Mark Coleman - Quiet The Ruminations And Self-Judgement

Mark Coleman is a therapist, coach, author of 3 books, and an amazing mindfulness teacher and trainer. His newest book, "From Suffering to Peace: The True Promise of Mindfulness," gets to the heart of what mindfulness really is and defines it in pretty simple but powerful terms: “A depth of awareness that we bring to life...and the clarity that we need to meet the changing and challenging circumstances we all face, many of which are out of our control.”

Transcript

Welcome to Untangle.

I'm Patricia Karpis.

Today's episode is with Mark Coleman.

Mark is a mindfulness teacher and trainer,

Author and coach.

He gets to the heart of what mindfulness really means and defines it in pretty simple but powerful terms.

A depth of awareness that we bring to life and the clarity that we need to meet the changing and challenging circumstances we all face,

Many of which are out of our control.

True wisdom from one of the top mindfulness teachers in the world.

Now,

Here's Mark.

Mark,

It's so great to have you back on Untangle today.

Thanks so much for being here.

Great to be with you,

Patricia.

Yeah,

And I just finished your new book,

From Suffering to Peace,

The True Promise of Mindfulness,

And I really loved it.

It was great.

What inspired you to write this book and how is this different from some of the other books that you've written?

Well,

As you may know,

And you're very much in this world,

Mindfulness has really exploded in the last five to 10 years.

I've been very much part of that as a view in terms of I've been teaching from Google to United Nations to Ford Motor Company to high schoolers.

I really watched the mindfulness movement grow and I started 35 years of studying mindfulness in the Buddhist tradition,

Teaching in that tradition for the last 20,

And much more involved in the secular mindfulness world in the last 10,

15.

Having watched it grow from both the inside and the outside,

I've watched with concern as have many of my colleagues.

What I've seen,

And it's true I think with many things that get popularized like mindfulness,

Like yoga did 20,

30 years ago,

Is especially when media tries to scale when it becomes commodified,

The desire for broad appeal to simplify the message and to simplify the practice.

Often I've seen mindfulness getting reduced to things like attention or to focus,

Which are important parts of mindfulness,

But the essence that mindfulness is embedded within a tradition that sees mindfulness as a part of a path from suffering to peace,

Really understanding what it means to be a human being,

Looking at how we can understand our minds,

Hearts,

And bodies,

How we can free ourselves from unnecessary stress and suffering,

And how we can find peace.

I wanted that message to be more out there to the mainstream audience.

There's plenty of good Buddhist books about this topic because that's what Buddhist teachers speak to,

But not many that were really speaking to a more mainstream audience.

So I was wanting to draw from the depth of the tradition in a very accessible way that pointed to the depth and scope of the practice.

I'm so happy that you did that.

I love that your main sections are body,

Mind,

Heart,

And world because I think that makes it so real for people.

In the book,

You define mindfulness as depth of awareness that we bring to life and developing that clarity that we need to meet changing circumstances that we may or may not be able to control.

Can you talk a little bit more about what does it take to actually have that clarity of awareness?

And is it just being aware or is there something else about our emotions that we need to accept reality just as it is?

I think it's a process and it's layered and it takes time.

There are many things involved in mindfulness and meditation teaching that sound very simple like letting go,

Being present,

Noticing your reactivity,

And they are simple.

And yet if one hasn't really cultivated that attitude of mind,

It does take training.

So mindfulness practice is,

Mindfulness is a quality of mind but it's also a training and there's 20 to 3000 year old tradition that's been developing these tools,

Techniques,

Practices.

So to live with that presence of awareness,

It does take some training to learn how to be present,

How to be mindful and within your own skin,

Mindful of your body,

How to be present to the whole range of emotional experience and so many things internally and externally are challenging and easily throw us off our center.

And so mindfulness is really the sort of steady training to learn how to develop that capacity or the muscle of awareness to really be present to the whole range of human experience.

It's so interesting because we talk about a lot of these concepts on this show and I've been meditating for a long time myself and I still get overwhelmed by thoughts and feelings and I still hear from some of our listeners,

What does it take to actually change?

