply accept them for what they are. If we are non-judgemental about our feelings, then we can begin to be unafraid of them, since there is no shame in feeling fear, or regret, or resentment. And by feeling safe in acknowledging our feelings, we can see them for what they are and be better able to deal with them, and allow them a healthy expression.
Feelings need to be expressed rather than repressed. In the end, like water in an imperfect vessel, they will find their way out eventually. So it is better to allow them a positive means of expression, one that is within your conscious guidance, than allowing them to fester until they explode in an unpredictable, and possibly damaging way.
Part of learning how to be non-judgemental about your own feelings is through fostering self-compassion. Forgive yourself what you may be feeling in a given moment. In doing so, you might also begin to feel less judgemental about other people’s feeling too.
Monitoring your emotions
As you feel yourself in the throws of an emotion, slow your breathing, take a mental step back and observe without judgement. Once you have reached this stage, you can begin to notice how your body and your emotions are connected. Ask yourself: what physical sensations am I aware of that are connected to the way that I am feeling?
Very often, emotions elicit physical responses and sensations, which in turn trigger memories of past situations that caused us to feel this way. This can then reinforce the emotions and intensify them. Sometimes, simply the physical sensations can trigger an emotional response. This feedback loop can be very powerful, sometimes all-consuming, which is why mindful awareness—simple, calm noticing—is so vitally important.
Let’s say that you are feeling nervous about an upcoming event. Perhaps you feel butterflies in your stomach. Perhaps you feel a lurch. If you allow the emotion to consume your thoughts, these initial sensations might reinforce themselves and heighten your emotional state. Soon, you may start to have an adrenalin spike—a fight or flight response—and then you might begin to feel muscles becoming tense, or quivering. Your legs might feel like jelly. All this intensifies your emotional state until blood is being taken away from your stomach and other organs in order to prepare you for a physical fight. In doing so, you may begin to feel nauseous, or feel the need to dash to the toilet. Next your heart rate is shooting up, you are sweating. If left unchecked, you could allow your initial bout of nerves cascade into a full-blown anxiety attack.
This is how emotions can quickly get out of control. Our modern lives may end up leading us to experience emotions that are actually appropriate only in extreme life-or-death situations. Luckily, your mindfulness skills can intervene, and help you to break the distressing cycle before it becomes a problem, allowing you to better function in situations that might otherwise cause you significant and harmful stress.
In order to do this, we must learn to embrace the present moment, to anchor ourselves in the now, where the emotions are unfolding. By doing this, you will begin to gain a deeper understanding of the mind-body relationship and how it can completely inform your reaction to a given situation. By embracing the present, you can better navigate your emotional landscape with clarity of thought and a calmness that will help you in times of stress.
Strategies for mindful emotional management
Once we become comfortable with noticing and identifying emotions, we can begin to equip ourselves with practical methods for dealing with those emotions mindfully. Of course, there are many emotions that will not cause us problems either internally or externally, via our reactions—such as joy, contentment, generosity, happiness. These kinds of feelings may be harder to come by if we are under a lot of pressure, and so simply enjoying them as they come is an easy process. But, very often, our inability to cope with other types of feelings will hinder moments that could otherwise be enjoyable, if only we were to employ mindful techniques and be able to live in the moment. Also, when stronger, more turbulent emotions do come our way, it is good to know how to cope with them and integrate them into our life.
As the saying goes, ‘some rain must fall into every life’, so what we need are strategies that we can employ, like a raincoat or umbrella, to ensure we are able to experience those showers without catching a chill, and succumbing to illness.
Many of these techniques, we have already covered.
Mindful breathing
As we know, this is one of the most basic mindful exercises we can do. It acts as a reset button, it helps to break physiological feedback loops, it steadies the heart-rate, it stops us from hyper-ventilating and triggering the fight-or-flight response, it allows us to take a step back and observe an emotionally charged situation with a little more calmness. Breath through the nose, in slow, steady, comfortable breaths. Remind yourself that, whatever the situation (baring a blocked nose!) there are simple pleasures on hand for you to experience, to balance any other feelings that threaten to get out of control.
Body scan
If you recall, body scanning is a mindfulness meditation that involves placing your attention onto different parts of the body. As it pertains to emotions, we are specifically concerned with those sensations that are linked to emotions—such as butterflies, or flushed cheeks etc. These kinds of sensations can feed back into the emotions we are feeling, so if we seek calmness, we must break that cycle and simply notice the sensations without attachment. Even if they are challenging sensations. By withholding qualitative labels and reactions to these sensations we are better able to resist their ability to dominate our thinking and get the better of us.
