Cotton candy, chutes and ladders

Telluride Daily Planet, Friday, June 21, 2024

“Because of this inner busyness, which is going on almost all the time, we are liable either to miss a lot of the texture of our life experience or to discount its value and meaning.” John Kabat-Zinn, Full Catastrophe Living

The bottom line? It’s kind of a mess.

I’m not talking about my garden, or kitchen, or car, politics, or plastics in the ocean — though those are probably all true, as well. I’m talking about something far closer to home — the contents of my mind. I reencountered this mess in a profound way after completing an eight-week course on MBSR (Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction) as part of my requisite continuing education credits for health coaching. 

Though the MBSR program does begin with disclaimers about what one is likely to discover, that doesn’t make it any easier when beginning to assess the lay of the land. Because what becomes clear while learning to be more mindful — or mindful at all — is that the human mind is indeed full of sticks, stones, dross, cotton candy, chutes, ladders, dark clouds, mites, reruns, traps, tendencies, shiny objects, pitfalls, dark corners, jingles, wounds, worries, patterns, resentments, judgments, and every other kind of debris one can fathom. 

For most of us, in the West, at least, there is very little given in the way of this kind of training the mind looking in at it, letting it be, and learning to be more conscious of the reality of the present moment without judgment of it. After the initial gawking at the profusion of our mental undergrowth and overgrowth, however, we can begin to see how often we interfere in our own interaction with the ever-present now. We’re just in our own way so much.

MBSR — just one of many roads to mindfulness — was started in the 1970s by Jon Kabat-Zinn, now 80, a professor of medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts, who essentially took a more scientific approach to Buddhist principles and created a program through which body-mind stress reduction could be taught and applied. It includes such practices as sitting and walking meditation, body scan, mindful eating, qigong and yoga. 

Of the six principles of MBSR, my favorite is this idea of “non-striving,” simply because of our insane cultural pressures to set goals, compete, achieve, manifest and win. There is a painting in our house that says “Un-be a winner.” Same notion. The other MBSR principles — of having a beginner’s mind, acceptance, letting go, mindfulness and non-judging — comprise a life’s worth of practice for anyone seeking a more balanced and joy-filled life. This is thoroughly explored in Kabat-Zinn’s classic book about the program, Full Catastrophe Living, one of the fifteen he has authored. 

Does mindfulness sound hard? It can be! Fortunately for us doers and strivers, we can also attend to our minds by attending to the more obvious health of the brain, the container of the mind. This can occur through exercise, hydration, relaxation, stimulation, brain-healthy foods an

And within the already profoundly deep mysteries of sleep, the brain, in addition, has its own system of clearing itself out called the glymphatic (glial-lymphatic) system, newly researched in the last decade or so. The glymphatic system operates during sleep when many of the other bodily systems are resting. It clears waste proteins and metabolites (including beta-amyloids, involved in the Alzheimer’s process) from the brain and nervous system via cerebrospinal-fluid-filled channels that collect the waste and eventually flush it out of the body. Important research continues on the connection of low glymphatic health to neurodegenerative diseases (like Alzheimer’s and Parkinsons’) and sleep disorders.

Hacks to improve glymphatic system health? One PubMed article from 2020 cites sleep position (side sleeping is best), exercise, and omega-3 consumption. 

Simple hacks for mindfulness? Notate internal ruminating (what is my internal tone, what am I saying, am I complaining, re-living, fantasizing) without judgment. If you’re a busy person like most people are, try coming to a complete stop and remaining perfectly still for as little as fifteen seconds while you open your ears and all the other senses. It is astonishing how lost we can be in thought and how much we miss. 

For the quickest regulation of the nervous system I have found, perform the “physiological sigh” a couple of times by inhaling deeply then following immediately (same breath) with a short second inhalation, and then an extended exhalation. We (babies especially) do this naturally when we cry — for a reason! 

Mindfulness is a life’s worth of work. But it can start with gently asking yourself what is rattling around in your mind today and actually taking a moment to consider it in the greater galaxy of your consciousness. And, as with everything concerning our growth, potential, and health, it is never too late to try something new and to allow small steps to make a difference.