<![CDATA[Dr. Natsumi Sawada • Psychologist - BLOG]]>Sat, 09 May 2026 14:49:57 -0600Weebly<![CDATA[The Importance of Feeling Our Feelings: Insights from AEDP]]>Sun, 16 Jun 2024 19:49:54 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/june-16th-2024Feeling our feelings is crucial for overall well-being, and Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) provides a compelling framework for understanding why. AEDP emphasizes that core emotions such as sadness, anger, joy, and fear are fundamental to our authentic selves and essential for healing and transformation.

Core Emotions and Healing
AEDP teaches us that unprocessed emotions can lead to distress and maladaptive behaviors. By fully experiencing these emotions, we can resolve underlying issues. This process involves recognizing and validating feelings, which helps reduce defenses that block emotional expression. Facing our emotions promotes healing and resilience.

Transforming Emotional Pain
​When we confront and process painful emotions in a supportive environment, we transform this pain into strength and resilience. This process alleviates distress and fosters emotional growth. Fully feeling and expressing emotions can lead to profound changes, moving individuals from suffering to well-being and fulfillment.

Enhancing Emotional Intelligence
Processing emotions through AEDP enhances emotional intelligence, which is crucial for personal and professional development. Understanding and managing our emotions improve our ability to navigate social interactions and make better decisions. Embracing our emotions deepens our understanding of ourselves and others, leading to meaningful relationships and greater life satisfaction.

Creating Authentic Connections
AEDP highlights the importance of relational work in therapy. By feeling and expressing emotions in a therapeutic setting, individuals learn to form authentic connections. This relational healing helps overcome feelings of aloneness and fosters a sense of belonging and connection.

Practical Steps to Embrace Emotions
  1. Create a Safe Space: Find or create an environment where you feel secure and supported.
  2. Acknowledge Your Emotions: Recognize and validate your feelings without judgment.
  3. Stay Present: Focus on the physical sensations associated with your emotions.
  4. Express Your Feelings: Allow yourself to fully experience and express your emotions.
  5. Reflect and Integrate: Reflect on your emotional experiences and integrate them into your sense of self.
Emotions as Pathways to Growth
AEDP views emotions as pathways to growth. Sadness, when fully processed, can lead to acceptance and peace. Anger can transform into assertiveness and protection of boundaries. Joy enhances connection and engagement with life. Fear, when faced, can foster empowerment and resilience. Fully experiencing these emotions taps into their transformative potential.

The Role of the Therapist
In AEDP, the therapist plays a crucial role in helping clients process their emotions. The therapist creates a secure environment, validates the client’s emotional experience, and guides them through emotional exploration and integration. This supportive relationship unlocks the healing potential of emotions.

Overcoming Inhibitory Emotions
Inhibitory emotions like shame, guilt, and anxiety often block access to core emotions. AEDP helps individuals identify and work through these inhibitory emotions, allowing them to reach and process underlying core emotions. This leads to greater emotional clarity and reduces the psychological burden of unresolved feelings.

The Long-Term Benefits
The long-term benefits of feeling and processing emotions include increased emotional resilience, improved mental health, and a stronger sense of self. Integrating emotional experiences achieves a more balanced and fulfilling life.

Conclusion
By embracing and processing our emotions through AEDP, we transform our emotional experiences into powerful tools for growth and resilience. This process enhances our emotional intelligence and personal relationships and leads to greater life satisfaction and fulfillment. Ready to explore this journey? Discover how AEDP can guide you toward emotional mastery and well-being.]]><![CDATA[The Power of Positive Emotions for Transformational Change and Personal Growth (in AEDP Therapy and Beyond)]]>Tue, 11 Jun 2024 20:49:37 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/june-11th-2024In the fast-paced and often stressful modern world, the pursuit of happiness and personal growth has become a universal endeavor. While many strategies exist to facilitate personal change, one of the most potent and accessible tools at our disposal is the cultivation of positive emotions. Research in psychology and neuroscience has increasingly highlighted how positive emotions not only enhance our well-being but also act as catalysts for profound personal transformation. In this blog post, we will explore how harnessing positive emotions can lead to meaningful changes in our lives, particularly through the lens of Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP).

