Today I want to share an easy, yet powerful technique to improve mental health. It’s called somatic tracking. It’s simple, so let me break it down. Somatic refers to the body as distinct from the mind. Somatic tracking is about mindfully attending to our internal state and whatever bodily sensations we are experiencing in the moment with calm, curiosity and compassion. Those of you who meditate may already be doing this on a regular basis.

Wherein lies the power of somatic tracking? One, it communicates a message of safety to our entire organism. Picture a crying baby or a distraught child. The fastest way to cure their stress is reassurance on the part of a parent or loved one. When we experience anxiety or physical pain as adults, our body is sending out distress signals. We can’t help but hear the signal, like a crying baby, but we often don’t attend to it. When we mindfully attend to our body’s distress signals, our mind gets the message that it is safe to turn off the fight-or-flight response that feeds chronic stress and illness. In a word, you and I have the ability to console ourselves much like a parent consoles a child, or a friend consoles another friend.

Before you go, I want to share a few fascinating quotes from an article on somatic tracking written by Alan Gordon, a TMS Therapist who specializes in mindbody medicine. It was his work that introduced me to the concept several months ago. I recommend you check out the complete article on somatic tracking. It is an easy read and well-worth the time, as is the entire free 21-day healing program that it is a part of.

It feels wonderful just to be checked in on. It can make you feel cared about and attended to, and can remind you that you matter in this world. But many of us don’t check in on ourselves, and this subtle self-neglect can actually have many physical consequences.

Neuroscientists have found that mindfully attending to our bodily sensations can actually shrink the “fight or flight” center of our brains. Furthermore, this practice enables us to have better control over our brains’ processing of pain and emotions.

Somatic Tracking is the most important component of overcoming neural pathway pain. When you attend to your physical sensations mindfully — without fear, without judgment, and without motive — not only are you communicating safety, you’re giving yourself the message that you deserve to be treated in a loving way.

Until next time, happy somatic tracking.

As people, we often do things without thinking. Especially harmful things, like smoking, overeating, or lashing out in anger. We get in this numb state of mind where we aren’t rationally processing what’s going on. And that leads us to make bad decisions. Many people have discovered that when we stop and focus on the present moment, we are less likely to make decisions that go against our well-being. This is called being mindful. Mindfulness is how we live life with intention and purpose rather than being dragged from moment to moment like subconsciously programmed robots.

Judson Brewer is author of The Craving Mind: From Cigarettes to Smartphones to Love — Why We Get Hooked and How We Can Break Bad Habits. Brewer gave a Ted Talk in which he argues that the easiest way to break a bad habit is to practice mindfulness. Our brain likes to wander to distract from unpleasant feelings (the numbing effect I talked about in the previous paragraph.) People seek distractions in the form of food, drugs, or relationships. Mindfulness, however, is about cultivating interest and curiosity in the present moment such that our brain no longer seek a distraction. And when it does seek a distraction, mindfulness enables us to evaluate its effects.

Brewer and researchers have found that mindfulness can help people quit smoking and break other bad habits. Check out the inspiring video and complete transcript down below. I leave you with a provocative quote from Thich Nhat Hanh.

When you drink whiskey, learn to drink it with mindfulness. “Drinking whiskey, I know that it is whiskey I am drinking.” This is the approach that I would recommend. I am not telling you to absolutely stop drinking. I propose that you drink your whiskey mindfully, and I am sure that if you drink this way for a few weeks, you will stop drinking alcohol. Drinking your whiskey mindfully, you will recognize what is taking place in you—in your body, in your liver, in your relationships, in the world, and so on. When your mindfulness becomes strong, you will just stop.

Thich Nhat Hanh

Transcript:

When I was first learning to meditate, the instruction was to simply pay attention to my breath, and when my mind wandered, to bring it back. Sounded simple enough. Yet I’d sit on these silent retreats, sweating through T-shirts in the middle of winter. I’d take naps every chance I got because it was really hard work.

