Over the course of several weeks I’ll be providing a series of posts that will help you stay calm and centered in 2022. These posts are based on two of my books, Redesign Your Mind and Ten Zen Seconds. To learn more about the techniques I’ll be describing, please take a look at those two books.
We know from Eastern practices like yoga and meditation the importance of the twin concepts of breath awareness and mindfulness. Breath awareness is simply paying attention to the way we breathe, with the object of reminding ourselves to breathe more deeply and more fully than we usually do. As we rush through life we breathe shallowly, our mind chatter propelling us forward. Burdened by what Buddhists call monkey mind, that worried, needy, grasping, anxious, unaware mind of the everyday person, we fall into the habit of automatic shallow breathing.
A vicious cycle evolves where we maintain this shallow breathing as a defense against knowing our own thoughts. In a corner of consciousness, we know that if we were to slow down and breathe deeply we would become fully aware of our thoughts and learn too much about what we’re actually thinking. Out of a fear that acquiring such an understanding would upset us, we make sure not to engage in deep breathing.
If we were willing to engage in conscious deep breathing, we would become more mindful. We would begin to see our own tricks, how what we hold as facts are mere opinions, how our usual ways of operating often sabotage us, how pain, resentment, and disappointment course through our system. Therefore, mindfulness is much easier to champion as an abstract idea than it is to tolerate in reality. Mindfulness implies that we grow aware of how our mind actually operates, which is a scary proposition.
I’m employing a very simple version of breath awareness as a core element of ten-second centering. You have nothing arcane to learn, no long sitting meditations to endure, no distinctions to make between emptying your mind versus concentrating your mind. You will simply learn and practice “one long, deep breath,” a breath longer and fuller than you usually experience. This addition to your breathing repertoire is all you need to take away Eastern practice in order to begin your transformation to mindfulness and centeredness.
From Western thought, I’m taking the basic ideas of cognitive therapy. The main idea of cognitive therapy is that what we say to ourselves—our self-talk—is the primary way we maintain our problems, defenses, flaws, and blocks. If we manage to change our self-talk we will have done something profound, something more substantial than just making some innocent linguistic alteration.
The twelve incantations I’ll teach you in this series function the way that “thought substitutes” function in cognitive therapy. A cognitive therapist teaches you to identify maladaptive self-talk, confront and dispute wrong thinking, and substitute new language that supports your intention to move in a certain direction. You learn to notice your characteristic forms of distorted thinking and create thought substitutes that in form and content are indistinguishable from affirmations. These are the key ideas from cognitive therapy that underpin ten-second centering.
Ten-second centering does not demand a full practice of mindful meditation or a complete course in cognitive therapy. In an important sense, I have done that work for you, by presenting you with twelve incantations that you might have arrived at yourself through insight meditation, self-reflection, pain, and suffering. When, for instance, I teach you the incantation “I expect nothing” and explain to you why it is important to let go of expectations, though not of goals or dreams, I will be presenting an idea that you might have arrived at through years of ardent practice. The practice has been done for you and you can reap the benefits.
This is not an illegitimate shortcut. Suffering is overrated. I would prefer that you change your life in a day and not in a decade. I hope that you agree. I hope that you concur that you have already earned your merit badges in suffering and that it is legitimate to quickly learn a way of centering that works, rather than arriving at one by studying everything that the East and the West have to offer.
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To learn more, please take a look at Redesign Your Mind and Ten Zen Seconds.
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