The Science of Positive Emotions
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Positive emotions, such as joy, gratitude, serenity, interest, and hope, play a crucial role in our psychological and physiological health. According to the broaden-and-build theory proposed by psychologist Barbara Fredrickson, positive emotions expand our awareness and encourage novel, varied, and exploratory thoughts and actions. Over time, this broadening effect builds lasting personal resources, such as resilience, social connections, and skills, which contribute to overall well-being.

How Positive Emotions Foster Personal Change

Enhanced Resilience
​Resilience, the ability to bounce back from adversity, is a key factor in personal growth. Positive emotions help build resilience by creating a buffer against stress. When we experience positive emotions, our bodies produce fewer stress hormones like cortisol, and we recover more quickly from stressful events. This enhanced resilience allows us to face challenges with greater confidence and adaptability, facilitating personal change.

Improved Physical Health
Positive emotions have been linked to better physical health outcomes, including lower blood pressure, reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, and stronger immune function. When we feel good emotionally, we are more likely to engage in healthy behaviors, such as regular exercise, balanced eating, and adequate sleep. These health benefits create a strong foundation for personal change by giving us the energy and vitality needed to pursue our goals.

Strengthened Relationships
Healthy relationships are essential for personal development, providing support, encouragement, and opportunities for growth. Positive emotions foster stronger connections with others by promoting trust, empathy, and cooperation. When we approach our interactions with a positive mindset, we are more likely to build and maintain meaningful relationships, which in turn support our efforts toward personal change.

Increased Creativity and Problem-Solving Abilities
Creativity and effective problem-solving are critical for navigating the complexities of life and achieving personal growth. Positive emotions enhance our cognitive flexibility, enabling us to think more creatively and approach problems from multiple perspectives. This expanded thinking capacity allows us to identify new solutions and opportunities for change that we might otherwise overlook.

Motivation and Goal Achievement
Positive emotions boost our motivation by making us more optimistic about our future and our ability to achieve our goals. When we feel hopeful and enthusiastic, we are more likely to set ambitious goals and persist in the face of obstacles. This sustained motivation is crucial for making and maintaining positive changes in our lives.

Harnessing Positive Emotions in AEDP Therapy

Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy (AEDP) is a therapeutic approach that leverages the healing power of positive emotions to facilitate deep and lasting personal change. Developed by Dr. Diana Fosha, AEDP focuses on creating a secure and empathetic therapeutic relationship, allowing clients to explore and transform their emotional experiences.

Experiencing Core Positive Emotions
In AEDP, therapists guide clients to access and fully experience core positive emotions such as joy, love, and compassion. By validating and amplifying these emotions, clients can reconnect with their inherent capacity for resilience and self-healing. This process helps clients build a more positive self-narrative and fosters a sense of hope and possibility.​

Transforming Negative Emotional States
AEDP therapists work with clients to transform negative emotional states by tapping into positive emotions. For instance, feelings of fear or shame can be countered with experiences of safety and acceptance within the therapeutic relationship. This transformation not only alleviates distress but also strengthens the client's emotional resilience.

Building Emotional Resources
Through the repeated experience of positive emotions in therapy, clients develop a reservoir of emotional resources. These resources, such as increased self-compassion and a sense of connection, equip clients to handle future challenges more effectively. AEDP emphasizes the importance of these resources in sustaining personal change beyond the therapy sessions.

Creating Corrective Emotional Experiences
AEDP provides clients with corrective emotional experiences, where past traumas or negative experiences are reprocessed in a positive emotional context. By reliving these experiences with a new, supportive emotional response, clients can integrate them in a way that promotes healing and growth.

Practical Strategies for Cultivating Positive Emotions

Practice Gratitude
Regularly reflecting on the things you are grateful for can significantly increase your positive emotions. Keep a gratitude journal, where you write down three things you are thankful for each day.

Engage in Mindfulness and Meditation
Mindfulness practices, such as meditation, can help you focus on the present moment and appreciate the positive aspects of your life. Even a few minutes of mindfulness each day can enhance your overall emotional well-being.

