Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
“The Question is not what you look at but what you see.” -Thoreau Mindfulness means maintaining amoment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment.
Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them—without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.
When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.
Mindfulness has its roots in Buddhist meditation, a secular practice of mindfulness has entered the American mainstream in recent years.
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
https://youtu.be/xoLQ3qkh0w0
Why Practice Mindfulness? Mindfulness is good for our bodies: Studies have shown that it
boosts our immune system’s ability to fight off illness and can be effective in fighting obesity.
Mindfulness is good for our minds: Several studies have found that mindfulness increases positive emotions while reducing
negative emotions and stress, helps us focus and increases density of gray matter in brain regions linked to learning, memory, emotion regulation, and empathy.
Mindfulness fosters compassion and altruism: Mindfulness training makes us more likely to help someone in need, and can enhance relationships.
Mindfulness is helpful: to parents, schools, health care professionals, even people in prison.
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
https://youtu.be/qzR62JJCMBQ
Jon Kabat-Zinn emphasizes that mindfulness can be cultivated through formal meditation, but that’s not the only way. “It’s not really about sitting in the full lotus, like pretending you’re a statue in a British museum.”
“It’s about living your life as if it really mattered, moment by moment by moment by moment.”
Here are a few key components of practicing mindfulness that Kabat-Zinn and others identify:
Pay close attention to your breathing, especially when you’re feeling intense emotions.
Notice—really notice—what you’re sensing in a given moment, the sights, sounds, and smells that ordinarily slip by without reaching your conscious awareness.
Recognize that your thoughts and emotions are fleeting and do not define you, an insight that can free you from negative thought
patterns.
Tune into your body’s physical sensations, from the water hitting your skin in the shower to the way your body rests in your office chair.
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Happiness Practice: Mindfullness Meditation TypesThe body scan, where you focus your attention along your body, from the toes to the top of your head, trying to be aware and accepting of whatever you sense in these body parts, without
controlling or changing those feelings.
The raisin exercise, where you slowly use all of your senses, one after another. This exercise is intended to help you focus on the present moment, and can be tried with different foods.
Walking meditation, where you focus on the movement of your body as you take step after step, your feet touching and leaving the ground.
Loving-kindness meditation, involves extending feelings of compassion toward people, starting with yourself then branching out to others.
https://youtu.be/BiLJxCC1f1E https://youtu.be/tYDXQQBojk8
https://youtu.be/RhsyqeefpXI https://youtu.be/_IFvablc6EI
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Do you savor life or let everyday stresses control you? In other words, how mindful are you?
The practice of mindfulness has been linked to happiness, health, and psychological well-being, but many of us may not know exactly what it is, let alone how to cultivate it.
The link below is a quiz that draws on a mindfulness scale developed by researchers at La Salle and Drexel University, Please answer as honestly as possible about how frequently you experienced each of the following 20 statements over the past week.
When you’re done, you’ll learn more about what mindfulness is, how much you currently practice it, and how you can
promote more of it in your life.
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/quizzes/take_quiz/4#embed-p romo
Let's Discuss
Mindfulness, meditation,
contemplative practice, centering prayer, attention skills, inner awareness. Where does mindfulness fit into your life
experience, and how do you think increasing it might increase your happiness?
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Being Mindful When Meditation Isnt Possible
“I’m a useless meditator.” “The idea of meditation is attractive, but I can’t stomach the static silence that is involved. Plus, I can’t often shut myself away in a room for 10 minutes, without the distraction of children or noise.”
“Sometimes when I’m rushing, I’ll notice that I’m ‘rushing home to
relax.”
The solution is to try to alter your approach to ‘stressful’ situations, for example”
“The moment I become present and realize that I don’t have to rush home to relax, I have arrived in the present moment and can choose to ‘be’ different.”
Walking Meditation: Instead of carving out
practice time, we can learn how to be present while simply walking.
Give Your Time To Someone Else : Studies show that when people gave their time away, they felt that they had more time to spare, compared to those who spent time with themselves.
Try the RAIN practice
Recognize what is going on;
Allow the experience to be there, just as it is;
Investigate with kindness;
Natural awareness, which comes from not identifying with the experience.
https://youtu.be/HWGoW9si3_w?list=PLzvRx_johoA89chxxeg6luIhgaB027MeS
Mindfulness Is Presence
It’s certainly easier to make assumptions about people than it is to spend time getting to know someone. What happens when we put assumptions to the test? What are we missing out on because we're not present and so busy that we assume we already "know" a person.
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Resilience is the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma,
tragedy, threats, or even significant sources of stress — such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors. It means
“bouncing back” from difficult experiences.
Research has shown that resilience is ordinary, not extraordinary.
Being resilient does not mean that a person doesn’t experience difficulty or distress.
Resilience is not a trait that people either have or do not have. It involves behaviors, thoughts, and actions that can be learned and developed in anyone.
Factors in Resilience
• Caring and supportive relationships
• The capacity to make realistic plans and take steps to carry them out
• A positive view of yourself and confidence in your strengths and abilities
• Skills in communication and problem solving
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
How To Cultivate Resilience Resilience is a personal journey. People do not all react the same to traumatic and stressful life events. An approach to building
resilience that works for one person might not work for another so most people employ varying strategies.
They know their boundaries. They keep good company.
They cultivate self-awareness. They practice acceptance. They’re willing to sit in silence.
They don’t have to have all the answers. They have a menu of self-care habits. They enlist their team.
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Let’s Discuss
We know what resilience is and factors and practices that people employ or that encourage it. What is a set back that you have experienced? How did you cope? What strategies do you feel work for you?
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
Mindfulness and
Resilience
The benefits of mindfulness are both
well-established and wide-ranging.
Studies on subjects ranging from
college students to Marines have found the practice reduces stress and leads to higher levels of well-being.
New research from India points to a connection between mindfulness and resilience.
A study featuring 327 undergraduates asked students completed a series of surveys measuring their mindfulness, life satisfaction, emotional state, and level of resilience.
Mindfulness—or a lack thereof—was measured by their responses to 15 assertions, such as “I tend to walk quickly to get where I’m going without paying attention to what I experience along the way.” To gauge their resilience, participants were presented with 10
self-descriptive statements, including “able to adapt to change,” “can stay focused under pressure,” and are “not easily discouraged by failure.” They responded to each on a five-point scale (“not at all” to “true nearly all of the time”).
As predicted, the researchers found “individuals with higher mindfulness have greater resilience, thereby increasing their life
satisfaction.” They note that resilience “can be seen as an important source of subjective well-being,” and point out many ways mindfulness can promote this state of mind.
Unit 5: Mindfulness and Resilience
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D54qs_cjOWE
According to Bonnie Benard , resilience is something we all possess. It is an internal drive to satisfy our most basic psychological needs. It helps us overcome
obstacles to staying on a healthy developmental path. And it is the reason why
many kids who experience poverty or abuse still turn out OK.
Drawing upon a decade’s worth of resilience research from a wide range of scholars, Benard shows that
negative factors in a child’s life don’t necessarily predict negative outcomes, whereas there is a strong association between positive factors and positive outcomes.
Benard stresses that this does not mean we should ignore the effects of abuse or poverty on children.
Rather, she argues, we can offset these effects by giving children the right kinds of support, enabling them to find their own natural strengths.
At the core of Benard’s argument is the idea that the most supportive environments for children contain three elements:
Caring relationships High expectations
Opportunities to be an active member of a community.
