RECOVERING PEACE AND TRANQUILITY DURING THIS STRESSFUL COVID19

RECOVERING PEACE AND TRANQUILITY DURING THIS STRESSFUL COVID-19 TIMES Jim Messina, Ph. D. Troy University Tampa Bay Site CE Broker Tracking #: 20 -714909

Objectives of Workshop Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a proven healing measure when practiced! 1. Identify what Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) can do to help us gain peace, tranquility and ability to center ourselves so as not to shred into worry and fear 2. Identify how getting into “non-doing” we can do so much more for our sanity, centeredness and grow in loving self-kindness 3. Identify what research tell us about the benefits of MBSR which is so needed in these COVID 19 times 4. Identify the resources out there in the virtual world which you can use to help you achieve your personal inner healing, peace and tranquility to quiet the stress and anxiety which come with the COVID-19 World

Make Time for Self-Healing During COVID-19 Times v Impose a moratorium on exactly how much news you are subject to—hopefully not more than an hour a day of television, social media, internet news, magazine and newspaper commentary, and/or political discussions. Instead v Use this time for some form of public service, volunteerism, reading popular and classic works, and mindful meditation or, preferably, all of the above. You have much to gain now and nothing to lose. Nothing at all. And the world—with you as a stable center—has nothing to lose. And everything to gain.

WHAT IS MBSR DURING COVID-19?

What is Mindfulness is awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way: von purpose, vin the present moment, and vnon-judgmentally. (Source: Jon Kabat-Zinn (2016). Mindfulness for Beginners: Reclaiming the Present moment-and your life. Sounds True, Inc: Boulder, Colorado, p. 1)

What is Meditation is any way in which you engage in: v. Systematically regulating your attention and energy v. Thereby influencing and possibly transforming the quality of your experience v. In the service of realizing the full range of your humanity v. Your relationship to others and the world v. Which helps you to cope with all of the unsettling consequences of the COVID-19 Pandemic (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p. 1)

Two Forms of Meditation in MBSR There are two complementary ways to do this: v. Formally: Formally means engaging in making some time every day to practice with the guided meditations which are readily available to you v. Informally: Informally means letting the practice spill over into every aspect of your waking life in an uncontrived and natural way These two modes of embodied practice go hand in hand support each other, and ultimately become one seamless whole, which we could call living with awareness or wakefulness (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p 2)

Importance of Breath in MBSR The fact is that you are a being that breathes which is a blessing given that COVID-19 could take away such breathing v. You drink in the air on each in-breath, giving it back to the world on each out-breath. Your life depends on it. v. Your breathing can serve as a convenient first object of attention to bring you back into the present moment, because you are only breathing now — the last breath is gone, the next one hasn’t come yet — it is always a matter of this one. v. So, it is an ideal anchor for your wayward attention. It keeps you in the present moment. v. This is one of many reasons why in mindfulness we pay attention to the sensations of breathing in the body v. But attending to the feeling of the breath in the body is not only a beginner’s practice. It may be simple, but the breath has within it everything you would ever need for cultivating the full range of your humanity, especially your capacity for wisdom and for compassion (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p 11)

What is Awareness is a capacity that you are intimately familiar with and yet are simultaneously a complete stranger to. v. The training in mindfulness is really the cultivation of a resource that is already yours which is free and in you and so important with COVID-19 cutting you off from so much v. It doesn’t require going anywhere v. It doesn’t require getting anything v. But it does require learning how to inhabit another domain of mind that you are, as a rule, fairly out of touch with. v. And that is what you might call the “being mode” of mind. (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p 17)

DOING VS NON-DOING DURING COVID-19

“Doing Mode” vs “Being Mode” During most of your life prior to COVID-19, you were absorbed in doing and in fact you still are absorbed with perhaps a different objective and perspective v. In getting things done v. In going rapidly from one thing to the next v. Or in multitasking — attempting to juggle a bunch of different things at the very same time v. Often your life becomes so driven that you are moving through your moments to get to better ones at some later point v. You live to check things off your to-do list, then fall into bed exhausted at the end of the day, only to jump up the next morning to get on the treadmill once again. v. This way of living is compounded by all the ways in which your life is now driven by the everquickening expectations you place on yourself and that others place on you and you on them, generated in large measure by your increasing dependence on ever present digital technology so common during our COVID-19 Times. (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p 18)