Connect with Others
Spend time with people who uplift and inspire you. Positive social interactions can boost your mood and reinforce positive emotions.

Pursue Activities You Enjoy
​Engage in hobbies and activities that bring you joy and satisfaction. Whether it’s painting, hiking, reading, or dancing, doing what you love can generate positive emotions and contribute to personal growth.

Practice Acts of Kindness
Performing acts of kindness, whether big or small, can increase your positive emotions and create a sense of connection and purpose. Helping others not only benefits them but also enhances your own happiness.

Conclusion
The power of positive emotions in facilitating personal change cannot be overstated. By intentionally cultivating positive emotions, we can enhance our resilience, improve our health, strengthen our relationships, boost our creativity, and stay motivated to achieve our goals. Through therapeutic approaches like AEDP, we can harness these emotions to transform our lives and achieve lasting personal growth. As we navigate the journey of personal development, let us embrace the transformative power of positivity, knowing that each joyful moment brings us closer to our best selves.]]><![CDATA[Goals: Welcome to the dark side?]]>Thu, 01 Nov 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/goals-welcome-to-the-dark-sideIf you want to excel in your profession or at your craft...
If you want to be a better partner, friend, parent...
If you want to be fitter and stronger...
If you want to be happier…

You must set....

...GOALS!

​Right?

It’s taken as a given in our culture that goals are THE foundation of performance and wellbeing.
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I'd say our culture is goal obsessed.

BUT is there a counterproductive or even destructive side to goal setting?
The answer is YES according to researchers based out of Harvard Business School whose 2009 paper Goals Gone Wild synthesizes research and case studies on goal setting and comes to three conclusions:

  1. The benefits of goal setting are overstated (in part due to bias in research dating back to the 60s)
  2. The systemic harm caused by goal setting is not recognized and needs to be recognized
  3. ​​Goal setting is over prescribed. Goal setting should not be widely and indiscriminately prescribed to everyone and anyone. Rather it should be very selectively prescribed, it's effects should be very carefully monitored, and it should come with a warning label like you find on a prescription drug.

There is actually picture of a warning label in this paper and it says something to the effect of: WARNING GOAL SETTING MAY CAUSE
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  • poor decision making
  • irrational behaviour
  • reduced motivation
  • poorer learning outcomes
  • decreased cooperation
  • unethical behavior​
The authors give a number of fascinating examples of 'goals gone wild.' One is the story of the May 1996 Everest climb as told most famously by Jon Krakauer.

For an in-depth analysis of how destructive goal setting may have contributed to this tragedy see Destructive Goal Pursuit: The Mount Everest Disaster by Christopher Kayes.

​Kayes is a former stock broker, business consultant, and is currently a professor and the chair of the Department of Management at George Washington University. He was on the mountain the day of the climb and has spent years analyzing what happened. He proposes that destructive goal setting was a major contributor.
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While the Goals Gone Wild paper mainly focuses on the problems of goal setting within organizations, it does touch on the negative potential impact of goal setting on individuals.
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And we can all find examples of destructive goal setting in our personal lives:

  • Maybe we dedicate ourselves to a goal, perhaps unknowingly, at the expense of something equally or more important like our health, a relationship, or our integrity
  • Maybe we attach ourselves and even our sense of self to our goals and and then when something outside of our control interferes or threatens to we get discouraged and give up or frustrated and work even harder towards our goal (even though this might not be in our best interest)
  • Maybe we live in a chronic state of lack or failure until our goals are attained: Thinking that we do not have enough or that we are not enough until we GET THERE
  • Maybe we set goals and sacrifice ourselves in anticipation of how AMAZING we will feel when we reach the goal but when we get there it’s anticlimactic
  • ​Maybe we set goals that seem exciting but lose motivation before we even get started​
Do I think goals are destructive or dangerous and do I think ALL people would be served by abandoning ALL goals?

Absolutely not.

And at the same time I think that goals do have the potential to cause problems. Big problems. Goals Gone Wild explores these in detail.

So what are we to do? How can we motivate ourselves in a healthy way and stop our goals from going wild?