For instance, sometimes we may feel the first pangs of anxiety. We may recognise the bodily sensations and then take those as a cue to escalate our emotions onto the next level, thereby precipitating more extreme bodily sensations, and so on. But we can take back control of the cycle with calm, gentle curious attentiveness. Simply observe without attachment. Bring our breathing and heart-rate back under control. Quieten our thoughts. Describe what you are feeling, acknowledge that you have listened to your sensations. Thank your subconscious for trying to alert you to what it instinctively perceives as a threat, even though you consciously may know it is not.
Crucially, when we perform a body scan, we are also looking for any secondary physical reactions to our emotions—things we do in response to our feelings—ones that might lead to ailments or other problems. These might include, tension in different muscles of the body, frowning, tightening our neck or shoulders, shallow breathing and increased heart-rate, clenched fists, jiggling legs, nervous fidgeting, biting nails, pulling out hairs, a stressed posture etc.
To perform a quick body scan, simply calm your breathing, take a mental step back from whatever situation you are currently in, and start placing your attention on the crown of your head and then move downward through each part of the body.
As you move from the top of your head, down to the muscles in and around your forehead and around to the back of the head, try to apply a gentle and curious attention. Observe whether that potion is feeling tense, or of there are any other sensations present. Abstain from judgement. Try to breath out any tension where you find it, using your breathing to help you to relax each muscle, or calm any unpleasant sensations.
Remember, sensations are just that. It may be very easy to say, and hard to put into practice, but feelings in of themselves are not what harm us. How we react to those sensations is what counts.
Free-divers are able to hold their breath for several minutes at a time whilst swimming under water. They are able to do so because they have learned to notice the sensation of wanting to breath, and to calmly put it to one side. The aching yearn to breath might seem impossible to ignore, and by denying that urge, many beginners will respond with increasing panic, which will exacerbate the sensation and cause much distress. But the fact that it is possible to do such things (under controlled supervision and teaching), shows us that we can do this with our emotional sensations too—butterflies in the stomach, signs of anxiety, stress and frustration. We are not ignoring the sensations, since suppressing emotions is not advised, but by calmly observing our bodily sensations and not then reacting to them unthinkingly, we afford ourselves a measure of control in how we allow them to affect us.
Observing thoughts without attachment
Keeping your breathing relaxed and calm, you now place your attention upon your thoughts. Sometimes it is good to take a step back from our internal monologue. To give it some perspective, as if we are observing a play upon a stage. Try not to cast judgements on what this internal voice is saying. Just observe it. Disassociate your ego from the thoughts you are having. Try to see if there are any non-vocal thoughts occurring in the background. Intentions, or reactions, or wordless ideas. Maintain a gentle curiosity, as if you are observing some wonderfully interesting ecosystem of sea plankton under a microscope. Trying to observe and understand their behaviour, without the moral or emotional judgement we normally apply to human affairs. You might find that this exercise allows you to break free of cognitive loops
Letting our thoughts float past our awareness and into the ether.
Sometimes we may find our conscious mind working in overdrive—especially if we are feeling stressed or anxious. We may find ourselves having intrusive, repetitive or spiralling thoughts that are precipitated by our emotions. To deal with thoughts like these we must again reset your breathing to a calm and pleasant rhythm before attempting to observe your thoughts without judgement. With each exhale, let go of your thoughts and allow them to pass out of your conscious space and off into the ether. Like letting go of balloons, or watching clouds drift by in the sky, you don’t have to hold onto these thoughts, and you don’t have to take possession of them.
Thoughts happen often without our control or consent. Because we think a particular thought does not mean we subscribe to that notion or that we need to keep hold of it as part of us. We can simply experience it with tolerant curiosity and let it drift off on the breeze of our breath. Sometimes the realisation that we can let go of thoughts can be very comforting. We can sometimes feel shame for thinking unpleasant thoughts, but it is important to remember that these thoughts aren’t truly ours unless we embrace them and incorporate them into our general being and behaviour.
Focusing on the moment
As with so many areas of mindfulness, one of the core tenets is to keep returning our attention onto the present moment, if we find our thoughts wandering back towards a path of anxiety or stress. When emotions are running high, we can find ourselves obsessing about ideas—things that could go wrong for us in the future, or events that are out of our control. Much, if not all, of this kind of thinking is wasted energy and time, and it places our bodies and mental-well being under a great deal of strain. Therefore, if we find ourselves in the throws of one of these episodes, if we find our emotions running high, it’s always a good idea to calmly, and without judgement, bring our attention back to the moment.
