Online Therapy via Skype.
Dr. Peter Strong is a pioneer of Online Mindfulness Therapy, which is a very effective treatment for anxiety disorders, panic attacks, depression, stress & PTSD, and for recovery from addictions.
Visit : https://pdmstrong.wordpress.com to book a Skype therapy session.
Mindfulness Therapy is one of the most effective forms of cognitive therapy for breaking free from patterns of reactive thinking that create anxiety and depression.
Mindfulness Therapy Online for Anxiety-Depression-Stress
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I am a psychotherapist and that I specialize in Mindfulness-based Psychotherapy and Counseling, which I offer online.
The internet approach to psychotherapy is proving to be somewhat popular these days due to its convenience, its effectiveness, which is currently shown in affordability, several clinical studies and, naturally. But, convenience, this really is the most crucial thing. For once, the customer can feel totally in charge of the entire process of arranging and scheduling his or her session of treatment. No longer have you got to drive to an office and wait in line to get your session. You are able to do it in the convenience of your home or at office, place of work - wherever you have somewhere that is not noisy and have access to the web.
The process itself is hardly difficult. All you will need is a computer using download Skype, and a webcam, which can be a free service which allows one to make video calls. Sessions are usually between one hour and 90 minutes, and through that time we could work on special anxiety or depression or alternative types of mental pressure that you are working with. I have to charge for sessions, of course, but you will see that they're in an infinitely cheaper variety than conventional office therapy. So, in the event you'd like to get going on this, please send me an email by going to the site below.
Fast note about Mindfulness Therapy: What can it be? Well, mindfulness is a very ancient technique is finding tremendous use now and developed by the Buddha several years back. This is a form of quite focused knowledge that enables you to research the structure of emotions and patterns of reactive thinking that is negative. Two part of mindfulness training are first of all to understand patterns of negative thinking in order that they don't go on automatically, which of course they'd go on for ever and ever. So, first we learn to awaken to these patterns of negative emotions and negative thinking, and subsequently the 2nd part of Mindfulness Therapy is learning how to form an open and very close relationship in which we develop what's called existence, engaged-presence, with all the emotion or thoughts. And it's in this space of engaged-existence, without being reactive to it, where we're completely with all the emotion, that change takes place, and this can be what I'll guide you through in a web-based session of Mindfulness Therapy.
So, please send an email to me and let us get started. You'll love this and you'll find it very effective.
Mindfulness Therapy Online for Anxiety-Depression-Stress
Welcome! I reside in Boulder, Colorado, and I offer Online Counseling via Skype. Skype Counseling is becoming more and more popular, mostly because of the convenience, plus it means which you can speak to a therapist, like me, from the comfort of your home. And, this may be essential for people, particularly if you're struggling with agoraphobia or anxiety, where it's not really easy to depart house. It truly is also very suitable for people who can't leave home for reasons such as having driving anxiety, or living in rural areas where it's not easy to travel from house to see.
So, the Skype Counseling option is a good choice for lots of people. So, the Web Counseling alternative becomes a very convenient alternative.
The type of treatment that I offer online is called Mindfulness Therapy, which is growing immensely in popularity nowadays. And, it's really a way of cultivating friendship towards your own emotions, developing a relationship with them that enables them to heal, cultivating knowledge and working with your emotions in a really direct manner.
Should you'd like to find out more about Skype Counseling and Mindfulness Therapy, please see my web site, CounselingTherapyOnline.com and send me an e-mail. I'll be pleased to answer your questions and schedule a Skype Counseling session with you. Thank you!
Mindfulness Therapy for Anxiety Mindfulness Therapy for Depression Mindfulness Therapy for Stress
Welcome! I offer online treatment via Skype for the reduction of stress, and for help with anxiety and depression.
I teach Mindfulness Therapy for anxiety and stress reduction. This strategy is quite powerful for helping you change the underlying process that creates psychological stress. Now, what is that inherent process? Well, should you look closely you will observe that nearly all anxiety that we experience is generated by uncontrolled reactive thinking. We may find some stimulation that creates an anxiety or worry and after that immediately we begin proliferating thoughts; ideas around "What if...?" or expectation of some type of catastrophe. This type of catastrophic thinking, rumination, or simply general proliferation of consideration from the one stimulus is what creates most of our psychological reactivity.