I think the first step is to understand how and why goals can cause problems.

For the most part I think the problems we see with goals boil down to two main issues.

  1. Goals create a narrowing of focus that obscure bigger picture including things that might be more important
  2. Goals take us out of the present moment

Both of these factors can obscure our perspective, impede wise decision making, and eat away at our appreciation of the present moment and therefore at our well-being.

I think that if we can set and work towards goals while staying tuned into the big picture of what matters most and staying tuned into the present moment we can develop a healthier relationship with goals and goal setting.

Stay tuned for more on how to do this coming your way in a few weeks!
]]><![CDATA[Life is like music: Music and the meaning of life]]>Sun, 07 Oct 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/life-is-like-music-music-and-the-meaning-of-lifeLife is like music. A clever video from the creators of South Park featuring Alan Watts on the meaning of life. Makes a good point.
]]><![CDATA[Mindfulness is not about stopping your thoughts. But then what's it all about?]]>Wed, 13 Jun 2018 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/mindfulness-is-not-about-stopping-your-thoughts-heres-a-helpful-metaphor-from-headspace-on-how-to-relate-mindfully-to-thoughts Here's a helpful metaphor from Headspace on how to relate mindfully to thoughts.
]]><![CDATA[Clarify and connect to your values. Loosen the grip on your goals. Dr. Russ Harris explains why.]]>Fri, 16 Jun 2017 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/clarify-and-connect-to-your-values-loosen-the-grip-on-your-goals-dr-russ-harris-explains-whyDr. Russ Harris explains why it pays to clarify and connect to our values and loosen the grip on our goals with a simple metaphor. 
]]><![CDATA[Moving through emotional pain towards what's most important: One of of my favorite strategies for staying balanced and getting out of my head]]>Wed, 14 Jun 2017 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/moving-through-emotional-pain-towards-whats-most-important-one-of-of-my-favorite-strategies-for-staying-balanced-and-getting-out-of-my-headA central feature of one of my favourite therapies, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (aka ACT) is the idea that identifying our “values” and moving towards them even when we are experiencing emotional pain is crucial for psychological health and wellbeing.  

What are values? They are the things in life that are most important to us. They are what we want our lives to be about. They are different from goals in that they are not things that we can achieve or complete and they are not future destinations. They are the the things that are most important to us in life and in the now.

Examples might be: Helping, creativity, connecting with others, self development, kindness, independence. One way to tap into your values is to ask, “Who or what is most important to me?”

​I will write more on identifying values in an upcoming blog post.  

So why move towards values even when we feel terrible? ​​
​Well, ACT proposes that pain is an inevitable part of being human (or sea slug for that matter). To experience physical and psychological pain in the form of difficult thoughts, emotions, and sensations is to be human. It is not pathological, abnormal, or something to be changed. Our lives cannot be separated from pain. We inevitably experience loss and disappointment; feel sadness, anger, fear, guilt, and shame; experience self doubt and self judgment. We don’t often recognize that everybody suffers especially in the Instagram era when all we see is everybody else’s glowing faces and smiles on our screens while we struggle through the slop. But the idea that everyone is happy is bogus. The truth is, every person feels emotional pain and will feel pain throughout their life. Values are important because moving towards them orients us and give life meaning (and all the positive things that come with it). If we want to create meaning in our lives we cannot wait for the skies to clear because being human can at times be a little like living in Vancouver in November.  ​​
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This sounds grim but it’s actually great news because to be psychologically healthy we need to experience pleasant AND painful emotions. For one thing, it’s natural to feel painful emotions. Imagine you never felt sad or afraid. I don’t think I need to explain why that would problematic.  Painful emotions and thoughts serve important protective functions. We need to experience fear, sadness, and guilt to function in the world and to be human (more on this later). Some people argue we need to embrace this vulnerability that we all share, to connect with and be of service to others. Some research even suggests experiencing too much positive emotion is bad for our health and well being. It can cause us to engage in more risky behavior, impede our performance, and hinder our ability to empathize and take others’ perspectives (something that is crucial for good relationships). Research also suggests pursuing happiness can do more harm than good because the more people pursue happiness the less they seem to experience it. See this article for more. So forget the “don’t worry be happy" stuff. Ideally we have a little of both.  ​​
However understandably, humans don't like to experience pain (and don’t even like to experience the possibility of future pain) so often when we experience it we struggle against it like a fish on a hook and line. We think about it, we worry about it, we dread it, we anticipate it, we question it, we obsess about it, we try to mentally problem solve our way out of it. A large part of the war we fight against our painful mental experiences (such as sadness, anxiety, anger, worries, doubts, obsessions, rumination) often takes place in the form of a why question: Why can't I be happier? Why me? Why am I so weird? Why am I messed up (or insert another insult of your choice here)? Why does life have to be this way? Why is everybody such a [bleep]?  

