Gill Hasson is a teacher, trainer and writer, based in Brighton. Her expertise is in the areas of confidence and self esteem, communication skills, assertiveness and resilience. She also teaches accredited courses on the subjects of mentoring and counselling skills.
Gill’s delivers teaching and training for education organisations, voluntary and business organisations and the public sector.
Her latest book is entitled “Mindfulness: Be Mindful. Live In The Moment.
Gill was interviewed by Jon Wilde at Jon’s house in Hove, February 2014.
EVERYDAY MINDFULNESS: How would you describe your childhood?
GILL HASSON: My upbringing was the opposite of troubled. There were no great crises. I suffered no major bereavements or illnesses. There were no extraordinary setbacks. No periods of depression. Just a straightforward life with normal ups and downs. I’ve generally been very positive but I’ve never been the meditative type.
But, as a kid, I was definitely the inquiring sort. In 1971, at the age of twelve I got a book on yoga out of Crawley library which, looking back, would have been considered a little eccentric. I used to practice yoga in my bedroom. I must have had some curiosity about what I would now call spirituality – the feeling of being connected to something bigger and more everlasting than myself. I couldn’t bear secondary school. I didn’t feel that I fitted in. So I was always looking for some connection, some sense of belonging.
EM: How did that curiosity manifest itself?
GH: Through my twenties I travelled a lot. I was an au pair in California. I worked in Germany as a chambermaid. For six years I managed a holiday company in the south of France.
In my early thirties I was back in the UK, a mother of two, and it dawned on me that I had no skills or experience I could build a career around. I did an Access course at City College, Brighton, with the idea of exploring what I wanted to do with my life. When trying to figure out what I would do for a degree I met a woman who mentioned she was doing her degree in social anthropology. I wasn’t aware there was such a thing. But it totally appealed as I’d always been interested in other people’s ideas, values, beliefs and ways of living. That’s pretty much defined my work ever since. It’s always fascinated me why some people find it impossible to move on from life events and others find it relatively easy. My first book (Bounce: Use The Power Of Resilience To Live The Life You Want), co-written with Sue Hadfield, came out of that.
EM: How did you become drawn to mindfulness?
GH: Six years ago I’d written an article about mindfulness for Psychologies Magazine which involved me interviewing a few people, including the psychotherapists, Sue Cowan Jenssen and Cecilia d’Felice. I wanted to ask them both their opinions on the effectiveness of mindfulness.
After writing the piece I didn’t really give mindfulness much thought. Then, in 2013, I met up with publishers to discuss ideas. I mentioned mindfulness and they just happened to be looking for someone to write a book on the subject. They weren’t looking for a book that focussed on meditation and that suited me fine. Some people might have a preconception that mindfulness will be all about meditation. With that in mind, I decided that my book would be less concerned with meditation and mostly be concerned with informal mindfulness which involves integrating mindfulness into everyday activity.
EM: Within mindfulness circles, that approach might be considered controversial.
GH: It might be, yes. What I’ve learned from teaching is that you have to set people up to succeed. A lot of people will be put off mindfulness by the idea of sitting still for any length of time. I have tried to meditate and I didn’t last two minutes.
If people are put off mindfulness because they don’t fancy meditation, then you’ve lost them. With anything I teach or write books about, I want to make it as inclusive as possible. If people take to the idea of informal mindfulness, then there’s every chance they’ll become curious about meditation. Or there’ll be people who will get into informal mindfulness and decide they have no interest in meditating.
It’s interesting to see that, on Amazon, my book is recommended when you click on Finding Peace In A Frantic World by Mark Williams and Danny Penman, and vice-versa. It would be interesting to see how many people bought both books, and what they got out of each. Feasibly, there will be people who don’t connect with Frantic World but they connect with the different approach to mindfulness in my book. Or it might be that, for some people, the two books complement each other.
EM: In the book, you don’t mention Buddhism at all. Was that a considered decision?
