So what is wrong with me?

The short answer is that 16 years ago I was diagnosed as manic depressive (now Bipolar 1). If you’re satisfied with that as an explanation then either you are an official (who needs a label and no more) or a fool. Of course I had been diagnosed several times before that. In the seven years after my first meeting with a psychiatrist in 1987; it was first a reactive depression, then a psychotic episode, then severe depression, a short gap of normality, then schizoid affective disorder, and more depression before it settled upon Bipolar.

My perception of my problems, or acceptance of such labels, changed over the years too. Before entering the mental health system I was quite clear psychiatry was the ‘dismal science’, but within days of my first admission I’d lost track of what I felt my problems were. I’d entered a new world of psychological interpretations, but had also begun to be influenced by the clients around me. The end result was that over a period of a decade I became completely converted to defining who, and what I was, by the use of psychiatric labels. I came to the belief that ‘bipolar’ explained myself, to myself. And for a few years more, no doubt with much confirmation bias, I remained thoroughly dis-abled!

It wasn’t until six or seven years ago, when I radically changed my ‘world view’, that I had to then set about revising my view of myself. I began to view the world, from minute to minute, as well as over millions of years, from the point of view of Darwinian evolution by natural selection, and that let me step-out of ‘the preoccupation with self’ that seems to paralyse so many people in mental distress. Viewing all human activity in evolutionary terms, including all social and cultural activity, allows you to see ‘before your very eyes‘ the unfolding of human psychological behaviour on a daily basis - how the interaction between people (including mental health workers, clients and carers) usually reproduces, and only very occasionally transforms, relationships. All of which has led to what verges on contempt for the world of mental health, as evidenced by many of the previous posts on this blog.

Of course an expression of contempt is hugely powerful, if you see it in the face of a partner, then the relationship may as well to over. I haven’t been a client of mental health services for three years, I’ve ceased almost all ‘involvement in Involvement’ or participation, refused for six months now to meet with anyone in an official mental health building and severed links with mental health academics.

I’m now left with two kinds of explanation of myself, between which I flip from time to time. The less common one might be titled; ‘How the hell should I know what’s wrong with me?’ For the sorry facts are that I’ve spent my life not getting the jobs I wanted and being largely unemployed, and unemployable - unable to live to a set routine, accept authority or responsibility for others. A life of not sleeping with the women I really wanted to, but having a succession of short-term relationships with whoever would have me, plus long periods of living alone. And despite all the studying I’ve done, I still don‘t know why I’m largely ignored by the rest of the world. For example, not so long ago I wrote;

‘Just had one of those horrific moments of despair (thankfully they never last long) when I realise that by being honest and true to myself I’ve lived a life of broken relationships, unemployment, mental illness and academic rejection. As a result what blissful moments there have been have largely been experienced alone. And yet any outsider looking-on would conclude that although the day began and ended alone, it was full of good company and worthwhile activity. The more ‘well’ and socially skilled I become, the more angry and isolated I feel.’

So one kind of explanation is that insight has brought me nothing, but that should not be unexpected with someone so unable to understand others. In this sense the question: ‘So what is wrong with me?’ is for others to answer.

The second explanation is the academic one, the alternative to psychiatry, the more neuro-scientifically flavoured one:

a) There is natural variation in the limbic system (which regulates emotion) between the brains of individuals living in any particular environment; my inheritance is that I’m more highly sensitive to my environment than most others. Such sensitivity is occasionally useful, but when the majority in my environment are less sensitive, my emotional reactions look to others like rapid and consistent overreactions. Equally, I’m likely to quickly become over-stimulated and feel the need to socially withdraw. Such reactions occur over the whole range of emotions, which the crude psychiatric category of ‘mood’ hardly begins to encompass.

b) So when it comes to nurture (social learning) individuals bring their particular genetic inheritance to learning in particular environments. But whatever the background and context, the outcome is that we learn (using the inherited capacity to imitate) varying degrees of empathy (the ability to feel what others feel) and a ‘theory of mind’ (knowing how others think). Bringing the consequences of a) to my own particular environment, my ability for empathy and to a lesser extent to share a theory of mind were blocked. I even have problems recognising the universal facial expressions of emotion. So when psychiatry focuses on something called ‘depression’ they are attempting to treat the consequences (rejection or ejection from normal purposeful social interaction) rather than the cause.

c) Finally there is a third process which even neuroscience, let alone psychiatry, hardly recognises and about which I’m only aware of the consequences - and that is handedness. I am very left-handed, instinctively a southpaw, but I also want to move anti-clockwise, often transpose figures and letters - all in a world designed by right-handed people. But of course I’ve known no other world and I am well adapted. Nevertheless I have the horrible suspicion that these instinctive ‘reversals’ happen all the time when I try to relate emotionally to others - and if they do, what must others feel about me?

