Life is hard.
This is Buddha's first noble truth, and the first sentence of M. Scott Peck's Road Less Travelled. I have bought that book ten times, and still I don't have a copy in my house. The Road Less Travelled is named for a Robert Frost poem. One of Peck's central points, as I recall (and can't check) is that a life of personal development is a lonelier, sadder, wilder, richer ramble through our lived experience: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."
This is not a blog about Buddhism. And Buddhism, I have learned, has many paths. It offers a Way, but in many senses the Way is best discovered by each individual for themselves. Many schools of Buddhism encourage mindful meditation. And most of mindful meditation is about letting go, not being 'hooked into' responding to any given worldly object or occurrence. Most people are hooked in. In psychology terms, we call that a fused response. The wife-beater cries that when she insults him, he has to hit her. And sometimes when she seems about to insult him. He has no choice, according to him.
This isn't a blog post about Peck, either. Maybe a subsequent one will be. This is a blog about a psychological treatment. This is a blog about mindfulness, in the psychological sense. It is also a blog post about the normal, failed humanity which constitutes my own self. It is about being broken.
Mindfulness, in the psychological sense, originates meaningfully with Jon Kabat-Zinn. An accomplished professor of medicine and founder of a stress reduction clinic, Kabat-Zinn has brought mindful practice into the psychological mainstream - and, further, into mainstream society. In the context of decades of Westerners having fled our culture to embrace Buddhist practice, Kabat-Zinn has made it possible to incorporate Buddhist principles into the Western way of life.
Mindfulness has been used as a cornerstone of treatment approaches by people such as Hayes, Wells, Linehan, Teasdale, Williams and many, many more. Mindfulness is the backbone of the third wave. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy are all extremely useful therapeutic approaches to assisting people whose lives truly need some support. If you're looking for a way to improve your psychological health, mindfulness comes second only to regular exercise and a good diet.
Yes, I said regular exercise and a good diet. If you want to be well, exercise forty minutes a day, don't drink too much alcohol and have plenty of dark green vegetables. Seafood, lots of water, and getting outside to soak up vitamin D (without contracting skin cancer) are the heart and soul of a healthy psychological state. Good things, and not too much of them. Moderation. That. Is. All.
In an earlier post I described how hard it is to achieve such a state, though. And, without boring you with too much neuropsych, that is a symbiotic process where actions are inspired by the brain, which is guided by our actions. The right pre-frontal cortex can be conservative, negative and avoidant. The left side tends to be articulate, goal-focussed and good with detail. When we're bodily healthy, the left side kicks in to encourage us to go out and hunt and gather (or whatever). When we're not healthy, the right side tends to try keeping us in the cave to sleep and avoid danger 'till we're well again. In the West, our cave is well stocked with high-fat foods, usually, and so our down-ward trend to obesity and type-II diabetes is kind of pre-determined by our unprecedented wealth and our fundamental biology.
So, if we are able to force ourselves out of the cave and to exercise and eat less, then we're more likely to get back into optimistic goal-focussed living. Here is my problem with positive psychology: it puts the cart before the horse. Rather than its stated ambition to promote well-being, my lived experience of positive psychology practitioners has been that they want people to focus upon being happy. Happiness is a by-product of good living, rather than an input. While positive psychology does add some excellent balance to what had become a very depressing debate, my observations are it tends to promote the out-of-cave experience without helping us to get up and walk.
Which brings us back to mindfulness. Freud's original clinical position was that when people achieve insight into their true situation, they will resolve the psychological problems they are experiencing. This approach has been traced back to the writings of Plato. Sigh. Nothing new under the sun, and all that. By the way, my rabbiting on about caves can't help but put the well-read in mind of the Simile of the Cave from Plato's Republic. Good for you. I have tended to congratulate Carl Rogers for making the insight point most articulately: "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change".
Ok, so if we are to be dragged out of the cave and embrace a new life, one reflected in Aristotle's Golden Mean, (moderation in all things, or the 'middle way', which also has a long history in the Buddhist tradition) we need actual practical help. Help to see ourselves as we are. Help that enables insight. Help which defuses our automatic, cave-continuing actions. And the third wave therapies have capitalised upon the impressive demonstration by Jon Kabat-Zinn that mindfulness is that practical help. Mindfulness helps us out of the cave. Mindfulness is the way.
If you have struggled through the earlier posts of my blog, then you have my sympathy. You've put up with a lot of whining. You already know a lot about me. I work too many hours, I have bad dreams, I loved a woman I can't be with and I wrecked my own marriage through being a weak and conceding man. There's also a lot of good stuff in my life. My curry nights with mates every second month, my international travel, the brilliant times I've spent camping and laughing with my wonderful children. I own and love a motorbike. Some days I am mildly funny in hilarious company. I like to cook. I am blessed with brilliant friends in a wide range of contexts. So, there's that. And I am rarely home.
Like many men of my acquainatince, I eat and drink too much. I exercise litle - I walk a bit, play squash once a week, I wrestle my motorbike in windy conditions. I get laid when I can, and count that as virtuous calorie burning. I can't describe myself as incredibly active. In short, I need to get out of the cave. I spoke to my GP this week, and he gave me a gruff look and said bluntly: Jim, you're a psychologist. You know the deal. Just change things. Make better choices.
He was right, damn him.
But how do I change these things?
Mindfulness.
I can explain what mindfulness is, and will do so in my next post: but it seems more polite, in the first instance, to let Jon tell you himself. So here are the links, and see how you go. My next blog post will be about my struggles with practicing mindfulness.