GH: No, I wasn’t looking to exclude Buddhism at all. Simply, I never thought there was a good reason to mention it in the book. Ultimately, mindfulness is a concept that relates to the mind. If you choose to base a religion or a set of beliefs around that, fine. I can see how those things would go together. Personally, I don’t see the need. Just as I wouldn’t feel the need to bring Christianity into a book about integrity and how to be good. I’m comfortable with allowing the concepts to stand on their own.
EM: This is your sixth published book. Was it easier or harder to write than the others?
GH: It was a different experience. With previous books I’d been writing about subjects I’d thought about for years. When I was commissioned the mindfulness book, I was pretty much starting out with a blank slate and I had three months to write it. I approached it journalistically and, through the writing of it, mindfulness became a part of my life. It’s been transformative.
EM: In what ways has it been transformative?
GH: My father died halfway through the writing of the book. He’d been both mentally and physically ill. It was the darkest of times. Writing the book was an enormous help in terms of coping with his illness and death. It kept me focussed and helped me cope with everything that was going on. The dedication in the book reads, “To my dad, who always knew that the present moment is life itself.”
If there was a problem looming, my dad’s attitude was that we’d deal with it when it comes. He was calm and practical. My mum was completely the opposite. She’s always been a big worrier, and she still is. She’s constantly projecting into the future. I get my impatience from her but I’m much more pragmatic. I might think about worst case scenarios but I’ll think about them practically, rather than get stuck with the worry. I’m much more solution-focussed. My mum tends to catastrophize every situation. I’ve always been aware that there’s an alternative way to think about things, that life shouldn’t boil down to ruminating on the past and speculating about what might happen in the future. All that came sharply into focus during the writing of this book. In researching the book I came across a lot of ideas that I’d never encountered before, ideas that I found very powerful. Hopefully those ideas will have a similar impact on people who read the book.
EM: In the book you talk about the idea that the human ability to look into the past and project into the future can be both blessing and curse.
GH: As human beings, we are able to look back on the past and learn from it. We’re also able to project into the future and make plans. But those abilities are not an unmitigated blessing. If we’re not careful, they can cause us problems. Think about the way we still hold on to things that were said to us years ago, even right back to our childhoods. I still remember what Miss Tibbals wrote in my report book: “Easily distracted by fun-loving evils from across the room.” All of us have things like that which we hang on to.
On the face of it, worry and anxiety are not completely negative feelings. They are positive in the sense that they can motivate us to do something to change our situation. The problems begin when we get stuck in anxiety and worry instead of seeing those things for what they are.
Say you’ve got a teenage daughter who is heading into the town centre for a night out. That’s a situation that might cause you a fair bit of anxiety. But the anxiety is hugely lessened if you slip them a few quid to get a cab home.
People worry that one day they’ll get cancer. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. In the meantime, it makes sense to eat healthily, exercise regularly and try to enjoy your life.
One of the hardest things to accept is there are some things in life that we can’t do anything to change. But, with mindfulness practice, we can learn how to relate to those things differently.
EM: It’s astonishing how much of life we miss when we’re caught up in our ruminations and worries.
GH: It’s also astonishing how much difference simple mindfulness exercises can make. In the book I talk about the park bench exercise. This involves imagining that you’re on a bench in the park. You notice what’s going on around you, people walking, teenagers on skateboards, but you don’t get drawn into narratives, you just observe and imagine that the people in the park are your thoughts. It’s about learning to understand how emotions and thoughts can simply be held in awareness and allowed to pass, without getting too attached to them. But if we’re completely absorbed by our thoughts, we won’t notice what’s going on in the world around us. What I’ve learned is that every moment is an opportunity to be mindful.
EM: So much of the time we seem to go into situations with a preconception about how things are going to turn out, rather than be open to what arises in the moment.