And we talk so much about the training,

How much training do we need?

Can we just hope to become aware of our thoughts and feelings to really not get overwhelmed,

For example?

Yeah,

It's a very common and important question of what does it take?

And basically,

I think that hidden within that is what's the minimum I need to do to get the maximum result?

We're living in that kind of culture where,

You know,

Time's scarce,

What really works?

And I think it's good that we're putting these practices to the test and asking those questions.

It's hard to say it's different for different people depending on what they've already learned and developed and cultivated in their lives.

But I can speak to what I see from the experience of my students is that when people first take up a meditation practice,

Meditating every day is helpful.

Starting small is helpful,

You know,

Five minutes a day,

10 minutes a day,

Using apps and supports like news and whatever helps people get some sense of training and cultivating the mind.

Usually,

I mean,

Within weeks,

I see students realizing that this simple practice of mindfulness of breath or body actually does help me when I'm in a relationship or when I'm at work or when I'm stressing in traffic.

And of course,

That's just the very,

Very beginning phase.

But I do think that if we do have a regular meditation practice,

It is the lab and the gym of the mind.

I like to generally say that over time,

You're developing at least a 20 to 30 minute daily meditation practice because that really does support the depth of awareness.

And then in your day-to-day life,

You can apply and do five mindful breaths before a meeting or when you're in traffic or when you're in an argument and those sort of more applied tools can really work.

But I would say that people can start to see significant change within a few months.

What's your daily practice and do you find yourself getting thrown off center still?

And if you are thrown off center in,

Let's say,

A conflict in your personal relationship or something related to your work or to your book tour event,

What is the first thing that you do when you're thrown off center?

My daily practice at this point is I sit with open awareness style,

Which is just simply being present to the flow of experience and really just meeting whatever's arising without too much agenda or idea of what should unfold.

And I find that they're really great preparation for life because with life,

We're simply learning to be present and meet whatever's here with as much presence,

Awareness,

Kindness that we can do and understanding.

And for sure,

I'm a human being and I get triggered and things throw me off guard,

Whether it's listening to some politician on TV or in an argument with my spouse or some physical discomfort and pain.

For sure,

I can get reactive.

And for me,

The criteria is not so much whether I get triggered or not because I think that's just part of being human and part of being alive and I have to be quite sort of a passionate,

Strong feeling person.

So things do impact me.

But it's really,

To me,

What matters is the awareness.

Like,

Can I be aware when I'm getting angry?

Can I be aware when anxiety is present?

Can I be aware when I've lost I'm sort of a reactive tunnel vision and I know it and I know not to hit send on the email or send on the text or pick up the phone and want to say what I want to say in the fit of my theory and just don't.

For me,

The awareness is the key point and then the wisdom that comes from the awareness of maybe wise restraint because it's that awareness that provides difference between being caught in the experience and knowing it.

And if we can just present through it,

We're not necessarily suffering even though with the reactivity strong,

There's some spaciousness that allows us some freedom from that.

Yeah,

That makes a lot of sense.

What do you say then to people who get lost in,

I think you call this,

I like the sentence,

Get lost in endless rumination and sort of whipping themselves up into a painful frenzy over something that's not happening but that they're creating in their minds?

Well that definitely is a painful place that we get into commonly.

And I noticed this is one of the key distinctions I see between meditators and non-meditators is if you haven't cultivated mindfulness or some kind of awareness practice in meditation,

I find that people much more believe their mind,

Believe their thoughts,

Believe their stories and therefore will get lost in much more rumination.

Not that meditators don't get lost in rumination,

We do,

But there's much more sense of,

Oh,

There goes my mind doing this thing,

Running a story,

Catastrophizing about I'm going to end up under a railway bridge because my boss looked at me funny and I know I'm going to get fired and I'm going to lose my house.

There's a way that we can see,

Oh,

There goes my judging mind,

There I go comparing myself negatively.

And again,

It's the awareness that has the space to see that that really unhooks the pain.

