Mind Time: How ten mindful minutes can enhance your work, health and happiness. Michael Chaskalson

body sensations and impulses as just that – thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses, and not as ‘me’ or as ‘reality’ – then you can choose. This is what we call a state of ‘intimate detachment’. This isn’t the kind of detachment that leaves you feeling somehow separate, cold, clinical and not involved in what’s going on. Instead, you’re close to the experience, intimately involved in what’s happening. And at the same time you’re able to stand just a tiny, tiny bit back, so you can see what’s happening as it happens.

      The diagram above describes this process.

      1 The event – the kids get out of the car at school without saying a word.

      2 The mind-state – we’re always in one or another state of mind when anything happens. In the example above, if we didn’t get much sleep we’d be in one kind of mind-state; if we slept well we’d be in another.

      3 The interpretation – depending on our state of mind, we immediately form an interpretation of what just happened. When we’re sleep-deprived and struggling with the day we might well interpret that behaviour as fundamentally selfish and uncaring, whereas when we’re feeling well rested and more resourceful we might interpret it more as just what adolescents sometimes inadvertently do.

      4 Our thoughts, feelings, body sensations, impulses – depending on the interpretation we make, our experience then unfolds in a particular way. A range of thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses to act follow from that interpretation. In scenario 1 we might think, ‘I’m just a taxi service for them!’ That comes with feelings of sadness and a sense of hollowness in the belly and tightness at the jaw. And we might want to cry or go off and get some chocolate. In scenario 2 we might think, ‘Uhuh – that’s adolescence for you.’ That might come along with warm feelings to the kids who are going through puberty; a sense of warmth and openness in the chest area and the resolve to talk about taking others into account when the time is right for that.

      Thoughts, feelings, body sensations and impulses. That’s one way of exploring the various components of each moment of experience. Meta-awareness is the capacity to observe these in action and realise they are not set in stone; we do not have to succumb to being driven blindly by them.

      KEY MESSAGES IN CHAPTER 1

       We spend most of our life on automatic pilot, being swept along by our stream of experiences, habitually deciding on courses of action according to our programmed reactions.

       If, however, we can develop our AIM – allowing, inquiry and meta-awareness – we have more choice in the actions we take.

       Allowing is about meeting our experience with an attitude of care and acceptance, rather than wishing things were different. Inquiry is about being interested in our experience. Meta-awareness is about being able to be both in our experience and, at the same time, just a little separated from it so that we can observe and describe what is going on.

       Our research tells us that we can hone these capacities in a concentrated way through the Mind Time practices.

       The Mind Time practices we will teach you in this book will enable you to choose how you respond more of the time, rather than simply reacting automatically.

       By giving you more choice in your actions, you are more likely to make informed and careful decisions. That is likely to lead to better lives for you, for those around you, and potentially for the environment and society you live in.

      The next chapter will introduce you to these practices so you can learn how to AIM.

      Chapter 2

       Learning to AIM

      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