Free introduction to mindfulness for Healthcare Professionals during the pandemic.
Designed by an Intensive Care Physician
Inspired by Unified Mindfulness, a modern and secular mindfulness system influenced by the spirit of science.
Mindfulness is a skill that anybody can develop. It may help you navigate this challenging time where what we took for granted is not the same anymore.
The coronavirus is affecting all of us in many different ways. One reason to practice mindfulness is to decrease our distress — decrease the intensity or the severity of what is troubling us. Although they are plenty of mindfulness techniques out there, there are only three mindful strategies that you can apply when you experience any type of discomfort. You can turn your attention toward the discomfort, anchor your attention away from it or alternate between turning toward and anchoring away.
With mindfulness, you can choose to TURN TOWARD the discomfort, whether it is emotional, mental or physical. You can explore and discover the experience of discomfort and the distress that comes with it. As you turn toward the sensory experiences that accompany the discomfort, and you become curious about them, you will uncover the resistance that you have toward the discomfort. By paying attention, untangling and allowing all the sensory experiences that contribute to the distress, you may discover that it is much less. What used to be overwhelming may become bearable or no longer a problem.
Alternatively, with mindfulness, you can choose to ANCHOR your attention AWAY from the discomfort. You can select an object of focus (not related to your discomfort) to pay attention to. For example, you could focus on restful or positive emotional sensations.
In the context of the pandemic, maybe at this time, what you need is a strategy to turn your attention away. Perhaps, what you need is a strategy to explore the discomfort. Irrespective of which strategy you take and which mindfulness practices you use, you develop your baseline mindful awareness and this new skill will be there with you whenever you need it.
WHAT: In any mindfulness practice, there is an OBJECT OF FOCUS (a specific sensory experience or an aspect of the sensory experience) that you want to focus on. In some cases, there are multiple sensory experiences or a category of sensory experiences that you want to focus on. In this case, we would use the word FOCUS RANGE to define all the sensory experiences that you may focus on. If you have done breath meditation, in this practice the sensations of the breath are the sensory experiences that you want to focus on. The breath is the object of focus. Anything else would be a distraction. For instance, if your mind starts wandering during breath meditation, it is a distraction. In that case, without any judgment, you would let the distraction be in the background of your awareness and put the spotlight of your attention back onto the sensory experience you decided to focus on (the breath, for instance).
HOW: There are many ways to practice mindfulness. A great way for newcomers and even for experienced practitioner involves these four steps:
1) Noticing
Noticing means acknowledging the sensory experience that draws your attention. For example, you may notice that you see a door.
2) Labelling
Labelling implies saying a neutral and simple word to yourself to support the act of noticing. In the door example, the label could be "SEE." The word "SEE" is an excellent example as it doesn't describe much of what you see. Hence, it prevents the mind from being triggered and being caught in a mental process of defining, comparing, and analyzing. Labelling "SEE" reinforces the fact that your attention noticed something visual.
3) Soaking
For a brief instant — 1 to 5 seconds — you soak your awareness into what you noticed in step one. You focus, discover, and open up to the sensory experience you noticed. In the above example, that would be soaking into the visual experience of the door. During this step, you become curious and explore the details of the sensory experience for a brief instant. When you soak into it, you can actively focus on what you noticed, or you can let your attention be passively drawn to what you noticed.
4) Repeating
After step three, release and allow your attention to notice a new or the same sensory experience. You label it and you soak into it for a few seconds. In our door example, your attention could land on the wall next to the door or remain on the door. You would label that new experience "SEE" and discover that experience for a few seconds and repeat the cycle of noticing, labelling, and soaking over and over.
SKILLS TRAINING: You can develop mindfulness like any other capacity in life. Just as we can go to the gym to train our muscles to get more endurance, strength, and flexibility, we can train our awareness to become more mindful. Mindfulness exercises aim to develop the awareness to become mindful.
Shinzen Young, a mindfulness expert, uses this formula: Suffering = Discomfort x Resistance
The discomfort is always experienced as a sensory experience, whether it is physical (pain), mental (confusion) or emotional (any unpleasant emotion). At a sensory level, the discomfort does not come with a story — it is only a sensory experience. Pain is pain.
The resistance often comes from the thinking mind and sometimes from the emotional body. The stories, ideas, thoughts and feelings that come with the discomfort are what the resistance is. Resistance is thus a product of many sensory experiences (mental images, mental talk and emotional sensations). With mindfulness, you can appreciate, untangle and discover those sensory experiences. With mindfulness, you can also allow the sensory experiences to come and go freely into your awareness without trying to make them go away (repressing) and without trying to make them last longer (grasping).