And then of course with things like rumination,

And this is again one of the principles I'm stressing in the book,

Because mindfulness has got reduced to attention,

Then sometimes the idea that,

Oh,

I should just be aware and just be aware and be aware and let my mind or my body or my heart or my reactivity do its thing.

It's like,

No,

One can also be very active.

What arises out of mindfulness is clarity and wise action.

And so with rumination,

The best thing is to cut it.

And it's like,

Okay,

There I go ruminating,

Okay,

Let me purposefully unhook from that and shift my attention.

Look out the window,

See,

Oh,

It's a beautiful summer's day.

Oh,

I get up and I move my body or I need something to snap myself out of that trance,

Which we might need to do many,

Many times a day.

So we're not just,

You know,

Because if we don't,

Then we're just feeding that mind that gets lost in endless rumination.

And there's emotions that are then attached to that.

So when people aren't snapping out of that trance very quickly,

They may feel sad or agitated or anxious because of that endless rumination.

So this idea of snapping out,

Would it just be doing something else or focusing on something else?

Because sometimes when your mind is ruminating and you're meditating,

It's a little bit hard.

It's like when you're feeling extremely anxious,

I know it's hard for people to meditate sometimes.

So there are different types of meditations that you might do.

Definitely.

So for sure,

Sometimes sitting with the intensity of a feeling is either hard or not so helpful.

So maybe you sit down,

You're feeling extremely anxious or afraid or angry.

And it's just hard to be with that physical intensity and emotional intensity.

And it may be better to do a standing practice or walking practice,

Or maybe go out into nature and do a meditation practice where you're less sort of just doing in the intensity of your mind and heart.

One of the easiest things to do with rumination or with intensity is open the eyes.

So if you sit with your eyes closed,

Which most mindfulness practitioners do,

And you open your eyes,

It immediately cuts through the rumination because often the rumination is visual imagery.

And then to look around,

Ideally look outside,

Look for some vista so you get a sense of perspective and space.

And ideally look for something pleasing because the pleasantness of something allows the nervous system to calm down.

And one practice I teach a lot these days because this comes up a lot for people where the rumination thinking mind is so strong,

They just can't lose the grip of that is I teach a practice called seeing,

Hearing,

Sensing,

Where you just rotate your attention from seeing to hearing to sensing,

Seeing,

Hearing,

Sensing.

Every few seconds,

Every few breaths,

You just rotate your attention.

And that's a way of simply grounding like I'm here,

Seeing,

Maybe seeing the grass or the carpet or the wall,

Hearing the sounds of the neighbors or the wind,

Sensing my body and breath.

And that's a very,

Very practical thing,

Especially morning practice before work when the mind's busy planning,

Worrying about a meeting.

There are ways to cut through the thinking mind and really ground in the physical sensory experience.

That makes sense too,

And trying to sort of soften all of those loud thoughts that are ruminating.

It makes sense to open your eyes or to focus on other senses.

When people say you are not your thoughts,

And we hear that a lot and it's a big part of most mindfulness training and we know that we create narratives around our thoughts based on our biases and our conditioning.

But sometimes people will say,

Well,

If we're not our thoughts,

Who are we?

There's so many people that have been so cognitively focused for so much of their lives and their intelligence and the actions that they've taken and behaviors all based on what they've been thinking.

And then someone says to them in this practice,

You are not your thoughts.

And you think,

Okay,

Well then how do I know myself?

How do I trust myself?

How do I believe my intuition?

How do you instruct around that challenge?

Yeah,

It's an interesting reflection.

Certainly one of the things that comes from mindfulness is we tend to have more spaciousness around our experience because we're more attuning to the awareness that's aware of experience,

Whether it's thoughts or feelings or sensations or life experience.

When we have that vantage point of observing awareness,

Noticing,

Then we tend to what's called disidentify from our thinking process,

Which means there's a little more space between the knowing of the thoughts and the thoughts themselves.

Prior to that,

We tend to,

As you say,

Very much identify with our thoughts as who we are,

They're my thoughts,

And we take pride in them or we enjoy them or it's very important for our work.

