Throughout our lives we’ve been interpreting and making meaning out of all kinds of events. Every event by itself is just an event, but the way we see it, the importance we give it, how it weaves into the fabric of our cells makes all the difference. This meaning that we make then goes on to affect how we interpret other things, it informs the choices that we make and the behaviors that we conduct.

For example, if I were to get pulled over by the police for speeding I might think “the world is out to get me” or “I need to slow down.” I may miss the possibility that this may have saved me from an upcoming accident. Some people say life is like a blank canvas, go ahead and paint your masterpiece.

The problem with that statement is that life is not like a blank canvas because we bring all of our past experiences, woundings, traumas, and triumphs with us to the seat. These inform that immediate snap judgment that occurs beneath our awareness in any given moment.

With the moments of life seemingly becoming more fleeting, there’s never been a more important time to cultivate or become more aware of the meaning in our lives. Therese Borchard, author of Beyond Blue: Surviving Depression & Anxiety and Making the Most of Bad Genes, wrote a past post 7 Ways to Prevent Burnout. In this blog she summed up a book by one of her favorite authors, Robert Wicks, who laid out a path toward integrating spirituality into daily life in an effort to prevent stress and live the lives we want.  Definitely worth the read and if you have any aversion to the word “God” or “spirituality,” just replace that term with “higher self” and see how that works.

In 2005, I conducted a national study in an effort to see if people could in fact cultivate what I called “sacred moments” and see what effect that had on their stress and well-being. Lo and behold, in practicing 5 minutes a day for 5 days a week, for 3 weeks, there was a significant positive effect in stress reduction and well-being. What was so fascinating to me was that for many it allowed them to touch a sense of spirituality when they felt they had never been able to do this before.

A quote from one participant:

So you spent your life working hard in elementary school, maybe pushing through to university and thought, well once I land this job then I’ll be happy, or once I get married, then I’ll be happy, or once I get a divorce, then I’ll be happy. The reality is, the conditions for happiness are all right here, right now, but it’s not enough to say, “Just dip into the now and happiness will arise.”

There are too many conditioned forces at play from past experiences that compromise the ability for “the now” to be a source of happiness. But we can train our minds to relate to “the now” in a particular way and train our minds toward happiness.

At this point the mental health benefits of a mindfulness practice are fairly well established. However, cultivating a more mindful life isn’t often easy – there are many obstacles at play.

The places we work and the people we surround ourselves with are likely not trying to put mindfulness at the forefront of their lives. We’re also looking for that perfect quiet time to sit, stand or lie down and practice intentionally, paying attention to the present moment with fresh eyes. Sometimes we get restless, agitated, bored or begin to doubt ourselves that we can ever truly be mindful and so we reactively avoid it.

The following is a quote by the 15th century Indian poet Kabir that I love to bring up again and again because it gets underneath these obstacles and drops us into mindfulness.

Today it’s my honor to bring to you Martine Batchelor, who along with her husband Stephen Batchelor, is author of a number of books including, Walking On Lotus Flowers, Let Go,and The Spirit of the Buddha.  Her husband Stephen Batchelor is author of Buddhism Without Beliefs and his most recent book Confession of a Buddhist Atheist. With her husband, Martine co-leads meditation retreats worldwide, including the upcoming retreat at InsightLA.org in Santa Monica on November 12-13 titled Toward a Secular Approach to Buddhism.  Martine and Stephen now live in France.

Today Martine talks to us about what is being gained and lost in a secular approach to Buddhism, where mindfulness is going and some tips on how to ground ourselves when we’re feeling overwhelmed.

Elisha: Mindfulness meditation can trace its origins to Buddhism, but is now being picked up in the fields of healthcare, psychology, business, and even politics as a way to live with greater ease, be more effective at what we do and even change our brains.

What are the implications of secularizing this Buddhist teaching and practice, what is gained, what is lost?

