Mindfulness helps prevent relapses

Learning mindfulness meditation reduced the risk that people in substance-abuse treatment programs would relapse, a study by researchers at the University of Washington says. Mindfulness may work better than group meetings or education because it helps people understand what's happening when they have cravings, researchers said.

The study looked at 286 recovering addicts who were divided among three groups: a program that involved group discussions, one that taught relapse prevention strategies (such as avoiding triggers), and one that included mindfulness meditation. Researchers note that 40 to 60 percent of those in recovery relapse.

After six months, participants in the strategy group and the meditation group had a reduced risk of using drugs or heavy drinking compared to the talk-only group, the study said. After a year, those in the meditation program had used substances on fewer days and had a reduced risk of relapse, compared to both other groups. This suggests meditation may have a more lasting effect, researchers said.

Study researcher Sarah Bowen, an assistant professor at the University of Washington's department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences , and her colleagues designed "mindfulness-based relapse prevention," which she described as a "training in awareness."

In this program, each session is about two hours, with 30 minutes of guided meditation followed by discussions about what people experienced during meditation and how it relates to addiction or relapse, Bowen said. The meditation sessions are intended to bring heightened attention to things that patients usually ignore, such as how it feels to eat a bite of food, or other bodily sensations, as well as thoughts and feelings.

The mindfulness program may work to prevent relapse in part because it makes people more aware of what happens when they have cravings.

"If you're not aware of what's going on, you don't have a choice, you just react," Bowen said.

Livescience.com quotes Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., who was not involved in the study, who says people with addiction often have difficulty regulating emotion, resulting in states like depression, anxiety, or self-harm. People may turn to drugs or alcohol to cope with those feelings.

Mindfulness meditiation helps teach people to "tolerate feelings of emotional distress, so when they feel like they're going to use [drugs], they don’t," Krakowe said.
 

You are not your craving -- and neither is the chocolate

A new study by Canadian researchers says that mindfulness can reduce chocolate cravings.

Lead study author Julien Lacaille, a psychologist at McGill University in Quebec, told Reuters that practicing mindfulness meditation, which emphasizes identifying and distancing oneself from certain thoughts -- without judging them -- weakened chocolate cravings among people with a self-declared sweet tooth.

It's an interesting study for reasons that go beyond simply decreasing food cravings. The researchers worked with almost 200 subjects -- who admitted they were prone to strong cravings for chocolate and wanted to diminish them -- to determine which aspect of mindfulness had the greatest effect. 

Participants were divided into five groups, four of which received training in mindfulness meditation techniques and were told to practice specific ones when they craved chocolate over a two-week period. Those in the fifth group were told to distract themselves when craving arose.


The researchers focused on three distinct aspects of mindfulness meditation: Awareness (simply noticing one's thoughts); acceptance (not passing judgment on one's thoughts), and disidentification (seeing thoughts as separate from oneself.) Participants were assessed before and after the study to determine how effectively they practiced the techniques.

After two weeks, participants were given a piece of chocolate to unwrap and touch for one minute; after it was taken away, they rated their craving. Those trained in disidentification reported less-intense cravings, the study found. Further analysis showed that the specific craving for chocolate, as well as the general state of craving, was reduced for who learned to see cravings as thoughts.

While that's an interesting breakdown of skills, it doesn't suggest to me that you should train only in recognizing thoughts. Awareness and acceptance are keys to being able to do that skillfully. Without first seeing that the thought exists, you can't recognize it as a thought. If you don't accept it but try to push it away or deny it, you're still attached.

Several Buddhist teachers, including Tara Brach and Sharon Salzberg, teach a process with the acronym RAIN -- Recognize, Accept, Investigate, Non-attachment (which equates to disidentification).

The extra step -- Investigate -- refers to giving yourself a chance to explore the thought: Is it habitual? When does it arise? How does it feel in the body? What does chocolate represent -- an indulgence, a reward, a hug?

It's also important to note that there's nothing wrong with the chocolate -- it's our attachment to it that may benefit from modification. As long as you know that the chocolate won't bring lasting happiness -- and enough of it over time may lead to added pounds -- go ahead and enjoy it in the moment.

Meditation is not entertaining

Meditation is not entertaining. That's kind of the point -- our constant craving to be entertained distracts us from how things actually are. Meditation is about getting in touch with that, finding calm by seeing the ways we stir up chaos so we can be entertained.

But lack of entertainment in the practice is deterring some people from trying it, says David Romanelli. “It’s still just a very old practice, and most people can’t relate to it,” he tells Well&Good.