“Human Doing” vs “Human Being” If you are not careful, it is all too easy to fall into becoming more of a “human doing” than a “human being”, and forget who is doing all the doing, and why. This is where mindfulness comes in. v. Mindfulness reminds us that it is possible to shift from a doing mode to a being mode through the application of attention and awareness. v. Then your doing can come out of your being and be much more integrated and effective. v. What is more, you cease exhausting yourself so much as you learn to inhabit your own body and the only moment in which you are ever alive — this one. (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p 18)

ATTITUDINAL FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS

The Attitudinal Foundations of Mindfulness Practice 1. Non-Judging 2. Patience 3. Beginner’s Mind 4. Trust 5. Non-Striving 6. Acceptance 7. Letting Go (Kabat-Zinn, 2016. p 123 -134)

1. Non-Judging v When you begin to practice the guided meditations, notice how frequently judgments of various kinds arise. v You only need to recognize them. v No need to act on them 2. Patience v Patience is really a wonderful attitude to bring to mindfulness practice because the practice of mindfulness is already, in some fundamental sense, about stepping out of time altogether. v When you are talking about the present moment, you are talking about now; You are talking about “outside of clock time. ” v You have had moments like that. In fact, you have nothing but moments like that, but you ignore almost all of them, and it’s just once in a blue moon that you will experience a moment when time stops for you 3. Beginner’s Mind v Beginner’s mind is an attitude. v It doesn’t mean you don’t know anything. v It means that you are spacious enough in that moment to not be caught by what it is that you do know or have experienced in the face of the enormity of what is unknown.

4. Trust If you can’t entirely trust what you think: v What about trusting awareness? v What about trusting your heart? v What about trusting your motivation to at least do no harm? v What about trusting your experience until it’s proven to be inaccurate — and then trusting that discovery? v What about trusting your senses? v What about trusting your body? 5. Non-Striving Non-striving is not trivial. v It involves realizing that you are already here. There’s no place to go, because the agenda is simply to be awake. v It is not framed as some ideal that suggests that after forty years of sitting in a cave in the Himalayas, or by studying with august teachers, or doing ten thousand prostrations, or whatever it is, you will necessarily be any better than you are now. It is likely that you will just be older. v What happens now is what matters

6. Acceptance is an expression of lived wisdom v Not that it is easy to accept what is unfolding, especially if it is highly unpleasant v But you can shift to “awarenessing” with acceptance which immediately frees you from the narrative in your head that says” “I’ve got to have conditions be just so in order for the moment to be a happy moment. ” But clinging is the opposite of acceptance. v Acceptance is letting go of the need for things to be in order for you to be happy or in order for you to even show up with awareness in the present moment v When you can hold whatever is unfolding, pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral in awareness and allow things to be exactly as they already are-then all of a sudden it becomes possible to stand fully in the moment without it having to be any different 7. Letting Go Letting go means letting be. Letting go is akin to non-attachment to outcome. When you are no longer grasping for: v What you want v What you are already clinging to v Or what you simply have to have Letting go means not clinging to v what you most hate v Or what you have a huge aversion for Letting go is a healthy condition of mind and heart-it embraces the whole of reality In a new way. Which needs to be developed through practice

RESEARCH FINDINGS ON BENEFITS OF MBSR

The Goals of Mindfulness-Base Stress Reduction So Needed in these COVID-19 Times! 1. Reduction of painful symptoms 2. Stress reduction 3. Improved quality of life 4. Improved coping skills 5. Greater sense of inner connectedness 6. Greater sense of unconditional self-acceptance

