Smoking Meditation Day 9

Change Brands

Smoking is a marriage to a brand. A brand is ownership (to brand is to own). Break your bonds. Un-brand yourself. Dare to be disloyal for a day. Reclaim your smoking sovereignty: you are free to inhale any smoke you want. Dare to have an affair with a different brand. Change your brand to change your mind today. Buy a pack of something unfamiliar today and smoke it instead of your favorites.

Context:

Awareness-Building & Pattern-Interruption: Smoke Mindfully to Quit Mindfully

The goal is simple: take the next three months to awaken the smoking zombie. The daily objective is to try out the various awareness-building, pattern-interrupting smoking meditations. Approach these exercises as meditative play. Consider each exercise to be an investment in mindfulness. Smoke mindfully to quit mindfully.  Feel free to reuse the exercises you like, but avoid developing favorites. Comfort, the cousin of habit, is counterproductive at this point. What we want is to muck up the mindlessness of the smoking process. So, change is the name of the game here. Keep your mind limber and your smoking hands guessing.

Read the Original/Introductory post (for context)

Adapted from Smoke-Free Smoke Break (Pavel Somov, Ph.D. & Marla Somova, Ph.D., New Harbinger Publications, 2012)

Related posts:

• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 1: Change Hands
• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 2: Just Witness
• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 3: Puff-n’-Om

Conscious eating isn’t just about being calorie-conscious.  Conscious eating is about being conscious.  It’s about counting moments, not just calories. So, put aside this tedious business of counting nutritional calories for a moment and ask yourself: What else am I getting out of this eating moment? How is my mind being enriched?

A Nutritional Calorie is a unit of energy. The job of a Nutritional Calorie is to fuel your Body. An Experiential Calorie – to coin a term — is a unit of awareness, a unit of conscious presence, a unit of meaning. The job of an Experiential Calorie is to enrich your Mind. Take a moment to count the latter…

Ask yourself:

What are the Meditational Calories of this moment? Indeed, as you eat, pause to consider the interdependence of people, places and events that converged into one seamless process in time to finally reach your lips. Of course, the Sun didn’t shine for you and the grapes didn’t grow for you and the farmer didn’t collect the grapes for you and the canner didn’t can the grape jelly for you in particular… And yet, somehow, as you are spreading grape jelly on your toast, you are now the beneficiary of this endless process of transmutation. Or, as you focus on the automaticity of your hand-to-mouth motions, on this smooth machinery of your habits, perhaps, you will awaken the eating zombie for just a moment, to both marvel and fear this ease of mindlessness with which our lives run. Or, perhaps, as you watch this food and this moment come and go, you will consider the impermanence and transience of things, and of yourself.

Ask yourself:

What are the Spiritual and Ethical Calories of this moment? How am I expressing my life values in this moment? Are my eating choices an accurate reflection of what I stand for — ethically and spiritually? Is my eating kind? Is my eating graceful? Is my eating meaningful? Is my eating grateful?

Ask yourself:

What are the Aesthetic and Hedonic Calories of this moment? Am I enjoying this eating moment, this moment of living? Am I allowing myself to notice the humble, unpretentious beauty of what I am about …

Smoking Meditation Day 8

Just Smoke

Zen trainers tend to instruct: when you eat, just eat; when you walk, just walk. The idea is to commit to the present, to pledge allegiance to the here and now of your life, whatever you happen to be doing. Today, when you smoke, just smoke. Kill the TV, set the coffee aside, break away from work; in other words, avoid multitasking by mixing smoking with either work or pleasure. Just smoke. Enjoy it while you still do.

Context:

Awareness-Building & Pattern-Interruption: Smoke Mindfully to Quit Mindfully

The goal is simple: take the next three months to awaken the smoking zombie. The daily objective is to try out the various awareness-building, pattern-interrupting smoking meditations. Approach these exercises as meditative play. Consider each exercise to be an investment in mindfulness. Smoke mindfully to quit mindfully.  Feel free to reuse the exercises you like, but avoid developing favorites. Comfort, the cousin of habit, is counterproductive at this point. What we want is to muck up the mindlessness of the smoking process. So, change is the name of the game here. Keep your mind limber and your smoking hands guessing.

Read the Original/Introductory post (for context)

Adapted from Smoke-Free Smoke Break (Pavel Somov, Ph.D. & Marla Somova, Ph.D., New Harbinger Publications, 2012)

Related posts:

• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 1: Change Hands
• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 2: Just Witness
• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 3: Puff-n’-Om

Here’s some food for thought for you, excerpted from Freeman Dyson’s 1985 book Infinite In All Directions:

“When life spreads out and diversifies in the universe, [...] the human species will one day find itself faced with the most momentous choice that we have had to make since the days when our ancestors came down from the trees in Africa and left their cousins the chimpanzees behind.  We will have to choose, either to remain one species united by a common bodily shape as well as by a common history, or to let ourselves diversify as the other species of plants and animals will diversify.  Shall we be forever one people, or shall we be a million intelligent species exploring diverse ways of living in a million different places across the galaxy?  This is the great question which will [historically] soon be upon us.  Fortunately, it is not the responsibility of this generation to answer it.” (p. 287, my italics)

What a momentous question!  To remain one people or to diversify?  I know my answer: I am for “diversifying,” for branching out, even if it means that future descendants of humans (populating diverse cosmic habitats) may be as different as refrigerators and stiletto shoes…  My guess is that Dyson too would vote for diversifying rather than remaining “one people.”  What about you?  If this was up to you, what would you choose?

