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SHAPING YOUR MIND

We have seen how in one mood we interpret events in one way, while in another mood we interpret them another way. How our minds are shaped from moment to moment determines how we experience things.1 The Mind Time practices we’re sharing will help you first to notice how your mind is currently shaped. And then, over time, like a potter with a wheel shaping clay, you’ll begin to discover for yourself how you can reshape your mind. That can significantly change you and it can change the world you experience.

Just as the art of shaping clay is a skilled task that can’t be forced, so the art of shaping your mind with Mind Time is also a process that can’t be forced. But it can be learned, easily, if you just keep at it for a while.

CHANGE YOUR MIND, CHANGE YOUR BRAIN

In recent years, as brain-scanning technologies have become ever more sophisticated, neuroscientists have come to see just how adaptable the brain is. The way we habitually use our minds, it turns out, actually ends up shaping and reshaping our brains – quite literally. This process is known as neuroplasticity. It accounts for the fact that if people take up an activity such as playing the violin, then the parts of their brains connected with fingering the violin strings show higher levels of activity, even when they’re not playing, and in some cases those parts of the brain measurably increase in volume and density.2

All the Mind Time practices are forms of mindfulness meditation. And we know that when people engage in mindfulness meditation, over time they too show changes in their patterns of brain activity – and also brain volume and density.

To give just a couple of examples:

 Scientists at Harvard3 found that people who regularly practised mindfulness meditation over the years had an increased thickness in brain regions related to the ways we sense ourselves as well as the world around us – what we see, smell, taste, touch and so on.

 Another Harvard study4 found that when people practised mindfulness meditation for just eight weeks they showed changes in brain grey-matter concentration in regions involved in learning and memory processes, the ability to regulate their emotions, their sense of themselves, their capacity to see their own perspective as just one perspective, and their ability to take and try out different perspectives.

There are many more studies like these, some of which we’ll refer to as the book unfolds. Scientists are discovering more and more every day about how malleable the brain is and how we can beneficially change it by using our minds differently.

In both of the cases above, the changes that showed up were the result of rather more than the 10 minutes per day of daily practice that we’re suggesting as a minimum. Our research tells us that when people meditate for at least 10 minutes a day their experience changes. That changed experience, we believe, will show up in time as changes in brain structure. If you keep using your mind differently, over time you change your brain.

Over the centuries, a vast range of meditation practices has grown up, from many different traditions. There are meditations designed specifically to increase focus and concentration. There are those designed to increase positive attitudes – such as loving-kindness or compassion. There are meditations to increase devotion to saints or gods. There are meditations that are contemplations on the nature of reality, and there are those that focus on sounds such as mantras, or visual patterns or images.

The Mind Time practices we’ll be sharing are different to these. Specifically aimed at helping you to develop mindful awareness, practices like them are increasingly being used in clinical, workplace and other secular contexts.

Before we introduce our first Mind Time practice, however, here’s a short exercise that will help you experience a key element we’ll be working with.

Take a moment, right now, to look around you. Notice the varieties of white in your environment.

Perhaps some are tinged with yellow, or with blue, or with grey.

See how the gradations of white might shift across any one area of whiteness. All the subtle changes.

Now select another colour and do the same.

Now, coming away from the visual, turn your attention to the sound-space you’re in.

Pay attention to the varieties of sounds.

To the rhythms of those sounds, the patterns formed by the sounds.

Linger with that for a few moments.

Letting that attention to the sound-space move into the background, now bring your attention to your body and its sensations.

Feel your body in contact with whatever you’re sitting or lying on – feel the pattern of sensations there.

Explore that for a few moments.

Now, how are you feeling?

When we teach this we often hear that right after doing this exercise people feel calm, or settled, or more alert.