So Romanelli, who helped popularize yoga with his Yoga and Chocolate workshops, is out to make meditation more entertaining. He's partnered with Happier.com to create a seven-day Meditation Vacation "that will teach you to soothe your mind, embrace or enhance a meditation practice, and have a BLAST in the process," the class description says.

"Dave’s fun and thought-provoking stories will capture your attention before he guides you through a series of short, sweet audio meditations, all set to soothing musicscapes created by East Forest."

And if it reminds you of Stuart Smalley .... well, the similarities are there.

The Buddha flat-out said that sarcasm is not Wise Speech, so I'll speak plainly. Don't do it. If you're taking an entertainment break, be honest and play Angry Birds. Watch a music video. Don't confuse entertainment and meditation.

Meditation is about getting rid of the entertainment and distractions to see the truth of who you are and what the world is. It's about listening to and questioning your self talk, not new-agey piano music. Being bored is a valuable experience, most Buddhist teachers would tell you, because it teaches you to sit with discomfort and find the clear blue sky behind the cloud of distractions.

You could look for shapes in the clouds -- or you could relax into the endless clarity of the sky.

Trungpa Rinpoche used to praise boredom in sitting. He said that you have to sit to the point where you’re just bored. You’ve worn out all the entertainment value and you’re just bored. And you have to go through the restlessness of boredom. Because boredom is just another word for this fundamental restlessness--it’s hot, you want to get out of there. And he said you have to sit through with as much loving kindness towards yourself and compassion, relaxation, anything that enables you to kindly and gently and continually stay present. Learning to stay with the boredom. Until, at some point, it shifts to what he called cool boredom, which is that it doesn’t make you want to jump up anymore or fill up the space. -- Pema Chodron

I am not my job description

You have opportunities every day to step beyond your role at work and act like a whole human being, offer a helping hand, learn the skill outside your scope of work, allow yourself to be helped by others. This will make your life more humane and deeply fulfilling.
-- Sharon Salzberg, "Real Happiness at Work"


This was my intention for the week: Find ways to act like a whole human being, not a job description.

-- Nicely asking someone who called on an intense deadline to call back in 20 minutes rather than snapping at him. He doesn't know my schedule.

-- Hearing out a long-winded regular caller without getting impatient.

-- Doing a task that needed to get done without claiming credit.

-- Asking for help from others instead of becoming a steaming pot of snotty resentment.
I appreciated that final phrase -- "allow yourself to be helped by others" -- since that's a part of being a whole human being I skip over. That also means speaking up when you need/want help (it's OK to help with something that you technically don't need help with) because other people don't necessarily know what's going on in your head.

I confess, I found the last chapters of "Real Happiness at Work" a little too heavy on how to be happy in your job, no matter how bad the conditions. I was hoping for some guidance on how to work toward improving a work situation, not just improving your attitude toward a work situation. Sometimes dropping your stories and seeing clearly shows areas that are in need of change, but since others aren't dropping their stories, it's difficult to acheive that.

There are stories of people who left their jobs and found their true calling elsewhere, but there's also value in changing the culture of a workplace so that work that is fulfilling can be done in a place that is supportive of your growth. I would like to be a whole human being working in a humane system.

But maybe that's another book. This book offers a wealth of explorations and contemplations for being personally happier at work, and that is a treasure.

The Real Happiness Meditation Challenge continues for another week -- or for 28 days from whenever you start. Read more -- and more blogs about people's experiences -- here.

Real Happiness Week 1: Meditation in the maelstrom

I am already pretty happy at work. I like what I do, and I like the people I do it with. I know exactly what I'll be doing, but I never know what I'll be doing. (I'm a newspaper editor, and the schedule is the same every day but the content is different.) Nevertheless, I experience stress at work. I'd like to experience it less.

So of course I clicked on a link that offered seven ways to reduce stress at work. Unfortunately, most of the tips weren't applicable. And one that suggested reducing interruptions made me laugh.

I shared that with a co-worker, who comment, "But interruptions are our business." That and multi-tasking.

Which makes concentration, the first week in Sharon Salzberg's 28-day guide to "Real Happiness at Work," a challenge. At any given moment, I may be editing a story, talking to a reporter who has an update on another story, waiting to have a page proofread, and wondering if I can hold a story for a day. And in the next moment, I'm checking email, checking the wire services for breaking news, looking at faxes dropped on my desk, and answering a colleague's question about grammar or word use (what we call "style").

Sharon notes that "human beings seem to be cognitively unable to multi-task." When we think we're tracking several things at once, we're actually switching our focus rapidly from thing to thing. Multi-tasking, she says, can "stimulate us into mindlessness, giving the illusion of productivity while stealing our focus and harming performance."