And when we take a step back as we can in meditation with awareness,

We see that mostly the thoughts are kind of thinking themselves in that if you pay attention in meditation and you're honest,

Most of the thoughts that arise that come,

You didn't actually decide to think them.

That thought about your high school teacher or what you're planning to do next week or did you leave the stove on or what email did I send or not to my boss,

They just pop up images,

Random thoughts,

Memories,

Pop songs,

And we see how the mind or the brain is this thinking machine that we can learn to be present to.

And of course,

We can use our thoughts in a very conscious,

Deliberate way to plan and to create and to strategize and to imagine and all of that.

But often the thoughts are just what in neuroscience they call the default mode network where the brain ruminates,

We're left to its own devices when we're not having to engage,

The brain will ruminate,

Which means just sort of circulates thoughts around itself and one's life and one's stories.

And it's just like the brain thinking itself.

So when we see that,

We see,

Oh,

We get a certain spaciousness and we may reassess,

Well,

Is it true that I'm my thoughts or my thoughts are mine or actually is a lot of it just happening by itself?

But we direct and have some agency over,

But so much of it is out of our control.

And so the key again with mindfulness is learning how to be present to that whole process.

And then you can see more clearly what you can control and what you can't control or kind of gives you that choice point.

Yes,

It gives you a freedom or spaciousness to then,

Do I want to engage in this rumination?

Do I want to actually let it go and shift to something more productive or come back to something that's just happening in the present rather than worrying about the future?

So it just gives us much more room to maneuver.

And really it's about learning to less becoming a victim of our thinking process and more actually using the mind in its brilliance to create,

To think and to plan.

Like I've written this 300-page book.

It took a lot of conscious thought and that's the way we can use our minds.

But left to its own device,

It will often spin in stories and ruminations that are actually not so helpful either for meditation or for our wellbeing.

So true.

I mean,

I sometimes think to myself,

Like,

Is that your wise mind,

Patricia?

Is your prefrontal cortex in control of what's going on here or is it some other kind of old thought or old bias?

And I think that's for me what meditation has really helped me be able to sort of see that distinction.

But I kind of like that idea of having a wise mind versus just the sort of rogue whatever that's going on in our minds sometimes.

Exactly.

And so with awareness,

With mindfulness,

We can train ourselves to cultivate that wise mind.

So really employing our mind effectively rather than just being lost in the soup of thoughts that are not necessarily so creative or helpful.

Yeah.

And like that term soup of thoughts,

It is a soup of,

It's kind of the stew sometimes.

You have a chapter that's called the Restless and Comparing Mind,

Which I think also ends up being a ruminating mind and a judging mind.

And is it possible to really stop judging since it's so much a part of our culture,

We see it everywhere.

Or in mindfulness practice,

Do we simply learn to notice it,

Not act on it,

But can we actually sort of smooth out that judging mind?

I think it's an interesting question.

In the beginning,

We're just learning to bring awareness to our thoughts and understand what am I thinking?

And when we notice how much our mind can often be caught up in judging and comparing,

Then we see that the mind in those states of negative,

Usually a slightly distorted perception only orienting towards what's wrong.

And so in the beginning,

It can be actually a little demoralizing in meditation because we see one,

How much we think and ruminate,

And two,

How often the thoughts are negative and judgmental.

And so in the beginning,

We're simply just noticing and noticing and noticing,

And then we can bring a little more inquiry in terms of like,

Are these thoughts helpful?

Are they accurate?

Are they useful?

And as we begin to see the prevalence of the thoughts,

We also begin to develop a little more agency and either we just let them go.

There's a practice in the book I call three R's.

We recognize,

We release and return.

So with judging,

We recognize,

Oh,

Judging is happening,

Not helpful,

Release the thought,

And you come back and then return in this case to whatever it is you're doing,

Breathing,

Conversation,

Whatever.

So over time,

We can actually learn to drop the thoughts.

We can release them.

We cannot believe them,

Give them so much attention,

Give them so much weight,

And then shift our minds either towards what's happening in the present moment or to whatever else that we need to be doing at that time.