The objective of online mindfulness therapy for reducing stress would be to educate you on how you can prevent this process of reactive proliferation of thinking.
Mindfulness is an extremely innovative tool of comprehension which allows one to see what's happening when it's happening before they start to gain momentum and cause psychological pressure in order to catch these reactive thinking processes earl on.
Please read my site and then please contact me in case you'd like to learn more and we could schedule a Skype therapy session to help you work on lowering your stress levels through therapy that is mindfulness. Thank you!
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong and I am a professional Online Therapist. My specialty is Mindfulness Therapy and I offer Mindfulness Therapy online via Skype.
This approach is gaining tremendous popularity, and it's an extraordinary way of working with emotional problems such as anxiety, depression and stress.
The great strength of the mindfulness approach is that it help you develop what we call a non-reactive relationship with your emotions and negative thoughts or patterns of cognitive reactivity that generate anxiety, depression or stress.
It is so important to be able to literally "sit" with your emotions instead of avoiding them or fighting them or running away from them. You need to establish a relationship with your emotions if they are to change.
With mindfulness we learn how to establish this relationship with our emotions. We learn how to bring a quality of awareness and friendliness, or compassion, to our emotions. This create the ideal inner conditions that leads to healing and transformation.
We all know that reactivity, avoidance and aversion will not help an emotional condition like anxiety heal. It can only heal when you bring this quality of mindfulness to the emotion. We learn to become friends with the emotion, and this is what promotes healing.
So, there's a lot of detail to Mindfulness Therapy. If you would like to learn more, please visit my website (the link is below) and please contact me. We can schedule a Skype Therapy session and see if this is an appropriate choice for you to help you overcome your anxiety, depression or stress. So, please go to my website and send me an email. Thank you!
I am pleased to announce the publication of The Path of Mindfulness Meditation in February 2010. This book has been many years in the making, starting in the 1970s. It is based on many years of personal meditation practice and my experiences from teaching and helping others apply mindfulness to facilitate spiritual and personal transformation. The capacity of mindfulness to facilitate healing is truly remarkable and is one of the greatest discoveries given to us by the Buddha.
Mindfulness, called sati in Pali is a multi-dimensional form of conscious awareness with both passive-receptive qualities of openness as well as the active components of watchfulness and vigilance. Above all, mindfulness reflects the four sublime Buddha qualities of metta, karuna, mudita and upekkha, the boundless expressions of the awakened mind that is truly free. Metta describes the quality of friendliness and genuine care towards all formations, and this begins with your inner emotional pain and suffering. It is only when you choose to turn towards your inner experience of anxiety, anger, depression, grief, disappointment, trauma and low self-worth that change become possible. This choosing to turn towards suffering and in fact towards all aspects of your ongoing experience, including your personal joys and happiness is the essential movement of mindfulness to embrace and care for all beings. As you cultivate this towards yourself, you naturally become more open and friendly and caring towards others and towards your world. Karuna is the application of metta to embrace suffering as you experience it internally or externally in others. Mudita is the application of metta to embrace joy and happiness and well-being as you experience it internally or externally in others. Upekkha is the foundation of equanimity and non-reactivity that allows you to embrace everything, pleasant or painful and allows you to be fully engaged and fully present with whatever you experience. When there is upekkha then your innate intelligence, called satipanna shines through and your resultant actions become skillful and in-tune with the needs of the present and always lead in the direction of the resolution of suffering or dukkha.
Mindfulness facilitates the movement from Reactivity to Responsiveness and you become more responsive and less reactive in life and in relationships. Mindfulness also gives you a way to access your true essential Self - your Buddha nature as the pure conscious awareness that is the ground of your Being and that is free from reactivity and reactive conditioning and where intelligence, compassion, creativity and intuition run free. The Path of Mindfulness is a path to freedom - I hope that you find my book a useful guide.
Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.
Visit my YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/pdmstrong
Email inquiries about Online Therapy and Online Counseling are most welcome. Request an Online Psychotherapy Skype session today and begin a course of Mindfulness Therapy for your Anxiety, Depression or Emotional Stress.
A brief introduction to the 3 R's of Mindfulness Therapy: RECOGNITION, RELATIONSHIP, RESOLUTION. First mindfulness teaches us to wake up to our habitual reactivity and negative thinking; secondly mindfulness teaches us how to turn towards our suffering and form a non-reactive relationship with our anxiety; third, mindfulness creates a "therapeutic space" in which emotions begin to soften, unfold, transform and finally resolve.
