WHAT POWER DO YOU HAVE ACCESS TO RIGHT NOW?

We have the power of now. We can stop and do nothing or we can keep going. We, humans, spend the majority of our day planning and looking ahead or ruminating and remembering what has passed.

But what good does any of that do? But also what harm does it do?

The harm of looking ahead or back is that we can create cesspools of anxiety and lose the joy of the moment. Our amygdala, the part of our brain responsible for releasing emotions can become enlarged. Meaning that our brain floods our body with indicators, “hey! hello! Anyone listening?! Something is happening! I am feeling stuffs here!” 

The areas that are responsible for reason thin out because we have practiced bringing our awareness to the future - something that may never happen or the past, something we have zero control over. 

Flooding the brain & body with stress-related hormones creates a dis-ease in the body.

But wait, we do have the power of change!

The concept of mindfulness is the act of cultivating a mindset through attributes and bringing our mind aware of the present state we are experiencing. We create connections between the mind and the body by focusing on the sensations and experiences currently happening through the use of our breath paired with movement, and various meditations. 

When we go through the effort of bringing our mind aware of what is going on in our body we create neuroplasticity in the brain. The amygdala which is responsible for releasing emotions shrinks. Meaning that our brain doesn’t need to flood our body; allowing the reason areas of our brain to thicken because we have practiced bringing our awareness to when, where, & why the emotion hormone is being released. 

Mindfulness helps to filter our thoughts, and experiences through attributes, recognize our patterns and provide a safe space to reframe and heal our ancestral brain, self, communication, relationships, and as a collective.

We use the breath because it is always there without us having to think about it. Making it an easy touchstone to the present. 

Though originally coming from Buddhist practice, mindfulness in itself does not conflict with any religious or scientific practice. It is a gentle, nurturing, appreciative practice. It is simply a practical way to be more in touch with the fullness of your being through a systematic process of self-observation, self-inquiry, and mindful action.

What Are These Attributes?

These attributes are deeply connected. They support and lead into each other by starting with one. 

Trust - Trust the process, no matter how messy or uneasy it appears. 

Patience - Know that any effort to bring the mind aware reaps the reward.

Non-judgment - Don’t worry about right or wrong, magical or frustrating.

Non-striving - It is how it should be for that day/time. 

Acceptance - When we hold tightly change takes longer. 

Letting Go - The closing and opening of the fist are both needed.

Beginner’s Mind - Remove the mantle of the expert - it prohibits growth. Give yourself the freedom of curiosity to try. 

Gratitude & Generosity - Becoming grateful for all learning in things “good and bad” and giving thanks to those around you.

How Do We Heal The Ancestral Brain?

If you have made it to this era, it was because you come from a line of humans who were acutely aware of the danger. They were stressed-out beings and with good reason. They gave the gift of being able to recall “bad” situations and memories to keep alive for this day and the next. 

In the modern world, this means that our brains are wired to retain “negative” thoughts like velcro and let the positive ones slip off like Teflon. 

If the ancestors have passed this on to you, you also have the ability to pass it on… or something different. I’ll write more on Epigenetics in another blog. If this is something we want to change for our future generations, we have some mindful work to do.

How Do We Heal Ourself?

Our far back ancestors gave us the Standard Operations of our brain, but our not so far back relatives, our great grandparents, grandparents, our parents passed down core stories of who we are that live rent-free in our minds. They play their tracts of “judge” and “victim” over and over often at a decibel that we don’t hear. 

We can each fill in these blanks for ourselves:

This family cares about______________, has always been_______________

You have always do ______________, you are just like________________

These experiences create attachment wounds that we walk around with like ticking time bombs. 

Unless we practice mindfulness. 

The act of mindful actions and meditations is to bring a gentle awareness away from the anxiety-filled planning of the future and the recycled ruminations of the past to just being in the current moment. 

In that we develop an understanding of the mind traps we can fall into, habitual thought patterns, catastrophizing, exaggeration of the negative and overlooking the positive, mind reading, the eternal expert, blaming, etc. 

There is nothing more we can do to alter the past, it is how it happened. We also learn that there are infinite possibilities for the future and spending so much time planning and overthinking robs you of your current joy. 

During a bodyscan meditation, you are guided to practice gently drawing your awareness to the sensations in various parts of your body. When feelings, attachments, and emotions pop in, you can help yourself to experience the texture with curiosity and then let it go moving on to the next area you are guided to. This practice slows down our nervous system responses. We are telling our body “we hear you, and we are ok.”

After a bodyscan you can work with your coach or journal what emotions and stories came up, where you felt them, then help the body further release those stress-hormones with breathwork, afterward you can then reframe the “Judge” track to one of “Discernment” and the “Victim” track to one of Compassion. 

If your judge whispers “you are doing it all wrong again.” and your victim chimes in with, “see this always happens to you.” Know that they are just defense mechanisms with the best intentions but from a flawed point of view. 

Discernment and compassion tell us, “not your best attempt but we can have a do-over. We will learn more by trying it again in a new way.”

Want to discover more about how mindfulness can heal? Click here to purchase my PDF on Mindfulness Healing

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