When you talk about dropping the thoughts and I think about in our meditation practice,

And I like that concept,

Recognize,

Release,

And return,

And sometimes we are able to drop the thoughts.

But I wonder what you think about when you finish meditation journaling some of the things that you've sort of inquired about during your meditation.

Do you find that helpful or do you think it's best to do your meditation practice and then get on with your day?

No,

I think journaling is definitely,

As you know,

There's many,

Many meditations in the book,

But some of those meditations are more like reflections and then journaling.

And particularly with what I find in the workshops I do with the inner critic,

Particularly it's helpful to get those thoughts out on paper,

To tease them out.

And so sometimes I'll ask people after meditation,

Write down the judgments that you're telling yourself,

Although you're noticing.

It might be one,

Five,

10,

Judge 50,

Who knows?

And then when we read them,

We bring a different reflective quality.

We bring a different discernment to the written word rather than the words jumbling around in our head.

And we can also do inquiry.

And then one of the inquiry practices is just questioning,

Is this judgment true?

Is this helpful?

Is it accurate?

If I asked my 10 closest friends,

Would they agree with this?

Most likely the answer would be no.

And so we can bring up,

Again,

We're using the mind in a helpful,

Skillful way to discern,

For example,

With a judging pen,

Whether it's helpful or useful or not.

And when you talk about,

In the book,

You talk about the changing nature of self.

And I try to make this really real for myself and for our listeners.

Are you talking about impermanence and never taking anything like when you're in a bad mood or you're thinking negatively,

20 minutes later,

You may be in a different mood and you may have a different thought.

Are you basically saying that we change in every moment?

Is that kind of that concept of the changing nature of self?

It's true.

Change does happen every moment.

But what I'm referring to in that context is really just paying attention to how much our sense of self or identity or personality is changing.

And we tend to think of ourselves in a rather fixed,

Solid way.

I'm such an English person or I'm this age or I'm a social worker or a meditation teacher,

And we tend to lump our identity as this fixed thing.

But actually when we pay attention to ourselves,

Particularly when we pay attention to our moods,

Our thoughts,

Our feelings,

Our inner feelings,

We realize that who we are is actually quite a shape-shifting experience.

And I write about this in the book in several ways.

Like I make the analogy of I'm teaching on a nature retreat and wake up in the morning and I had a rough night's sleep because of the sleeping on the ground and it was cold.

And so I wake up feeling a little grumpy and a little tired and I drink a cup of tea.

And so instead of a grumpy identity or personality shows up that I'm familiar with,

And then I have some tea and I have some caffeine and it wakes me up and suddenly like,

Oh,

It's a brighter day.

And suddenly like positive,

Happy mark shows up and then I meditate outside and I'm feeling connected and a sense of oneness with the trees and so sort of more softer,

More deeply connected identity is present.

And then on it goes,

Maybe I hear rustling the bushes and suddenly the fearful one shows up.

So it's like paying attention to how throughout the day our changing sense of self or identity is really always in flow.

And when we fix it,

When we say,

Well,

I'm like this,

I'm this kind of person and I'm always like that.

Well,

Actually who you are is really quite indefinable.

And whenever we do try to define it or limit it,

It's constricting the potential and the fullness of who we are as human beings.

Yeah.

I think you say we expand and contract all day long.

It's hard not to use our Buddhist words crave or cling to the more pleasurable or positive ways that we feel when we're in expansion throughout the day.

But I think what you're saying is we have to embrace all of it.

Yeah,

Of course we have preferences and we like ourselves in certain ways.

We like to be expansive or happy or playful,

Creative.

We may not like ourselves so much when we're feeling negative or depressed or judgmental.

But yes,

Who we are is really a flow of all those things.

And the mistake we make is we tend to identify with a certain very narrow range of experience and then say,

I'm like this.

We either identify with our body and this is who I am or particular kinds of mental habits or emotional states.

And then when we do that,

It's like we put ourselves in a straitjacket because you're the,

Who we are is this is such a much vaster,

More interesting,

Complex web of experience that we can see as we get more curious about these inner changing states.

Is that what you're talking about when you talk about sort of releasing a mistaken identity?

