Mindful in the City
Thoughts & Musings
In therapy, bridging the mind and spirit—exploring the intersection of adult development, psychological maturity, and spirituality—can offer profound insights. It can help individuals not only understand their current spiritual beliefs but also recognize the potential for growth and transformation, leading to a more integrated and authentic self.
I recently wrote a piece for Psychology Today on dating during COVID-19. I provided four questions to ask yourself to figure out your boundaries around dating during a global pandemic—starting with the question of whether or not you should be dating at all.
While many outlets are trying to untangle guidelines around safely getting to know new people—from video dates to socially distanced meetings—it’s important to start with this question. Dating during a pandemic can raise the stakes and make dating feel more intense. Just one reason is that many new partners are becoming monogamous immediately to lower risks of transmission. Some people may like the new focus and clarity. Simultaneously, negative outcomes like ghosting can feel more hurtful when we’re spending most of our time at home near our phones, unable to seek as much in-person support or distraction as we normally would.
Whether or not you decide to date, it’s important to focus on grounding yourself and taking care of yourself on a daily basis. Grounding may look like meditation, yoga, journaling, or speaking with friends who make you feel supported and confident. Taking care of yourself means both focusing on physical care (getting enough sleep, exercising, eating healthily), and finding pleasure in whatever forms work for you (taking nature walks, watching horror movies, making art). With self-care as your primary goal, you’ll be more likely to handle whatever emotions come your way in dating or not-dating.
Image Source: Glen Anthony on Unsplash
By Harsh Dave with Lan Lan Yoga
Making friends can be hard sometimes. It’s hard to be yourself and have the courage to stay true to who you are while making friends with other people. Its hard for us, so it must be hard for our children. Here are a few tips to help your kids make friends!
Don’t be afraid to talk!
The hardest step can be simply talking and feeling free to express yourself. Its so easy to go through life with walls up, and hide what you are really feeling and thinking, but if you have the courage to speak up about what’s going on in your head, you might find that other people feel the same way!
Try to keep other’s feelings in mind!
Being sensitive to how other people feel is very important for making friends! People don’t like to feel like you’re not listening to them when they are speaking, or that your insensitive to what’s going on in their life. Thinking before you speak can help you avoid making other people feel bad when you don’t mean to hurt their feelings.
Do your best to handle conflict!
It’s hard when you get into fights with your friends. Try to remember that your friends like you for who you are, and even if you don’t get along sometimes, it doesn’t mean that they stopped liking you. Everyone is different, so when you get upset with your friends, remember that its okay to let go of your anger, because your friends are important, and you don’t have to agree on everything!
Don’t be afraid to share your struggles!
Everyone has bad days, but if you keep your bad day in your heart it will only stay with you. Don’t be afraid to share your problems with your friends! They are your friends because they care about you!
Be a friend to yourself!
Remember that you have to like yourself so you can show yourself honestly to other people! There are so many great things about all of us! Celebrate those great things so you can share them with your friends!
Yoga is a series of stretches and poses that an individual does while controlling their breathing technique. Since it’s a gentle activity, almost anyone can do it, regardless of your age or fitness level. Yoga allows children to express their energy and joy. It gives them an opportunity to try out new poses, which encourages them to believe and achieve.
Yoga exercises can be intense and vigorous, depending on your personal choice. No matter which type of exercise you do, it will allow your mind and body to relax and reflect.
1. Yoga allows children to challenge themselves
Children will be given the opportunity to try out new yoga poses. To an extent, children get to overcome an obstacle.
2. Children get to take time off and reflect on their personal health
This allows children to understand what works well for their body, this can be related to breathing problems, anger management, and even time management.
3. Yoga encourages connection between each other
Children will learn to communicate with each other, especially when they are practicing poses with a partner.
4. Yoga provides a method, environment where children can explore themselves
The environment that the children practice in will be private, meaning they will learn about their strengths and weaknesses.
5. Yoga works as a “natural medicine” for people of all ages
Yoga is a natural, drug-free method for your body to reset and re-energize.
6. Children will understand how to control their emotions through success and failure
Failure does not always bring negative effects. In fact, children can learn about the process and how to prevent failure.
7. Yoga is non-competitive (Self-challenge)
Instead of competing with other, yoga allows you to set goals ( achieve whatever pose you like).
8. Yoga improves sleep patterns especially in young children
Yoga can benefit sleep schedules, as well as breathing techniques.
9. Children learn about determination and perseverance
Without determination and perseverance, the chance of success is rather low.
10. Encourage kids to be patient and learn
In the beginning, children will have to pay attention to practice certain poses. They might even have to observe an expert first before trying it out themselves.