Welcome! My name is Peter Strong. I'm a psychotherapist and I specialize in Mindfulness-based Counseling and Psychotherapy, which I offer online.
The online way of psychotherapy is proving to be somewhat popular these days due to the convenience, its effectiveness, which is currently revealed in many clinical studies and, naturally, affordability. But, advantage, this is the most important idea. For once, the client can feel completely in charge of the whole procedure for scheduling and organizing her or his session of treatment.
The process itself is hardly difficult. All you will need is a computer using download Skype, and a webcam, which can be a free service that enables one to make video calls. Sessions are often between 90 minutes and one hour, and during that time we could work on other types of mental pressure or depression or particular anxiety that you are working with. I have to charge for sessions, obviously, however you will find they are in an infinitely more affordable variety than traditional office treatment. So, if you would like to begin on this, please send me an e-mail by going to the site below.
Fast note about Mindfulness Therapy: What is it? Well, mindfulness is an incredibly ancient technique produced by the Buddha several years ago today and is finding application that is tremendous. This is a form of really focused comprehension which allows you to check into the structure of emotions and patterns of negative reactive thinking. Two part of training that is mindfulness are first to comprehend patterns of negative thinking to ensure that they don't go on automatically, which of course they would go on for ever and ever. Also it's in this space of engaged-presence, without being reactive to it, where we're totally with the emotion, that change occurs, and this really is what I am going to show you through in an online session of Mindfulness Therapy.
Please send an e-mail to me and let us get started. You are going to enjoy this and you will discover it very powerful.
Online Mindfulness Therapy
Visit my website and contact me if you would like to schedule a session of online therapy.
Intense emotions like anxiety, grief, fear, anger or phobias or post-traumatic stress are formed when emotional feeling energy becomes concentrated in the form of an internal belief. Psychotherapy modalities such as CBT focus on these dysfunctional internal beliefs and attempt to change them through exposing the irrational nature of the belief and offering new belief models to the client. However, the real challenge is always in how to change the associated feeling level that empowers the belief. If this emotional energy remains unchanged then the beliefs and habitual reactivity based on them will simply return. Therefore, to change a belief structure and associated compulsive reactivity, the therapist must help the client form a high quality relationship with his inner feelings in which he can observe and learn the feeling without falling into the trap of further reactivity. This secondary reactivity most often takes the form of ruminative thinking, emotional reactivity or avoidance.
This is where mindfulness becomes an invaluable tool for both the client and the therapist. Mindfulness is defined as the non-reactive present-centered awareness of an experience. It is the art of sensitive listening, being fully present and receptive to whatever is being experienced. In Mindfulness Meditation Therapy, mindfulness is applied directly to the felt-sense of the emotion to cultivate this quality of presence. We choose to make the emotion the primary object of our meditation and our task is to develop a relationship with the emotion, with the anger or fear in which we can observe the emotion and allow the emotion to unfold. The purpose of cultivating the mindfulness-based relationship is so that we can move from the superficial surface structure of the emotion to the deep internal structure and reveal the subtle internal structure.
In practice, mindfulness is the sensitive awareness to reactivity itself. It is the art of continually recognizing when we become reactive, when we become lost in thinking and judging or reacting with aversion or resistance or wanting things to be different than they are. All of these reactions take us away from the direct experience of our inner felt-sense of the emotional complex, a phenomenon that I call Reactive Displacement. Mindfulness allows us to tune into all the subtle movements of wanting, aversion and delusion and allows us to return our attention to the primary object, which in this case is the felt-sense of the emotion. We stay at this interface and return to this interface over and over again. The effect of mindfulness, focused in this way, is to open a "space" around the emotion, to stop secondary reactivity and be fully present with the emotion without reacting, without trying to fix things, without trying to control things.
The practice of mindfulness meditation in this way opens up a therapeutic space that allows for the possibility of change. Reactivity keeps things the same and inhibits change; mindfulness counteracts reactivity and restores freedom into the psyche. Now, how an emotion undergoes transformation and resolution is a big topic that will be discussed in another article. Suffice it to say that any emotional complex has the property of being highly unstable and the psyche is very efficient at resolving instability if given the freedom to operate - and this is the key point. Reactivity inhibits the freedom to operate, while mindfulness restores the freedom to change. What is observed is that when we have a sustained mindfulness-based relationship with a dissonant emotion, the emotion will spontaneously undergo transformation in a direction that leads to its resolution. This, I call the principle of Psychological Homeostasis - but the key is freedom to change. No freedom, no change.
Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.
Meditation has been around for thousands of years and there are many different approaches. The most common forms of meditation usually involves focusing on a particular object, such as a word mantra, as in Transcendental Meditation; a divine image as in some forms of Tibetan Buddhist meditation; an inspirational phrase or image, as in Christian contemplative meditation; or mindful contemplation of breathing, as in Buddhist samatha meditation. In general, these forms of meditation attempt to cultivate an altered state of consciousness, in which you feel more relaxed and more centered in the present moment, and generally more spiritually uplifted by the contemplation of something greater than the “monkey mind” of our common moment-to-moment thoughts and worries. In this approach the meditator attempts to empty his mind of intrusive thoughts and preoccupations and simply return his focus onto the primary object of meditation. In many ways, these forms of meditation are equivalent to taking a vacation from the emotional stress of life, and there is no doubt that this can be very helpful, allowing us to unwind and refresh our minds. However, as refreshing and relaxing as it may be, we need to remember that this kind of meditation is a vacation, and when we return to our normal activities, we will still have to confront the same old problems caused by the reactive mind.
Such contemplative and concentration based approaches to meditation may be very inspiring and refreshing, but are generally not able to transform emotional suffering and the habitual patterns of reactivity that plague the mind. However, there is another type of meditation that uses a completely different approach to our mental afflictions and emotional stress. Rather than trying to empty the mind of intrusive thoughts and emotions, we turn our attention towards them and surround the emotion or reactive thought with mindfulness. This approach to meditation is called vipassana meditation, insight meditation, or simply mindfulness meditation.
The Buddha taught this form of meditation as a way of transforming the root cause of our emotional suffering and stress. You cannot transform your suffering by avoiding it, but only by working with it and creating the right kind of inner relationship with your inner anxiety, anger, or other form of stress, that promotes healing. Mindfulness is a particular way of relating to our experience, whatever it might be, including our emotions and inner stress, that is based on being fully present and fully awake. Mindfulness is a quality of awareness where we know what is happening in each moment of experience. This is in stark contrast to our more usual sate of reactivity, in which we don’t fully experience things, but react to them. If you react to your painful emotions, your suffering or you negative thoughts with further reactivity then nothing can change. If you stop reacting and respond with mindfulness to your inner pain, then you create a therapeutic space in which change can happen. Mindfulness re-establishes the freedom and choice that habitual reactivity takes away.
In Mindfulness Meditation Therapy (MMT), we make difficult emotions the very focus of our meditation. We do this because we understand that there is no way to escape our inner suffering, and the only way to change suffering is by facing it directly. Mindfulness teaches us how to do just that, how to form a therapeutic relationship with our inner suffering that is open, fully present and not reactive. Learning to cultivate this inner relationship, the mindfulness-based relationship, with your inner emotions and stress is immensely empowering and provides the gateway to inner transformation; it creates the right inner therapeutic space that allows negative emotions to resolve and heal themselves.
When working with emotions, the first part of MMT is learning to recognize the impulse to react. Most of us are not very aware of these impulses, and the result is that they take control of us and ambush our state of mind. So the first step is to see them before they take hold, when they are still in their infancy.
The next step is to form and maintain a mindfulness-based relationship with the impulse-emotion. This is rather like placing a wild animal in a large space: Give it plenty of room and it can’t hurt itself, or you. When you surround your inner suffering with this mindful-space, which is love, then you provide the right environment in which the emotion can soften, unfold, become malleable and transform.
Mindfulness skills and mindfulness meditation can be learned quite easily online, but what you learn will be very much more effective if it is individualized to your specific needs. In Online MMT, we use email correspondence and Skype video conferencing to teach you how to meditate and how to use mindfulness to work on your emotional issues and stress reactions. Online MMT is also a very cost-effective approach, because it focuses directly on the core issues and makes changes at the core level of our emotional reactivity. Visit my website and email me to schedule an appointment. Mindfulness Meditation Therapy
Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.
Email inquiries about Online Therapy and Online Counseling are most welcome. Request an Online Psychotherapy Skype session today and begin a course of Mindfulness Therapy for your Anxiety, Depression or Emotional Stress.
