In the past 2 weeks I've dared to explore more on child abuse stuff online than I've before. In the process, I came across Dr. Jim Hopper's website where he talks about Mindfulness and Child abuse. He pays his respects to Jon Kabat-Zinn and expands further upon that. I was reading his article, co-authored with Amy Schmidt, entitled "Mindfulness, An Inner Resource for Recovery from Child Abuse". I came across this,
"...Practicing bringing your attention to whatever arises in the present moment, and noticing it without judgment, makes you much more likely to notice positive experiences and emotions and much less likely to judge or dismiss them. Particularly when your mind is moving more slowly, and is relatively spacious, positive feelings have an opportunity to grow, last longer and lead to other positive feelings. And many positive emotions, particularly feelings of appreciation, kindness and love, help to enhance the mind's calmness."This is very true. In fact, this was one of the exercises my T gave me when I started out on therapy. I remember even downloading a Palm program (moodylog) to log my emotional states all through the day, whenever I can. The point wasn't to judge the emotion, just to notice and potentially label them.
When I first tried this, I noticed only sadness, fear, shame, self-effacing hatred, self-ridicule, embarrassment, sorrow, desperation and a respite in the guise of numbness and depression. However, within 2 or 3 days, I started noticing glimpses of neutrality and even elation. These days, I've come to realize that it is mostly the other way around -- I'm mostly feeling neutral with a sprinkling of sadness, fear, shame, self-guilt and anger. I even see elation quite a lot. I'm more often than not coming to terms with just noticing, labeling and letting go... simply being mindful of them without getting caught up in them. This, as Dr. Hopper says, enhances my mind's calmness. For this, I'm unabashedly grateful to my T.
That said, mindfulness is a skill that involves patience and perseverance; and it can also cause a lot of pain sometimes. That is where yoga is helpful. For some reason, it is easier to be mindful when I'm in motion as in yoga. I'm noticing my bodily sensation very acutely and my own mind is attuned to emotions much better. It is as if someone put an amplifier for these and somehow filtered out all other noises. That is not to say that the mind doesn't chatter. It definitely does, but it is easier to notice, label and let go.
Perhaps by doing yoga, I'm able to "feel" my body more than I'm able to otherwise. Perhaps I'm able to tune to my body, rather than disconnect from it. The latter being the strategy I've taken since... well, since whatever happened.
3 comments:
I find yoga helps me to be "simple". I feel very calm and "centered" within myself and it helps me to be a better person. That calmness and centeredness has helped me through some difficult spots in my life and even though I think of myself as happy, most of the time I feel emotionally stable, a good place to be.
Its ironic that I can't do yoga anymore because I keep injuring myself because of the trauma that I hold in my body....i hope to come back to it because I tink it did a lot for me.
The meditation is also a good idea. Thanks for the book recommendation.
Karma, yoga works for me because, I find it very "grounding". When I say yoga, I'm talking about vinyasa style yoga; it involves coordination of breathe and movement, through a sequence of poses.
Because of the attention paid to the breathe (and the mind), it helps me develop mindfulness. I'm better able to be aware of my own body's physical & emotional needs as well as habitual patterns of thought this way.
There might be something that works for you!
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