In Bits & Pieces, I share some brief insights, sparks of creativity and interesting lessons that may or may not constitute further, more elaborate work. Below you can read the most recent ones!
Insight
How to cultivate insight of impermanence? This is the eight week of the course from the book life with full attention by Maitreyabandhu.
Anyone can experience moments of transcendence at any time. These moments are characterised by increased perspective, heightened significance, and a wordless sense of meaning.
Buddhism distinguishes between two levels of transcended awareness: glimpses of reality and insight into reality. Glimpses can be seen as ‘vision experiences.’ Insight is a wholly new orientation, away from self toward reality. Insight is an awareness of how things really are, free from the limitations of self.
After insight, our desire to change, grow, be wise, kind, courageous, mindful, and creative comes naturally. We do not need to make an effort to make an effort. Effort becomes playful, spontaneous, and responsive. After insight, the path is no longer needed—we become the path.
Vision experiences (glimpses) are a prefiguration of insight. But vision experiences are not the goal of insight, and neither are they needed to achieve it.
The Buddha says that the best thing to reflect on to gain insight, is the fact of impermanence. To realise that arising and ceasing are happening at the same time. If we see that arising and ceasing are what life is all the time, we start to ‘hang loose’ to experience. We watch things come and go without attachment. We are no longer fighting life, we let go and allow anything to happen.
Cultivating insight
To the emergence of insight, we need to cultivate clarity, integration, sustained concentration, positive emotion, faith, and single-minded dedication. Each is explained in more detail below.
- We need to attain clarity about what it is we are aiming for. We can gain clarity though learning and reflection.
- Furthermore, psychological integration of thought is a prerequisite for clarity. To gain clarity we need to experience what we learn, not merely grasp it intellectually.
- Once we are psychologically integrated, we can become concentrated. Sustained awareness is a prerequisite to insight. To this end, we need to separate ourselves from the competing demands of the attention-deficit society wherever possible. For example, by going on retreats from time to time.
- When we reflect in a negative state of mind, our reflections will be prejudiced by our negativity. This pushes us away from reality and isolates us. We develop positive emotion by cultivating our virtues and strengths (week 5).
- We need faith; an intuitive sense of there being more to life than the every-day mind.
- Single-minded dedication is a clear sense of existential priorities, an emotional commitment to life with full attention. It is the desire to put spiritual practice at the centre of our life.
Eighth practice week
When trying to cultivate insight, it is important to keep an eye out on your emotional state. If you are becoming unhappy when practicing the insight of impermanence, you need to re-establish yourself in the previous states.
When we reflect on the nature of reality, we try to cultivate wisdom, not intellectual sophistication. We need to establish ourselves in the states of mind described before to cultivate insight. We need to become deeply curious about the true nature of experience.
There are several ways to integrate reflections into our day-to-day lives. You should try the ones that resonate most:
- Find a phrase that captures the reality of impermanence that you can bring to mind in experience. For example: “this too, will pass” or “all things are impermanent. See which sentence you can experience, not just recite.
- When we look forward to something, imagine that it is already over. you can do the same when you do not look forward to something, too.
- Try to see that everything that happens to us is teaching the truth of impermanence.
- Notice how you expect things not to change.
- Keep track in your journal of when you experience change as a good or as a bad thing.
- Become aware of when your positive or negative predictions turn out to be wrong.
- Try to see what is ceasing in arising, and what is arising in ceasing.
- Bring death to mind, as it makes us want to live deeply. You will remember that this moment is all you have, and you will consciously find something to appreciate.
During the mindfulness walk, see if all the necessary states of mind are present for insight to emerge. If you feel like one of them is lacking, recognise this, and cultivate it. When all are present, you can bring to mind reflections on impermanence. You can, for example, label the things that arise and cease, both internally and externally.
During the mindfulness moment too, see if you can bring to mind reflections on impermanence. Try to observe any change that happens and realise its nature.
The instructions for the meditations are as follows:
- Day 1: start by scanning the body and noticing the general feeling tone of your body—vedana. Are there internal narratives? What dhamma do you need to bring to mind? Then focus on the breath, trying to notice what you are experiencing or what is you thinking about experience.
- Day 2: start as during the previous day and then bring your attention to the heart area. Once you have established peaceful awareness, cultivate loving kindness using the mantras from the previous week.
- Day 3: establish yourself in body awareness and see if you can develop concentration. Try to develop clarity about the changing nature of the breath.