Mindfulness Meditation Therapy (MMT) can be defined as: the direct application of mindfulness to the present felt-sense of an emotional complex.
DIRECT APPLICATION means that the individual trains to establish and sustain a quality of relationship with the inner experience of an emotion, called the Mindfulness Based Relationship. The quality of the MBR is the key factor that will determine the successful outcome of MMT.
MINDFULNESS describes direct attention and awareness that is best described by the term ENGAGED PRESENCE. When we are mindful, we are fully awake and aware of what is happening as it is happening, without any thinking about the experience or any emotional reaction to the experience. We simply "sit" with the experience and observe it with a keen interest as we might have when listening to a favorite piece of classical music. But mindfulness also has a quality of engagement in which we investigate the structure of the experience. All mindfulness involves moving beyond the superficial and initial appearance of experience and uncovering the finer and more subtle inner structure of experience. When we listen to an orchestra with this sense of rapture and keen interest, we are likely to become aware of individual instruments and gain a new appreciation of the piece of music that exceeds our previous experience. When this kind of mindfulness is developed, then every time we listen to the music we always discover it anew, even though we have heard it a thousand times. This is the kind of attitude and approach to experience that we are attempting to cultivate in our practice of The Path of Mindfulness and MMT.
The term PRESENT FELT SENSE of an emotional complex is the general quality of feeling that surrounds the emotion. An emotion is different than a feeling, because it has form. An emotion is a constellation of thinking, physical sensations, actions and speech. If you think of anger as an example, to be angry requires changes in facial expression, tightening in various muscle groups throughout the body, an increase in heart rate and changes in behavior. These actions are aggregated around a collage of different feelings, beliefs and patterns of thinking. All of these components are part of the emotional reaction we call anger. A feeling does not have form, but is a property in the same way that the color yellow is a property of a lemon. An emotion has a certain felt sense, a certain quality of feeling energy, called vedana. In Buddhist terms, this general undifferentiated feeling energy can be positive, negative or neutral. The negative form is called dukkhavedana and is the feeling sense that accompanies dukkha or emotional suffering and agitation.
What the Buddha discovered over 2500 years ago, is that this very process of listening with mindfulness and opening to the unfolding orchestra of our own experience, including the experience of emotional suffering, or dukkha, creates the right conditions for transformation. All emotional suffering is comprised of psychological feeling energy, vedana that has become locked into specific mental formations, sankharas that take the form of an emotional reaction, a behavioral reaction or even a bodily reaction. Dukkha is a state of psychological instability and the psyche will always move in a direction that leads to the resolution of this instability, if given the freedom to change. This automatic tendency towards resolution, I call Psychological Homeostasis and which corresponds to the same principle of physiological, biochemical and immunological homeostasis that occurs spontaneously in the body. However, the absolutely essential factor required for homeostasis to work in either the body or the mind is FREEDOM: the freedom to move and change in an intelligent direction that leads towards the resolution of instability and the cessation of dukkha. Mindfulness is the perfection of relationship to our experience that brings this essential quality of freedom to dukkha and creates the ideal conditions in which emotional conflict can transform and resolve itself. A therapeutic space opens around the dukkha and the dukkha responds by changing, transforming in a direction that leads towards resolution. We can feel this process transformation as it is occurring by monitoring changes in feeling tone. When transformation leads to resolution there is a felt shift from dukkhavedana to sukhavedana, the more positive form of feeling energy. Eventually, when resolution is complete, the feeling energy changes further to a state of greater stability in which the felt sense is neutral, balanced and in equilibrium and this is called upekkhavedana. This latter quality of feeling is accompanied by a sense of well-being and vitality as energy is released back into the psyche.
The mechanism of transformation and resolution is primarily experiential, which means that changes evolve from the immediate present experience of the emotion, rather than from our views and beliefs about the experience. Of course, mindfulness, or sati is all about being present for our experience as it arises and unfolds in the present moment. The path of experiential transformation and resolution is unique to each person and each session of MMT. Typically, there will be a differentiation of feelings, memories and word-symbols that seem to fit with the feelings that are experienced. Almost all clients will notice some form of experiential imagery that seems to resonate with the felt sense of the experience. The mind thinks in pictures and uses visual representations to organize experience. Many of us are not aware of this internal imagery, but when we focus mindfulness on the felt sense of an emotion we create the right state of awareness and sensitivity in which imagery will arise. Experiential imagery is imagery that arises from our present felt experience, rather than a visualization that we create and it provides an extraordinarily powerful medium for promoting the transformation and resolution of dukkha.
