6/14/2018 Mindful Moments Evidence-Based Practice Interventions in Mindfulness Let’s take a few minutes to drop into the present Jaime Goldstein moment with a guided North Texas Center for Mindfulness meditation practice so our [email protected] minds are more available to receive and integrate the wisdom shared today. 2018 Summer Institute Sponsored by: TASP and ASPA “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on What is Mindfulness? purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally.” -Jon Kabat-Zinn • Anchoring yourself to the present moment by being aware of your five 1. Awareness senses, thoughts, and emotions • Attending to a sensory experience 2. Of present (e.g. breath), and anytime the mind experience wanders, as it naturally will, gently bringing your attention back to the 3. With acceptance sensory experience (breath) • Mindfulness is awareness • This builds the mindfulness muscle – Our capacity to attend (Kabat-Zinn, 2009) 1 6/14/2018 Attitudinal How do I introduce Foundations such an abstract subject to students? 1. Non-striving 2. Beginner’s Mind • Being a mindful scientist where our lives are the experiment! 3. Acceptance • How do scientists study natural phenomenon? 4. Letting go – Through observation with the five senses – We also include thoughts and emotions 5. Non-Judging with mindfulness 6. Patience • This helps create an attitude of curiosity and openness to learning 7. Trust • Introduce mindfulness through a more concrete activity like mindful eating where all five senses are engaged (Kabat-Zinn, 2009) Responding vs. Reacting “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is Stressor-Reaction our power to choose our response. In our Vs. response lies our growth and our Stressor-----M-I-N-D-F-U-L-N-E-S-S-----Response freedom.” -Viktor Frankl (Goldstein, 2015) Breaking the Feedback Loop • Expanding the space between stimulus and response – Responding vs. reacting • Noticing negative unconscious thoughts that perpetuate the feedback loop • Understanding our thoughts are not facts – In fact, they are often inaccurate – The misperception that our thoughts are facts can lead us to getting caught in the feedback loop • This awareness gives you control of behavior as opposed to being at the whim of your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations (Goldstein, 2015) 2 6/14/2018 Experiencing the full range of emotions • Facing our present experiences, including stress and unpleasant emotions, as opposed to avoiding them. • Not placing judgements on emotions Emotions are not good or bad. (i.e. labeling emotions as good or bad) They just are. • Allowing yourself to fully experience emotions • Noticing how your emotions change by stepping back and mindfully observing them • Awareness that all emotional states are temporary • All emotions are valid Mind Wandering Mind Wandering . Researchers from Harvard created an iPhone app that • Autopilot-body is doing one randomly sampled responses from several thousand people thing and the mind is on several questions elsewhere • Level of happiness • Planning for the future • What they were doing in the present moment • Thinking about the past • Mind wandering • Concerned with FOMO . Results • • Participant’s minds wandered Trying to get through the about 50% of the time current moment to get to • Mind wandering decreased something better happiness – “I just need to finish my • People experienced greater levels of happiness when their counseling notes so I can go minds were focused on the home!” present moment (Siegel, 2017) (Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010) “The only constant in The Problem life is change.” with Selfing -Heraclitus • Our endless thinking about ourselves • Everything changes • Social comparisons • It’s impossible to hold on to anything – Who is more intelligent/kind/creative? • We cling to what feels pleasant and resist what feels – Facebook, Twitter, unpleasant Instagram – This creates suffering • Selfing causes suffering • Mindfulness practices can help Mindfulness helps us to us be present with the • moment to moment changes free ourselves from more richly with less holding attachments of on and pushing away what is comparisons here now. (Siegel, 2017) (Siegel, 2017) 3 6/14/2018 The Thinking Disease • Reviewing past pleasure and pain • Maximize future pleasure and minimize future pain Research • Negativity bias • Mindfulness helps see our thoughts just as thoughts so we don’t believe all of them (Siegel, 2017) Neuroscience of Neuroscience of Mindfulness Mindfulness • Increased gray matter/cortical thickness Mindfulness is associated – Prefrontal cortex with increases in – Hippocampus – Executive functioning – Anterior Cingulate Cortex – Sustained attention – Insula – Short-term memory • Decreased