According to ACT, while this is a totally understandable response to pain, this mental war is problematic because whether you experience a little psychological pain or what seems like a lot, the struggle against it makes things so much worse; It creates pain 2.0 otherwise known as suffering. This is similar to an idea found in Buddhist philosophy, illustrated by the story of the two arrows:  

“…When touched with a feeling of pain, the ordinary person sorrows, grieves, and laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical and mental. Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows…”   

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The idea here is that when we experience pain (it could be physical pain as described here or emotional), we often react to it by fighting against it. We feel anxious and we get mad at ourselves for feeling this way, we feel sad and we feel ashamed, we feel depressed and we ruminate on the question “what is wrong with me?” and then ruminate on the answer, “you are deficient.” This causes us to, in effect shoot ourselves with a second arrow: We add suffering to pain.  

One goal of ACT is to teach us how to reduce this suffering by learning to let go of the automatic habit of shooting the second arrow when we experience pain and instead, move towards our values. Rather than getting caught up in the net of pain and suffering, we engage with and move towards what's important to us even when we feel pain.   The idea is that we can experience painful mental events such as sadness or anxiety or the thoughts, “I can’t do it” or “I don’t want to” or “I’m a failure”  AND we can go on bike rides, work in the garden, do our work, paint a picture, act in a loving way, meet a friend, and do other things that create meaning and value in our life. The experience of a painful mental event cannot stop us from doing these things. The idea in ACT is that we recognize these thoughts and feelings with mindfulness AND then we move towards what's important to us with pain in hand.  
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Does it sound hard? It can be! The experience of sadness for example can organize our whole being to want to lie in bed, cry, eat cheetos and ice cream, surf the internet mindlessly for hours, and ruminate about what went wrong. Does this mean this is our only option? No. As difficult as it might be we can mindfully recognize our emotions with kindness and then, with the same attitude of love and care, ask ourselves, “Does acting on my urges take me farther from or in the direction of who or what is most important to me?” We can then do our best to take a small step towards what is important. It is not always easy but with a lot of practice we can learn how to do this. We can learn how to respond more flexibly to emotional pain instead of always going with the knee jerk reaction of resisting it,  hiding from it, smothering it, and turning it into suffering. Some of the mental skills that can help us learn to do this are mindfulness, self compassion, and distress tolerance. I will talk more about these skills in future blog posts.    

I’m writing this post because I find this idea of moving towards values with pain particularly valuable and I use it a lot in my own life. When I feel despair, sadness, or anxiety, for sometimes what seems to be no reason at all, one of the most helpful things I've learned to do is to mindfully take note of the emotion and accompanying urges that arise in me, remind myself of my values, and encourage myself to take one tiny step in the direction of my values.  