Before you start turning toward your discomfort, you first need to discover how the inner reactivity manifests from a sensorial’s perspective — how your mind and body react to discomfort. Listen to the audio file to discover the inner sensory experiences that are intimately associated with the sense of self — to the sense of an “I” or “me” that is personally affected by the coronavirus pandemic, for example.
When you pay close attention to thinking, you might discover that your thoughts can appear to you in images that you see in front of or behind your eyelids when your eyes are closed. Your thoughts can also be heard as mental sounds or mental talk somewhere inside your head. Sometimes, thinking is a mixture of both mental images and mental talk. From a sensorial perspective, you can actually see and hear your thoughts, and thus you can develop mindful awareness of the thinking mind.
When you experience emotional sensations like love, joy, surprise, anger, sadness and fear, you can feel them in different places of the body such as in the face, throat, chest or belly, for instance. Thus you can develop mindful awareness of all those emotional sensations.
Here is a mindfulness exercise that you can apply to turn toward the resistance that creates suffering when experiencing any discomfort. In the context of the current coronavirus pandemic situation, maybe you experience fear, anger, confusion, stress or anxiety. Discover your own sensory experiences, learn how to untangle the different strings of sensory experiences, and how to not interfere with the flow of the sensory events. I invite you to listen to the instructions first and then the guided practice.
See Hear Feel (inner reactivity) Instructions
WHAT TO FOCUS ON: There are three categories of sensory experiences that you may focus on during this exercise: mental images (see), inner voice (hear) or emotional sensation felt in the body (feel) whether the sensory event is strong, weak or absent. Anything else would be a distraction, for example: visual objects in the outer world, sounds or silence in the outer world and physical or physiological sensations felt in the body.
HOW: “See Hear Feel (inner reactivity)” is a practice where you let your attention go wherever it wants to go inside your mind & body, and you simply notice where your attention lands, moment to moment.
NOTICE and LABEL where your attention lands
Are you seeing a mental image or seeing the absence of mental images (label SEE)
Are you hearing the inner voice, a mental tune or the silence of the mind (label HEAR)
Are you feeling an emotional sensation in the body or the absence of any emotional sensations (label Feel)
Then, SOAK into the sensory experience for a few seconds (1 - 5) or until it disappears if fleeting
When you soak into, become curious about the details of the sensory experience such as
P: Is the sensory experience interacting with other sensory events (Provoke)
Q: What it is (Quality)
R: Where it is (Region / Radiation)
S: How intense or subtle it is (Severity)
T: When it occurs & if it changes over time (Timing)
You do not need to use words to describe to yourself what you are experiencing. All those different aspects of what you can keep track of are examples of how your awareness could gain more clarity.
Then, release and allow your attention to notice and label something different or the same sensory event, soak into it and repeat.
WATCH OUT: Turning toward may accentuate the experience of discomfort and/or resistance. You can always stop turning toward if this exercise is not helpful to you. You could also decide to alternate between turning toward and anchoring away, like if you were doing an interval training with periods of rest.
VARIATION TO PRACTICE DURING THE DAY
Do a micro-practice (30 seconds - 2 min) where you put all your attention on the practice for a brief instant
Before you meet with a patient or a co-worker
When you walk to and from the parking lot
Before going to bed
Just focus on what you SEE in your mind
Just focus on what you HEAR in your mind
Just focus on the emotional sensations that you FEEL in your body
Here is a mindfulness exercise that you can apply to anchor your attention away from the discomfort and the resistance that create suffering in any context, including the current coronavirus pandemic situation that you experience in your own way. I invite you to listen to the instructions first and then the guided practice.
Feel Rest Instructions
WHAT TO FOCUS ON: Relaxation or any restful sensations felt in the body. When a sensory event is active, there is a certain intensity and level of activity associated with it. In contrast, when it is restful, there isn’t much going on. You may want to consider your body as a container in which there are active and restful sensations happening all the time. In this exercise, you only want to pay attention to the restful sensations felt in the body. Anything else would be a distraction, such as anything that you see in your mind or in the outer world, anything that you hear in your mind or in the outer world and any active sensations felt in the body.
HOW: “Feel Rest” is a practice where you can
let your attention freely float to detect relaxation that is naturally present in the body
direct your attention to find restful sensations in a specific location such as
area of that are not typically calling for your attention unless you place your attention there (hands / feet / eyelids / nose)
area around an place of tension (by contrast, the zone around may feel more restful than the tension)
notice the absence of emotional activity
create relaxation sensations while
breathing out (the restful sensations are typically experienced in the chest area)
releasing tension in the body
After you NOTICE restful sensations, you may use the LABEL “REST”, to support the act of noticing.
