“Knowledge speaks, Wisdom listens.”
– Jimmy Hendrix
The world can be noisy and chaotic. Thoughts are often racing and emotions are the driving force. Without awareness, it is easy to miss the bigger picture and react irrationally. Like a cat jumping at a red dot on the wall, a momentary feeling like anger or panic can take over and sweep us away.
But this is not necessary if one learns to pause and develop emotional awareness. With the right practice, one can cultivate a non-reactive yet ready state of attention, which has positive effects on the central nervous system (the brain and spine).
Mindfulness, the practice of staying in the present moment, focuses attention on observing rather than reacting. The magic is in letting go of the need to judge. As we learn to be more mindful, the world can speak for itself in its own way, and a sense of solitude and connection grows every day. How we carry emotions is the core subject of mindfulness practice.
A misunderstanding
In early Winter some years ago, I started my car in the morning to go to work. I began to pull out of the driveway slowly since there were cars passing through the street. As I slowly backed out, I noticed a white van drive past. I gently hit the break then continued going, watchful if the coast was clear. Suddenly, I heard a loud and lengthy honk. BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP.
I hit the break and squinted my eyes. There was a red sedan and the driver was a furious young lady flipping her lid thinking I was trying to get in her way.
Immediately, my stress response kicked in and I got angry by her honk. My jaw tightened and grip hardened over the steering wheel. The red dot on the wall was bright red and I was ready to jump at it.
Years before, before I got in the habit of meditating, I would not have noticed the chain reaction build up inside me. And my severe anxiety at the time would have made things worse. But now I was able to pause and notice more nimbly. I took a deep breath and felt agitated in my body. I took another breath and noticed my throat tightening and heat rising in my chest.
I realized the nature of the feeling. My reaction was coming from a person whose anger had nothing to do with me. I was not trying to get in her way and there was no use to explain the misunderstanding. The situation naturally became insignificant. With a presence of mind, I was able to drop it and go about the day.
“Staying emotionally aware is an ongoing practice of nonjudgment and like any other skill, it requires practice.”
A few things to note here. Staying emotionally aware is an ongoing practice of nonjudgment and like any other skill, it requires practice. The second thing is that practicing mindfulness does not make you special, it makes you a practitioner. And with practice, you become more sensitive to the early signals of stress and less willing to engage in maladaptive behavior. Labeling the emotion early on also helps to make the feeling conscious and less destructive (ex. “I feel angry”).
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness is the process of becoming attuned to bodily sensations in real time. The breath serves as the bridge to the body and body is the gateway to the now. Cultivating this mind-body connection is at the heart of emotional wisdom and what it really means is taking a pause to listen with the whole body.
Mindfulness can be practiced as a seated meditation, and it can be practiced while eating or watching dishes. Instead of being consumed by constant thinking, a conscious presence allows a fresh space to open up in between thoughts.
In the emotion center of the brain, there is an area called the Amygdala, which triggers the brain’s fight-flight response. The Amygdala is the brain’s alarm bell to detect perceived threats. There is a growing body of research that shows how mindfulness lowers stress hormones in the brain by easing the Amygdala’s fear response. Meanwhile, areas related to learning and reflection are activated and feel-good hormones like Serotonin are increased.
Doctors and athletes have been known to use mindfulness to stay “in the zone” and keep cool under pressure. Schools also use it to deal with misbehaving kids. Coleman Elementary school in the US replaced detention with meditation to reduce disruptive behavior. By helping kids calm down and re-center, bullying subsided and suspension reduced to zero within a year.
A presence of mind stabilizes attention and increases emotional awareness. The key is to maintain nonjudgment, allowing decisions to unfold naturally.
A basic instruction a meditation teacher might offer is, “feel the sensations of your breath, Watch the airflow in and out, if you notice the mind wandering, gently come back to the breath.”
You are right to think that simply observing is difficult and boring; you are also right if you think noticing is a source of strength and wisdom. As the inner workings of the nervous system become more conscious, emotions can be more readily processed for decision-making.
Seeing within
A brief history: The Greek term for this inner noticing is soma, the body as perceived from within. In 1906, neurophysiologist Charles Sherrington introduced the term Interoception, which means knowing through a physiological sense of the entire body. In his pioneering work in somatic experiencing on healing trauma, Peter Levine uses the term felt-sense which nicely expresses the physical sense of being here and now.
The modern-day term for this inward practice is mindfulness. It is to focus attention not on content, but on the qualities of awareness itself. As drawn from Buddhist origins, mindfulness is the general process of witnessing the interiors of the body: what it feels like to have shoulders, the weight of the breath, beating of the heart, spinal posture, sensations in the chest.
“Our innermost intimate connection is with our own nervous system.”
You gain a felt sense of how you are in this moment and what is revealed is the flow of aliveness that is present within. Our innermost intimate connection is with our own nervous system. While the mind may continue to wander and chatter, the fragrance of awareness itself gently hums when we simply stay present and notice.
Do I try to achieve a certain state?
The practice is not to justify one emotional state over another, like “I don’t want to be overwhelmed, I want to feel calm and focused.” When emotions sweep in, it takes strength to let it be and not identify with them. The central idea is to continually observe and stay alert with whatever arises, whether tense, comfort or numb.
This natural way of noticing has shown to calm the brain’s emotional pathways and regulate attention. The active brain region when we practice mindfulness is the pre-frontal cortex (PFC), which connects the emotion center to areas that process reflection and concentration. When the PFC is active, the amygdala’s fear-response quiets down.
Staying present is not always easy, but it is an invitation to step back and notice the red dot on the wall. The goal is to become an expert in one’s own emotions. As we gain mastery of the inner, the outer works itself out. As we wake up to the present moment what arises is the mind-body complex wheeling away but we no longer feel the need to be swallowed by it. What develops is a rooted sense of inner stillness, allowing thoughts to pass and events naturally unfold.
And if things don’t go our way, we don’t make a big deal about it. We simply breathe, notice, and keep going. The main challenge is our own ego, which craves attention and drama. Focusing on the breath is a huge insult to the ego. Conscious breathing deprives the ego of its negative patterns and an empty mind gives the ego no fuel to exist.
By maintaining non-judgment, we discover each moment anew, ready to unhook from old thought patterns and allow fresh thinking to emerge. No longer do we focus on outside forces, and instead we dwell on an unconditional friendliness with the inner states of the body, even the fear response. What was once a struggle against overwhelming chaos becomes a conscious surrender to a living relationship with what is, here and now.
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Arya Salehi is an author, speaker, and coach with a mission to help people align with their purpose and wellbeing.