amygdala size – Perceptual speed • Right to left shift in prefrontal activity – Fluid reasoning • Decreased activation of the Default Mode Network (Davidson et al., 2003; Lazar et al., 2005; Siegel, 2017) (Siegel, 2017) Emotional Well-Being Biological Effects • Improvements in ability to • Increased telomerase cope with short and long- activity term stress • Improved immune system • Decreases in perception of functioning physical and emotional • Reduces blood pressure pain (Kabat-Zinn, 2013; (Kabat-Zinn, 2013) Schutte & Maloff, 2014) 4 6/14/2018 Benefits of Mindfulness with Diaphragmatic Breathing Preschoolers • Also known as belly breathing • Flook et al. (2015) or abdominal breathing implemented a 12 week • Decreases in negative affect mindfulness-based kindness • Increases in sustained curriculum with preschoolers attention – Increased social competence – Higher report card grades in • Activates Parasympathetic the areas of Nervous System • Learning, health, and social- • Lowers cortisol levels emotional development • Reduces blood pressure – Increased cognitive flexibility and delays of gratification • Reduces anxiety, stress, and depression (Ma et al., 2017) Mindfulness for Gratitude Teachers • Reduced stress • A close cousin of mindfulness – In research completed by • Less burnout Emmons (2003), those who kept a gratitude journal experienced • Greater efficacy more optimism, felt better about their lives, exercised • More emotionally more regularly and visited physicians less frequently than supportive classrooms groups that journaled about negative or neutral events. – People who wrote gratitude statements were more likely to attain personal goals (ex. academic, interpersonal, and health-based goals). (Roeser et al., 2013; Jennings et al., 2013; Jennings et al., 2015) Trauma Informed Mindfulness and Yoga • Keep the room well lit. While it may seem more relaxing to turn the lights off, a dark or dimly lit room may feel unsafe. • If instructing students to lay down, always give an option to sit instead. Laying down Prepping for may be triggering. • Do not instruct yoga poses such as Downward Facing Dog, Tabletop, or Forward Fold to Mindfulness students who have experienced sexual abuse. These could be very triggering. Interventions • Always give students an option to skip any yoga posture that does not feel right or safe for them. Give them an alternative thing to do, such as stand in mountain pose or sitting in easy pose (criss cross). • Do not provide physical adjustments for yoga postures. 5 6/14/2018 Trauma Informed Mindfulness and Yoga Teaching Tips • If closing a practice with a bell, let students Communicate clear expectations and know before ringing the bell to avoid boundaries on behavior before beginning students feeling triggered a mindfulness practice. Try • Being asked to sit in stillness with the communicating positive expectations and breath during breathing practices may be boundaries (i.e. communicate what you initially overwhelming for students who want students to do as opposed to what have experienced trauma. Emotions that you do not want them to do). Here are a have been repressed may start to surface, few suggestions: which could lead to students feeling – Find a comfortable sitting position (or trapped if forced to sit. Start with short laying down if appropriate) durations of breathing practices (ex. 1 min) – Stay in your seat and work your way up. Give students an option for an alternative practice if they – Keep your hands and feet to self start feeling triggered, such as noticing the – Practice mindful silence which means connection of their feet with the ground, not making noise with your mouth or noticing the connection of your hands in bodies your lap, or giving an option to get some – Be a mindful listener water. – Be mindful and respectful of others experience Teaching Tips Teaching Tips Allow students to know that however We live in a very fast paced, driven, they are practicing mindfulness is right (as and hurried society. Our society long as they are following the behavioral sends many messages about self- expectations and staying safe). Students worth being tied to accomplishments, are so used to being graded on and this can be quite harmful to one’s completing work right or wrong. When emotional well-being. Additionally, students are reassured that there is no wrong way to practice mindfulness and our youth are overstimulated with that whatever they are doing is right technology. So the practice of (again, as long as they are following the mindfulness, the practice just being, behavior expectations), they are more may feel very uncomfortable to receptive to the practices. These students at first. Cultivate patience practices can be particularly beneficial to and compassion as students