- Day 4: spend some time developing body awareness, noticing any tensions and embrace them with kindly awareness. See if you can relax around the breath more and more. Take your attention to the chest area and say to yourself your preferred mantras of loving-kindness. Then try to extend this loving-kindness to a friend, someone you are uneasy with, and others from there.
- Day 5: start the same way as during the first day. Bring your attention to the breath and then pay particular attention to what happens when you get distracted. Observe the impermanence of whatever it is we are distracted by.
- Day 6: try to cultivate a warm and appreciative awareness. Tune into the changing nature of experience. Try to get closer to what is actually happening, rather than what you think is happening.
- Day 7: focus on an area of discomfort in the body. See if you can feel it without describing it or reacting to it. Then see if you can feel change happening, as a lived experience.
Awareness of other people
How can I cultivate awareness of others? This is a summary of the seventh practice week of Maitreyabandhu’s book life with full attention.
Love is the awareness of another person.
Maitreyabandhu
Other people and ourselves are intrinsically connected; they shape us, and we shape them. If we want to understand and change our life, we need to change our relationship with other people.
The Buddha once said: “friendship is the whole of spiritual life.” While Buddhism is often associated with solitary practice, its aim is selfless love.
Awareness of other people means relating to each person’s unique individuality. Not to their social status, appearance, wage-earning capacity, or amusement value—not as their value to you.
The danger with the inward journey of the first few weeks is that of spiritualised selfishness. It stresses introspection at the expense of activity. We should ask our friends about the kind of change they have notices, and we need to increase our awareness of other people.
Buddhism gradually moves us through psychologically oriented approach. It emerges from the need to end personal suffering and to become happy. Beyond this approach is the transcendental one. It is only by liberating ourselves from our belief in a separate self that we will really be happy.
Cultivating positive associations with the past can be acquired in different ways:
- Before you go to bed, think about five things that happened for which you are grateful.
- Start a gratitude-book. Write down as many things you are grateful for and keep adding them when they emerge. At the end of the week, see what things you were grateful for—one by one.
- Find opportunities to express gratitude. Write a letter, invite a friend, whatever seems like a good moment to explicitly appreciate the people in your life.
Starting to love others starts with loving ourselves. Many people deal with poor self-esteem, and often solutions only make things worse. To love ourselves, we need to learn to love. This we can do, by caring for things that we like, a plant, a cat, or a friend. Our moments of enjoying something, cherishing something or someone, gradually changes how we feel about ourselves.
Cultivating friendship
Friendship is giving someone your full attention. The Buddha was always the first to smile. Usually in social situations, we check someone out first, we rarely just give. If you want to be friends with someone, give them your time and attention. Do that, and friendship will bloom.
The deepest friendships are those defined by ‘good,’ not by usefulness or pleasure. Friendships based on the ‘good,’ are those where there is a common striving for virtues and strengths. These friendships help you grow. These friends will encourage you in your efforts and challenge them if needs be. It is the best support for a life with full attention.
Mindfulness of others means seeing the person, not the ‘people.’ There are no people. Only unique individuals with hopes and fears, wishes and desires, feeling and values. This felt reality needs to be acted upon.
As we become more mindful of our feelings, we may notice that in how we feel toward others. We may react to people increasingly with hatred, irritation, or anger. This can be a sign of progress; we often suppress these feelings because they do not match with our desired self-image. To be mindful is to allow these feelings to arise, but not to be consumed by them.
Practicing awareness of other people
Our parents are a good place to start when trying to become more aware of other people. Often, we revert to childhood patterns as soon as we see or interact with them. Next time you visit them, try to see if you can give them your full attention, and notice any habitual responses in yourself.
Similar things hold true for a relationship with a partner. Here, we can cultivate awareness of the exact nature of the relationship. What exactly do you expect from each other? When are you together, alone or with other friends? How are both of you experiencing the relationship and your interactions? Take this week as an opportunity to (together) become mindful of these things.
Exercise: awareness of two people
Bring two people to your awareness:
- Someone most like yourself (age, gender) that you consider a friend. Preferably someone you will spend time with this week.
- Someone you find difficult to be around.
Write a journal entry for each (first-person), using the spheres of mindfulness we have explored before:
- How does their body feel to them?
- Are they tense or relaxed, habitually tired, or over-strained?
- What vedana do they experience?
- What kind of states of mind do they inhabit?
- What values are they trying to express?
Jot down what they do, where they go, how they feel, and who they are in relationship with. How do they feel about you?