A momentous question that you don’t have to answer… But you can. There is much to learn about ourselves and our neuroses from the difficult questions that we prefer to avoid.

Mindful eating, as I see it, isn’t just about savoring.  It’s also about having a certain kind of skill-set.  Craving control, particularly, mindfulness-powered craving control is an essential skill of a conscious approach to eating.  So, let’s take a look at your craving control options.

Not All Craving Control Strategies Are Created Equal

One of the most common and most intuitive craving control strategies is distraction. The strategy of trying to not think about eating often backfires since not thinking about something usually means thinking about it even more.

Self-talk, another traditional craving control strategy, involves the use of self-motivational statements that reiterate the benefits of sticking to a plan and remind the person of his or her health goals. Self-talk, in its reliance on logic and reason, is of limited utility: craving is an emotional state that takes the otherwise rational brain and reduces it to irrational simplicity. Rational self-talk is hard to pull off when your mind’s wisdom has been reduced to a nutritional tantrum of “I want!”

Breath-based relaxation for craving control is an improvement on either distraction or self-talk as it allows the craving-aroused mind to return to its rational baseline.

Mindfulness, as a craving control technique, involves “just witnessing” or “just noticing” craving thoughts as they pass. Mindfulness has received much clinical attention, particularly in the area of substance use treatment where the goals of relapse prevention closely parallel the challenges faced by chronic overeaters (Marlatt, 2002).

In my opinion, mindfulness and relaxation are the first echelon of craving control, followed by self-talk and distraction strategies. But don’t just take my word for it: experiment with all four to make an informed choice.

Skill Combinations

There are many ways to combine the four craving control skills. My favorite combinations are mindfulness + relaxation and relaxation + self-talk (note that the order does matter).

Taking the Guess-work Out of Craving Control

As you work on developing your mindful eating craving control skill-power it is important that you try all four different methods for controlling your cravings and track your impressions on their effectiveness. Doing so will help you take the guess-work out …

Smoking Meditation Day 7

Change How You Enlighten

Smoking is pyrotechnics: the cigarette is a fuse, your lungs a bomb of pleasure and worry. Today’s objective is to change how you set yourself on fire. Make time today to get a new lighter, a lighter you wouldn’t intuitively use. For example, if you are into classy metal lighters, get a cheap plastic lighter with a cheesy theme. If you prefer a minimalist, slick, urban look, get something gaudy or camouflaged. Show some behavioral plasticity: pick the wrong color of plastic; if you don’t like yellow, get yellow; if you like white, get black. The bottom line is: undermine the seamless mindlessness of your lighting choices. Set out a charge of change. Startle the smoking zombie into wakening. Change how you enlighten this smoking habit of yours.

Here’s a tip: if your finances allow, buy a dozen or so different lighters and keep rotating them throughout the day today and in the weeks to come. If you light with matches, try a lighter, if only for a day. If you never use matches, get a box (in addition to new lighters) and light up with a match a few times today and in the weeks to come.

Context:

Awareness-Building & Pattern-Interruption: Smoke Mindfully to Quit Mindfully

The goal is simple: take the next three months to awaken the smoking zombie. The daily objective is to try out the various awareness-building, pattern-interrupting smoking meditations. Approach these exercises as meditative play. Consider each exercise to be an investment in mindfulness. Smoke mindfully to quit mindfully.  Feel free to reuse the exercises you like, but avoid developing favorites. Comfort, the cousin of habit, is counterproductive at this point. What we want is to muck up the mindlessness of the smoking process. So, change is the name of the game here. Keep your mind limber and your smoking hands guessing.

Read the Original/Introductory post (for context)

Adapted from Smoke-Free Smoke Break (Pavel Somov, Ph.D. & Marla Somova, Ph.D., New Harbinger Publications, 2012)

Related posts:

• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day …
  Continue reading… »

Smoking Meditation Day 6

Deal Yourself a Hand

Consider starting to collect empty smoke packs, and cut out the fronts and backs to make a deck of playing cards. A typical deck has fifty-two cards. If you smoke a pack a day, you get to save two playing cards (front and back) a day. With this in mind, you’ll have a full deck by day 26.  As you collect the cutouts, use a black marker to mark them as if they were playing cards. It’s important to draw the card marks right on the outer design sides (not on the inner or blank sides).

Once you gather a full deck, get someone to play a few card games with you. Notice how the significance of these designs begins to fade out of your mind. Recognize that these designs and symbols have no independent meaning without you. You are the meaning maker. The meaning isn’t in the pieces of paper, but in your mind. The designs have the meaning that you assign to them. They can mean “smoking” or “playing.” When it comes to matters of meaning, meaning is the hand that we deal to ourselves. So, play the hand that you choose to deal yourself, not the one that’s been handed to you by tobacco marketing.