The very common example,

And again,

This comes out of the work on the inner critic,

Is if most people very inaccurately self-assess and we self-assess through the critical mind.

And so the critic will look at our faults,

Our foibles,

Our deficiencies,

Our problems,

Our insecurities,

And we will tend to,

For the most part,

Label ourselves and fix ourselves.

Well,

I'm just sort of like not very successful,

Not very whatever kind of way we do that kind of person.

And we usually it's inaccurate,

Unhelpful,

And doesn't support our wellbeing.

And so with mindfulness we can see,

Oh,

That's right.

That's clearly a distorted point of view and perspective that I don't really need to subscribe to.

And you can recognize it probably in other people because you may be in relationship with someone that's kind of stuck on one part of your identity and not able to see all of who you are.

And would you communicate with that person in the same way that you would communicate with yourself?

Or is it just,

Would you say just don't be with people who judge you for one or two parts of yourselves,

But don't see the full range of emotions and feelings of who you are?

Well that would definitely limit our social circle.

I think in the same way that we take with a pinch of salt our own limited view or judgment or opinion,

We also take theirs with the same lightness and hopefully a sense of humor.

And so we come across this with our families or our families grow up with us and tend to have a very old view of who we are and especially as the older we get,

When we shift away from our teens and we're in our thirties,

Forties,

Fifties,

Sixties,

Our family still relating to us as when we were a child.

And often who we are and our sense of self and identity is vastly different because we evolve into different beings almost.

And one of the challenges we experience when we go home is we get related to as if we're still 15 years old and still the anxious child or the rebellious one or the silly one or the creative one.

And that may have been true at 15,

But very different at 50.

And then that's an interesting way where we get to see the limitation or the inaccuracy or the constriction of those identities when someone's trying to pin that on us.

And it's so far from our lived dynamic experience.

And that's a really hard situation.

I mean,

How do you teach your students,

For example,

How not to be triggered by that or if somebody sees you in a way you don't see yourself and you don't attach yourself to that?

Certainly wouldn't say don't get triggered because triggering happens by itself and going home,

For example,

Is often one of the more triggering situations,

Probably because of this thing around identity and the way people might box us or pin us into a certain narrower experience.

And that is actually true.

But mindfulness helps reveal when we get triggered,

Helps us be aware of the feelings,

Sensations,

Thoughts,

Reactions,

Helps us not compound it by judging it or rejecting it or thinking we shouldn't be triggered.

But more importantly,

Helps us to not act it out.

Yeah.

I mean,

I love the way that this wasn't your quote,

But it's a quote that you selected for the book.

At the end of the day,

We're all reactive personalities.

We just don't know that until we meet the right catalyst.

So if we have that expectation,

Maybe it's a little bit easier when we do meet that catalyst.

I wanted to move on to the heart because you have a whole section three of the book is about finding peace in the heart.

And I think especially for sensitive souls,

But really for everyone,

You talk about opening to vulnerability with a kind heart.

How do we bring kindness to our soft,

Vulnerable parts of ourselves for people that may feel like are going through loss or feeling unloved or anxiety or even things related to aging and insecurity?

How do we bring that kind heart,

Compassionate perspective to all of those very vulnerable,

Difficult parts of ourselves?

Well,

That's an important question and arena.

And I speak to this a lot in the book about how we have fundamentally being human is to be vulnerable.

We have bodies that get sick and chronic pain,

And we have relationships that are unstable or we can lose loved ones.

And so there are many,

Many things that we're just vulnerable as a person in life.

And the reason why there's a section in the book about developing the heart is that it's essential with mindfulness practice that we learn to bring a warmth or care or kindness to our experience specifically and particularly because life has so many challenges as well as beauties and joys,

It has its challenges.

And so what mindfulness allows us to do is become close to our experience and see and up close the vulnerability,

The vulnerability to aging,

To loss,

To sickness,

Et cetera.

What we're learning and training to do with the practice is see how to relate wisely to life,

To experience.