However one of the implications of the above, and much of the content of this blog, is that a search or journey for conscious explanation is merely a ‘story we tell ourselves’, after the fact and of no causal consequences, and so must be of no importance when attempting to transform one’s own, or anyone else’s behaviour - our routines, rituals, habits and addictions. One should of course be asking what does Nick Hewling do, and ‘how’ does he do it?

I like to think of myself as a mental health peer supporter. I have much greater confidence in my understanding of people when they’re crazy than when they’re together! I almost always know how to react in a useful way. I’ve done my 10,000 hours and some of that learning has become instinctual. On the one hand I’ve always despised those workers who don’t live in the area in which they work and therefore don’t know a client’s territory, who believe their work can be professionalised by impersonal rules of best practice and imagine therefore they can use some different psychology than in their ‘personal’ lives. But equally I’ve come to mistrust the kind of peer support that has been turned into work, formalised and made ‘intentional’ - which rapidly comes to resemble the kind of talking therapy it was intended to replace. I’m accountable only to myself, my rules of effective and ethical conduct have evolved over two decades. I can operate when I like, where I like. To my mind you cannot be an effective helper unless you can do it standing up in the street, or in a bus queue with an audience of ordinary people. What the person in mental distress needs, is support to feel at home in normal social spaces. And I don’t mind occasionally looking crazy to outsiders in order to build a rapport with someone who is being activity avoided by others. Confidences can be offered and received when necessary in the normal way, in close proximity with appropriately lowered voices. Of course such informal peer support is increasingly facilitated by web-based social networks.

What workers think they achieve in one hour in an isolated consulting room I cannot imagine, I’m often with clients before and after such an appointment and actively undoing their work. Having lived in my local area a long time I’m now quite conspicuous, but have come to know the routine of so many clients that I can have as many ‘chance’ encounters as I like. My activity is also purposeful in another sense, I do ‘set the stage’ a lot, contriving the time, location and activity - so as to create an atmosphere conducive to new learning. Motivation can only come from others, and in pursuing people one purses knowledge and skill, I practice social skills like I practice rolling and smoking a cigarette. I know what others want from me; warmth, confidence and competence, humour, to feel what strength I have so they can feel safe and good about themselves. They want my ability to be serious without making heavy talk. I do it by turning my fear and judgement into curiosity, confidence and competence, doubt into accurate assessment, the desire to control into the ability to live with change and uncertainty. I model, verbally and more importantly non-verbally, more effective ways of being with.

It's the company you keep! (updated 2014)

(Christakis and Fowler 2008)

I've been directing people to the short article below since it first appeared on the Edge.org site almost two years ago. On the surface it's just a small investigation of a few hundred of the early student users of facebook - but give it some thought and a second read and the implications are enormous. Much of my writing on this blog insists that the real world, along with the virtual one, is like the article describes. Mental distress is made and unmade everyday through our interaction with others. When it persists for long periods we become progressively more isolated. Mapping social networks suggest how such a process works.

Social Networks and Happiness

(Nick Christakis homepage, and on video How social networks predict epidemics plus The hidden  influence of social networks)

Motivation and acting 'as if'

'Evolutionary theorists argue that social intelligence was the primordial talent of the human brain, reflected in our outsize cortex, and that what we now think of as “intelligence” piggybacked on neural systems used for getting along in a complex group' (Goleman 2007:334).

Given the social model I’ve been pursuing on this blog, then in what sense can an individual act purposefully and ‘make something happen’? Fulfil a fantasy about an imagined future - a ‘desired outcome’? Change and adaptation provokes anxiety for anyone who has become isolated. But to find a different way of being in the world requires getting back into some form of social involvement, navigating and negotiating a way back into public spaces in order to gain acceptance from others, some mutuality and sense of social belonging despite the overt and covert negative messages that come from society at large. And in what has become an unknown environment you have no choice but to jump in at the deep end, and act ‘as if’ you already have a competence you don’t yet feel. Once in a new environment however, motivated by others who have become important to you, you can begin to acquire new skills in living, by taking risks and acting as if you were already the person others desire you to be.

