Traditionally, people who talk about mindfulness talk about the practice of meditation. Their perspective is often grounded in Buddhist traditions.
I like to meditate and have long been interested in Buddhist ideas, especially in the Zen tradition. However, my perspective on mindfulness primarily reflects different areas of experience. When I had these experiences, I did not necessarily consider them related to mindfulness. It took time for me to see how they had shaped my sense of mindfulness.
In this article, I want to share what has shaped my understanding of what I now call Proactive Mindfulness.
Therapy & mindfulness
My work as a therapist is a big part of my experience with mindfulness. In a way, you could say that being a therapist amounts to being a mindfulness teacher.
It’s not that therapists teach people to meditate. We usually don’t. But the practice of therapy shows you that people cannot productively process what happens in treatment if they are not within a window of presence that neuroscience characterizes as Social Engagement.
Another way to say this is that, to do effective therapy, we need to be very aware of our clients’ nervous system state. It is important to notice whether they are mindfully engaged instead of defensive or reactive. And, by the way, we also need to be very aware of our own nervous system state.
So, a big part of therapy involves monitoring the quality of presence or activation in our clients and us.
If that feels a little abstract, try to remember situations in which you talked to somebody who was distracted, worried, or scared. And remember how difficult it was to get through to this person. Compare that with having a conversation with somebody who is very receptive. The key to being heard is not how clever what you say is, but how receptive the other person is. So, if you can foster a situation in which the other person is more receptive, you are more likely to impact them.
Conversely, remember situations in which you were distracted, worried, or scared and how what came out of you was ineffective. As you can imagine, a therapist has much more impact on their clients when they are more present.
In this sense, you could say that the work of a therapist is to foster the conditions in which it becomes possible for the therapy process to be effective. It is not so much about showing people what to do; it is about helping them remove the obstacles that are in the way of using their natural inability to learn from experience.
For that to happen, both therapist and client are present and engaged in the process. Another way to say it is that therapy involves the practice of being mindful, or returning, to a mindful state. Hence, the concept of therapy as a kind of mindfulness training.
Within these ideal conditions, insight can happen. New possibilities open because the nervous system circuit that facilitates openness of mind and creativity is functioning.
Neuroscience & mindfulness
We are now talking about the nervous system. The findings of neuroscience have significantly influenced contemporary therapy.
Neuroscientist Stephen Porges developed a sweeping view of the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) based on its physiology and from an evolutionary perspective. His
Polyvagal Theory postulates that there is a circuit in the ANS that mediates social engagement and mindful...