And given the inevitability of challenging circumstances that we learn how to,

Or we see the wisdom of holding,

For example,

As you're pointing to the vulnerability of say loss and change that we see if we can attune to the difficulty about the painfulness about the vulnerability that it's much more likely to then lead us to feel care and compassion.

And that's really what allows us to hold our difficulties with greater ease.

If we're judging and rejecting and being mean to ourselves,

We're just adding fuel onto the fire if we can actually feel,

Oh yeah,

This is hard when I,

My body gets sick when my,

Someone I love is also sick or I'm losing a job that I love or when we can meet that with kindness,

We have much more ability to effectively deal with it rather than judging and blaming and rejecting.

What do we do to become more compassionate with ourselves so that we don't suffer so much?

Yeah,

Well I think the,

As I was saying earlier,

The,

One of the keys is we first have to acknowledge that something is hard.

This is a step that we usually overlook.

Something difficult happens.

We quickly move to the fixing,

The problem solving,

The strategizing,

Which is fine,

But we also need to acknowledge to ourselves that this is hard,

Like chronic pain is hard,

Being sick is hard,

Being estranged from a loved one is hard.

And when we acknowledge the difficulty or the painfulness of it,

It actually is one of the ways that the heart,

The compassion can engage in the same way that when someone,

When we present,

You know,

A difficulty to say to a friend and they get busy trying to fix us and problem solve,

But actually all we want to do is be heard and actually just have someone emphasize saying,

Oh,

That's really,

Then that's really sucks.

I'm sorry that you're going through that.

That's so often what's necessary,

But we miss that either in ourselves or with friends.

We skip over it and we jumped to fixing and solution oriented before we've actually had chance to feel.

And if we can acknowledge that with ourselves,

We're much more likely to develop some sense of self-compassion.

And as I speak about in the book,

There's the principles of self-compassion is shifting from judgment to kindness and from seeing that pain is universal,

It's not just my problem.

It's actually sometimes just the way it is having a body's going to have difficulty.

And also remembering that shifting from judgment to kindness is a slow process.

Developing the heart is a slow process and having patience.

Then that ties into this idea that we try to flee from pain really quickly and maybe just acknowledging the pain and giving it some kindness might be more helpful than fleeing from it.

Are there any particular practices or inspirations in the book that are favorites of yours that were life-changing for you?

Yes.

So many,

As you say,

I would say the,

That's one of my favorite practices is the nature of awareness.

And that is generally in mindfulness practice,

We're paying attention to an object,

An object being like the breath or body sensation or a feeling or a thought or an experience or a person.

And the nature of awareness practices,

We turn that mindful awareness on itself.

We start to become aware of that,

Which is being aware that which is allowing us to know experience,

Which is both mysterious and tangible.

And certainly in neuroscience,

They have gotten,

I just was leaving a summit recently on consciousness and consciousness and awareness,

Which is sort of synonymous.

One of those more nebulous things,

But we can experientially become aware of that faculty of awareness,

Which is really what allows mindfulness and anything else to be.

And so that's a very powerful practice.

I particularly like Where is that in the book?

I know you have practices under every section of the book.

If we wanted to go to that practice.

It's in the nature,

It's in the section on finding peace in the mind.

I think it's the last chapter.

Yes,

Examining the nature of self.

Oh,

Okay.

Mindfulness of awareness.

I gotcha.

It's number 21 on page 170.

People want to take a look at that.

Was there anything else about the book that you want to share?

Sure.

I mean,

Mostly I just want people to realize that the one mindfulness is accessible.

It's really part of our nature.

And yet it has infinite depth to really bring about a sense of understanding and insight about ourselves and our body,

Mind and heart and bring about a genuine sense of transformation and peace.

And so I hope your listeners read that and really put these teachings into practice and see the great potential that they can offer us.

Well,

Thank you so much for writing this book.

It's an amazing book and it makes everything so tangible and practical and puts everything into a really beautiful perspective.

So thank you so much for being with us today,

Mark.

Thank you,

Patricia.

Nice to be on your show.

Thanks so much to Mark for joining us today.

We'll see you next time.

Reviews

Very interesting! Thank you!