What’s happening is that you’re moving your attention from being mainly caught up in mental activity – reading, understanding, thinking, planning and perhaps occasionally worrying – to a much more immediate, sense-based focus. There’s an intriguing neuroscience around these two different ways of experiencing, but for now just notice these differences.5

Because our minds tend to revert to a thinking/planning/worrying/analysing/daydreaming focus most of the time, scientists call the set of brain networks that deliver these ‘the default mode network’. It’s what our brains default to when we’re not trying actively to do anything else. For example, sitting in a traffic jam with nothing else to do, your mind drifts off into daydreaming, then to worrying about work, then to thinking about your relationship, then to wondering whether to book that family holiday, then back to daydreaming – all in the space of a few short minutes.

During Mind Time we begin to work on that tendency. We learn to recognise the default mode when it kicks in and we learn to choose to come away from it, at least for a time. As you’ll see, we do this over and over.

The Mind Time practices we will share are a key to changing your mind. The simple truth is that you will only get the benefits we promised you at the start of this book if you put in the work. But the good news is that it only takes 10 minutes a day. Just 10 minutes to change your mind!

In each chapter, we’ll be offering advice and exercises to help you reflect on how these 10-minute practices might help to change your mind and affect your life in key areas.

Our experience, as well as our research, tells us that, as we have said, if you do these practices for 10 minutes or more each day (and the more you do the better), that can help you develop your capacity for allowing, inquiry and meta-awareness. Very broadly speaking, here’s how it works:

With each of the different Mind Time practices, we’ll invite you to select a different ‘focus’ – somewhere to place your attention. In the Breathing practice, for example, you’ll focus on the breath and the sensations that come along with it; in the Body practice, you’ll focus on the sensations you find at different parts of the body in turn, and you’ll place your attention on these.

What you’ll find is that your attention will stay with your chosen focus for a time and then it will drift off. Maybe you’ll start thinking about some of the things you need to do today. Then you’ll notice that your attention has drifted away, you’ll see where it went to, you’ll unhook your attention from where it went, and you’ll bring it back to your chosen focus.

And, strange as it may seem, this simple process builds your AIM.

It builds allowing

You intend to keep your attention on the breath but your mind wanders off. You might want to give yourself a hard time about that. ‘Why can’t I do this simple thing? My mind is so busy! It’s so loud in there. Pipe down! Settle! Come on, this isn’t rocket science! It’s so simple. Why can’t I do this?’

You might find yourself carrying on an internal conversation like that. Or, maybe you’re doing this in a city where there’s lots of noise outside. ‘Oh no! Can’t I have a few minutes’ peace for Mind Time? Car alarms! Again. And that pneumatic drill. Why are they always doing building work?’

Or maybe there’s noise from your family. ‘Kids! Please … Just a few minutes … Please. Where’s that husband of mine? Can’t he help – just for a few minutes?’

Over and over again, as you listen to the Mind Time guidance, we’ll remind you to bring a gentle, kindly, allowing attitude to whatever you find as you sit to meditate.

So you find an allowing attitude for a bit, you settle into it, and then it slips away and another attitude takes over. Then you notice what’s happened and you come back to allowing. The allowing slips away again, after a bit you notice what’s happened and you come back to allowing. Over and over.

Gradually, you’re building your capacity for noticing the quality of your inner state and for choosing to become more allowing. Self-criticism, irritability, harshness, unkindness. We all harbour these to some extent. As you engage in the Mind Time processes you’re learning to spot these states more readily – and you’re learning to come away from them more easily and to embrace whatever comes your way with a more allowing attitude.

Sometimes it can be fairly easy to adopt an allowing attitude to unhelpful or unwanted thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses. At other times it can be very much more difficult. Experiences like deep grief, loss or shame, for example, can seem at times to be overwhelming and very hard to allow. At such times, though, even the smallest touch of allowing might help to turn down the volume – just a little. If your experience feels overwhelming, approach it with caution. At times it can be like entering a lake of very cold water. You touch your toe in and then withdraw. You approach it again, and then withdraw. Gradually, though, you begin to let yourself down into it a bit further – step by cautious step. There’s no rush. Take your time. Eventually, maybe you’ll find you can swim.