People like mysteries and not the idea that psychological abilities can be learnt as a set of skills. But the mastery of a skill brings joy, flow or happiness. That loss of self-consciousness first experienced in childhood play. Improvisation is innovation in one’s own behaviour. The traditional ‘four stages of competence’ learning model on the psychological states associated with the acquisition of skill (the origins of which are unknown) can be adapted for self-awareness in general. Unconscious incompetence (I don’t know, what I don’t know), conscious incompetence (I know I don’t know, but can’t do), conscious competence (I know, I can do, but others can see I’ve not mastered the skill) and unconscious competence (I and others take my competence for granted).

I learnt how to be crazy from imitating the psychologically troubled and becoming progressively isolated from the mental healthy - and I learnt to be sane through others ‘taking me by the hand’ and placing me in new social environments where I was forced to act in novel ways, and realise the way to mental wellbeing is to imitate the mental healthy.

Goleman, D (2007) Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships Arrow: London

What is social neuroscience?

Neuroscience has expanded hugely in the last fifteen years or so since researchers have been able to buy time on hospital fMRI scanners during off-peak periods. By attaching ever more sophisticated computer technology, it has become possible to collect data that promises to close a major ‘missing link’ - between how the brain and behaviour of one person, influences that of another - how the physical science of the human body links to the psychological and the sociological. How the verbal and nonverbal communication of one person becomes that of another. Equally the results show a trend towards the brain being much more flexible, adaptive and capable of new learning (in all age groups) than was previously thought. Indeed the key question to ask now may well be; how do people manage to stick to habits and routines which narrow the possibilities of their lives when their brains have the capacity to do otherwise?

(Most neuroscientists proceed on the assumption that Darwinian evolution by natural selection applies to the human species - both biologically and culturally; or to phrase it differently; the rules of evolution apply to the maturation of the physical structure of an individual brain, plus all it’s acquired contents - all the learnt stuff!)

So researchers are now talking tentatively about a social neuroscience; how the daily physical experience of the world of others maps into the creation and growth of new connections in the brain leading to the strengthening or weakening of neural pathways (a physical process of chemical encoding) and of course, how it all comes out again before proceeding into someone else’s brain.

Asking ‘why?’ type causal questions, or trying to attribute agency becomes increasingly pointless. Rather we should stick to ‘how?’ When someone makes an assertion, the right response really is; who told you that? Nothing written on my blog is original, it’s just a series of links - OK! (And how come all these brain scientists are into eastern philosophies and meditation?)

Start with two very short TED talks; first Chris deCharms

http://www.ted.com/talks/christopher_decharms_scans_the_brain_in_real_time.html then proceed to the mighty ‘Rama’ http://www.ted.com/talks/vs_ramachandran_the_neurons_that_shaped_civilization.html For a good written introduction go to Daniel Goleman’s Social Intelligence http://www.amazon.co.uk/Social-Intelligence-Science-Human-Relationships/dp/0099464926/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1263909589&sr=1-1 (he finally got the right title for a book!)

An evolutionary approach to mental health

What follows is a temporary, but necessary diversion into ‘grand theory’. Necessary, because any approach to mental health that isn’t compatible with a theory of human behaviour in general doesn’t stand a chance. (Those stuck in the insular world of psychiatry and clinical psychology please note). I’ve included references this time, just to give pause to those tempted to come down on me ‘like a ton of bricks’!

I have an evolving definition and explanation for what mental distress (disorder or illness, mild or severe) is. It shows itself as a misplaced fear of others. Personal relationships breakdown, followed by an inability to form and maintain new ones. The sufferer becomes progressively more emotionally and cognitively isolated (which may or may not involve physical isolation too).