For example, if I feel despair I might notice the urge to listen to sad music, lie in bed and watch Netflix, or ruminate about the things that are not going well for me and what I’ve done wrong. However, while understandable, these behaviors are designed to numb or escape pain and take me further from my values of learning and teaching, caring for others, developing my skills as a psychologist, being an engaged and loving partner, and creative expression. So, I do my best to notice these emotions and urges with kindness, acknowledge how painful they are, and then if all goes according to plan, I take a tiny step in the direction of my values. I repeat TINY. This is crucial because when we feel anxious or down even “small” steps can seem overwhelming. ​My tiny step might be washing the dishes in the sink, reading a page of a book, going  for a walk around the block, or send a half dozen friends a cat meme (someone usually responds). Although it’s important to note that the point of moving towards values is not to get rid of pain, I sometimes find that after I have made a move towards my values, my difficult emotions loom less large or sometimes even pass. And, at the very least I’m sad but at least I’m sad AND I went for a walk and took a step towards health.  ​
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If you want, try this out for yourself. Write down a few of your values and the next time you find yourself caught up in painful thoughts or emotions, see if you might remind yourself of some of your values and ask yourself the question, “Does acting on these mental experiences or thoughts take me closer to or farther away from what is most important to me?” If the answer is farther you might ask, “What tiny step might I take towards my values?” If this seems really difficult get in touch with a counsellor or psychologist for help. 

It's important to note that what feels tiny to me might feel microscopic to you or it might feel huge. Take a step that feels tiny to you. It might be doing five jumping jacks or washing three dishes or it might be reorganizing your house or running a marathon.  Meet yourself where you are at. The main point is to take a tiny step towards your values, notice that you did it, and see what happens next and repeat. Let me know what happens.  

Stay tuned: In the following weeks I will write some more blog posts on identifying values, mindfulness, ACT, self compassion, and distress tolerance.  ​​​
]]><![CDATA[3 simple mindfulness practices for coping with difficult experiences and emotions in day-to-day life]]>Wed, 07 Oct 2015 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/3-simple-mindfulness-practices-for-coping-with-difficult-experiences-and-emotions-in-day-to-day-lifeCultivating mindfulness through regular meditation practice has been shown to produce numerous benefits over time. It reduces stress, anxiety, and emotional reactivity and increases focus, well-being, and compassion.

However, meditators sometimes grapple with the question of how to practically apply mindfulness skills in day-to-day life, particularly in moments of stress when we notice our buttons are being pushed or we’re edging towards emotional reactivity. It’s not always clear how to take mindfulness from the meditation cushion into the activities of daily life. It’s also no surprise that being mindful in moments where we are dealing with a difficult person or event can be more challenging than being mindful when we are peacefully and comfortably seated on a meditation cushion!

There are a few short practices that are well suited to integrating mindfulness into day-to-day life in order to reap the more tangible and immediate effects of stepping out of automatic patterns of reactivity and grounding ourselves in the present. Weaving these practices into your day in moments of calm can help you go about your daily activities more mindfully and may help prepare you to use mindfulness skills when you encounter stressors.

​This may interrupt the cascade of negative thoughts, emotions, and actions that sometimes seems to happen automatically in moments of stress or emotional discomfort.

These different practices share elements but also have important differences. Try them and see what works best for you!
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STOP

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This practice is helpful when we find ourselves caught up in ruminative, worried, or otherwise “busy” patterns of thinking or in destructive urges and impulses. It can help us notice our mental state, ground us in the bare facts of the present moment, and insert a pause between our thoughts, urges, and impulses and impulsive (and sometimes harmful) behavioral responses.

The acronym STOP serves as a reminder of each step.
  1. Stop what you are doing. Freeze and do not do anything.
  2. Take a few deep breaths and step back from the situation. You can continue this deep breathing for a few minutes while paying attention to the sensations of breath in your belly.
  3. Observe what is happening inside of you and in your environment without judging or evaluating. Observe the bare sensory qualities of your present moment experience. What is your body doing? What thoughts, feelings, and body sensations are you experiencing? What is happening around you? What sensory information are you receiving from the environment?
  4. Proceed mindfully and with compassion. Act with awareness of what you are doing and how it will affect yourself and others. Proceed with compassion for yourself and others.

There are a few variants of this practice but the intention of each is similar.

​To read more about psychologist Elisha Goldstein’s version of STOP visit http://www.mindful.org/stressing-out-stop/

RAIN

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Psychologist and meditation teacher Tara Brach teaches this practice. It's one of my FAVOURITES.

​It is helpful for when we feel overwhelmed by painful feelings such as sadness or despair and difficult thoughts of insecurity or unworthiness.