Yoga brings positive aspects to our spiritual and mental well-being. Growing up is a challenging period of parents and children, let us use yoga to de-stress and unwind. Yoga provides such a wonderful activity for the family. So why not try it out? At Lan Lan Yoga, we utilize a simple three steps method to take Yoga for children to the next level by having the children to reflect their own experience, helping them perceive, believe and achieve!
Recently I was asked to interview for Pilates Style magazine on creating and maintaining New Year resolutions. In the article, I offered three stages of applying mindfulness to succeed and sustain your aspirations for the new year. The three stages are:
1. Setting Mindful Intentions
2. Putting It Into Practice
3. Maintaining Intentions
Setting Mindful Intentions:
An important first step in setting mindful intentions is to decide how you achieve your goal. One way to adopt and preserve your New Year's intentions is a concept I will highlight called harm reduction. Harm reduction is taking simple yet measurable steps towards a larger goal.
Why is harm reduction important in setting intentions? Researchers found that people are more likely to succeed when they are rewarded for the small wins along the way. According to a study conducted by Teresa Amabile and Steven J. Kramer, “When we think about progress, we often imagine how good it feels to achieve a long-term goal or experience a major breakthrough. These big wins are great—but they are relatively rare. The good news is that even small wins can boost inner work life tremendously” (Amabile & Kramer, 2011).
I will use a case example of a client named John to help further illustrate mindful intentions through harm reduction.
Putting It Into Practice:
John is a 25-year-old recent college graduate in finance who has been smoking half a pack of cigarettes every day since he was 14 years old. Over the course of several months in therapy, John and I implemented a harm reduction technique to slowly decrease John’s smoking habit. Rather than smoking half a pack, he started to smoke one less cigarette every day for one month. In the subsequent month, John reduced his intake even more by smoking two less cigarettes a day. He continued to reduce the daily number of cigarettes each month in small, manageable increments.
John was able to identify work stress as his primary trigger. In therapy, we worked together to develop a toolkit of mindfulness technique, such as body scanning, diaphragmatic breathing (breathing from the abdomen instead of the chest) and waiting 10 minutes before picking up his next cigarette. By combining mindfulness and harm reduction techniques, John was eventually smoking only one cigarette per day, a dramatic change from his daily half a pack habit.
Maintaining Intentions:
Now that I covered the first two stages, let’s talk about the third and most important stage: maintenance. Accountability is important for maintaining new habits because we all have blind spots. In the mental health industry, we call them cognitive distortions. Some examples are denial, minimizing, and all-or-nothing thinking. By setting mindful intentions and engaging in harm reduction techniques, you can shift out of the all-or-nothing mindset of “I am a failure because I fell off the wagon” to a healthier and more sustainable narrative such as “I can take this one step at a time, be patient, and not judge my progress.”
The reality is, the three stages of Intention Setting, Putting It Into Practice, and Maintenance is challenging for all of us. But, by seeking support, practicing harm reduction, and implementing mindfulness skills, we can take manageable steps towards a happier, healthier year.
Chances are, you've heard of breathwork. In recent years, it’s made its way into yoga studios, the latest meditation apps, and wellness circles across the country. But what’s so special about breathing?
What is breathwork?
Simply put, breathwork is an intentional practice of breathing. It can be understood as a form of active meditation in which there is a sole focus on a specific breathing pattern for a set period of time.
Some techniques utilize a three-part breath--inhaling, holding, exhaling, and holding again for four counts each--whereas others practice six breaths per minute, inhaling and exhaling through the nose for four minutes or more. Consciously controlling the breath can have positive effects on our emotional, psychological, and physiological states (Morningstar, 2001).
How does it work?
Generally speaking, breathwork is a means of regulating the autonomic nervous system. When our sympathetic nervous system is activated by a stressor, we may feel anxious and overwhelmed.
We often spend more time than we realize in our sympathetic nervous system throughout our daily lives--feeling frazzled at work or in an argument with a significant other. Especially during the holiday season, stress can run high. Often, patients will report challenges interacting with family and having difficulty shifting gears to focus in on their internal experience. By taking even a five-minute break to check in with ourselves, we have the power to activate the parasympathetic nervous system and bring the body back into balance (Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. 2006).
Tapping into the parasympathetic system, colloquially called the “rest and digest” system, improves the ability of regulatory centers of the brain to manage over-reactivity in the emotion-processing centers of the brain (Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. 2006). Breathing techniques that stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system induce a relaxed state, allowing for greater emotional regulation and mental clarity (Morningstar, 2001).
Breathwork can be especially helpful for the following issues:
anxiety
panic attacks
depression
(Jerath, R., Crawford, M. W., Barnes, V. A., & Harden, K. 2015).
As we breathe deeper, we start to slow down and become increasingly present. We learn to quiet the mind and connect to our bodies. This heightened awareness allows us to not only feel more grounded, connected, and safe with ourselves--but also with others.