It builds inquiry

We can think of Mind Time as setting up the dedicated conditions for investigating the complex processes that underlie our moments of experience. To create such conditions, you go somewhere quiet-ish, where you won’t be disturbed. That reduces input to some extent. Then, if you’re comfortable doing so, close your eyes. That reduces input still further. Sit upright and alert – that lets you pay close attention to whatever you find. Then choose a focus, for instance the breath, and watch what happens.

You will begin to see your inner processes unfolding. The focus on the breath is there as an anchor, to return to over and over. It lends stability and direction to the process. All of your unconscious processes are still running; they don’t go away just because you sat down and closed your eyes, only now you can see them.

Over and again, we’ll remind you to treat what arises in the changing flow of your experience with a kindly curiosity. Coming back to that, over and over again, builds your capacity for inquiry.

Through inquiring, you’ll begin to see where your attention slips to out of habit. Maybe it goes over and again to your to-do list, or to worrying about your relationship. You get interested in that. Curious about it. You see that this is what your attention does now. This is what’s preoccupying you. More than that, you also begin to see and to inquire into what comes along with that. When you’re worrying about your relationship, what’s happening in your shoulders, in your stomach, in your jaw? Notice any tightening or tensing. Feel it, explore it for a few moments. See what it’s like to come away from it. Ease those shoulders, let go of tension in the jaw. Now what’s here in your thinking?

In this way, in the dedicated conditions of Mind Time, you gradually build your capacity to notice and inquire into the different, interrelated elements of your experience.

When you become better able to inquire in this way, you become better able to manage and regulate the changing flow of your emotions. You also become more alive to, and curious about, other people and what’s happening with them. And you become more alive to the world around you and all the wonderful, infinitely complex systems that your life unfolds in: family systems, social systems and natural systems. As your capacity for inquiry builds so all of these begin to reveal more and more of the extraordinary wonder that you can see unfolding wherever you turn your attention.

It builds meta-awareness

You sit down and select your focus. Maybe the breath. Then your attention wanders and you start to think. You think and think and think – and then you notice that you’re thinking. That noticing is a crucial moment of meta-awareness. You’re no longer just thinking. Now you’re thinking and you’re aware that you’re thinking. That is meta-awareness. When you have this meta-awareness you can choose what to do next. You let go of the thinking and you shift your attention back to the breath. It’s easy to make that move, from thinking to paying attention to the breath, but it’s only possible to make it – only possible to choose – when you have that crucial moment of meta-awareness. Meta-awareness is the beginning of choice.

Of course, it’s a choice you’ll have to enact over and over. You’ve had 15, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60 – however many years of habit of not noticing what your attention is up to. So, of course your attention will slip back into its familiar grooves. But gradually you’re now building another habit. The habit of meta-awareness. So now you can see and choose more often where your attention goes.

We’ve been talking about meta-awareness of thinking, but it’s wider than that. With meta-awareness we can also be aware of feeling.

In the example above, if a noise starts up while you’re practising and you become irritated with it, you can notice that. You now have meta-awareness of irritation. That can let you choose. You can treat that irritation with kindness and allowing – ‘Ah, there are those irritable thoughts again …’ – and you can come away from those thoughts. You don’t fight with them, push them down or push them away. Rather, you allow them, perhaps explore them for a few moments and see what they’re like and what they are doing to the rest of your system (perhaps they come with particular body sensations, maybe a tightness in the jaw). Treat all that with kindness, and now the overall flavour of your experience is kinder and more allowing.

The alchemists were early medieval ‘scientists’ who famously set out to change lead and other base metals into gold (in fact they were equally interested in achieving higher states of spirituality and consciousness). What you’ve done in the process above is another kind of alchemy. Instead of fighting with your irritation you’ve transformed it into something else.

You can also bring meta-awareness to body sensations. Maybe you notice a little tension in your shoulders, so you move your attention there and explore the sensation. Again, you don’t fight it, you don’t force anything. Instead you get interested and you explore – with kindness. Placing your attention in that tension, what’s there? Do any images come to mind? Any thoughts? That might be a clue. And if nothing comes to mind, that’s fine too. Just bring some warmth, some kindness to the tension. Maybe that will soften and ease it. And if it doesn’t, as best you can simply allow it to be as it is.