The acronym RAIN serves as a reminder of each step. 
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  1. Recognize what’s going on inside you by acknowledging the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that are present. You might label these experiences by saying to yourself, “sadness is here”, “pain is here”, “self-critical thoughts are here”, etc.
  2. Allow the thoughts, feelings, and sensations that are already present to simply be here. Often we react to difficult thoughts and feelings by judging others or ourselves, numbing ourselves to our experience (e.g., by overeating, abusing alcohol, mindlessly surfing the internet). Allowing means willing to be with these experiences. Allowing also involves noticing if there is urge to resist difficult thoughts, feelings, and sensations and intentionally relaxing our resistance. Note that allowing does not mean that we agree with our self critical thoughts or like our painful feelings. It means being willing to observe and make room for what is already present. When we are willing to allow our difficult thoughts and feelings to be as they are, we may be less likely to react in impulsive and destructive ways intended to reduce our discomfort. We may therefore be more able to chose a wise and skillful course of action. Paradoxically allowing may therefore reduce suffering in the long run.
  3. Investigate with kindness means bringing a gentle and discerning curiosity to our experience in the present moment. You might investigate whether the emotion or thought that is present shows up in the body (e.g., a lump in the throat, clenching in the jaw, a knot in stomach, tension in the shoulders or arms), the qualities of the sensations you are experiencing (e.g., tense, throbbing, prickling, solid, fluid), and the area of your body that is occupied by the sensations. You might also notice if resistance to the present experience shows up in the body (e.g., a tightening around the lump, a twitching sensation, an urge to move). Investigating with kindness means bringing a compassion and curiosity to difficult experiences in the moment and observing them without jumping to change or “fix” them.
  4. Non-identification means not fusing our sense of self with limiting thoughts, difficult feelings, and uncomfortable sensations. This means recognizing that our awareness in the present moment can hold more than just our difficult thoughts and feelings and that we are therefore not defined by these experiences (e.g., sadness, fear, anger, pain). ​Difficult emotions are shared by all human beings and are simply showing up in the wider field of our awareness in this moment. Non-identification also means recognizing thoughts as mental events rather than “capital T truths” about what needs to be acted upon, fixed, or changed.

For more on RAIN visit
http://www.tarabrach.com/articles/RAIN-WorkingWithDifficulties.html

3-minute breathing space

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This exercise is taken from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). It is a quick and simple way of taking mindful pauses throughout the day and maintaining continuity in our mindfulness practice.

It is also helpful for interrupting automatic (i.e., habitual) and unhelpful thinking patterns that can sometimes spiral into negative moods and destructive behaviours. It integrates two types of meditation (open-monitoring and concentrative) as well as the practices of acceptance, attentional switching, and letting go.

​The following instructions are from Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression by Segal, Williams, and Teasdale, 2002.

Step 1 - Becoming aware

Start by adopting an erect and dignified posture. Then if possible, closing your eyes. Bringing your awareness to your inner experience by asking “What is my experience right now?”
  • What THOUGHTS are present? As best you can, acknowledging thoughts as mental events, perhaps putting them into words.
  • What FEELINGS are here? Turning toward any sense of discomfort or unpleasant feelings, and acknowledging them.
  • What BODY SENSATIONS are here right now? Quickly scanning the body to pick up any sensations of tightness or bracing, acknowledging the sensations.

STEP 2 -  Gathering your attention

Redirecting your attention to the physical sensations of breathing in the abdomen.

Feeling the sensations of the abdomen wall expanding as the breath comes in..and falling back as the breath goes out. Follow the breath all the way in and all the way out, using the breathing to anchor yourself into the present.

STEP 3 - Expanding your attention
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Expanding the field of your awareness around the breathing so that it includes a sense of the body as a whole, your posture, and facial expression. If you become aware of any sensations of discomfort, tension, or resistance, taking your awareness there by breathing into them on the inbreath. Then breathing out from those sensations, softening and opening with the outbreath. As best you can, bring this expanded awareness to the next moments of your day.
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A video of Mark Williams guiding the three minute breathing space is available here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVW_IE1nsKE
]]><![CDATA[What is mindfulness? - An introduction by Jon Kabat Zinn (at Google)]]>Tue, 21 Oct 2014 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/what-is-mindfulness-an-introduction-by-jon-kabat-zinn-at-googleOne of my favourite talks on what mindfulness is all about for people who don't know much about it yet.
]]><![CDATA[What's mindfulness all about?]]>Fri, 23 May 2014 07:00:00 GMThttps://www.natsumisawada.com/blog/what-is-mindfulnessPicture
Mindfulness is a particular state of awareness cultivated through intentional practice.