Then, SOAK into the restful sensory experience for a few seconds (1 - 5)
When you soak into, become curious about the details of the restful sensory experience that you noticed such as
What type of restful sensation is present
Where it is
How intense or subtle the restful sensation is
You do not need to use words to describe to yourself what you are experiencing. All those different aspects of what you can keep track of are examples of how your awareness could gain more clarity.
Then, release and allow your attention to notice and label something different or the same restful sensation, soak into it and repeat.
WATCH OUT: Restful sensations might not always be available in one’s experience. If that is the case, you may want to choose a different technique. Although restful sensations can be very pleasant and rewarding to focus on, sometimes, when we relax the body, the discomfort may intensify. If that is the case, do your best to allow the discomfort to be in the background of your awareness and keep your focus on the restful sensations. By doing so, you are still developing your mindfulness skills.
VARIATION TO PRACTICE DURING THE DAY
Do a micro-practice (30 seconds - 2 min) where you put all your attention on the practice for a brief instant
When you move from a patient to another
When you wait in a line
When your computer boots
Do a background practice where you put 10-20% of your attention on the practice and 80-90% on the task
When listening to a report
When doing a repetitive task (scrubbing, donning & doffing)
Here is another mindfulness exercise that you can apply to anchor your attention away from the discomfort and the resistance that create suffering. I invite you to listen to the instructions first and then the guided practice.
Feel Good Instructions
WHAT TO FOCUS ON: Positive emotional sensations felt in the body such as love, tenderness, joy, pleasure, amazement, contentment or gratitude to name some examples. Typically those sensations are felt in the chest but some people may also experience them in the face, the throat, the upper belly or in other body parts. In this exercise, you only want to pay attention to the positive emotional sensations felt in the body. Anything else would be a distraction, such as anything that you see in your mind or in the outer world, anything that you hear in your mind or in the outer world and any other sensations felt in the body.
HOW: “Feel Good” is a practice where you
Find a way to activate a positive emotion (see below). Imagine that your body is like a ringing bell of positivity. You first need to strike it!
When a positive emotional sensation is present, let go of how you activated it (let go of the striker)
Bring all your awareness into the body to focus on the positive feelings. No labels in this technique.
Become curious about the details of the sensory experience that you noticed such as
What type of positive emotional sensation is present
Where it is
How intense or subtle the positivity is
Is the sensation changing, spreading or collapsing over time
You do not need to use words to describe to yourself what you are experiencing. All those different aspects of what you can keep track of are examples of how your awareness could gain more clarity.
When the positive emotional sensation vanishes, “strike the bell” again and repeat these steps over and over
How to activate positive emotional sensations
Find it: notice if a positive emotional sensation is already present in your body
Evoke it: briefly think of something that would bring positivity to you (whether you bring a mental image to your mind or you use words) & let go of the thought
Activate it: turn on the positivity switch, like an actor/actress would do (if you have access to that switch)
Smile: bring a gentle smile to your face
WATCH OUT: Sometimes when focussing on positivity, negativity sneaks its way to the surface of consciousness. If that is the case, do your best to keep the negative thoughts or feelings in the background of your awareness and keep focussing on the positive emotional sensations in the foreground of your awareness. By doing so, you are still developing your mindfulness skills.
VARIATION TO PRACTICE DURING THE DAY
Do a micro-practice (30 seconds - 2 min) where you put all your attention on the practice for a brief instant
Before and after meeting with a patient
When you wait (OR to start, results to show up, patient to deliver)
Do a background practice where you put 10-20% of your attention on the practice and 80-90% on the task
When listening to a patient or a colleague
When doing a repetitive task (scrubbing, donning & doffing)
Visit the mindfulness section to discover
The three attention skills of mindful awareness that we develop with any mindfulness practice
Common Issues while practicing mindfulness and how to deal with them
Here are the benefits that people commonly report:
• Freedom from intrusive or racing thoughts
• A sense of calm that pervades into every aspect of life
• Ease in finding inner relaxation not dependent on external surroundings
• Less difficulty falling asleep and improved sleep
• Reduced stress and anxiety
• The ability to find areas in the body where there is no pain, so one can find rest
• Improved well-being
• Enhanced self-care
• An increased ability to be present
• Better self-compassion
• Increased happiness
• Heightened effectiveness throughout the day
• A better understanding of self
• Improved emotional regulation
• The opportunity to grow
• Boosted focus and clarity
• The ability to make better choices in certain situations such as with heightened emotions
• A refined ability in receiving feedback
• Improved interpersonal relationships
• And more...
I dream of a revolution of the healthcare system. For this to happen, we have to give both the patients and the healthcare providers the inner tools to start this revolution inside their own being. Instead of fighting against the system, becoming cynical or constantly dissatisfied, we could become empowered within ourselves. This empowerment would bring the change that is needed, a change of perspective that would not only contribute to our personal growth but to the growth of the entire humanity.