Madness results from our failure to constantly update and modify the mental map of the world we have in our brain. If we do not ‘test’ our predictions, beliefs, dreams, thoughts, internal dialogue, fantasies, hypotheses, plans, ideas about how the world is, and what the people within it think and feel, our map becomes rapidly out of date. If we act with an out of date model of the world - we will look mad to others, and they will treat us as mad. If others don’t share a large part of our model of reality we are emotionally and cognitively isolated. Though none of us ‘see’ the world as it really is, we all rely on making a more or less accurate map; by sharing we come to have a more complete understanding than we could ever achieve alone. The ability to doubt and live with uncertainty, and hence know that we must constantly test our vision of the world - is sanity. To control and fix our view is the first step on the road to disaster. And of course the only way to maintain an unchanging outlook is to isolate oneself from any evidence that might contradict it. If we fail to observe (insufficient data) or misinterpret (wrong theory) then the map becomes more out of date. If our prediction disagrees with the experiment it is wrong. An unmodified and out of date model of the world is one where our thoughts and feelings are anchored in the past, hence our predictions of the future may be hopelessly wrong. Mental disorder is emotional and cognitive isolation to varying degrees.

Emotional reactions always come first, from what our five senses are telling us in the present moment, only afterwards do we attach thoughts. If we attach thoughts that come from the past, then we are operating with an out of date model of the world. So often we are not aware of what, in the present moment is ‘cueing’ our emotions and reproducing redundant thoughts. It is natural to be in a meditative state and to focus on the present moment. When the mind drifts away the discipline is to learn to let go, again and again. It is the opposite of taking control. It is about allowing decisions to make themselves, of not worrying about an unknowable future and refusing to get involved in hopes and expectations. The goal should be greater mental awareness of others, at the same time as being more physically relaxed. A full-time activity done with the eyes open. Meditation is not a set of skills that once acquired, can be called on at leisure; for one’s inability to operate in the world, based on the learning made in past relationships, will always return unless such skills are continuously practiced. Unwanted emotions and thoughts from the past will always ‘crash-in’ - meditation is a continuous process of letting go. The myth of self-control leads most to imagine that without it, mayhem and moral collapse will ensue. In practice, the need to manage others falls away and you become a better companion!

The best introduction to meditation I have come across, as a way of operating throughout the day, is to be found in Harrison (1994), and can be read along with his articles on how the core skills have been extracted from their religious context (Harrison 2005-). Sue Blackmore goes further, much further, by placed meditation techniques in the context of human cultural and biological evolution, and how we have evolved the very idea of a ‘self’ (Blackmore 2000:219-246). It’s possible to move towards a resolution of the contradictions of modern life, and the mental distress they give rise to, by developing both an evolutionary perspective and by being aware of the promise of social neuroscience (deCharms 2008, Goleman 2007, Ramachandran 2009). If you view daily life as evolution by natural selection, from minute to minute as well as on a timescale of the last 180,000 years (since we became homo sapiens with our full range of mental capabilities and capacities), see the biological and social as evolving in parallel and feeding back on each other (though at very different rates), then other kinds of questions and explanations suggest themselves (Oppenheimer 2004, Dawkins 1989, Blackmore 2000, Stevens & Price 2000, Nesse & Williams 1996, Nesse 2006).

We have lived out ninety-five per cent of our history as hunter-gathers, moving through and living from the environment. The last eight to ten thousand years, since we have sought to transform the environment (with the invention of agriculture, ideas of ownership and permanent settlement), has been an exceptional, perverse, untypical and abnormal period. Our point of reference for mental wellbeing should be the pre-agricultural world, where we evolved to be nomadic, as part of groups (‘bands’) of no more than about one hundred and thirty people, consisting of relatively close genetic relatives. You cannot ‘know’, as in feel an emotional attachment for, more than about that number of people.

Empathy (the ability to feel what others feel) and a ‘theory of mind’ (knowing how others think) derive from humans almost unique ability to imitate using the ‘mirror neurons’ of the brain, and give the capability to identify with, and be accepted by your group! (Blackmore 2000, Ramachandran 2000, 2003:97-131, 2006, 2007, 2009) If these abilities are blocked by life experience, then you become isolated from the people you are genetically most attached and attracted to. The last eight to ten thousand years has seen the construction of a world containing mental illness. And the culmination is the development of mental health workers, with the normal human capacities, who then try to empathise and share the ‘theory of mind’ of the unhealthy! This leads to the maintenance or reproduction of mental distress. Therapists should be leaders, mentors and role models to whom a client can apprentice themselves, and should not try to connect or catch the habits of the ill. As clients we must imitate the mentally healthy. Three out of four people don’t have a mental health problem during their life times.