GH: But is it possible to approach something as if for the first time, without any baggage attached to it? In a work situation, maybe ideas have become stale? What would happen if you and your colleagues pretended that you’d never met and that you were an entirely new organisation? Perhaps something fresh and dynamic would come from not doing things in the same old way. If you don’t get on with your mother-in-law and you’re caught up in the same way of behaving in front of her, what would happen if you imagined coming across this person for the first time? Otherwise we carry on behaving the same way, making the same choices, and expecting everything to turn out differently.
EM: Whereas mindfulness teaches us that we have a choice in most situations; that we can respond rather than react.
GH: I was running a confidence and self esteem course. The subject of bullying came up. Of course, there’s many different kinds of bullying. One everyday example would be on the road, if a car is repeatedly tailgating your vehicle. That can be very intimidating. There’s many different ways you could react in a situation like that, some of them potentially dangerous. What I started doing in that situation is to choose to let the car pass me. Now, you could say that, in doing that, I’ve let the other person win. But I’ve got a choice as to whether I see it that way or not. Another way of looking at it is that I’ve won because I chose to let the car go past. I took control of the situation. Whether the other person thinks he’s won or not is neither here nor there. He can think what he wants.
EM: In the book you introduce the idea of the mindful meal and you ask, “Of the 1000 meals or so you ate in the last year, how many did you eat mindfully?” It’s a question that gives one pause for thought.
GH: I think it’s a question we can all relate to. It’s not only about focussing on things like the smell and the taste of the food. How often do we think about everything and everyone that has been involved in delivering that food to your table:
nature, the farmer, the fisherman, the packer, the driver…
How many of us eat whilst doing something else: flicking through a newspaper, gazing at the television…
When you watch someone who is ill eating a meal, it’s interesting to see that the food is all they concentrate on. Because they’re incapacitated, it’s as though they are forced to focus on one thing at a time. They don’t have the strength or the mental ability to do three things at once. Oddly, most of us pride ourselves on the fact we can do a lot of different things while we’re eating a meal, as if that shows how alive we are. Focussing on one thing at a time is not valued in our culture. But eating a meal mindfully brings us into the present. It reminds us that there is no “what’s next?” This is it.
EM: It seems that, these days, everyone is in a hurry to get to the next thing.
GH: Recently I was at the Waitrose counter, chatting away to the check-out lady whilst packing my bags. The bloke behind me in the queue piped up with, “Excuse me, can you stop with the chat and just get on with it? Some of us have homes to go to.” And we just carried on the conversation. The point being that the bags wouldn’t get filled any faster if we’d stopped talking. Being a man, it wouldn’t occur to him that women could do two things at once. I’ll admit I’m guilty at perpetuating that myth.
EM: In the book you talk about children being great role models for being in the moment.
GH: When you watch small children at play, you can see that they’re not thinking about what happened yesterday or thinking about what they’re going to do later. They’re completely absorbed in what they’re doing. A child might fall over and start crying. Nothing else matters but what has upset them. They’ll have a cry and then let it go. But they won’t create a long-running narrative around it.
As parents, we owe it to our kids to be more mindful when we’re with them. I do despair when I see parents with their children, and the parent is completely absorbed in some gadget or other, rather than paying attention to what their kid is doing or saying.
EM: One of the main challenges for people seems to be maintaining a mindfulness practice. Even if they grasp all the main concepts, there’s a tendency to slip back into old habits.
GH: It’s not too difficult to grasp that the present moment is the only moment we’ve got. But it’s a lot easier to be dragged out of the present moment by the next demand on your time or the next worry. If you find yourself stuck in a traffic jam, you could sit there, hunched over, gnashing your teeth, getting more and more frustrated. Or you could relax, take a look out of the window, and enjoy what you see. Rather than be frustrated, be creative with your time. Whether it’s a traffic jam, a dentist’s waiting room or a supermarket queue, it’s all an opportunity to anchor yourself in what is happening right now.
One change I’ve noticed is that I’m not always looking to fill my time. In the past I would arrive early for a doctor’s appointment and immediately go looking for something to read to pass the time. Now I’m far more likely to be mindful towards my surroundings.
