Mindfulness & Stress Reduction

[blloyd]

My name is Brendan Lloyd. I'm a psychologist in Private Practice in a town on the most Easterly point of Australia, Byron Bay. In this post I get around to asking for feedback on an article. I provide the link at the bottom of this post.

I've been interested in Buddhism since my 20s which is a time-span of over 40 years now. My, how time flies when you're having fun.

I must say that I am not a practicing Buddhist. On the other hand I am very much a Mindfulness practitioner and teacher for the past 16 or so years. I do no formal meditation.

When I started out in private practice I used to spend a lot of time with clients trying to get them to meditate. I’d guess that about 10% of my clients had any real interest in meditation; and out of those 10%, one or two would do meditation outside the therapy sessions. This is the same for relaxation exercises, body-scan, two-minute breathing, etc. So I was determined to find another way to get my clients to practise Mindfulness.

Clearly Mindfulness meditation is different to Buddhist or focused-style meditations. For example, the Walking Meditation or the Body Scan meditations are not at all an altered-state experience. Or at least it is not the intension to create an altered-state. The intension with Mindfulness meditation is to develop that consciousness muscle.

I take the definition of Mindfulness and work from there. There is no mention of meditation in the definition of Mindfulness. I understand that the definition as, ‘Mindfulness is paying attention in the present moment on purpose with a particularly non-judging attitude’. The Mindfulness meditations can help you to develop the skills of conscious living. We would be limiting ourselves if we were to believe that meditation is the only way to develop these skills.

I am very interested in the mind-body connection. Mindfulness makes a lot of scenes once you dive into the mechanics of the mind-body connection. There is nothing intuitive here, just good science and careful reasoning. Mindfulness has a lot to offer anyway, but even more to offer once you understand the mind-body connection as a process. What is more, you can describe the process without mentioning Buddhism or meditation. The mind-body connection can be explained purely in terms of psychology and physiology. Mindfulness then becomes the way in which you use the information.

My job as a psychologist is to educate and teach the skills. To do this I need to find ways to make the information and instructions accessible. To this end I have written a series of articles that I give to my clients as we move through the therapeutic process.

The basic teaching is an article titled 'The Stress Model & Stress Reduction'. This article describes the mind-body connection as a process. Everything that I do with my clients is underpinned by The Stress Model.

I am happy for anyone to read 'The Stress Model & Stress Reduction' and to provide me with feedback. What I am interested in is the accessibility of the information. Any model that is to be of use to people must be accessible. Of course any article such as this one will have a large range of readers who all have their own levels of comprehension. I have done my best to keep it simple without being facile of simplistic. The article in its current form is in its Nth rewrite and I still look for ways to improve.

byronbaypsychologist.com.au/Documents/The-Stress-Model-and-Stress-Reduction.pdf

[JonW]

Hello Brendan,
You say, 'We would be limiting ourselves if we were to believe that meditation is the only way to develop these skills.' That may well be true. But here at Everyday Mindfulness we encourage people to follow a meditation-based practice.
Having had a quick look at your site, my opinion is that your psychological approach is not a good fit for our members. Perhaps you would have better luck targeting those with an interest in psychology.
Best of luck for the future,
Jon

[blloyd]

Hi Jon

Sorry, it sounds like you think that I'm knocking meditation.
(I tracked someone from the UK accessing my website yesterday and it seems that whoever (you) may have taken yourself to an area that wouldn't have help you much. I think that you typed the wrong URL in to the address bar.)

So are you saying that you are not open to the essential practice of mindfulness without the meditation, in spite of agreeing that meditation is not essential?

I'm saying two things...
1. There are other ways to lean the essentials and if people don't want to meditate and they do want Mindfulness then why not make Mindfulness available? Your website is titled Everyday Mindfulness.

2. On your site, are your practitioners talking about Mindfulness meditation or Buddhist meditation? There is a difference between the two types. I'm all in favor of the various Mindfulness meditations; but do you think it's possible to get the general public interested? It's in the too hard basket.

OK, here's another way to look at it, 'just because you have lapsed on your meditation practice, doesn't necessarily mean that you are not practicing Mindfulness'.

So I guess judging by your post above, you will have my account cancelled and I've been excommunicated for heresy.

[JonW]

'So are you saying that you are not open to the essential practice of mindfulness without the meditation, in spite of agreeing that meditation is not essential?'

This site is devoted to meditation-based mindfulness practice. That's what we share ideas about here.
It's as simple as that.
Best wishes,
Jon

[barbs55]

I think most of us on here who have used Mindfulness for Stress Reduction of Anxiety would say that they have found that Mindfulness without a regular Meditation practice is hard to maintain. It may give you some useful ways to approach anxiety or panic attacks but it is unlikely to make a lasting difference if not grounded in some sort of daily practice (which maybe 20 minutes on an App). This is just because it is hard to learn to let your anxious thoughts go in the middle of a busy day, and doing so in the quiet of your home helps you to see how to do it and get more confident to apply it in real life.

This site is open to all who are interested in Mindfulness, some of us are very secular in approach, and some are Buddhists. I think the Mindfulness approach to stress handling (since stress is a normal part of everyone's life) as pioneered by Jon Kabat-Zinn is very much secular based, and it is this sort of mindfulness which is currently very popular, and the classic 8 week course he pioneered IS grounded in a daily practice. I personally don't think there are any short-cuts, although having done both, I can see links between CBT and Mindfulness in terms of not treating your thoughts as facts.