And it’s not ‘faulty’ genes either, it is because we did our early learning with very close genetic relatives to whom we are automatically attached. Problems arise as a result of conflicts between the quality of our learning and our attachment to the person from whom we learnt. If you were separated from your close genetic relatives, your learning may well have been exceptional, but your life may become a search for those you are instinctively attached to. Equally you may search the world in vain for a ‘soul mate’, because it is so unlikely in modern society that you will ever meet that person, from the edge of your natural ‘group’, with whom you have a relatively close genetic attraction. It never was nature or nurture - but the ways in which your personal learning, your own cultural evolution, conflicted with the demands of your own biology. Your genes will determine to whom you are attached and attracted to, but it is with your learning that mental disorder is created and maintained.

References　
Blackmore, S (2000) The Meme Machine Oxford University: Oxford
Dawkins, R (1989) The Selfish Gene Oxford University: Oxford
deCharms, C (2008) Christopher deCharms looks inside the brain TED conference presentation Feb 2008

Goleman, D (2007) Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships Arrow: London
Harrison, E (1994) Teach Yourself To Meditate Piatkus: London
Harrison, E (2005-) articles for Nova Magazine available at http://www.perthmeditationcentre.com.au/articles/index.htm [10.1.10]
Nesse, R.M (2006) response to the ‘2005 Edge Question’ in Brockman, J (ed.) What We Believe But Cannot Prove Pocket: London
Nesse, R.M and Williams, G.C (1996) Evolution and Healing: The New Science of Darwinian Healing Phoenix: London
Oppenheimer, S (2004) Out Of Eden: The peopling of the world Robinson: London
Ramachandran, V. S (2000) MIRROR NEURONS and imitation learning as the driving force behind “the great leap forward” in human evolutionhttp://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html [19.7.08]
Ramachandran, V. S (2003) The Emerging Mind Profile/BBC: London
Ramachandran, V. S (2006) ‘Mirror Neurons And The Brain In The Vat’ response to the 2006 Edge Question at; http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran06/ramachandran06_index.html [3.6.09]
Ramachandran, V. S (2007) Self Awareness: The Last Frontier http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/rama08/rama08_index.html [6.1.09]
Ramachandran, V. S (2009) The neurons that shape civilisation TED conference presentation.

Stephens, A and Price, J (2000) Evolutionary Psychiatry: A new beginning Routledge: London

Meditation techniques for mental health

Meditation is about being more physically relaxed at the same time as gaining greater mental awareness - throughout the day and with your eyes open! It’s about being in the present moment and therefore more grounded in reality. Despite the rather naive acceptance by some psychiatric authorities of mystical claims about ‘altered states of consciousness’; misunderstanding over an apparent connection with trance, dream like states and psychosis; and the timid approval by the NHS of just one aspect of meditation known as Mindfulness (sometimes referred to as ‘kitchen-sink meditation’) - it is, once stripped of its religious elements, the most important tool I have against madness. It’s the best anti-psychotic there is.

Untangling the myth however is not easy, you need to ‘suspend your disbelief’ and consider for a moment that the meditator is more in touch with reality than you are. You may imagine someone on a mountainside, eyes closed in the lotus position, but the real practitioners may be passing you in the street unnoticed - they blend into the social landscape because they are in the here and now, whilst you are preoccupied with your own thoughts. Your conscious thoughts can only be about the past or future, in the present you only have your senses with which to literally ‘feel’ your way around. Realise your emotions come from the data your senses are giving you now - then you’ll have it! It’s a shock, like waking up from a dream, you are back in the real world for the first time since - when? Suddenly self-consciousness, anxiety and fear can be put to their proper use; of spotting the occasional occurrence of real danger. You can get back to the proper use of your time, finding activities that match your skills and can become absorbed in, achieving some degree of ‘flow’, that sense of happiness that comes from the loss of self-consciousness - something we all felt in childhood play.

The first ‘pay off’ from meditation is the awareness of where you feel fear in your body, what in the environment has triggered or cued your brain to remember some past unpleasant association. It may be an unwelcome series of sensations to begin with, but it soon becomes a useful revelation. This is followed by learning to let go of unwanted thoughts and feelings about the past and future. In the process you can stare life in the face - as it is now.

