The New Change Your Brain, Change Your Pain: Based on EMDR by Mark Grant

Author:Mark Grant [Mark Grant]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mark Grant, MA
Published: 2016-08-30T16:00:00+00:00

Mindfulness strategies

Mindfulness strategies involve top-down regulation of attention to get distance from your emotional responses to what is happening. Mindfulness strategies include meditation, breath awareness, and living mindfully. Mindfulness can also be part of some spiritual practices. Mindfulness meditation is a top-down strategy which involves focusing on what you are feeling in a non-judgmental way and mentally detaching from negative feelings or thoughts which might be inflating your pain or distress. Mindfulness mainly involves the PFC (responsible for planning, decision-making) and the insula (integrates sensation and emotion and processes social emotions such as empathy and love).

Mindfulness meditation with its emphasis on open, here and now attention involves a shift from left-hemisphere thinking to right-hemisphere, in-the-moment experience. It’s the right hemisphere that enables you to feel love, beauty, serenity, and joy. The right hemisphere also controls the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for making you feel calm. Mindfulness meditation thus results in an increased ability to stand back and view how you (and others) are feeling more empathically and compassionately. Neurologically, mindfulness leads to decreased activity of the PFC, normalization of DMN functioning and more balanced activity between the brain’s two hemispheres. Below you will find three emotional regulation exercises based on mindfulness. They are also all available as part of the series of downloads that accompany this book.

Mindfulness meditation exercise

1.Assume a comfortable position.

2.Begin by attending to whatever physical sensations you notice in your body.

3.Try to “just notice” whatever is happening in your body in a detached way without thinking about it or analyzing it too much.

4.JUST NOTICE whatever you’re feeling…

5.Avoid analyzing, thinking, or problem-solving. If you catch yourself doing this, just bring your attention back to just noticing whatever is going on.

6.Notice your breathing, the gradual rise and fall of your chest with each breath.

7.Notice how your chest expands with each in-breath and deflates with each out-breath. You may notice that there is a slight feeling of tension with each in-breath, and a feeling of relief with each out-breath…

8.As you focus on your breathing, you might like to think about how NATURAL breathing is, how CONNECTED breathing makes you feel with your body and the rhythm of life. You might also enjoy the realization that breathing happens AUTOMATICALLY, without your having to make any special effort.

9.As you continue to focus on your breathing, you may also notice the rate of your breathing slowing down, as your mind becomes more detached from your everyday consciousness.

10.If any other thoughts or feelings intrude into your awareness of yourself, just notice them and let them go by.

11.Notice of anything changes about how you are feeling, including your awareness of what you are feeling. If nothing seems different, that’s fine too.

12.Just keep breathing and keep noticing. Whatever you feel or notice, just observe it and let it go.

13.Continue doing this for fifteen to twenty minutes.

14.At the end of that time, give yourself a few moments to gradually reorient yourself

15.If you have been able to maintain your attention on your breath reasonably consistently, you should

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