Doing this exercise will help you to take them into awareness when you see them again. When you do;
- Look at them, really take the other person in.
- Listen to them, instead of rehearsing a reply in your head.
- Become interested and set out to learn something new. Deepen the conversation without drawing the story toward yourself.
- Do or give something, no matter how small.
Exercise (alternative): working with a difficult situation
Alternatively, you can work with a single encounter. There are three ‘phases’ to such an event, and each can be approached with awareness:
- Anticipate (before the encounter). Notice how, what and where you feel in your body. See to what extent the things you are anticipating are true, or based on truth? What are creative ways to bring the situation to a productive end?
- Encounter (during the event). Focus on observing any physical or mental discomfort. Make a conscious effort to stay open to the other person(s), as habitually, we turn inward in difficult moments. Check if you understand the other correctly.
- Recall (after the encounter). Notice yourself going over the encounter when you do. Is what you are thinking helpful? Decide what to do and follow through with it.
Keep doing the mindfulness walk as before but pay particular attention to people along the way. Make sure you stay in touch with your body as you do this. Try to be mindful especially of the people you are usually unaware of or try to avoid.
As you pass people, try to see if you can grasp how they might feel. Do they look happy, relaxed, stressed? What can you derive from their posture?
Then, wish them well. While staying in touch with your body, say to yourself “may you be well, may you be happy.”
You can use the mindfulness moment to recall one of the two persons you decided on earlier. What details can you bring up about them? What might they be doing in this moment?
The instructions for this week’s meditations are as follows:
- Day 1: start with overall body awareness. Then, zoom in to the chest and belly area, and gradually bring awareness to the place of your hearth. What can you feel there?
- Day 2: do the same as yesterday. Once you are aware of the heart-area, tell yourself “May I be well. May I be happy. May I be free of suffering. May I make progress.” Try to mean what you are saying, but do not force a feeling upon yourself. While saying these sentences, see if anything happens around your heart-area.
- Day 3: repeat the process of the first day. Then recall a moment where you were in a positive state of mind, perhaps a moment of generosity from this week’s practice. Bring the memory vividly to mind. How does it feel? Alternate between recalling the memory and being receptive to its effects.
- Day 4: start by repeating the process of the first day. Then, bring your friend to mind, and everything you have become aware of in the other mindful moments. Wish them well, like you did to yourself the second day. Alternate between that and receptive awareness of your body.
- Day 5: first bring your awareness to the breath. Then, on the in-breath, invite a difficult situation on event into your heart. Breath them in with kindness and understanding. On the out-breath, think of the things that give your life meaning, purpose and satisfaction. Once you have done this for a few moments, do the same from your friend’s perspective.
- Day 6: repeat the process of the second day, becoming aware of your body and wishing yourself well. Then recall the person you find difficult. Can you feel your body respond to them? What do you feel and where do you feel it? Then expand your awareness to grasp them fully. Not just the things you find difficult about them but try to be aware of them as a whole person, with hardships and struggles of their own. How does that change your bodily response to them?
- Day 7: start off the same as day one. But now, instead of wishing one person well, see if you can expand your awareness. First to multiple people, whoever you can image, and then unconditionally all around.
The three attentive forces
The following is based on a short audio course by Martin Aylward that I followed during my last silent retreat. You can find the session in the Waking Up app: link.
Immediate attention
There are three ‘ends’ to which our attention is drawn. The first is immediate attention. This is where you suddenly look in the direction where you just heard a glass shatter or saw something move in the corner of your eye. The force of immediate attention keeps us on the look-out for the unfamiliar, and things that we may need to attend to immediately to survive.
We cannot control immediate attention. It is a reflex of sorts. We can get familiar with certain sounds or images over time, but we cannot overcome the force of immediate attention in the moment. It is our strongest force of attention, over which we also happen to have the least control.
This force of attention only pulls on our attention when there is some anomaly in our environment. As such, it does not work on us most of the time.
Evolutionary attention
The force of evolutionary attention draws on our attention almost all the time. It can pull our attention in three directions, and how much it pulls toward either can vary from one person to the next. These directions are:
- The past. Our attention is pulled toward memories so that we will learn from them. Painful memories can make us fearful or angry, which will push us away from anything we associate with it. Pleasant memories draw us in, we long to recreate a similar memory and are drawn to everything we associate with it.