Actually, it was exhausting. The instruction was simple enough but I was missing something really important. So why is it so hard to pay attention? Well, studies show that even when we’re really trying to pay attention to something — like maybe this talk — at some point, about half of us will drift off into a daydream, or have this urge to check our Twitter feed.

So what’s going on here? It turns out that we’re fighting one of the most evolutionarily-conserved learning processes currently known in science, one that’s conserved back to the most basic nervous systems known to man. This reward-based learning process is called positive and negative reinforcement, and basically goes like this. We see some food that looks good, our brain says, “Calories! … Survival!” We eat the food, we taste it — it tastes good. And especially with sugar, our bodies send a signal to our brain that says, “Remember what you’re eating and where you found it.”

We lay down this context-dependent memory and learn to repeat the process next time. See food, eat food, feel good, repeat. Trigger, behavior, reward. Simple, right? Well, after a while, our creative brains say, “You know what? You can use this for more than just remembering where food is. You know, next time you feel bad, why don’t you try eating something good so you’ll feel better?” We thank our brains for the great idea, try this and quickly learn that if we eat chocolate or ice cream when we’re mad or sad, we feel better. Same process, just a different trigger.

Instead of this hunger signal coming from our stomach, this emotional signal — feeling sad — triggers that urge to eat. Maybe in our teenage years, we were a nerd at school, and we see those rebel kids outside smoking and we think, “Hey, I want to be cool.” So we start smoking. The Marlboro Man wasn’t a dork, and that was no accident. See cool, smoke to be cool, feel good. Repeat. Trigger, behavior, reward. And each time we do this, we learn to repeat the process and it becomes a habit.

So later, feeling stressed out triggers that urge to smoke a cigarette or to eat something sweet. Now, with these same brain processes, we’ve gone from learning to survive to literally killing ourselves with these habits. Obesity and smoking are among the leading preventable causes of morbidity and mortality in the world. So back to my breath. What if instead of fighting our brains, or trying to force ourselves to pay attention, we instead tapped into this natural, reward-based learning process … but added a twist? What if instead we just got really curious about what was happening in our momentary experience?

I’ll give you an example. In my lab, we studied whether mindfulness training could help people quit smoking. Now, just like trying to force myself to pay attention to my breath, they could try to force themselves to quit smoking. And the majority of them had tried this before and failed –on average, six times. Now, with mindfulness training, we dropped the bit about forcing and instead focused on being curious. In fact, we even told them to smoke. What? Yeah, we said, “Go ahead and smoke, just be really curious about what it’s like when you do.” And what did they notice?

Well here’s an example from one of our smokers. She said, “Mindful smoking: smells like stinky cheese and tastes like chemicals, YUCK!” Now, she knew, cognitively that smoking was bad for her, that’s why she joined our program. What she discovered just by being curiously aware when she smoked was that smoking tastes like shit. Now, she moved from knowledge to wisdom. She moved from knowing in her head that smoking was bad for her to knowing it in her bones, and the spell of smoking was broken. She started to become disenchanted with her behavior.

Now, the prefrontal cortex, that youngest part of our brain from an evolutionary perspective, it understands on an intellectual level that we shouldn’t smoke. And it tries its hardest to help us change our behavior, to help us stop smoking, to help us stop eating that second, that third, that fourth cookie. We call this cognitive control. We’re using cognition to control our behavior. Unfortunately, this is also the first part of our brain that goes offline when we get stressed out, which isn’t that helpful. Now, we can all relate to this in our own experience. We’re much more likely to do things like yell at our spouse or kids when we’re stressed out or tired, even though we know it’s not going to be helpful. We just can’t help ourselves. When the prefrontal cortex goes offline, we fall back into our old habits, which is why this disenchantment is so important.

Seeing what we get from our habits helps us understand them at a deeper level –to know it in our bones so we don’t have to force ourselves to hold back or restrain ourselves from behavior. We’re just less interested in doing it in the first place. And this is what mindfulness is all about: Seeing really clearly what we get when we get caught up in our behaviors, becoming disenchanted on a visceral level and from this disenchanted stance, naturally letting go. This isn’t to say that, poof, magically we quit smoking. But over time, as we learn to see more and more clearly the results of our actions, we let go of old habits and form new ones.