THE PROCESS OF MMT
The first phase of Mindfulness Meditation Therapy is primarily about learning to recognize reactions as and when they arise and replace ignorance with awareness. This is the first function of mindfulness, the factor of RECOGNITION. Without this most basic first step nothing can change, but with awareness comes the possibility of change. Recognition is the beginning of the transformational process and often this skill alone is sufficient to totally change the whole reactive dynamic between two people.
The next phase of MMT involves changing how we view the reaction and associated emotional energy. This is called REFRAMING and is one of a number of skills that is taught in the psychological science of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) and which is another chief modality used in MMT. Normally, (ie when we are unaware) we blindly identify with emotional reactions and literally become the reaction. When a reaction of feeling hurt arises we become the emotional reaction of hurting. Anger arises and we become angry. We say "I am upset," or "I am angry?" because we literally take on the entire identity of the emotion. During reframing, we learn to stop this automatic process of subjective identification and see the reaction as simply an object that is not self, but simply a phenomenon that has arisen in our consciousness due to various causes and conditions. When the reaction of feeling upset arises, we now see it as an object within us, rather like a bubble rising in a pond. The bubble is not the pond, but simply an object that arises within the pond and the emotion is not our self, but simply a small part that arises within our experience. After reframing the emotion, we learn to say, "I notice a feeling of hurting within me" or "I notice anger arising in my mind." This is a very important step, because it counteracts the habitual tendency to react and opens up a sense of space and choices around the emotion. You cannot relate to something with any sense of presence and engagement if you are gripped by reactivity: reactivity inhibits relationship. Only when you can form a pure and direct relationship with an experience, including emotional suffering, will presence and engagement be possible and without complete presence, nothing can change.
The third phase of MMT, after RECOGNITION and REFRAMING is the most important step of forming a RELATIONSHIP with the internal felt-sense of the emotional reaction. Let us explore this in more detail. Once you have recognized a reaction and made it into an object that you can see and experience, then you begin to see the emotional reaction as an object to be investigated and known in its own right, rather than getting entangled in the storyline of the emotion, which is our usual tendency. The storyline may be very compelling and you may feel very offended or hurt, but indulging in negative, emotionally charged thinking is seldom an effective tool for resolving emotional conflict, internally or externally. This is the first function of mindfulness: learning to recognize a reaction, seeing it as an object and not getting seduced into further reactivity.
The kind of relationship that we cultivate in MMT is called the Mindfulness Based Relationship. This relationship has certain unique qualities. The first and most important quality is non-reactivity. By learning to recognize reactivity, we can stop the tendency to proliferate further reactivity in the form of reactive thinking, or further emotional reactions of aversion and displeasure. The second characteristic of the mindfulness-based relationship is about opening our heart and mind and developing a quality of genuine caring towards the inner pain of our anger or resentment. Instead of turning away, we turn towards our suffering or the suffering of others. This does not mean that we indulge in feeling sorry for ourselves and certainly it does not mean that we indulge in reactive thinking, such as worrying. Rather, we learn to be fully present with our inner felt experience of an emotion with a keen level of attention. The third quality of mindfulness is investigation. We turn towards our pain, we become attentive and then we take this further step and investigate the deeper inner structure of the experience. This has a profound effect on whatever is observed and the observed responds by differentiating into its component parts. What seemed like the solid emotion of anger or resentment, fear or anxiety begins to unfold into a complex interior landscape of subtle feelings and memories and very often, some form of experiential imagery.
This is the fourth phase of MMT: EXPERIENTIAL TRANSFORMATION. The term "experiential" is a very important term in mindfulness work and MMT and has a very specific meaning. By "experiential" we mean that we allow experience to unfold in its own way and in its own time without any interference or agenda or beliefs about what should happen. Mindfulness provides the ideal therapeutic space in which experiential unfolding can occur, because of its open and non-judgemental quality. What unfolds is often unexpected and unpredictable, but has a very clear felt meaning and felt sense of being relevant and important. The exact nature of what unfolds is unique to each person and cannot be predicted. There is no attempt made to interpret what arises, only to fully experience it with mindfulness and full presence of mind. The effect of becoming aware of this inner detailed structure that arises naturally as we focus mindfully on an emotion is highly transformational. Often, beneath anger there is sadness and beneath resentment there is fear. These more subtle feelings may give rise to further feelings and experience. During the process of transformation, emotions literally dissolve into many small parts, which can be more readily digested and re-integrated by the psyche and our innate intelligence into something more stable.
