Frot Magazine is so grateful to Alex Bannard for her Mindfulnes series and delighted that when time permits she will be joining us for a Menopause Series and probably Yoga too.
When I first started practicing mindfulness & meditation it was in a very self-led, self-taught fashion. When we moved to Bangkok I was blessed to meet a wonderful French woman, Violaine, who is a practicing Buddhist & taught meditation.
It was a fantastic experience. I relished our time together & learnt so much. One day we were talking about the concept that thoughts are just thoughts, they aren’t necessarily fact & they don’t define us.
I found this to be immensely liberating because for years I had been plagued by way too many unhelpful, unhealthy & unpleasant thoughts. Finally, I felt free – they were just thoughts, not real & they didn’t define me, hurrah! What a relief!
Mindfulness encourages us to take on the role of the observer to our thoughts instead of getting swept away in the narrative & down the rabbit hole with a train of thought before we even know it, a bit like Alice down the rabbit hole.
Becoming more aware & paying attention to what we are thinking, how we are feeling & behaving we can start to question the truth in thoughts that pop up. After all, most of us wouldn’t entertain the thought that we are a multi-coloured flying elephant dancing around in a glittery tutu, the thought is ridiculous enough for us to discount.
But many of us will happily indulge the I’m not good enough, I can’t do this, it’s not fair, I’m unlovable, I’m useless dialogue that arises in our mind without questioning it. But they are just thoughts. They aren’t fact. Mindfulness gives us the space & time to question such thoughts.
Our mind often catastrophizes a situation – a bad day becoming a bad life when it is in fact just a bad day, which is a perfectly normal & acceptable part of life. Mindfulness helps to remind ourselves that pain is a normal part of life, suffering is optional.
Both approaches are simply a choice, choosing to recognize unhelpful, unhealthy thoughts & then choosing not to accept them as fact. But it’s a practice too – being mindfully aware of these kind of thoughts & not acting on them but recognizing them as just thoughts.
Meditation helps us to gain this distance from our thoughts by observing the nature of our mind. Even people who have been practicing meditation for a while will happily acknowledge that thoughts are always arising in our mind no matter how much meditation we do. We can’t stop our mind from thinking thoughts, it’s what our mind does but we can stop those thoughts from controlling us.
The thoughts aren’t going to stop but we can choose to change our relationship to them. Freedom isn’t not having thoughts, freedom is changing our relationship to them, seeing them as just thoughts & not reality. You may still get the thoughts but you no longer believe them because you know your reality is right here right now in the present moment, not in the string of thoughts. Over time as you question the validity of unhelpful thoughts they eventually quieten down – this is one of the beautiful benefits of meditation & mindfulness: that inner critical voice starts to quieten.
Let me demonstrate all this by sharing an experience. Last summer I was in the midst of the menopause & really struggling with extreme anxiety & panic attacks. Initially I had no idea that anxiety & panic attacks were linked to the menopause (when oestrogen levels drop it can spike adrenalin which can causes anxiety & panic attacks.) The first panic attack I experienced I thought I was having a heart attack & it was terrifying.
Once I understood what was going on I was able to use my mindfulness practice to help me. One day out on a dog walk I could feel another panic attack brewing. So I literally stopped & talked myself down saying things like: this is just anxiety it’s not real, this is just menopause, this isn’t real & eventually I calmed myself… & have never had a panic attack since. It was as simple as acknowledging that no matter how terrifying the experience felt, it wasn’t real.
This idea that our thoughts are simply that – thoughts & they don’t define us was incredibly liberating for me & so it was easy to grasp as a concept. But not for some people, who feel that they are intrinsically their thoughts. A useful analogy I find is the mirror: our thoughts are like our reflection in the mirror – what we see in the mirror isn’t us, it’s just our reflection, so it is with our thoughts.
Sometimes it is hard to settle our mind in meditation especially if we have a lot going on, our mind can feel really scattered (apparently we have more than 6,000 thoughts a day so it’s not surprising!). This week’s meditation is the letting go free-flow meditation. Allowing our mind to go wherever it wants to helps it to settle quicker than if we try to control it. To get your free copy of this meditation simply email Alex at Alex@alexbannard.com quoting FROSTFREE.
Alex is based on the edge of the stunning Cotswolds & has been sharing her love for all things yoga & mindfulness for almost a decade, not just in the UK but also around the world. Her mission is to help everyone discover a more mindful way of living & to encourage them to embrace regular self-care practices for a happier & healthier way of being.
If you would like more information on how to practice mindfulness, meditation & yoga message her at alex@alexbannard.com.
For free resources check out her Facebook group: Mindfulness & Yoga for Self-Care, here is the link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/MindfulnessYoga4Relationships
Alternatively please check out her website: alexbannard.com