The paradox here is that mindfulness is just about being really interested in getting close and personal with what’s actually happening in our bodies and minds from moment to moment. This willingness to turn toward our experience rather than trying to make unpleasant cravings go away as quickly as possible. And this willingness to turn toward our experience is supported by curiosity, which is naturally rewarding. What does curiosity feel like? It feels good.

And what happens when we get curious? We start to notice that cravings are simply made up of body sensations –oh, there’s tightness, there’s tension, there’s restlessness — and that these body sensations come and go. These are bite-size pieces of experiences that we can manage from moment to moment rather than getting clobbered by this huge, scary craving that we choke on. In other words, when we get curious, we step out of our old, fear-based, reactive habit patterns, and we step into being. We become this inner scientist where we’re eagerly awaiting that next data point.

Now, this might sound too simplistic to affect behavior. But in one study, we found that mindfulness training was twice as good as gold standard therapy at helping people quit smoking. So it actually works. And when we studied the brains of experienced meditators, we found that parts of a neural network of self-referential processing called the default mode network were at play. Now, one current hypothesis is that a region of this network, called the posterior cingulate cortex, is activated not necessarily by craving itself but when we get caught up in it, when we get sucked in, and it takes us for a ride. In contrast, when we let go — step out of the process just by being curiously aware of what’s happening — this same brain region quiets down.

Now we’re testing app and online-based mindfulness training programs that target these core mechanisms and, ironically, use the same technology that’s driving us to distraction to help us step out of our unhealthy habit patterns of smoking, of stress eating and other addictive behaviors. Now, remember that bit about context-dependent memory? We can deliver these tools to peoples’ fingertips in the contexts that matter most. So we can help them tap into their inherent capacity to be curiously aware right when that urge to smoke or stress eat or whatever arises.

So if you don’t smoke or stress eat, maybe the next time you feel this urge to check your email when you’re bored, or you’re trying to distract yourself from work, or maybe to compulsively respond to that text message when you’re driving, see if you can tap into this natural capacity. Just be curiously aware of what’s happening in your body and mind in that moment. It will just be another chance to perpetuate one of our endless and exhaustive habit loops … or step out of it. Instead of see text message, compulsively text back, feel a little bit better — notice the urge, get curious, feel the joy of letting go and repeat.

Thank you.

Today I want to share an article I wrote for another blog a few weeks back on a topic I have grown a lot in over the years: mindfulness. One of the biggest challenges we face in a 21st century dominated by progressive values is staying grounded in the present moment. In my experience, the journey is more important than the destination. It’s where we spend most of our lives. And when we achieve one goal or reach one destination, we typically just replace it with another. One of my daily resolutions is to stay grounded in the here and now, not some phantom past or imaginary future. See the complete article here. Do you agree with my basic proposition?

During the last two years, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with cold showers. I love them because of the myriad benefits I’ve experienced. But I’d be lying if I said I don’t experience the temptation every morning to turn the nozzle a few degrees more counter-clockwise. Cold showers are something I tolerate because I know they make me better. And I have no intention of going back to my old regimen.

There’s one benefit of cold showers that I have yet to address–and it surprisingly has to do with meditation. A few months ago, I published an article on the three important life skills of meditation—concentration, clarity, and equanimity (emotional stability). Nothing will make you concentrate and think clearly faster than a cold shower. And, when you take them regularly, you learn to be less reactive to physical and emotional pain and discomfort. It follows that cold showers are meditation in the same way that exercise is meditation.

Recently I was feeling distracted as my mind wandered from this responsibility, to that chore, to the other commitment. Being my own doctor, I knew that a solid cold shower was just the prescription I needed. The longest cold shower I had ever taken was on January 2, 2019. It lasted 20 minutes–a lot longer than the usual 2-3 minutes. I had just completed a workout that day and the water didn’t even feel that cold. I learned a long time ago that no two cold showers are alike. There’s the subject’s body temperature prior to entering the water (did you just hop out of bed or did you just finish working out or sunbathing?) And then there’s the temperature of the water itself (is it cold, frigid, or downright icy?). I would place my typical cold shower somewhere between cold and frigid (I’ll get back to you when I invest in a water thermometer). I have found that the colder the shower, the easier it is to be mindful — and the more caution and common sense you should exercise.