- The future. We plan—envision—and run through future scenarios in our mind. Depending on the type of future, we experience the same sensations as if we are actually there. When they are pleasant, we will positively associate with this vision. When they are not, feelings of aversion are embedded. These will become self-fulfilling prophecies as we sabotage or work towards these futures, respectively.
- The present. We make sense of what we are experiencing in the moment. We judge, label, analyse, fill in, make sense off… We have many different thoughts about the present experience.
I call this force directing our attention evolutionary because by being aware we literally ‘evolve’ our brain. Our brain becomes more sophisticated, integrated, streamlined… All so that our chances of survival, of success, are increased.
This form of attention is useful, for sure. In my work, the strength of this force keeping my attention on a subject matter (the present) allows me to produce original ideas and write about them in a comprehensible way.
The evolutionary force of attention ensures that we do not get into trouble when we go on holiday, and that we do not fall from our bike the same way over and over again.
When the force of evolutionary attention is demanding our attention to meet productive ends, we may call it deliberate.
It does not have to be like this, though. We have all ruminated over something or someone when we are past the point of learning anything from it. Our judgement of people in the present can make us feel uneasy, and our thoughts of the future anxious when it is the place nor the time for it.
When the force of evolutionary attention draws it to unproductive ends, we may call it undirected.
We will resort to undirected evolutionary attention when nothing more important demands it (either immediate attention or directed evolutionary attention). When we are waiting, driving, in bed… we ruminate over things so that we may run into something useful.
Living attention
The force of Living attention directs our attention to the present experience. It is a neutral awareness of our sensations, sounds, thoughts, smells, etc.
Living attention is not necessary for survival, but it is the essence of living.
Sadly, we do not learn to focus our attention on the present experience, such that the force of living attention is often weak.
If we want to experience life, we need to balance the forces on our attention. Specifically, we need to train our force of living attention so that we can use it to overrule the force of undirected evolutionary attention.
The skilled connoisseur
It is not the quality of the coffee that determines the quality of the experience of its taste. It is the skilfulness of the one who drinks it.
He who can see a shimmer of light in an ocean of darkness, feel the lightness of a feather buried between concrete and stone, witness the beauty in ugliness itself, hear how the silence is played by the orchestra…
this is the true connoisseur.
Are we not all here to become connoisseurs of life?
Awareness of our environment
How can I cultivate awareness of my environment? This page explores the importance of appreciating nature and art to enhance mindfulness and awareness.
The four spheres of the teachings of the Buddha (which we explored in the previous weeks) misses two crucial elements; our environment and other people. These will be the topic of this week and the next, respectively.
We are often so engrossed in our own internal narrative that the external world is only at the periphery of our awareness. We should (re-)learn to see with complete clarity and feeling. We should be wholly attending to what is around us. With this true seeing, the division between the self and the world begins to dissolve. Both are experienced as more meaningful and alive.
Vidya can be translated as ‘analytic appreciative understanding,’ or as ‘wisdom implicit in true appreciation.’ When we see with vidya we see that everything partakes in everything else, that everything is interconnected.
Our aim should be to appreciate life, to stand back and enjoy it all. Yes, we need to work, grow, do uncomfortable things, plan, be responsible… But this is only a necessity of life, not life itself. If all we do has to have a reason, it will take all the joy and spontaneity out of life—it will take the life out of living.
Appreciation, vidya, needs quietude to blossom. It needs speciousness and freedom to emerge. When we are absorbed in appreciation, we forget ourselves and, by doing so, we transcend ourselves. Instead of being the character we have always played, we become open-ended, spontaneous, fluid, and creative. We are no longer bound by who we perceive ourselves to be.
When we see things without relating everything back to ourselves, we see with vidya. When we see with vidya, the world starts to shine. There seems to be more in everything we look at.
Nature
The best place to cultivate interest in, and appreciative awareness of, what is right in front of us, is nature. As we cultivate life with full attention, we appreciate nature as something valuable in and of itself. Appreciation of this kind is not ‘forced’ outward. Rather, it is an appreciation that invites inward.
Art
We can cultivate appreciation of nature by developing our appreciation of art. Artists can help us notice patterns and connections, affinities and ambiguities, subtleties, and nuances. Poetry is a rich source of metaphors that do just that.
We need a counterbalance to the world of work and reason. We need a world where life flows freely. Nature and art help us create such a world.
Sixth practice week
Consciously shifting our attention onto something more constructive is a valuable skill. We should, however, not use it as a distraction when there is something—some negative feeling—that demands our attention.
