Group February 2nd 2017
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- Category: Connect
- Published: Thursday, 09 February 2017 09:48
- Written by Cherry
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We began with practice - a 'loving kindness body scan: developing affection and gratitude for your body' drawn from Jeffrey Brantley's, 'Daily meditations for calming your anxious mind', working through the body to address emotional states, with the intention of connecting with the body in a kindly, respectful way. Followed by enquiry.
There was discussion following some readings from Rick Hanson's 'Hardwiring Happiness - how to reshape your brain and your life':-
'The brain is the organ than learns, so it is designed to be changed by your experiences. It still amazes me but it's true: Whatever we repeatedly sense and feel and want and think is slowly but surely sculpting neural structure... intense, prolonged, or repeated mental/neural activity - especially if it is conscious - will leave an enduring imprint in neural structure, like a surging current re-shaping a riverbed. As they say in neuroscience: Neurons that fire together wire together. Mental states become neural traits. Day after day, your mind is building your brain... Your experiences matter. Not just for how they feel in the moment but for the lasting traces they leave in your brain.'
Under the heading 'Paper Tiger Paranoia' he continues:-
'One aspect of the negativity bias is so important that it deserves particular attention: the special power of fear. Our ancestors could make two kinds of mistakes: (1) thinking there was a tiger in the bushes when there wasn't one, and (2) thinking there was no tiger in the bushes when there actually was one. The cost of the first mistake was needless anxiety, while the cost of the second one was death. Consequently, we evolved to make the first mistake a thousand times to avoid making the second mistake even once.'
No wonder we have a negativitiy bias 'hard-wired' into our brains! But Rick Hanson goes on to describe how such a biologically based tendency is intensified by other factors - temperament, personal history, our current personal situation, but also the economic and political climates of our times, as Hanson says, 'And throughout history, political groups have played on fears to gain or hold on to power.' Sounds relevant now?!
So our modern life leaves us too often in a reactive state, reacting to a million and one small or moderate stressors, affecting our health and well-being.
Much of Rick Hanson's work is about 'levelling the playing field' and 'tilting towards the positive'. His 'taking in the good' approach is designed to correct the two tendencies of the negativity bias - 1) decreasing negative feelings, thoughts and actions while 2) increasing positive ones.
'Taking in the good' draws us out of reactive episodes and strengthens our responsive brains. He describes 4 steps:-
1. Have a positive experience 2. Enrich it (e.g., experience it through mind and body) a Absorb it (deliberately feel sensations sinking in) 4. Link positive & negative material (optional ) - deliberately allowing positive material to make contact with previous more negative material to 'tip the balance' = acronym HEAL
We can use these steps to consciously re-train our brains on a daily basis. They may be very small experiences - contacting a friend, noticing the first green shoots from the ground - but several times a day, for ten to thirty seconds a go is not a lot each day, but it can shift perspective, even in difficult times.
We finished with a 'Breathing Space with Kindness' practice from 'Mindfulness-Based Compassionate Living' by Erik van den Brink and Frits Koster.
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