Back to the cold shower itself. I knew I wanted it to be on the longer side to see what I was capable of and to experience maximum therapeutic effect. I started with the nozzle in the cold range and slowly turned it clockwise. As always, the first few minutes were the most uncomfortable. But in the midst of that discomfort there was a fascinating side effect: supercharged mindfulness. Within seconds of my skin touching the water, I wasn’t thinking about the assignment I had to complete for university. I wasn’t thinking about my car that needed fixed. I wasn’t thinking about the research I’ve been working on. I wasn’t thinking about relationship problems. I wasn’t thinking about what’s for dessert. In fact, I wasn’t thinking about anything–except being there in that shower under that cold water. And it was powerful in the most down-to-earth, die-hard fashion.

Fast-forward several minutes and I felt like I had got what I came there to get. I could have stayed in the water longer and pushed the envelope on my previous record, but at that point it would have been more about ego than therapy and I wasn’t feeling particularly ego-driven that day. The mindfulness effect of my cold shower carried over into the rest of my evening. My brain knew that I had accomplished something and generously rewarded me with endorphines. And the experience sharpened my conviction just a little bit more that mindfulness was possible in every moment.

Stress has more to do with perspective than it does circumstances. The human mind has the power to make a mountain out of a molehill and a molehill out of a mountain–and it does it all the time. Sometimes life experiences empower us to see this crystal-clear. People who have near-death experiences commonly come away with a whole new outlook on life. Suddenly the worries that consumed their mind don’t mean as much in the conscious light that death is imminent. Cold showers similarly minimize the important ascribed to the petty disturbances of life. But the most beautiful thing is the fact that anyone can change their perspective right where they are with no outside help.

If a single cold shower can contain so much insight, imagine taking one every day for an entire year.

Recall a few of the most beautiful experiences of your life. Maybe your wedding day or honeymoon. A memorable family vacation. The birth of a child or close relative. The day you graduated from high school or college. The day you landed your dream job or received a hard-earned promotion. Or simply an unforgettable night-out with quality friends. I bet they all had one thing in common: your undivided attention. Have you ever noticed that the happiest people tend to be the most mindful? They aren’t burdened by the past or anxious about the future. Wherever they go, there they are. . And they find pleasure in even the most mundane moments of life. What if we could program our minds to pay undivided attention to the present moment even in the absence of powerful, fleeting, stimuli from our environment?

Think of your attention as a limited energy source—like a WiFi Network. The power of your WiFi Network may be split between your phone, tablet, and computer—or those of your friends and family—based on energy output. A computer downloading updates may use up 80% of the WiFi while a phone in sleep mode may barely draw a charge.

What would a pie chart of your attention look like, at any given moment in time? How much of your attention is nurturing past hurts and failures? How much of it is anxiously fixated on uncertain future outcomes? And how much of it is fully focused on the people, sounds, smells, shapes, and textures of the present moment? The truth is every human being has high energy. People with “high-energy” are those whose energy is grounded in the present moment. People with “low-energy” are those whose energy is grounded in the past and future where anger, fear, and sadness barricade themselves.

Mindfulness a skill that can be developed. Every moment we redirect our wandering brain to the present moment is a victory for mindfulness. And a victory for a more high-definition, pain-processing, power-possessing, love-infused existence.

The greatest gift we can give others is our presence. It also just so happens to be the greatest gift we can give ourselves.

Even experienced meditators can’t always articulate how meditation works. I used to fall in that category. I swore by meditation because I knew it was good for me, but if you asked me to explain how meditation benefited me in other areas of life, I would have drawn a blank. Knowing what skills meditation develops is helpful when explaining meditation to other people. And it increases our awareness of the process, which may lead to better subjective results.