Unwise attention is the attention giving rise to negative mind-states or making them worse. Wise attention is giving attention to things that brings us forward. This applies to our thoughts and feelings, but also to what we see around us: advertisements, social media, pornography…
There are several things we can do to start cultivating wise attention of our environment.
Take an ‘environmental week‘ where you pay particular attention to reducing your impact on the environment.
Revise your cultural diet. What do you usually watch or listen to? Try to increase the nutritional value. This happens when things leave you satisfied, enlarged, and uplifted. Not bloated, narrowed, or coarsened. Additionally, you can visit an art gallery and try to experience fully what you see.
Take one evening where you sit for at least an hour to just read. No music, television, phone. Do not get up for at least an hour. Give the thing you are reading your full attention.
Go on a mindful daytrip. Think of a place that communicates value to you. Bring your journal and take in the experience of going there just as much as the experience of being there. Make it a day of full attention.
Besides, you can integrate environmental awareness into your daily walk. Try to see things as they really are, without reacting to them. See if you can notice to what extent your environment affects your mental states. See if you can feel how your body responds to them. See what things you can see that you have not noticed before.
The instructions for this week’s meditation are as follows:
- Day 1: connect to the body by scanning it from head to toe. Once you have established a connection, integrate sounds into the same field of awareness as well. Try not to make sense of what you hear, just listen to what comes.
- Day 2: start with your eyes open and soften your gaze. Let things ‘fall into the back of your eyes.’ Then close your eyes and become aware of the sounds as before.
- Day 3: start the same way as in day two but try to catch how you are perceiving things. Does it feel like something is entering your awareness, or is it already there?
- Day 4: take this day to explore the subtle changes throughout your body that emanate from the breath. Where do you feel movement?
- Day 5: try to add the awareness of breath from day four into the first three sessions. Cultivate an open awareness.
- Day 6: same as day five but try to become and stay aware of one particular experience as a consequence of the breath.
- Day 7: same as day six but try to really notice the moment when you bring back your awareness from being distracted.
The chiselled fortress (poem)
I know a man who’s building bridges,
bridges built from cobble stone.
Connecting sea and mountain valley,
to the place he calls his home.
A fortress reaching through the distance
to a sun that never settles down.
It appears to never quite be ready
as the tick-tick of his hammer’s sway.
He never stops to ask and wonder
what he’s actually building for.
There is just the tick-tick of his chisel
and the hidden place he calls his home.
Treasure map (poem)
Reconnecting with your body
How can I reconnect with my body? Learn to access your emotions and improve your well-being through regular body scans and mindful practices.
Experiencing emotions and urges mainly in your head suggests that you are disconnected from your body. When you experience feelings of numbness, emptiness, or ‘dead inside,’ the disconnection is particularly strong. This is common in the cases of trauma or major depression.
You can get better at accessing your emotions if you practice tuning in to your body. Learning to do so has other benefits, too:
- You will gain a sense of vitality,
- experience more the positive feelings (joy, happiness, contentment, love…),
- greater control over your actions by not getting hooked by thoughts,
- better choices and decisions,
- develop a better intuitive sense,
- feeling safer in—not in tension with your body, and
- stronger, deeper relationships.
Exercise: body scan
One of the best ways to reconnect with your body is to do regular body scans. These can be as short as thirty seconds or take as long as 30 minutes. Try to do them as often as you can, at least once a day, to make progress fastest.
You may find that some areas are particularly numb, or there are areas that you tend to avoid. Challenge yourself to gradually explore these areas, do not brush over them because there is ‘nothing to feel.’ When there is really nothing to feel you can create a feeling, either move, massage, or tense up a muscle in that area.
Being present, living life
How can I be more present in my daily life? This page offers mindfulness techniques to help you stay focused and fully engaged in the moment.
Caught up in our thoughts, our attention wanders away from what we are doing. We are physically present but psychologically absent. Being absorbed in thought can be useful when it is life-enhancing (for example, while solving a complex problem at work). When it takes us away from the life we want, we are simply hooked.
When we are not psychologically present, we (1) miss out on life and/or (2) do things poorly.
How to be more present
Mindfulness is a set of psychological skills for effective living. It entails paying attention with openness, curiosity, and flexibility.
We can imagine life as a stage show. On stage are your thoughts, feelings, memories, urges, and sensations. But also, everything you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
There is a part of you that can zoom in and out of that show, lighting up any aspect at any time—the noticing self, essentially: you. The noticing self is central to every mindfulness skill.