Besides the differentiation of feelings and associated memories, people will frequently encounter some form of experiential imagery. It may be in the form of a memory image, a picture from the past. Experiential imagery often takes on a more abstract form of shifting colors and shapes. Whatever form the imagery takes, the approach is always to sit with the present experience and felt sense associated with the imagery and allow it to unfold and change in its own unique way. One person focusing on anger first notices a red color, which takes on the form of a hard, rough rock. With continued mindfulness, the rock begins to change shape and color and dissolves into a pile of white sand. This is not visualization, because there was no deliberate effort to create the imagery; they arose experientially. The process of unfolding and transformation of experiential imagery is one of the most powerful events that can occur during MMT and is one of the most effective means of producing change at the deepest level of our emotional suffering. How this works is not well understood, but it is generally agreed that the mind thinks in pictures and organizes memory and particularly the affective dimension of memory through visual imagery. Why the anger took on the form of a red colored rock is interesting and of course red is often associated with anger, as is hardness. Why it changed into white sand is also interesting and similarly we can make interpretations of what it means: white sand symbolizes tranquility and fluidity. However, interpretation is not the purpose of MMT; what is important is the full conscious experience of this process of change in the inner structure of our experience. It is this conscious awareness of the process that is transformational, not an understanding of the contents that arise.
The final step of MMT is RESOLUTION. Resolution is said to have occurred when the emotional energy that powers a pattern of emotional reactivity has dissipated and returned to the psyche, providing energy for new and more positive responses. Resolution is the state of equilibrium, accompanied by a felt sense of uppekhavedana, which although neutral can lead to very euphoric feelings that can be simply described as the taste of freedom. Any form of emotional suffering, or dukkha, as it is called in Buddhism, represents a state of instability and conflict in the psyche. The psyche hates instability and will always try to resolve dukkha if given the freedom to change. Mindfulness provides the therapeutic space and freedom in which transformation and resolution can occur. The guiding principle throughout MMT and the process of transformation and eventual resolution of emotional pain is called satipanna, which means the wisdom-intelligence that arises with mindfulness. This is our innate intelligence that we all possess and which is unique to each moment of experience. Just as water seems to have an innate intelligence in its relentless journey to be united with the ocean, so the psyche has an innate intelligence that will always move towards the resolution of dukkha in all its forms. Mindfulness provides the conditions of freedom and openness in which satipanna will naturally direct and guide all the subtle changes at the experiential level that lead to the resolution of dukkha. This is also described in Buddhism as the awakening or living real-time insight into the Four Noble Truths: Awakening to dukkha, the cause of dukkha, the state of non-dukkha and The Path of Mindfulness that leads to the resolution of dukkha. We start with recognizing dukkha, we form a relationship with the dukkha with mindfulness and we allow the dukkha to unfold, change and transform itself in the direction that leads to its cessation. This direction is literally encoded in the internal structure of the state of instability of dukkha in just the same way that the path that water will take is encoded in the very process of creating instability when we pour water on the top of a hill. The direction of change is always towards greater and ultimately final and absolute stability. This applies to dukkha just as much as to the water trapped on top of a hill. Given time and the freedom to change, that water will return to the ocean and the psyche will resolve dukkha and reach a place of stability.
Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.
Email inquiries about Online Therapy and Online Counseling are most welcome. Request an Online Psychotherapy Skype session today and begin a course of Mindfulness Therapy for your Anxiety, Depression or Emotional Stress.
When you really look closely at anxiety, depression, fear, anger or stress, you will almost always find recurring patterns of negative thoughts, traumatic memories and habitual emotional reactions. They are our tormentors, the pesky biting insects that annoy us throughout the day. They ambush our consciousness, pull us down and cause stress and emotional suffering. They come uninvited, cause havoc, and we wish that they would go away. If only we could control them, we would certainly have a better chance of controlling our mental state. So how do we do this? The practice of mindfulness and mindfulness meditation can provide a path forward.