This is Buddha's first noble truth, and the first sentence of M. Scott Peck's Road Less Travelled. I have bought that book ten times, and still I don't have a copy in my house. The Road Less Travelled is named for a Robert Frost poem. One of Peck's central points, as I recall (and can't check) is that a life of personal development is a lonelier, sadder, wilder, richer ramble through our lived experience: "Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less travelled by, And that has made all the difference."
This is not a blog about Buddhism. And Buddhism, I have learned, has many paths. It offers a Way, but in many senses the Way is best discovered by each individual for themselves. Many schools of Buddhism encourage mindful meditation. And most of mindful meditation is about letting go, not being 'hooked into' responding to any given worldly object or occurrence. Most people are hooked in. In psychology terms, we call that a fused response. The wife-beater cries that when she insults him, he has to hit her. And sometimes when she seems about to insult him. He has no choice, according to him.
This isn't a blog post about Peck, either. Maybe a subsequent one will be. This is a blog about a psychological treatment. This is a blog about mindfulness, in the psychological sense. It is also a blog post about the normal, failed humanity which constitutes my own self. It is about being broken.
Mindfulness, in the psychological sense, originates meaningfully with Jon Kabat-Zinn. An accomplished professor of medicine and founder of a stress reduction clinic, Kabat-Zinn has brought mindful practice into the psychological mainstream - and, further, into mainstream society. In the context of decades of Westerners having fled our culture to embrace Buddhist practice, Kabat-Zinn has made it possible to incorporate Buddhist principles into the Western way of life.
Mindfulness has been used as a cornerstone of treatment approaches by people such as Hayes, Wells, Linehan, Teasdale, Williams and many, many more. Mindfulness is the backbone of the third wave. Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy are all extremely useful therapeutic approaches to assisting people whose lives truly need some support. If you're looking for a way to improve your psychological health, mindfulness comes second only to regular exercise and a good diet.
Yes, I said regular exercise and a good diet. If you want to be well, exercise forty minutes a day, don't drink too much alcohol and have plenty of dark green vegetables. Seafood, lots of water, and getting outside to soak up vitamin D (without contracting skin cancer) are the heart and soul of a healthy psychological state. Good things, and not too much of them. Moderation. That. Is. All.
In an earlier post I described how hard it is to achieve such a state, though. And, without boring you with too much neuropsych, that is a symbiotic process where actions are inspired by the brain, which is guided by our actions. The right pre-frontal cortex can be conservative, negative and avoidant. The left side tends to be articulate, goal-focussed and good with detail. When we're bodily healthy, the left side kicks in to encourage us to go out and hunt and gather (or whatever). When we're not healthy, the right side tends to try keeping us in the cave to sleep and avoid danger 'till we're well again. In the West, our cave is well stocked with high-fat foods, usually, and so our down-ward trend to obesity and type-II diabetes is kind of pre-determined by our unprecedented wealth and our fundamental biology.
So, if we are able to force ourselves out of the cave and to exercise and eat less, then we're more likely to get back into optimistic goal-focussed living. Here is my problem with positive psychology: it puts the cart before the horse. Rather than its stated ambition to promote well-being, my lived experience of positive psychology practitioners has been that they want people to focus upon being happy. Happiness is a by-product of good living, rather than an input. While positive psychology does add some excellent balance to what had become a very depressing debate, my observations are it tends to promote the out-of-cave experience without helping us to get up and walk.
Which brings us back to mindfulness. Freud's original clinical position was that when people achieve insight into their true situation, they will resolve the psychological problems they are experiencing. This approach has been traced back to the writings of Plato. Sigh. Nothing new under the sun, and all that. By the way, my rabbiting on about caves can't help but put the well-read in mind of the Simile of the Cave from Plato's Republic. Good for you. I have tended to congratulate Carl Rogers for making the insight point most articulately: "The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change".
Ok, so if we are to be dragged out of the cave and embrace a new life, one reflected in Aristotle's Golden Mean, (moderation in all things, or the 'middle way', which also has a long history in the Buddhist tradition) we need actual practical help. Help to see ourselves as we are. Help that enables insight. Help which defuses our automatic, cave-continuing actions. And the third wave therapies have capitalised upon the impressive demonstration by Jon Kabat-Zinn that mindfulness is that practical help. Mindfulness helps us out of the cave. Mindfulness is the way.
If you have struggled through the earlier posts of my blog, then you have my sympathy. You've put up with a lot of whining. You already know a lot about me. I work too many hours, I have bad dreams, I loved a woman I can't be with and I wrecked my own marriage through being a weak and conceding man. There's also a lot of good stuff in my life. My curry nights with mates every second month, my international travel, the brilliant times I've spent camping and laughing with my wonderful children. I own and love a motorbike. Some days I am mildly funny in hilarious company. I like to cook. I am blessed with brilliant friends in a wide range of contexts. So, there's that. And I am rarely home.
Like many men of my acquainatince, I eat and drink too much. I exercise litle - I walk a bit, play squash once a week, I wrestle my motorbike in windy conditions. I get laid when I can, and count that as virtuous calorie burning. I can't describe myself as incredibly active. In short, I need to get out of the cave. I spoke to my GP this week, and he gave me a gruff look and said bluntly: Jim, you're a psychologist. You know the deal. Just change things. Make better choices.
He was right, damn him.
But how do I change these things?
Mindfulness.
I can explain what mindfulness is, and will do so in my next post: but it seems more polite, in the first instance, to let Jon tell you himself. So here are the links, and see how you go. My next blog post will be about my struggles with practicing mindfulness.
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