Important Tips for Mindfulness

Please see the previous chapter for an overview of mindfulness.

A method for those who cannot control their focus

Something that always happens when practicing mindfulness is the mind wandering.

You think you are focusing on something, but before you know it, you are absent-minded and thinking about something else.

It happens to everyone.
It happens especially frequently to people with mental health issues or disorders.

If you are focusing on the sensations in your nose and throat during breathing training, your mind might wander to human relationships or mistakes at work.

You might recall a past you don't want to remember or imagine a future you don't want to think about.
These are very natural things.

The important thing is to not worry about it, no matter what happens.

When you notice it, return your consciousness to your five senses without thinking about anything.

That is all you need to do.

If you make it a habit, the time it takes to "notice" after your mind has wandered should gradually become shorter.

…As an aside, the true nature of concentration is the "ability to notice."
People with good concentration do not have uninterrupted focus.
They just notice immediately when it is interrupted and return their consciousness to the subject without thinking about unnecessary things.

Recent brain science has revealed that a group of brain regions called the "salience network" and the serotonin metabolized there govern the ability to notice.

It has also been confirmed that these are activated during meditation, providing scientific evidence for mindfulness.

Even if you end up thinking about unnecessary things, do not worry about it and return your consciousness to the matter at hand.

This is extremely important in daily life, and that is what it means to be mindful.

Thoughts that pop into your head regardless of your will are called "automatic thoughts" in psychology.

It is natural for people who have had many painful experiences to have their heads filled with negative automatic thoughts.

Even the thought of "wanting to die" is impossible to control by will.

However, that is not the problem.

What comes immediately after a negative thought crosses your mind is a "secondary thought".

Thoughts like, "I thought about that again. There is really something wrong with me..."
Because of this, negative thoughts cross your mind one after another, and I think many people get stuck in a loop and feel stressed all day long.

I was like that too.

Even now, the words "I want to hang myself" occasionally cross my mind, but I don't worry about it at all.
I know I would never actually do such a thing.

Since there is no one who has not had unpleasant experiences, I think this state is quite average, including for healthy people.

Trying to "think positively" or "discard distracting thoughts" to deal with the problematic flow of
automatic thoughts → secondary thoughts
is completely
meaningless.

The important thing is not to worry about it.

It is about letting negative thoughts pass by effectively.

In other words, do not give meaning or value to what you thought about unconsciously.

A mind that finishes whatever crosses your head with "Oh, I just thought about that. Hmm," creates a healthy spirit.

Mindfulness is training to refocus without worrying even if your consciousness wanders.

By repeating this, you will gradually become better at letting negative thoughts pass by in daily life as well.

The result you get is a mind that notices the emotions it experiences but is not swayed by them.

Do you understand?

Feeling painful when remembering the past or anxious when imagining the future happens to everyone.

The difference between healthy people and those who are not is being able to properly recognize that "an unpleasant thought has crossed my mind."
And being able to recognize that

"nothing is happening here and now."

When you feel pain or itching

However, there are some things that are difficult to let pass by.

During mindfulness, you might feel itchy somewhere or feel a little pain.

At that time, please try to feel

the itch or pain first, as much as you can.

Then, scratch it or change your posture.Move your body consciously

and slowly.The purpose of mindfulness is to naturally control

your emotions, sensations, and actions.
Once the itching or pain subsides, please also properly feel the difference between before and after.

Trauma treatment and mindfulness

I often see people in this circle who suffered severe trauma in childhood.

Many people also experience physical symptoms such as hyperventilation or panic disorder from flashbacks of those memories.

You might think there is no way you can let such things pass by.

To solve such serious situations, you need to rely on specialized treatments called "cognitive behavioral therapy" or "schema therapy".

However, the mindfulness approach is usually adopted in those as well.

In overseas cases, mindfulness training is often conducted as a preliminary step before entering actual therapy.

I myself grew up in a high-stress family environment, so I had many small, unconscious traumas that led to depression and communication difficulties.

I met a professor of clinical psychology and resolved these issues by undergoing therapy that applied schema therapy.

If you want to learn about trauma treatment, please read the books by a clinical psychologist named Emi Ito.

She writes about clinical cases for patients, so it is very easy to understand and practical.

Conclusion (A tribute to my late teacher)

What helped me emerge from my worst state was mindfulness, and I wrote about that process at ↓.

I believe I was able to engage with mindfulness 'meditation' without prejudice thanks to the late Professor N, an Indian philosophy researcher whom I met long ago through my mother's connection.

So, I would like to introduce some of that teacher's rather cool words.

From the next chapter, I will introduce specific practical methods for mindfulness in detail.

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