If you could stay calm in the crowd,
If you can see the trips of your wonderful neighbors
Without feeling jealous,
If you could love everyone without conditions,
If you can feel safe where you are,
In this case it will often be …
dog.
(Laughter)
Right?
We want to reach these unrealistic standards of idealism,
And then blame ourselves if we can not achieve them.
The significance is,
We do not have to be perfect,
Idealism is something that can not be achieved.
But we can change ourselves.
Every one of us has the ability to change, learn and mature
Regardless of the circumstances.
As a university professor and a scientist I study how people change,
How they turn,
One of the most effective ways is mental alertness.
My journey to mental awakening was unexpected.
When I was 17, I performed a spinal operation
A metal rod was placed in the vertebral column.
Turned from an active teenager,
To sleep on the hospital bed is unable to walk.
During the long rehabilitation period,
I tried to know how to live in this body
Who can not do what he is used to doing.
Physical pain was difficult,
But the worst was fear and loneliness,
I simply did not have the tools to live with this situation.
So I started looking for anything that would help me,
In the end, the search led me to a monastery in Thailand
To experience meditation for the first time in my life.
In the monastery,
The monks did not speak English and I did not speak Thai,
But I understood that mental alertness had something to do with it
Focusing at the moment.
The only thing I was asked to do was to get in and out of my nose.
So I started: same one, two breaths
My mind broke, and then I regained my concentration again.
The same one, two souls, have been displaced again,
Suspended in the past or lost in the future,
No matter how hard I tried to focus, I could not focus on the moment.
I was frustrated because I expected meditation to be so,
But in fact it looked like this.
(Laughter)
Being present is not easy.
In fact, try it yourself.
I kept talking for about 3 minutes,
Did you notice that your mind was displaced?
All of us are exposed to it.
Research appears from Harvard University
That mind is displaced on average by 47% of the time.
47%.
This means that we lose half our lives,
We do not exist.
So part of mindfulness
Is to train the mind to attend,
Where we already exist.
Like now, let’s try together.
Close your eyes, and just feel your foot on the ground.
Move your toes,
I feel your whole body sitting here.
Make your face relax,
Make your muscles relax,
Focused on breathing.
Feel yourself coming in and out of your body.
Just to be present.
as you are now,
Take the same deeper, entry and exit, open your eyes.
So…
When I was at the monastery, I was trying hard to do it,
Just to be present.
But regardless of my hard work, my mind has always been displaced.
At this time, I began to judge myself.
“What’s your problem? You’re so bad at this.”
“Why are you here?
It did not stop at the judgment of myself, but began to judge others,
Even the monks.
“Why are they just sitting here, do not they have to do anything?”
(Laughter)
Fortunately, a monk from London arrived to speak English,
When I told him about my suffering, he looked at me and said:
“My God, you do not practice mental alertness,
You practice judgment, impatience, frustration. “
Then he said five words did not leave my mind:
“What you practice becomes stronger.”
What you exercise becomes stronger.
We now know with the presence of nerve flexibility.
Our repeated experiences form the brain.
In fact, we can sculpt and strengthen communication between neurons,
By repeated practice.
For example, in the famous study of taxi drivers in London,
The part responsible for seeing and locating brain places is bigger and stronger.
They were traveling around the 25,000 London lanes throughout the day.
When you take a look at the brain of practicing meditation,
Areas of concentration, learning and empathy,
Become bigger and stronger.
They are called increased cortical thickness,
The growth of new nerves in response to repeated practice.
What we practice becomes stronger.
The monk explained to me that if I had contemplated the sentencing,
So I was only the strongest judge,
Meditation with frustration means that I am feeling stronger.
He taught me that mental alertness does not just mean focus,
But it means the way we focus,
lightly.
He said to me that it is like a warm hug that welcomes everyone,
Even our flaws and chaos inside us.
He also noted that we were exercising all the time,
moment by moment,
Not only in meditation times but at all times.
We develop something every minute.
So the question we have to ask ourselves is what we want to develop?
What do you want to practice?
When I left Thailand, I wanted to continue to exercise mental alertness,
I wanted to understand it at a scientific level.
So I began to prepare for the doctorate, and became a university professor in the end,
I have spent the last 20 years,
In searching for the effect of mental alertness through a large population,
Including veterans of PTSD and patients with insomnia,
Women with breast cancer, university students are subjected to psychological stress,
Executives run giant projects,
And many others, the data showed two main things.
First,
Mindfulness has a positive effect, it is useful for you.
It strengthens the immune system,
Reduce stress, reduce cholesterol, help sleep better.
When we first published our research, it was in 1998,
There have been few studies in this regard.