One of the things meditation tackles well is our ‘illusion of self-control’. We like to think we are consciously in control of ourselves all the time. We distrust our basic, spontaneous impulsive actions. We must be constantly choosing all the time as free independent individuals. As a result we have become acutely self-conscious. Yet there is only so much we can keep at the forefront of our minds at any one time. We come to consider it a failure or lapse in our own standards when we inevitably end up following the impulses of biology, and the learning we unconsciously achieved earlier in our lives. Meditation, by placing us back in the present moment and allowing us to feel what cues us, what stimulates our senses, shows us just how unnecessary the time and trouble we spent on worrying about decisions really was. Decisions are all about an unpredictable future over which we can exert little control. However, we can learn to trust our own brains to get on with it, become grounded in the environment of the present, reconnected to the social world of others, and just be.

Objectives

- to concentrate on the present moment all the time; let go of any thoughts that come up (knowing they can only be about the past or future), know too that in any one moment there is no observable ‘self’; to notice what is happening (not a series of events but continuous change), to pay equal attention to all that can be seen and therefore know what habitually cues you to feel or respond in a particular way (your attention, reactions, emotions, and the ‘story’ you tell yourself about who you are) - and so ultimately realise that it is the actions of others that is creating you.

- to understand that the ‘I’ or ‘me’ that appears when you want something is an obstacle to your sense of wellbeing; to allow decisions to make themselves (unconsciously) since the conscious self is not in control and actions happen whether or not you will them - sense the freedom that comes from knowing you don’t have to try to do anything!

- to refuse to get involved in desires and hopes (about an unknowable future), to know that it is quite possible to live without hope (now is all there is), that in the world of the present you can stop inflicting your desires on others, stop the harm we often do and be able to notice others more.

Finding A Focus

At the core of meditation is the ability to focus on something; whether it be within the body, an external object or a mental image. Focus is not concentration as such, but a fixed point of reference, something you always come back to. A fixed point, baseline or benchmark from which you can navigate your mental interpretation of the physical world. Physical relaxation must come first and the easiest way in is to focus on the breath - not control it, just ‘watch’ it. Once relaxed you can begin to focus away from yourself towards the environment you find yourself in. In a natural environment it makes sense to let your gaze rest on the horizon and make that your focus. Whether we like it or not our attention will be constantly distracted by whatever our senses pick up from the environment and the internal thoughts and feelings prompted by those cues. The ‘trick’ is to always come back to the focus, again and again. You acknowledge the thought or perception, and let it go in the act of always returning to the focus. When truly focused, for however shorter time that may be, you think of nothing else. However the choice of focus at any one time does need to be something that holds your interest - something you enjoy exploring. Good focusing is a joy, as you begin to learn to let go you can start to recapture that childhood sensing and feeling, which never required conscious thought and has a fascination all of it’s own.

Balance

There is however a need to create a balance, between physical relaxation (too much of which leads to sleep) and greater mental awareness (which if not matched with the right degree of relaxation, may provoke a degree of anxiety about ‘what’s going on’ and increase self-consciousness). Stress is not an external force, but occurs within the body, our attention is usually directed outwards so we don’t recognise it in our bodies. In the process of physically relaxing we can identify stress and let it go; so our increasing awareness becomes a tool with which to see the world rather than a product of anxiety that may cause us to turn away.

Relaxation

If the first requirement is physical relaxation, and that is dependant on focused breathing, then an unrestricted diaphragm is a precondition of meditation - it is not the choice of posture itself that matters, but how you hold yourself in it. You can meditate whilst sitting, lying down or walking. The breath naturally changes throughout the day and from minute to minute, if you can learn to watch it and not seek to control it, you notice how it automatically adjusts itself. After meditating for a while you realise it was your conscious attempts to control it that caused the problems in the first place. Unrestricted breathing then allows you to ‘listen’ to the body. Normally when we relax our minds have a tendency to wander, to fantasise or free associate, leading to sleep. Meditation usually has the opposite intention, beginning with the kind of self-knowledge that arises from a greater awareness of the body. You can literally feel mental stress as physical pain - as you begin to relax. Much mental distress is a shutting-off of awareness, of stopping feeling. Becoming more aware of the body begins to put you back in ‘touch’! Much of the tension in our bodies is an attempt to suppress unacceptable emotional responses. The technique known as a ‘body scan’ starts with an awareness of the breath, followed by deliberately focusing bit by bit on every area of the body, identifying tension, gently flexing the muscles, at the same time as noticing the thoughts and feelings that arise. And in the act of physically letting go, it’s a shock to realise just how much mental preoccupation seems to float away. Fear, anger, sorrow and desire all disappear when we are truly relaxed.