I was sitting with a friend recently who told me that he was resting in his backyard bringing mindfulness to the sounds and sights around him when he had an insight. The trees and leaves around him in some way were just like him. No, he wasn’t on any psychedelics or intoxicants, he just had this awareness that he was not really that separate from the nature around him.

In that moment he said he felt incredibly connected and the worries that had surrounded him before seemed to drift away as a feeling of belonging arose. Belonging is the essence of well-being.

In his latest book, Your True Home Thich Nhat Hanh describes it best:

A short while ago I opened an opportunity for people to send me stories of mindfulness that can show the rest of us how it has had a practical impact on a particular event or their lives. I’m calling this column of Mindfulness and Psychotherapy, “Voices.”

A number of people wrote in with stories. If you have a story, continue to writing in and as long as there are good stories that teach the rest of us how mindfulness can work in our lives, I will choose from them from time to time to post on Mindfulness and Psychotherapy.

Of course those that get chosen can also send me a link that I’ll include in the post where people can learn more about them.

Here’s a truly touching story of mindfulness, grief, courage and healing by Mimi Handlin, MSW, Senior Certified ADHD Coach:

A couple decades ago if you told people you were going to a yoga class, you may have looked into a face of confusion or judgment where the other person was thinking you were part of some new age movement. Now in the most conservative town men and women throw on their respective yoga gear and step into pose.

On the same note, just a few years ago if you told most people you were going to go to a meditation class, you would have gotten that same look, perhaps you still might today. However, we’re on the cusp of entering a mindful era, an era where the term and practice are starting to become more accepted and common.  We’re not quite there yet, but the explosion of research coming out of respected institutions such as Harvard, UCLA, Stanford, and major healthcare companies and the embrace in the corporate world is heading the train in that direction.

But what would a post-mindful era look like?

The burgeoning field of mindfulness, neuroscience and psychotherapy just never gets old to me. I am on a panel with Ron Siegel, PsyD, author of The Mindfulness Solution and Ruth Buczynski, PhD, president of the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine (NICABM) talking about a recent series that explored the question, Can Mindfulness Really Rewire the Brain? The series is free to listen to.

The series includes Dan Siegel, Rick Hanson, Tara Brach, Sara Lazar and Ron Siegel on the current state of affairs of mindfulness and neuroscience. The topics included the most current neuroscience research, how we can use it with trauma, chronic pain, depression, shame and even its potential benefits for aging.

The actual science that’s continuing to come out about mindfulness and its neurological benefits is incredibly motivating.

Did you know that mindfulness practice is showing that we can grow the area of our brain that’s responsible for learning and memory (the hippocampus)? So there’ll be less of the, “Honey, did you remember where I put my keys?”

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of the term “Mindful Recovery?”

Is it Addiction? Trauma? Depression? Or maybe something else?

Maybe it’s all of those things, but I’m going to pose this moment to be a time to look back on the last year and ask yourself, “What afflictions have I suffered this year that I am in recovery for?” Maybe this last year you let stress get the best of you? Maybe your relationship slipped this past year as you got roped into more television programs or Facebook addictions. Maybe you did slip into abuse with drugs, alcohol, sex, work, or overly accommodating people in life who abuse you.

What’s going to be different in the coming hours, days, weeks and months ahead?

Perhaps the simplest path is to make the intention an awareness of the moments you get sucked into these destructive behaviors that you want to change. In this space of awareness we draw a second intention which is to get curious about what the feeling is that you’re trying to escape from.

I think where we make our greatest error is when we make those resolutions that say, “I’m going to go the gym more, meditate more, start playing guitar or bring the romance back.” This jumps the gun. There are so many steps that occur before taking action with any of these things. There’s already a built up resistance to them and to skip over that is a recipe for failure.

What if these changes you wanted to make were couched in less immediacy? It’s helpful to actually understand what going on with the auto-pilot that lives within each one of us.

Here’s 7 steps to get underneath the hood and give yourself the change of making real change last:

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