Using breathwork in therapy
In my experience, ignoring bodily sensations in therapy means we’re only doing half the work. Sometimes the body--and especially the breath--expresses emotions in ways that cannot yet be verbalized. In session, I utilize breathwork to help patients anchor themselves and begin regulating difficult emotions.
Sometimes, this can be helpful at the start of a session as a way of establishing safety in the room. Here’s how we might begin:
Close your eyes and identify sensations in the body.
Locate the breath in the body and notice if you’re breathing mostly in your chest or more deeply, from your diaphragm.
Begin to deepen the breath.
I would then guide the breath through a short exercise: inhaling for a series of counts, holding the breath briefly, and then elongating the exhale.
Guiding you through a breathing exercise usually takes a few minutes and may involve visualizations. With practice, it becomes easier to bring the body and mind back to a state of calm. Ideally, this is a practice that you could ritualize and implement into your daily life, outside of session.
REFERENCES:
Jerath, R., Edry, J. W., Barnes, V. A., & Jerath, V. (2006). Physiology of long pranayamic breathing: neural respiratory elements may provide a mechanism that explains how slow deep breathing shifts the autonomic nervous system. Medical hypotheses, 67(3), 566-571.
Jerath, R., Crawford, M. W., Barnes, V. A., & Harden, K. (2015). Self-regulation of breathing as a primary treatment for anxiety. Applied psychophysiology and biofeedback, 40(2), 107-115.
Morningstar, J. (2001). Breathwork as a therapeutic adjunct in counseling.
Morningstar, Jim,“Breathwork-Therapy of choice for whom?”, The Spirit of Breathwork, (2001).
In my last two blogs, I spoke about the relationship between codependency and certain unrealistic patterns of thinking – or cognitive distortions. I defined “codependency” as a bond between someone addicted to a substance, or who engages in dysfunctional behaviors – whom I will call the taker -- and their counterpart, the codependent, who enables the taker’s dysfunctional or addictive behavior.
To recap: last time I wrote about “blaming,” where both parties place blame for the dysfunctional behavior on someone other than the one who is really responsible for those behaviors. In many cases, the person blamed by both people is the codependent, rather than the taker who is taking the actions. In this blog, we’ll look at another cognitive distortion -- a “cousin” of blaming: The Control Fallacy.
There are two sides to the control fallacy: the External Control Fallacy and the Internal Control Fallacy.
The external control fallacy operates when either party believes their problematic behaviors are caused entirely by external forces beyond their control. They think they are a victim of happenstance or of someone else’s actions and that they have no agency over the matter. They thus excuse their own negative behaviors – take no responsibility for them – and rationalize continuing to act in a way that would require a lot of effort to stop.
The addict or taker who is perpetually late for work might hold the subway system accountable. “It’s not my fault I’m late. The trains are terrible!”. If they are reprimanded by their boss for doing a bad job on a project, they might shirk responsibility by claiming: “I can’t help it if the quality of the work is poor; my boss demanded I work overtime on it!” This unrealistic pattern of thinking, or cognitive distortion, is the addict’s or taker’s way of enabling themselves to continue the behavior.
The codependent can also fall prey to the external control fallacy, which can lead to their own kind of enabling behaviors. For example, when the codependent co-opts their counterpart’s unrealistic external control fallacy -- that the dysfunctional behavior is due to an outside force – the codependent also excuses the behavior and promotes its continuation. “I need to keep paying his student loan bills. It’s not his fault he spends so much on clothing. He has to look professional for his job!”
You also see the internal control fallacy in the codependent when they mistakenly think they somehow control and are responsible for the feelings of their counterpart. That belief very often will extend to practically everyone the codependent deals with. They think that the happiness, pain, displeasure, etc. of others exists because of something they are doing. “You’re unhappy. I must have done something to upset you!” If they are giving a party they might believe they are responsible for their guests’ enjoyment or even boredom at the event. “If I had only put up more decorations, people would have had a better time.” When taken to the extreme, the codependent feels that their way of being or even their existence has the power to “make” someone feel or act the way they do.
If you relate to these thoughts and thought patterns, psychotherapy with a mindfulness approach might be really helpful. Psychotherapy can help you examine your thoughts and behaviors, and look at where they might have actually served you in the past. With your therapist, you can identify distorted or mistaken beliefs and ways of thinking that currently lead to unhealthy behaviors with negative consequences.
With the help of exercises designed to promote mindfulness, you can become more aware of your current reality and learn to tolerate it by practicing staying in the present moment. You can then begin to develop acceptance of what actually is. You will have the tools to replace the distorted thought patterns you have identified with and start to create more realistic and functional ones. You can then find your way to more healthy relationships – with others…and yourself! Stay tuned for my next blog where we’ll look at the cognitive distortion of the Fallacy of Change. Until then!