Meditating for sleep is different, with the eyes closed you may wish to initially focus on the breath, and body scan. But you shouldn’t seek greater awareness nor be tempted to move on and fantasise in a controlled, ‘story making’ way. Rather think of how dreams are when you’re asleep - less coherent, more a free association of thoughts. One technique is to explore a single visual image rather than imaging a movie.

The link between mental and physical relaxation becomes obvious when you see what great physical performers can do, and realise they could never do what they do unless they were relaxed in a holistic sense. But an even greater revelation comes when you see and hear those same people interviewed! If you want exemplary examples of ‘mental health’ look to the great dancers.

Awareness

Many people equate being alert with conscious thinking. But we can only be conscious of a very small amount of the brain’s activity at any one time and much of it we are never aware of. And we don’t need to be. What is useful is to educate ourselves from time to time about those things that habitually cue us to behave in a certain way. Not so much in order to change, but to stop ‘beating ourselves up’ over those things we have consciously decided should not be part of our self, our ‘I’ or ‘me’. Indeed with a lot of practice you can have consciousness, but no consciousness of self - just awareness!

Mindfulness is a basic technique to help you move from motionless meditation at an allotted time, to incorporating it into what should be continuous movement throughout the day. It’s about focusing on, and paying close attention to the detail of what we are doing in any given moment. Being very aware of the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and textures of the moment, becoming awake and tranquil by focusing intently on minute details. (There are obvious parallels here with being absorbed in the physical practice of a skill, but without the prescribed outcome). When eating just eat, when walking just walk. Walking is a good way to face each day a fresh, when you walk you ‘own’ nothing, you’re in constant movement and there is nothing but change around you, it feels natural to be nomadic - or it should do!

Mentally letting go again and again, brings greater awareness in the hear and now. It is the greatest reward of meditation to be suddenly flooded with insight, an intense feeling or a change of mood. To wonder where it came from, stop, look around, and then be amazed a second time to realise what cued that change. Understanding, and acceptance, of how things just are - in the same moment. And then to let go again. To borrow from Wordsworth: ‘Surprised by joy - impatient as the Wind …’. You lose nothing by letting go of good, as well as bad thoughts and feelings, because as you change, the ones that are useful and real will come back time and time again. Equally tranquillity comes not from changing the world, but from allowing the moments of emotional pain to die a natural death. Sometimes we don’t want to let go of our worries and fantasies, the conflicts that preoccupy us, they become part of our identity and maintain the world as it is, giving the illusion of self-control - the feeling that we can predict the future. But if we can be relaxed and aware in the present, all that falls away - we forget what used to preoccupy us.

When out and about the focus may switch from the breath to a visual object, a fixed point for navigation, but equally there is visualisation, an imagined image for still periods, usually with the eyes closed. But then there are transition states too, for example, ‘body asleep, mind awake’ which can have a better quality than sleep alone. You gain the benefit of an asleep body, but the mind, rather than having the chaos and illogical thoughts of dreaming, stays clear and focused.

And there are the times when it doesn’t matter if what we are sensing, tasting, touching with our bodies is pleasant or not! You just don’t feel the need to explain, understand, or solve, but simply watch and feel - then the realisation of the ‘right thing to do’ will occur at the time when it is appropriate to act. If we are open to the world, not preoccupied with ourselves, then our instinctive responses (which we have been taught to mistrust or contain) will fit the facts and we just feel the appropriate response in a given situation.