But now there are a large number
Shows the benefits of mental alertness.
It is useful to us.
The second thing we learned was a bit unexpected.
Almost everyone we worked with,
Regardless of their age, gender or cultural background,
They were talking about the same thing.
Feeling that they are “not good enough,”
“I’m not okay,” “I do not live this life right.”
This feeling of shame and self-control.
We all know what these words mean
Because shame is a common thing all of us have felt before.
And worse, that we have this false belief
If we feel shame about ourselves, if we ourselves,
It will improve in one way or another.
The fact that shame does not help us.
Shame has not benefited anyone before, and can not benefit anyone.
Literally and physically, can not help us because when we feel shame,
Brain centers responsible for growth and learning
Shut down.
This is a picture of the brain of a person who is shocked by a magnetic resonance imaging.
What happens is that
The amygdala (part of the brain) stimulates the secretion of norepinephrine and cortisol
To fill the whole body, closed learning centers in the brain
And change the path we take to survive.
Literally, the shame of our minds is stolen,
Steals the energy the brain needs to change.
The worst is that when we feel shame we try to avoid it,
So we hide from our parts that we are ashamed of,
Those parts are the first to focus.
But it becomes painful to look at.
So what is the alternative?
The alternative is to focus gently.
First, it gives us compassionate compassion
To look at these parts that we do not want to see.
Second, dopamine gives us relief,
Which stimulates learning centers in the brain
And gives us the resources we need for change.
A sincere and lasting change requires a gentle focus.
The words of the monk echoed in my ears,
Mindfulness does not just mean concentration, it means focusing gently.
It was not only marginally or something good,
It is a major thing in the exercise.
Part of mental alertness is overlooked.
So my colleagues and I developed a model of mental alertness training
Which explicitly includes our position and our intention,
As well as our focus.
All these parts work together.
Simply put,
Mindfulness is deliberately deliberately focused.
We used this model
In the veterans’ hospital of a group suffering from PTSD.
I was shocked to find out
We are losing more warriors because of suicide than we do because of fighting.
Our soldiers feel a lot of pain and shame.
So the aim of the group of mental alertness is to urge them to focus gently,
Even on things that are hard to forget.
There was a man in the group who did not speak a word and never lifted his head.
Two months passed, and it seemed elusive.
One day he raised his hand and said, “I do not want to be better.
After what I saw in the war and what I did, I do not deserve to be better. “
Then he looked at the ground and began to tell us everything in detail
What he saw and what he did.
I still feel terrified about what he said
And how he felt a strong shame.
I looked around to see the reaction of the rest of the group,
I did not feel that they were ruling him, but felt sympathy on their faces.
I asked him to look up to see this sympathy and kindness.
When he looked around, his face began to relax,
I saw hope in his eyes,
The possibilities were not only his past,
But his ability to improve his choices now, and change for the better.
Mostly this was the most important thing I learned.
We all can change regardless of circumstances.
This requires a focus rather than a sense of shame.
This requires a lot of training.
I would like to share with you a simple exercise that has always helped me.
In the past, she had a difficult divorce experience,
I wake up every day, and I feel shame.
The meditation teacher suggested that I do a clear exercise of concentration gently.
She said: “What do you think you say, love you Shona, every day.”
I said in my mind: “Impossible”, this seemed artificial.
She saw my hesitation and suggested,
What do you think about just saying, Good morning Shona.
And try to put your hand on your heart when you say it
This helps to excrete oxytocin, this is useful for you. “
She knows she will convince me with science.
So the next day, I put my hand on my heart,
I breathed and said, “Good morning, Yashuna,”
It was quite nice.
I kept working,
A month later, when I saw her, she admitted that this exercise had helped me immensely.
She said to me: “Wonderful, you graduated.
Now is the time for advanced exercise
“Good morning, I love you Shona.”
So the next day,
I put my hand on my heart resorted to myself and I said:
“Good morning, I love you Shona.”
I did not feel anything,
Maybe I felt ridiculous, but I certainly did not feel loved.
But I kept working because, as you know, what we exercise becomes stronger.
A day later,
I put my hand on my heart, breathed, “Good morning, love you Shona,”
I felt it.
I felt like my grandmother, love my mother,
I felt loved for myself.
I wish I could tell you
That from that day I became living in a shell of my love for myself,
I did not feel shame or ever judge myself,
This is not true.
But the truth is that this way of focusing gently was established inside me,
It grows strongly every day.
I would therefore like to invite you tomorrow,
Put your hands on your alkaline and say: “Good morning”
If you had enough courage, “Good morning, I love you.”
Thank.
(Applause) (Cheers)
”
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