Sometimes it illuminates thoughts or puts a particular emotion in the spotlight. At other times, it directs attention toward the world around you, noticing sights, sounds, and smells. Sometimes it zooms in and spotlight one area. At other times it zooms out, floodlighting the entire stage.
This is called flexible attention. It is the ability to narrow, broaden, sustain, or shift your focus, depending on what is most useful in the moment.
Everything we have learned so far incorporates various aspects of mindfulness. Mindfulness helps us to be present, so we can act more effectively and get more fulfillment (eudaimonia) out of life.
Below are four manfulness practices that you can immediately incorporate into your life. If distracting thoughts and feelings should arise, acknowledge them, and put your attention back to the task at hand.
- Notice your environment. Notice as much as you can about what you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell.
- Notice your body. Inwardly scan your body from head to toe.
- Notice your breath. Notice the rise and fall of your rib cage and the air moving in and out of your upper body.
- Notice sounds. Just focus on the sounds you can hear, either from yourself or from your environment.
Curing boredom
When these thoughts hook us, they obscure our view of the world. But life is very different when we pay attention with openness and curiosity.
We tend to get bored when our mind takes our present experience for granted, when we have experienced it many times before. The stage show of life is still there, but the lights are so dim we barely notice anything of it.
In such moments, we can use our noticing self to turn up the luminosity. Often you will find that there is a vast length, breadth, and depth of human experience, even when we have been there before.
Take a book for example and try to experience it as if for the first time in your life. Feel its weight and texture, the pages as you turn them. See the colours and shapes on the cover, the space around the letters inside. Smell the paper, and listen to the sound the pages make…
Exercise: a thoroughly enjoyable practice
Find at least two things every day that are enjoyable, important, meaningful, and life-enhancing. Not something you do to distract from unwanted feelings or thoughts. Nevertheless, it can be as simple as eating lunch or stoking a cat.
Pretend that this is the first time you have ever done it. Pay full attention to what you can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, and savour every moment. Focus completely on what you are doing, using all your five senses. When thoughts and feelings arise, acknowledge their presence, let them be, and refocus on what you were doing.
Exercise: a not-so-enjoyable practice
You can do the same thing for something that you usually do routinely, or things you (would rather) avoid. Give this activity your full attention. Notice whatever you can see, hear, touch, taste, and smell. Approach it as if you are a curious child discovering it for the very first time.
Keep practicing these exercises throughout the day. The aim is to progressively extend to more areas of your life, until you reach a point where you no longer think of them as practice. You are just naturally being present.
Over time, this leads to a profound change in the way you live: rather than missing out on life, you start making the most of it.
Kind self-touch and urge-surfing
How can I practise kind self-touch and urge surfing? Learn techniques for self-care through kind self-touch and managing urges effectively.
An (often more effective) alterative to compassionate self-talk is self-touch. It can help us to be there for ourselves in a caring, supportive way, at a level much deeper than words.
Exercise: kind self-touch
Evoke and observe a difficult emotion like you did in the chapter before this one. Take one of your hands, palm upward, and see if you can fill this hand with a sense of kindness. Now rest this hand gently on your body, either on top of the feeling or on top of your heart.
See if you can send that kindness inward—a sense of warmth and support, flowing into you. Hold yourself kindly and gently. Connecting with yourself, caring for yourself, offering comfort and support.
Alternatively, you might like to experiment with some of the following options:
- placing both hands on your chest or your tummy,
- hugging yourself gently with or without gently stroking your arms,
- gently massaging an area of tension or tightness, or
- holding your face in your hands with or without massaging your temples.
Exercise: urge surfing
Like waves, urges start off small, steadily increase, reach a peak, and drop off. When urges show up, we usually respond with by giving into or resisting them. While urge surfing, we do neither; instead, we open up and make room for them.
An urge ‘wave’ usually lasts about three minutes when we do not resist them but let them be. When we fight with them, ruminate about them, worry about them, try to distract ourselves, or try to push them away they can last much longer.
Urge surfing is very similar to the practice for taming your emotions:
- Take note. Notice and name the urge. Where do you feel it most in your body?
- Allow. Give your urge permission to be there.
- Make room. Open up to the urge; allowing it to freely rise, peak, and fall in its own good time.
- Expand awareness. Broaden your awareness to the rest of your body, and then also the world around you.
The main difference with the TAME technique is that we imagine the urge as a wave; watching it with curiosity as it rises, crests, and subsides.
