Therapeutic Presence Part 2

In part one I discussed interpersonal neurobiology in how important it is to our understanding of how nervous systems and cardiovascular systems synchronize with each other as we become a two-person biology. Now I would like to discuss how it is that we sort out who is who in the therapeutic relationship. This is done with what is called mindfulness. Mindfulness is now a subject of an enormous amount of research literature and has been shown to be valuable in helping a wide variety of problems from anxiety and depression to eating disorders. So what is mindfulness?

Mindfulness has two aspects. The first is seeing things from the inside. In traditional mindfulness there are four directions or objects of meditation to regard when seeing from the inside of one’s mind and body. Each direction is an object of meditation to create a continuous direct knowledge of the details of wholistic embodied experience. Consider these four directions as four aspects of our inner life or simply our beingness:

1. Body. As an object of mindfulness the body is experienced as having pleasure, pain and neutral sensation. The body is the ground of perception since without a body there is no perception. Therefore embodiment is part of spiritual practice not just life.  The posture of meditation involves doing a regular body scan from the feet to the top of the head to confirm comfort and ease. Then the practitioner examines whether he or she is resourced or not resourced regarding their experience of their body and relaxes into the current moment of experience. This can be done through interoceptive awareness of the core movements in the body such as those involved in pulmonary respiration and the movement of blood throughout the cardiovascular system. We inhabit the inner world of the body and its polarity of pain and pleasure which is constantly switching back and forth in the pendulum of embodied experience.
2. Emotions. The next area to examine in our inner life with mindfulness is the full spectrum of feelings and emotions both positive and negative. The practitioner examines whether he or she is resourced or not resourced regarding their emotional experience. Emotions are simply energy and information as Daniel Siegel calls them. Mindfulness allows us to see such energy and information as something far more neutral than we usually do. Mindfulness practice involves learning to entirely disengage from, disidentify with, and become non-attached to the experience under review in the four directions. Mindfulness neither favors or opposes inner phenomenon such as strong emotions nor does it like or dislike them.
3. Mind. The ordinary content of the mind consists of thoughts, ideas and concepts. Typically the techniques of mindfulness meditation are to greatly reduce the number of thoughts by recognizing them as distracting or entertaining and returning one’s attention to the present moment as a priority for developing a calm and peaceful mind. The present moment is directly experienced in one’s body such as breathing and heart rate or an external aspect like a panoramic awareness of the space or environment around the practitioner. Gradually the present moment of embodied experience and awareness of space merge in therapeutic practice as a dynamic stillness or void state in which concepts of self and other, dualistic thinking, are at least temporarily suspended.
4. Life. Mindfulness of life is about contact with our primal life stories such as from our family of origin, our career, life experiences and so forth. It is our personal narrative repeated over and over again in our mental life. The practitioner examines whether he or she is resourced or not resourced regarding their life stories. This includes how much time is spent reviewing past experience or anticipating future experience without at least an equal amount of time spent in the present moment for balance.

A basic design of mindfulness is to be able to discriminate what is healthy for us in these four directions and what is unhealthy. The practitioner begins to notice how judgment and evaluation about personal experience is not resourcing and thus does not lead to a sense of peacefulness, resilience and tranquility. This can simply be called presence. These qualities of presence such as tranquility are actually subtle emotions that are innate. They are like seeds that need to be watered as the larger stronger emotions have become like weeds and overgrown the garden of our mind. The basic technique of mindfulness meditation is to relax the mind and let go of any such polarities even down to the release of a single thought. This is like watering the other side of the garden. In this way, tranquility is not a concept but an actual mind-body experience resulting from regular mindfulness practice.

Being present is the ability to experience both pleasure and pain without clinging to anything which is a pretty tall order if one’s mind and emotions are constantly stirred up. One can be aware of what is gratifying and uncomfortable, and still abide independently, autonomously and self-regulated without needing things to be other than the way they are in that moment. The moment reveals the power of nowness with the universe of the present moment being accepted in its totality. This softens the heart by bringing our attention to that area of the body as a source of powerful movement or radiation and compassionate love.

If you are interested in this topic, I am teaching a two day class on interpersonal neurobiology at the body therapy Institute in Siler city North Carolina. This will take place on June 11 and 12th 2015. Please visit the Body Therapy Institute website for a detailed description of the class HERE. Regarding other upcoming classes I will be teaching: www.MichaelSheateaching.com.