MBSR in various Studies was found to: 1. Help clients increase their mindfulness, and wellbeing and decrease their stress and its symptoms (Grossman et al. , 2004; Carmody & Baerm, 2007; Chisea & Serretti, 2009; Golden & Gross, 2010; Birnie et al. , 2010; Bergen. Cico et al. , 2013; Gawrysiak et al. , 2016 & Greeson et al. , 2018) 2. Improve clients’ overall well-being, quality of life and enhanced health outcomes for its participants in it group therapy format (Merkes, 2010) 3. Substantially benefit patients who suffer with chronic health conditions (Carlson, 2012) 4. Increase clients’ growth in greater emotional regulation (Haslam et al. , 2017). 5. Help clients to increase in Hope, Self-Efficacy, Resilience and Optimism and experience a reduction in depression and anxiety (Jain & Singh, 2016) (SO NEEDED IN COVID-19 Times) 6. Help patients to experience a reduction of pain symptoms and the improvement of depressive symptoms in patients with chronic or acute pain (Chiesa & Serretti, 2011; Cherkin et al. , 2014; Omidi & Zarger, 2015; la Cour & Petersen, 2015; Beaulac & Bailly, 2015; Gotink et al. , 2015; Arefuasab et al. , 2016; Crisp et al. , 2016; Turner et al. , 2016; Zeiden & Vago, 2016; Ardito et al. , 2017; Hilton et al. , 2017; Nathan et al. , 2017; Hosseni, 2017; Brown & Becerra, 2017 & Brooks et al. , 2018). Note: Bibliography for these research articles is on: Intro to MBSR at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology/introtombsr. html

MBSR & MINDFULNESS RESOURCES

MBSR Meditations JKZ Series 1 JKZ Series 3 Track 1: Body Scan Meditation (45 min) 1. Breathscape (20 min) Track 2: Mindful Yoga 1 (45 min) 2. Bodyscape (20 min) Track 3: Sitting Meditation (40 min) 3. Breathscape and Bodyscape – More Silence (20 min) Track 4: Mindful Yoga 2 (45 min) 4. Soundscape (27 min) JKZ Series 2 5. Mindscape (20 min) Tracks 1, 2, 3 Sitting Meditations (10 -, 20 - & 30 -minute versions) 6. Dying Before You Die (30 min) Tracks 4, 5, 6 Lying Down Meditations (10 -, 20 - & 30 minute versions) 7. Nowscape (30 min) 8. Walking Meditation (10 min) Track 7 Mountain Meditation (20 min) 9. Heartscape (47 min) Track 8 Lake Meditation (20 min) 10. Lifescape (12 min) Track 9 Silence with bells (custom duration) Note: info on ordering these is at: Intro to MBSR at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology/introtombsr. html

Mindfulness Apps Insight Timer - Meditation App Calm Guided Mind Headspace: Meditation Breathe, sleep, relax & focus Mindfulness - Everyday guided meditations The Mindfulness App – meditate Mind Timer - A Simple Timer for Insight Meditation Aura: Calm Anxiety & Sleep - Mindfulness Meditation Daily Take a Break! - Meditations for Stress Relief Stop, Breathe & Think - Meditation for Calm & Sleep Happify: for Stress & Worry - Activities, Games & Meditation Simple Habit – Meditation Rx - Relief for Patients & Families At Ease Anxiety & Worry Relief Info on ordering these apps is at Mindfulness During COVID 19: http: //www. coping. us/covid 19 copinginfo/mindfulnessduringcovid 19. html

Note: info on ordering these is at: Intro to MBSR at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology/introtombsr. html

So Are You Ready We have loads of support for you on our website at: 1. Coping with COVID-19 Information Resources at: http: //www. coping. us/covid 19 copinginfo. html 2. Mindfulness & Neurobiological Tools for Healing a Training Resource at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology. html 3. Introduction to MBSR at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology/introtombsr. html 4. MBSR-MSC Train the Trainer at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology/mbsrmsctraining. html 5. Mindful Self-Compassion at: http: //www. coping. us/mindfulnessneurobiology/mindfulselfcompassion. html