Jeff Warren is a global meditation teacher and author of the widely acclaimed book The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness. Per his Wikipedia, he is founder of the Toronto-based meditation group Consciousness Explorers Club. A few months ago Warren appeared on the Joe Rogan Experience with co-guest ABC News correspondent, Dan Harris. Warren and Harris are both avid meditators, and the conversation naturally turned toward the discipline. I gleaned a lot of insight from their exchange, but in this post I want to focus on a segment in which Warren discusses the three life skills of meditation–concentration, clarity, and equanimity.

I’ve transcribed the entire segment below! FYI, it begins around the 1:05:06 mark. [Update: The video was removed, but you can still access the transcript below.]

Transcript:

May I just say something about where it turned the corner for me when I was practicing because I was a terrible meditator. It was understanding the actual skills that we’re building. And that’s the thing I think that links all of what we’re talking about when you talk about martial arts. When you talk about being a broadcaster. When you talk about comedy. When you talk about practice. There are particular kinds of mind-body skills that we’re training. And those skills have names. There’s a feeling that’s happening that you can experience when you’re training that muscle group. When I started understanding things that way–Kazu Shinzen[?], because he talks about it that way. Buddhism talks about it that way–the factors of awakening. You’re building up concentration, which is your capacity to pay attention to what you want to pay attention to. It’s like a commitment. Your mind wanders, you bring it back.

You’re building up clarity, which is your ability to be clear and make discernment about what’s happening in your experience. What’s happening in your social experience. Is this the right time to say this thing? What’s happening inside me. What am I really feeling versus how I’m acting. So dialing up that resolution dial.

And building up equanimity, which is can I actually not fight with my experience as it’s unfolding? Can I have this centeredness in the middle of what’s going on whether I’m doing martial arts. Whether I’m doing comedy. Whether I’m doing meditation.

The beauty of a meditation practice is it makes explicit what those skills are. In a simple situation with your eyes closed, you can notice when you’re being concentrated, when you’re being clear, when you’re being equanimous, when you’re building friendly–which is another good skill. You notice when that’s happening and because you notice when it’s happening you can start to notice how to apply it in every other area of life. So that’s all it is. All practice is is about being explicit and deliberate about what qualities of existence, of being, that you want to train in your life. And then you just try to apply it everywhere. And so that’s why you can get people–I see them as basically meditation masters–on a comedy stage. Or people who are better meditation masters in the sports arena. Or in a cage-match or whatever it is. They’re applying the same principles, so all of these are paths that can bring you into more presence in your life.

The problem comes when people start saying “Nope, but my path is the good path.” “Oh yeah, but I teach meditation, that’s more meditation.” “No, no, no I do a body practice. This is more fundamental.” It’s about the skills. Those are what’s fundamental.

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient, for he that is so, wants nothing.

Hack your past with forgiveness. Hack your present with mindfulness. Hack your future with I am enough.

The bamboo that bends is stronger than the oak that resists.

It seems like every month a new challenge makes its waves across the internet. Some of these challenges have been harmless (mannequin challenge), some have been painful (push up challenge), while yet others have been downright stupid (Tide pod challenge). All of these challenges consist of the participant taking radical action in a manner far out of the ordinary.

The challenge I propose can be understood in the same terms but with a twist: taking radical inaction in a manner far out of the ordinary.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE:

• Find a quiet space free from distractions.
• Refrain from all activity, including eating, watching TV, scrolling on your smartphone, making weird noises to your pet, and socializing with other human beings.
• Do not speak, sing, or hum (just be quiet).
• No lying down. You can stand or sit, although most people would prefer to sit for 60 minutes.
• You can focus on your breath or any other stimuli in your immediate environment. This includes parakeets singing outside, your air conditioner blowing, and the motor of your essential oils diffuser.
• Man or woman up by waiting out the duration of the hour.

Document your experience with the meditation challenge in the comment section below or on social media using the hashtag #meditationchallenge

I bet most of you can’t do it. if you need motivation, here is a quote to get you going (or better yet, to slow you down).

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

-Blaise Pascal

Note: Science has discovered that our brains on silence are constantly process information and making us more intelligent (study).