WHAT IS PARTICULAR ABOUT THIS STATE OF AWARENESS?

1. It is focused on the present moment.

Our awareness is usually caught up in thoughts about the past or future. We therefore cruise through life on autopilot unaware of what’s really happening now in our bodies and around us. Sometimes this is helpful because it allows us to remember, learn, and plan. 

The downside is:

1) We miss what’s actually happening now. 

2) We get caught in disappointment about the past or worry about the future, which can lead to depression or anxiety. We don’t need to actually experience threatening events to be scared or stressed – we can simply imagine past or future threats. 

Practicing mindfulness means intentionally bringing awareness to the present over and over again. It’s about noticing what’s here now.

Ironically, there is a sense in which all that actually exists is the present. Both the past and the future only exist now as thoughts, concepts, or stories.

The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it. - Thích Nhất Hạnh

2. It is embodied and sensory.

Mindfulness is a type of knowing through awareness with all of the senses (smell, touch, hearing, sight, taste, proprioception, interception, sensory knowing).

We are often caught up in experiencing the world almost uniquely through our thoughts/intellect/concepts:

Example: this is delicious, this tastes horrible, she’s beautiful, he’s stylish, this room is ugly, he’s talented. 

However, we don’t spend much time experiencing what actually comes to us through our senses.

Example: experiencing the texture of fabric, noticing light hitting a particular object, vibrations hitting our eardrums, the rise and fall of the pitch in a piece of music, the rush of an emotion bubbling up inside our chest.

When we practice mindfulness we cultivate knowing though all our senses at a pre-conceptual level. Sometimes I like to ask myself, how would I experience and get to know about this if I were a dog or a small child without concepts such as rude, ugly, stylish, and beautiful? What is here for my senses to experience?

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. - Rumi

3. It is characterized by five key attitudes.

a) Non-striving/acceptance:  This means noticing subtle forms of resistance such as wishing things were different, resisting certain facts or uncomfortable sensations in your body and intentionally and repeatedly cultivating non-resistance by coming back to noticing, acknowledging, and experiencing how things are in this moment primarily at a sensory level. 

Example: Becoming aware that you are rushing though a task you don’t like and telling yourself how great it will be to be done. Then, choosing to disengage from your thinking and directing awareness to the sensations in your body when you rush, when you do something you don’t like allowing yourself to open up to these. Then, noticing the information coming through all of your senses in this very moment.

b) Non-judgment/beginner’s mind: This means noticing when we’re intellectualizing, judging, conceptualizing, or telling “stories” about something based on our past experience and instead choosing to bringing our awareness back to the present and with curiosity exploring what we are experiencing as if we are experiencing it for the first time.

Example: Noticing you are telling yourself a story about (i.e. thinking about) what it will be like to do something you have experienced before (e.g. meeting a certain person, eating your favourite meal, experiencing a particular emotion) and choosing to come back to explore that this with curiosity, using your senses in this very moment.

c) Letting go: This means noticing when your mind is getting carried away with stories or thoughts about how things are, were, or should be. Letting go means intentionally coming back to the present and your body even when these stories are very compelling (they usually are).

d) Non-doing/being: This goes hand-in-hand with acceptance. We are almost always trying to do, change, or achieve something. Mindfulness is about intentionally being with what is here now. Simply being.

e) Patience/kindness/compassion: When your mind is carried away with stories, thoughts, or judgments acknowledging that this is simply what all minds do. Gently, kindly, and compassionately bringing your mind back to the present over and over and over again. Mindfulness does not imply constant, fixed awareness of the present. It is the intentional and gentle act of bringing your awareness back.
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