EM: Some people might argue that some situations are far easier to be mindful in than others. For instance, it’s easier to be mindful when sitting on a beach than during a heated row with your wife/husband.
GH: That’s probably true but the row is still another invitation to be mindful. You might not like what your wife is saying to you and you think, “Here she goes again…” Immediately, you’re referring to the past and you’re assuming that this situation is going to work out like rows in the past. So many rows seem to escalate at the point when previous rows are referenced. Quite often people forget what it was they started rowing about. So it’s worth asking whether it’s possible to pause and ask yourself what it is you’re rowing about, whether you’re actually listening to what the other person is saying, and whether you’re acknowledging what the other person has just said. Above all else, it pays to be mindful to what you are saying in this situation, rather than just letting your anger and frustration out.
In a heated situation like that, we feel the need to respond in some way, whether it’s verbally attacking the other person, defending ourselves, walking away, or whatever. Obviously, if you feel you’re about to be physically attacked, then you have to remove yourself from the situation.
EM: It can be very challenging to engage with someone who is angry?
GH: If someone is extremely angry, the rational part of their brain, the neocortex, is switched off so it’s impossible to appeal to reason. If you’ve ever advised somebody to “calm down” when they’re in a rage, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Often, it’s as though they are partitioned off behind a glass wall. They are so consumed by their own anger that they just can’t hear you. Sometimes the most mindful action might be to just stick with it and let them be angry. Also, the mindful thing to do would be to remind yourself that this anger will pass, as anger always does. When the anger has extinguished itself, maybe then it might be possible to properly engage with that person and try to understand what the row was all about. When things are calm again, is it possible for you both to talk about possible strategies for how to deal with the situation when it next arises? I’ll admit that this is easier in theory than in practice.
EM: Mindfulness, it would seem, is particularly useful when it comes to listening, properly listening to people…
GH: …Rather than always be moving the conversation on, which we’re all guilty of doing. Or coming up with answers: “I know what your problem is…and this is what you need to do.” Sometimes, especially if somebody has a problem, they might just need you to listen to what they’re saying. In writing the book, I’ve realised that I’ve become a lot better at slowing down and listening to what the other person is saying. Rather than try to come up with solutions, I’ve learned to ask useful questions. But I jump into conversations a lot less now.
EM: In the book, you talk about feelings being just one part of an emotion, and that every emotion has three aspects. Could you expand on that a little?
GH: The three aspects are behavioural, cognitive and physical. The behavioural aspect is the external expression of emotion – how you actually react. If you’re feeling worried about losing your job you might, for example, make plans to start your own business. The cognitive aspect involves thoughts. The physical aspect involves the changes that occur in your body when you feel a particular emotion. Those three components interact when you feel any emotion. Any one of them can trigger the other two. If you think about something that makes you angry, for example, that can lead to your body feeling clenched which in turn, can make your behaviour more excessive.
EM: In the course of your work, have you noticed an escalation of people suffering from anxiety and depression?
GH: Most definitely. You only need to check out the statistics on the MIND website, the mental health charity, to see how things are developing. I see it in my own work too. The community education courses I teach on are mostly populated by people with anxiety and depression, probably as high as 90%. That picture is vastly different from ten years ago.
EM: Finally, you mention in the book that you have learned a lot about mindfulness from observing your cat, Norman…
GH: When I look at Norman, I can see that he’s not comparing different brands of cat food. He’s not worrying about whether he’s going to get Whiskas or the supermarket’s own brand for supper. He’s living from moment to moment, only attending to what he needs to attend to right now. Unless they’re being chased by dogs, cats tend to move at a leisurely pace, never in a hurry to get anywhere. We could all learn a lot from Norman.
“Mindfulness: Be Mindful. Live In The Moment” is published by Capstone.
http://www.thisiscapstone.com/details/author/4963101/Gill__Hasson.html