To Be More ‘Grounded’

Once grounded, we change and move on automatically. A connectedness to the physical world around us should be our moment to moment preoccupation. We cannot see others in our environment as they are, without it. When we are not preoccupied with ourselves, then we can see the needs of others. And it is in this state that we can approach an understanding of what may be the true basis of what is called spirituality or religious experience. Making others, and or, other things, rather than oneself, the central focus of our lives, allowing transcendent experiences - going beyond our usually limited perception of others. But it is equally valid to assert that in the past there must have been a time when we were all very effective at meditation. That in some sense it must be a natural state, for it is hard to imagine our hunter-gatherer ancestors being able to survive without such skills. Think of hunting, of long hours on one’s feet, of the constant gentle movements needed to pick up a trail, to track and stalk, feel movement in the air, the physical coordination, the ability to navigate, feel the sudden stress of real danger, but be able to let go when it passes, the need for so much stillness, and the quick flowing response. And afterwards, to squat for a while under a tree, to be within the only real temple there is - not enclosed by the buttressing of the branches, but open to the vaulting of the sky beyond. Later, the making of fire - the focus of community and collective narrative.

'To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.'
William Blake 1757-1827: ‘Auguries of Innocence’ (c.1803)

That might well serve as a description of the potential of meditation and truly being in the moment. And Blake of course, experienced visual hallucinations from early childhood onwards. Meditation is a discipline that takes time and effort; though the more competent one becomes the more effortless it feels! Nonetheless like any set of skills, if you don’t practice then you lose them. It’s often when you feel at your lousiest, and have to ‘try’ the hardest that the most rewarding meditations follow. It is not unusual to suddenly feel worse as you relax and become more aware - you realise what’s been going on! This is the crucial moment to learn to continue meditating and not turn away - it is when the benefits really begin. At its best meditation gives a series of ongoing, ever deepening natural ‘highs’ based solely on increasing awareness of the fascination of the world around you. But don’t become a ‘bliss junkie’; stuck in a particular form of meditation, confined by time, place and routine or ritual - with a fixed set of beliefs about what is happening to you and your state of mind, seeking a continuous high, but effectively isolated from the rest of the world.

Meditation offers greater enjoyment of the sense world, deeper more varied emotional experiences and a sense of there being enough time. It feels like life with the ‘blinkers’ off, of a mental fog having lifted, in which we no longer fantasise - but then you catch yourself losing the focus again! But that’s as it should be, when navigating your way around a world of continuous change. Scientists and researchers in search of an ‘evidence base’ for meditation may object that whilst you can demonstrate a link with physical relaxation, the idea of greater mental awareness is not amenable to experimentation. Perhaps they are looking in the wrong place. I would wish to argue that it is the heightened awareness that comes with sudden stress or anxiety, and which to some extent has been measured, which through the discipline of meditation, is being harnessed by an individual who nonetheless remains physically relaxed.
　
Catch Tomorrow Now
　
Can you stop?
Let go of thoughts and feelings
Of the past and future
And just be in the present moment.
Now is all there is.
Reattach your emotions to your senses
In the real physical world of the present.
Notice what cues your thoughts now
Acknowledge them and let them go
Good or bad.
Allow yourself to feel the bad when it happens
Then it passes quickly.
Allow yourself to be ‘surprised by joy’
And let go those feelings too.
Knowing they will return unbidden.
Think of yourself as having no fixed self.
Able to construct a self anew every day
Attentive to others, unconcern for an ‘I’ or a ‘me’.
Aware of the others who make you what you are.
You learn most by imitation.
You only remain fixed
When you remake yourself today
As you were yesterday.
You imagine the past must persist into the future
But only because you reproduce it afresh everyday.
Don’t look forward or back, but around.
Seek to be more relaxed and aware.
Absorb what’s around you
And catch tomorrow now!
　
The Rules
　
Can you stop?
Let go of the past and future - again and again
Be in the present moment
Pay equal attention to everything
Notice in the moment what cues your thoughts and emotions
Now is all there is
Let decisions make themselves
Refuse to get involved in hopes and expectations
Physically relax yourself continuously
Always have a focus

Catch Tomorrow Now - part 2

Can you replace your assumptions about others,
With curiosity and fascination?
And can you unlearn as you let go?
Your routines should be made to work for you,
Habits should be unconscious,
Leaving you free to notice other things.
There is no such thing as a mistake, only new learning.
And the meaning of any communication,
Is always the message received.
Every thought comes with an emotion attached
And rationalising is just a way,
Of putting emotions on hold!
Experiences just make you feel good or bad,
Meanings become attached afterwards;
And meanings never started anything!
Motivation for action can only come,
From an emotional attachment to others.
But it’s a misplaced fear of others,
That is the consequence of mental disorder!