There are also all the rich and delicate sensations that come along with each breath. During Mind Time, you’re aware of these and you’re aware that you’re aware of them. That can come with a deep, settled sense of meta-awareness itself.

Finally, there’s the possibility of developing meta-awareness of your impulses. For example, you’ve decided that you want to do a Mind Time practice today but your to-do list keeps invading the practice. You work with it, noticing, allowing, letting go of it – over and over – but after seven minutes you lose your awareness. The list grabs your attention and, before you know it, you’ve got up and switched on your laptop.

As your meta-awareness develops through the practices, that scenario can play out differently. Your to-do list keeps invading your Mind Time. You keep working with it, gently and kindly returning your attention to the breath, and at minute seven you feel the impulse to get up and get on with your working day. But now you notice it. You feel the impulse. And you see it just as that. It’s an impulse. Just an impulse. You feel it, allow it, let it pass, and stick with the practice for three more minutes.

In this way, you’re developing the unusual skill of seeing impulses for what they really are – just impulses. Most of the time we don’t see our impulses in that way. They underlie all our behaviour, but they’re mainly invisible to us. There’s an impulse – so we act. We see the biscuits sitting on a plate on the kitchen counter and, without even noticing our impulse, we take one and eat it.

When, with meta-awareness, you’re better able to notice your impulses – and you can see them just as impulses – you get more choice. You see the biscuits, become aware of the impulse, and you decide. Do you want to eat one or not? You can choose.

That’s great for those of us who are concerned with piling on the calories, but it applies in so many other parts of life. Someone pushes into you in the street; you feel the impulse to say something harsh, but instead you respond more appropriately – and so on.

Allowing, inquiry and meta-awareness – AIM. Gradually, over time, if you can establish the habit of taking Mind Time regularly, your capacity for these builds. Then things will go better for you and for those whose lives you touch. But we also know that it’s never easy to establish a regular habit. Before you get going, therefore, there are a few questions you might want to think through.

Finding a good time for Mind Time

When in your day are you most likely to be able to commit to your 10 minutes of Mind Time? See if you can find a time when you won’t forget to do it and when you can be fairly sure you won’t be disturbed, get distracted or fall asleep.

It’s easier to build a habit if you can fit it into a routine. Would it work best for you first thing in the morning – before others are awake? Or perhaps, if you commute into work on a train or a bus, could you use your headphones to listen to audio instructions and do 10 minutes then? Might it work best as soon as you get to work or over a lunch break? Or perhaps when your home is quiet and there is some space in the evening before going to bed?

Finding a place for Mind Time

Choose a place where you won’t be disturbed or too distracted by things going on around you when practising. So, if your Mind Time is at home or at work, which room would be most appropriate? Is there a quiet meeting room that could be available at work (not the ‘glass goldfish bowl’ kind where everyone can see you)? Is there a place at home where others won’t disturb you? If you can find a particular space in a particular room which you can designate for your practice, that might help – but don’t worry if this is not possible – in the end the main thing is just do it.

If you will be practising on the move, don’t under any circumstances try to do these practices while driving, but if you’re regularly on a bus, train or plane, that might be a good time to set up your routine. A set of noise-cancelling headphones can help, but aren’t essential.

Seeking support from others

It can be helpful to have the support of your family, friends and colleagues when you begin Mind Time. Of course, you can’t expect them always to support you and we sometimes come across people who found that those closest to them definitely didn’t support them – occasionally even teasing them. See if you can find others who will support you. It’s helpful to tell a few people what you’re trying to do and why, and ask them to encourage, nudge and give you space.