Ask yourself today: Am I playing to win, or am I playing to lose?

Context:

Awareness-Building & Pattern-Interruption: Smoke Mindfully to Quit Mindfully

The goal is simple: take the next three months to awaken the smoking zombie. The daily objective is to try out the various awareness-building, pattern-interrupting smoking meditations. Approach these exercises as meditative play. Consider each exercise to be an investment in mindfulness. Smoke mindfully to quit mindfully.  Feel free to reuse the exercises you like, but avoid developing favorites. Comfort, the cousin of habit, is counterproductive at this point. What we want is to muck up the mindlessness of the smoking process. So, change is the name of the game here. Keep your mind limber and your smoking hands guessing.

Read the Original/Introductory post (for context)

Adapted from Smoke-Free Smoke Break (Pavel Somov, …

Smoking Meditation Day 5

Smoking Koans

In Buddhist training, a koan is a question that is designed to frustrate the logical mind. The goal of the koan is to close the mouth and open the mind. In the days to come, we’ll provide you with a few smoking koans. Note that these are pseudo koans, meaning that neither of us has the Zen authority to claim that these questions are anything more than just questions. But then you are not training to be a Buddhist monk. As you ponder these questions, embrace the ambiguity. If your mind goes blank (as you chew on these questions), leave it blank. There is no right or wrong answer. Here, asking the question matters far more than trying to find the answer.

So, here’s the first series of smoking koans for you to consider today:

What is nonsmoking?  

If I am in between cigarettes, am I still a smoker?

If I am in between puffs, am I still a smoker?

Am I still a smoker when I am asleep?

Is mindless smoking smoking?

If I am smoking mindlessly, am I really smoking?

If you have to smoke on this, do.

Context:

Awareness-Building & Pattern-Interruption: Smoke Mindfully to Quit Mindfully

The goal is simple: take the next three months to awaken the smoking zombie. The daily objective is to try out the various awareness-building, pattern-interrupting smoking meditations. Approach these exercises as meditative play. Consider each exercise to be an investment in mindfulness. Smoke mindfully to quit mindfully.  Feel free to reuse the exercises you like, but avoid developing favorites. Comfort, the cousin of habit, is counterproductive at this point. What we want is to muck up the mindlessness of the smoking process. So, change is the name of the game here. Keep your mind limber and your smoking hands guessing.

Read the Original/Introductory post (for context)

Adapted from Smoke-Free Smoke Break (Pavel Somov, Ph.D. & Marla Somova, Ph.D., New Harbinger Publications, 2012)

Related posts:

• …
  Continue reading… »

Smoking Meditation Day 4

Candle Lighting

Chances are, your typical way of lighting a cigarette involves an initial drag. Practice lighting a cigarette like a candle—without the initial drag—say, off the stove, the match, or the lighter. Experiment with lighting your cigarettes like that (without the initial drag) throughout the day today.  As you smoke, if possible, “candle-light” the cigarette without the assistance of your mouth, and then smoke, if you feel like it.

Notice the added awareness, presence and mindfulness that comes with these pattern-interruption smoking meditations.  Share what you notice and/or learn.

Context:

Awareness-Building & Pattern-Interruption: Smoke Mindfully to Quit Mindfully

The goal is simple: take the next three months to awaken the smoking zombie. The daily objective is to try out the various awareness-building, pattern-interrupting smoking meditations. Approach these exercises as meditative play. Consider each exercise to be an investment in mindfulness. Smoke mindfully to quit mindfully.  Feel free to reuse the exercises you like, but avoid developing favorites. Comfort, the cousin of habit, is counterproductive at this point. What we want is to muck up the mindlessness of the smoking process. So, change is the name of the game here. Keep your mind limber and your smoking hands guessing.

Read the Original/Introductory post (for context)

Adapted from Smoke-Free Smoke Break (Pavel Somov, Ph.D. & Marla Somova, Ph.D., New Harbinger Publications, 2012)

Related posts:

• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 1: Change Hands
• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 2: Just Witness
• Awakening the Smoking Zombie: Day 3: Puff-n’-Om

A thought about the interplay of Codependency and Narcissism recently occurred to me.  So I thought I’d share it with you, for whatever it’s worth.  This thought is an echo of a famous line from the so-called Heart Sutra (a Buddhist teaching).  The original Buddhist line is: “Emptiness is Form, Form is Emptiness.”  What echoed through my mind is this: “Codependency is dormant Narcissism; Narcissism is dormant Codependency.”

What I mean is that Codependency borrows ego from Narcissism (a kind of closeted narcissistic pursuit) while Narcissism polishes its relational mirrors (with a kind of codependent other-focused-ness, to assure a more magnifying reflection of its own ego).  A dialectic dance of Form and Emptiness.  And as this dream of counter-dependent outsourcing runs into a few rough awakenings, polarities, perhaps, eventually reverse.