I don't need a study to tell me that. I know that I do a better job when I'm not interrupted, when I can focus on one thing. But that's not the reality of life in a newsroom.

So I've been working with one of Sharon's "stealth meditations." I can't exactly find a quiet place to meditate in the maelstrom, but I can do this: "Feel your hands. See if you can make the switch from the more conceptual thought 'These are my fingers' to the world of direct sensation -- pulsing, throbbing, pressure. You don't have to name the sensations, just feel them."

I tried that this week, in those short breaks between tasks (frantic multi-tasking is interspersed with brief no-tasking) -- just feel my hands. And it brought me out of the swirl of thoughts, into the present moment, into my body. It let me come back with more clarity, less brain fog.

During February, Sharon Salzberg runs a 28-day meditation challenge based on her books Real Happiness and Real Happiness at Work. People who are taking part post abut their experiences here. Read, comment, take the pledge, or just lurk.

Is there an Inner Grumpy Cat?

January is the Interdependence Project's Responsible eConsumption Month, and I've been observing it by not turning on electronic devices during the first hour I'm awake. The experience has been as different as the days.

For most them, it's been pretty lovely. The day is quieter, obviously. It finds its own rhythm rather than having it dictated by my choice of music. I even get out of the house a few minutes earlier, a plus. Truth be told, I'd say it was a revelation -- rather than adding to the day, my habit of putting on music was covering up the quiet.

And then there was Wednesday. The previous two Wednesdays were holidays, and I got to sleep in. This past Wednesday was a workday, the third day in a row that I was up and out of the house before the sun was up.

I was cranky. I noted this as I was making coffee and getting breakfast ready. My thoughts were on a repeating loop of why-am-I-awake? and I-would-prefer-to-be-asleep, a constant drone of pervasive dissatisfaction. Then I was dissatisfied with my dissatisfaction. What would stop this?

Music, my habit mind said.

No, my thinking mind replied. You have made a commitment not to listen to music in the first hour of the day.

Fuck that, said habit mind. I'm CRANKY. Get me music, something poppy and mindless. Unleash the true funk soldier.

Caving to habit mind's intensity, I hit the on button on the CD player. The party got started.

I turned it off.

What is the practice here? one of my minds asked. If this was happening during meditation rather than breakfast, what would the practice be?

Note the aversion. Note the repetitive thoughts. Right now, it's like this. But is this a permanent state? Is there, in truth, a solid, permanent Grumpy Cat somewhere inside me? Look for it. Can it be found. No.


Oh good, coffee. There's my mug. There's my cereal and almond milk. A clean spoon in the drawer. Life is good.

On a regular day, I would have turned on music, maybe danced a few steps between the coffee maker and the table. I would have bypassed that moment of crankiness. But this way, I realized its insubstantiality, its impermanence. This way, I didn't skip over my bad mood or suppress it or talk myself out of it, I saw it, I accepted it as how things were in that moment, and I moved into the next moment.

And that was better than the best song ever.
IDP invites everyone to become more mindful of their use of cellphones, computers, televisions, and all electronic consumption starting in the New Year.   Join the month-long Responsible eConsumption practice.
Grumpy Cat photo from Grumpycats.com

Meditation May Ease Mild Anxiety and Depression

A new study by Johns Hopkins University finds the 30 minutes of mindfulness meditation a day may relieve mild anxiety and depression -- as effectively as medication.

The study looked at the degree to which self-reported symptoms or various conditions, such as insomnia and fibromyalgia, changed in people who began to practice mindfulness meditation, described as a form of Buddhist self-awareness designed to focus precise attention on the moment at hand. They say it shows promise in alleviating some pain symptoms as well as stress.

"A lot of people use meditation, but it's not a practice considered part of mainstream medical therapy for anything," says Madhav Goyal, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and lead author of the paper in JAMA Internal Medicine. "But in our study, meditation appeared to provide as much relief from some anxiety and depression symptoms as what other studies have found from antidepressants."

Goyal noted that mindfulness meditation is not just sitting down and doing nothing. "Meditation is an active training of the mind to increase awareness, and different meditation programs approach this in different ways," he said.

Mindfulness meditation -- emphasizes acceptance of feelings and thoughts without judgment, along with relaxation of body and mind -- showed the most promise, he said..

More study is needed, he added.  And individuals are different -- the study looked at those with mild anxiety and depression; some people with symptoms may need more than meditation, like therapy or medication.

But in the meantime, meditation won't hurt.