It would be great if you could embark on the habit of Mind Time with someone else. Is there a friend or a colleague who is also interested? You could support and challenge each other to stick to the practice, discuss things when they get tough, and share stories of how your new skills are helping you both. You might even want to get together to practise. During our research, a few people who worked together booked a meeting room and set up a regular lunchtime Mind Time session together. It was one of the main reasons, they said, that they managed to stick with their practice and saw its benefits.

Knowing there is no ‘right’ way to do this

We often get asked the question: ‘Am I doing it right?’ Sometimes that’s because the person asking has misunderstood what we’re trying to achieve in Mind Time. There’s a widely held misunderstanding in our culture that in meditation you should somehow be able to get rid of your thoughts or stop your mind from wandering. It’s easy to become exasperated when, like almost everyone else, you become aware that your mind is all over the place and keeps wandering.

Our minds wander – that’s just what they do. And every time we notice that they’ve wandered is an opportunity to refocus. Doing this over and over lays down the neural pathways in our brain that help us to be aware and to focus outside meditation. Mind Time isn’t about stopping our thinking or feeling. It’s about noticing when we’ve forgotten to be aware and bringing ourselves back to awareness. Sometimes you’ll do this hundreds of times in just one session, and that’s not a bad thing – it’s great practice.

It takes a lot of patience to develop a new skill. If you ride a bike, it’s unlikely that you just jumped onto one on day one and pedalled off happily. It’s more likely that you fell off several times and got back on several times. That is just how we learn.

Notice what your expectations are regarding Mind Time. We can often expect quick results and continuous progress and that is not always realistic. There will be ups and downs, and change takes time.

So when might I see changes?

As we said, change takes time. We can’t exactly predict when and in what form it will occur. Our observation of the thousands of people who have attended courses led by one or other of us is that often they find that the practices give them some immediate relief. For some people, when they start to practise Mind Time, it can help their minds to calm – at least a little. But AIM is very much more than calm. Allowing, Inquiry and Meta-awareness are a set of capacities that emerge from training.

I (Michael) was once approached by a client who wanted me to do some Mind Time work with a group of their employees. But they also wanted those employees to have an outdoor experience. ‘Could we combine the Mind Time training with mountain-climbing in Scotland?’ they asked. Never one to say no, I thought that would be interesting to try, so I agreed. I wasn’t very fit at that point in my life. So I engaged a trainer at my local gym and told him that his task was to ensure that I got up that mountain without embarrassing myself. My task, he told me in turn, was to turn up at the gym three times a week for three months and get on with the training.

In the end, for their own reasons, the client changed their mind and we did the work elsewhere. But I went out with a friend and climbed the mountain anyway. It was great to see how much my fitness had changed in just three months. Just a bit of exercise, three times a week, had changed things considerably.

It’s the same with AIM. We build it in the same way we build any other kind of fitness. And just as I’d never have been able to climb that mountain in the first few weeks of my fitness training, so you shouldn’t expect the capacities we’re discussing here to turn up very quickly. On the courses we lead, we tend to find that around the fifth or sixth week of practice people have come to experience AIM much more readily. But we’re all different. Our advice is to start, keep going, and check back in a couple of months.

Here are a few of the things the people we have worked with have said about learning to practise at various times during their journey:

‘It’s a bit like being a learner driver – you know you haven’t got it all completely sorted yet, but you just need to trust yourself to go on the journey and get to that point where you have an established practice with really good tools and really sound judgement.’

‘It’s just I don’t feel I have the time. And every time I have that thought I’m like, “That was the whole point of going on this course!”’

‘However hard it felt in the beginning to get into it, it was an incredible place when you got to the end.’

When asked what advice she would give others who were embarking on Mind Time, Sally, an inspirational primary school teacher we know, said:

‘It’d probably be something like: “There will be a point where you’ll hate it, but if you carry on trying different ways, eventually you’ll find something that feels right.” Because Michael and Megan had told me early on that at a certain point I might feel like this, I felt all right about it when I did! [Laughs] I think otherwise I would have said, “All right, forget it.” But in fact, pretty much everyone in my group was going through the same experience at the same time.’