Whatever activity or task you are performing at the time, try to apply your attention fully onto that task, rather than let your mind wander. Try and encourage a state of fascination and flow. In modern life, most of us have become accustomed to splitting our attention onto several tasks at once. We may be going through the motions with one activity whilst mentally chewing over the next. But if we decide to embrace the activity we are currently doing, and engage our faculties fully, we will find that we generally have a much happier experience. With some activities, you can become so absorbed that the hours can literally fly by. Fostering that sense of absorption can is an essential part of learning to be mindful. Choosing to commit to the life we are leading in the moment is how we find a greater sense of satisfaction and meaning.
What is going on right now? What am I experiencing? The sensations I feel, the situation I am in? Are my emotions proportional to the situation? If there are events unfolding in the moment, that are unpleasant or highly emotional, try shifting your focus onto something mundane and calming, such as the beautiful grain in a wooden table, or the gentle chatter of people in the street, or wondering about the provenance of an object in the room. Indeed, trying to unpick an object’s provenance can be a meditative and imaginative exercise in its own right. The rich and varied story that went into constructing its elements, the hands that took charge of it during its journey, the places it travelled through in finding its way here…
There is almost always something in the present moment that can help you attain mindfulness, even during stressful situations. You simply have to cultivate a skill of finding it.
Using gratitude, what things are you thankful for in this moment?
An incredibly important tool in our mindfulness toolkit is the power of gratitude. Sometimes, we are guilty of placing all our attention on the things that cause us pain, rather than those aspects of life that are positive. For example, the chef who cuts her finger thinks of nothing but the pain she is experiencing, and yet overwhelmingly, the majority of her body is in good health. Such is the nature of our perception, that our mind prioritises those things that cause us pain, worry or distress. Even when the chef has been alerted to her injury and has tended to it, her finger will continue to press upon her senses like a siren.
Often, in life, we become so focused on our problems that it becomes impossible to see anything else. Cultivating a habit of practising gratitude can help us to become aware of the wider picture, putting our problems into the proper perspective, and allowing us to feel happier about our life. For instance, we may be worrying about paying our bills—a very real and pressing concern—but we must not forget that we may also have things to be thankful for—things that we are taking for granted—such as a the loved ones in our life, perhaps, or our good health, or a roof over our heads. In actuality, there are so many things to be grateful for, in every moment. We spend so much of our time worrying about events that (a) might never happen, (b) may not be directly within our control, (c) may be brief in their duration (such as making a speech). In these cases, we end up spoiling beautiful moments that may have been enjoyed, because of the shadow of the mountain that hangs over us.
In these times, we must use our mindfulness techniques to place our attention back onto the moment and seek out things within that moment for which we can be grateful for. It is easy to fall back onto the same few things—for instance, I am eternally grateful to have two wonderful, daughters—but if we never vary our gratitudes they may lose their meaning and become mere motions that we go through. So instead of simply repeating the same general gratitudes, try observing something specific, or things that are unfolding before us in the moment.
For instance, you may be having a bad day, but perhaps you can hear the ambient sounds of a late spring afternoon drifting in through the open window. This joyous sound is something to savour and enjoy: something to be grateful for. You might be dreading an upcoming meeting with your boss, but in this very moment, there might be things for you to enjoy. Perhaps you are feeling warm and comfortable. Perhaps sunlight is shining upon your face. Perhaps you are currently performing a task that is beneficial or helpful for someone.
You might have just had a disagreement with a loved one about household chores, but if you can remind yourself of all the things you love about them, and are able to allow yourself to recognize those things in the present moment, rather than the thing that is frustrating you, then you might find yourself able to reframe the disagreement into a more appropriate perspective.
If we become mindful and truly aware of our current situation, then it becomes apparent that there is an infinite amount of things we can be grateful for in the moment. Practising this approach is key to alleviating stress or anxiety, which are often cumulative conditions where the mind and body have been exposed to prolonged distress or strain. Very often, it is because we carry our worrying thoughts across into moments where there are no direct threats or unpleasantness. Moments where we could rest and recuperate and balance the stressful moments in our lives with the restful ones. Our aim is to reach a point of mindfulness whereby, when we eventually do experience truly stressful moments, we have a large pool of resilience to draw from.
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