The first step of mindfulness practice, and one that can make all the difference, is to fully and completely understand that YOU ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. Thoughts, emotions, in fact any mental content that arises are simply products of conditioning; YOU are much more than this. It is like the ocean and the fish that swim in the ocean. The ocean is not the same as the fish that live in it, and cannot be equated with the contents. The essence of the ocean is as the space that contains these things, not its contents. The same applies to the mind. The essence of the mind is as a container of experience, the ground in which mental objects, thoughts, emotions, beliefs, perceptions and memories can exist. When you realize this, that you are so much more than your thoughts and emotions, then you are well on the way to gaining your freedom and independence from the pesky flies that cause so much stress and suffering. At the end of the day you have a simple choice to make: Do you want to be the ocean in all its vastness and glory, or do you want to be a fish, flapping around in a state of agitation and fear? Learning to be the ocean is a wise choice, and this is something that can be achieved through the practice of mindfulness.
The trick is to learn to see mental objects as just that, objects, not you, that arise, do their dance and then pass away. Anxiety arises, and what is our usual response? We are ambushed by the emotion and we become the emotion. We become an anxiety-fish! Fear arises and we are seduced into becoming afraid, a fear-fish. Anger arises and we become angry-fish. No choice, no freedom, lots of suffering.
With the practice of mindfulness, we begin to get wise, and become more engaged with what is going on in our minds. Mindfulness helps us tune in to this cycle of habitual emotional reactivity. Instead of blindly accepting our impulses to become anxious, to become afraid, to become fish, we learn to actively engage with these reactions. When anxiety thoughts arise, we respond with, “I see you, anxious thought. I welcome you, I will make a space for you to do your dance, I will listen to you with care and attention…but I will NOT become you.” You can learn to mindfully greet each emotion, each negative thought, as a visitor who has come to stay for a while, just like visitors in your home. Invite them in, offer them tea and sit with them for a while. You may not like your visitors, but you know the importance of being kind, courteous and hospitable. You cannot get rid of your negative emotions, your depression and fear by force, which is our usual reaction. We don’t want to feel our anger or fear; we want to fix them so they won't bother us. But, here’s the thing. You can't. Why not? Because you created them. Its like asking a wolf to guard the farmer’s chickens. A system that is broken cannot fix itself. What is needed is something altogether more creative, and this is the second step of the practice of mindfulness: Actively turn towards your suffering and work on creating a safe relationship with your fish. When you are mindful, you are by definition not being reactive. The effect of this is to create a space around the emotion. The more mindful you are, the greater the space. The more space there is, the more freedom. Freedom from what? Freedom from the grip of the negative emotion, thought or belief. There is a Zen proverb: What is the best way to control a mad bull? Answer: Place it in a very large field. If there is plenty of space, then the mad bull, or your anxiety, hurt, trauma or depression cannot harm you. Also, what is equally important is that the mad bull can't hurt itself. This is very important, because both of you need the space in which to heal.
Mindfulness creates therapeutic space in which emotional knots can move, unwind, unfold, soften and become workable. And, what is most remarkable, if you create lots of space around your suffering, the suffering has a chance to transform and heal itself. Its not what you do that matters so much as creating this transformational therapeutic space and allowing emotions to change themselves from the inside out. In my work as a psychotherapist, I never cease to be amazed at how effective mindfulness can be when used correctly. The moment when a client stops running away and turns towards his or her suffering with kindness, full attention and engaged presence, things start to change in a beneficial direction. The healing comes from the quality of the relationship that we have with our pain. It’s not about trying to fix things, trying to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts - it’s all about presence. With this quality of listening, based on genuine openness and gentleness, the relationship of mindfulness, solutions appear quite naturally.
Peter Strong, PhD, is a Mindfulness Psychotherapist, Online Therapist, Spiritual Teacher, Medical Research Scientist and Author, based in Boulder, Colorado. He was born in the UK and educated at the University of Oxford.
Email inquiries about Online Therapy and Online Counseling are most welcome. Request an Online Psychotherapy Skype session today and begin a course of Mindfulness Therapy for your Anxiety, Depression or Emotional Stress.
I provide online psychotherapy via Skype for help with anxiety, depression, PTSD and addictions using Mindfulness Therapy.
Go to https://pdmstrong.wordpress.com to learn more and feel free to contact me if you are looking for an online therapist who specializes in Mindfulness Therapy.
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