Expect there to be ups and downs. Take a moment now and again to notice how you may be starting to benefit from your practice. It will take time. But if you commit to your practice, and don’t give up, things will start to change. That is what our research and our work with thousands of individuals embarking on Mind Time practice tell us.

Let’s move on to the practices. First some general points.

1. Posture and position

You don’t need to sit cross-legged on the floor, although you can if you want. It’s helpful to be in a comfortable position – but not so comfortable that you fall asleep. Sitting upright in a straight-backed chair is good, and that’s what most people on our courses choose to do. If you choose this, get your knees ever so slightly below your hips – that will help lengthen your back. Keep your feet about hip-width apart and pointing forwards if that’s comfortable. Feel them making a good contact with the floor. Tuck your chin down slightly; the back of your neck then lengthens.

You could also lie down on a rug on the floor if you feel alert enough when you do that. You can even stay standing – and there are two Mind Time practices we’ve provided which need you to move or walk. The main thing is that you give yourself every chance to focus on the practice without being unduly distracted by sleepiness or discomfort.

2. Closing my eyes?

You don’t have to close your eyes in Mind Time, although it might help you to focus if you do. If closing your eyes is uncomfortable, or leads too easily to sleepiness, just leave them open, lowering your gaze to the floor and letting your focus soften.

3. What to focus on

In each practice we’ll suggest a different focus. And we will gently remind you to re-focus, whenever your attention wanders!

In some of the practices we will ask you to move your attention to your breath or parts of your body and keep your attention with the sensations you are experiencing. When we do this we are not asking you to think about the breath or your body. We’re inviting you to sense it – directly. Feeling the sensations that come with each in-breath, the sensations that come with each out-breath. There’s nothing you should be sensing here, there’s just what you are sensing. And there’s no special way of breathing, no right or wrong way of doing that. All you’re doing is allowing your attention to stay, for a time, with the actual experience of breathing as it occurs from moment to moment. Similarly, if we invite you to bring attention to your feet, we are not asking you to think about your feet; we’re inviting you to experience the sensations you feel in your feet right at that moment. Again, there is nothing that you should be sensing – it is fine if you don’t feel anything at all. We are just asking you to be aware of that.

4. How to stay focused

It is likely during Mind Time that the mind will wander. There’s no getting away from that. It’s what minds do and it’s not a mistake or a fault. But whenever you notice that you’ve lost your focus, just see where your attention went. It can help to silently say to yourself, ‘Oh yes, thinking …’, or ‘Uhuh – that’s planning …’, or ‘Oh yes – that’s me worrying …’, and then gently, kindly, return to the focus of attention. It is likely that you will do this over and over and over. And that is the practice.

5. How to stay awake

It is extremely common, especially when you start to practise Mind Time, that you fall asleep. Remember that our minds have spent years and years associating closing eyes with sleep, so it is hardly surprising that it is going to take a while to train ourselves that it doesn’t always mean that!

Coupled with that, many of us are also genuinely lacking in sleep – some of us acutely so. The American Academy of Sleep Science says that the minimum number of hours’ sleep required for a healthy adult is seven. Many of us get fewer than that, and obviously the quality of our sleep is also vital.6

If you fall asleep, don’t beat yourself up about it. You probably just need some sleep. If you can, though, find another time that day when you can do Mind Time again. If you keep falling asleep, perhaps you could try doing Mind Time at a different time in your routine when you are likely to be more alert. Or you could keep your eyes open and just lower your gaze and soften it, rather than closing your eyes.

Most of all, though, don’t give up!

6. How to transition out of Mind Time

When it’s time to end the session, give yourself a little while to adjust. It can take a few moments to reconnect with your day, so don’t just jump up and rush into whatever’s next on your to-do list – that can be a bit of a jolt to your system. Take your time.

7. Which order do I do the Mind Time practices in?

The simplest and most basic practice is called Breathing. We recommend that you start here. Start doing this every day when you’re ready and keep that up for a couple of weeks before moving on to experiment with some of the other meditations we’re sharing.