Matter and Mind — The Real Benefits of Mindfulness

My history with mindfulness is a complicated one. I had multiple run-ins with it over time. It was part of the syllabus of my sports and exercise psychology degree. I heard athletes I admired talk about it. I had friends recommend it to me. And I wanted to get into it, I really did. But I couldn’t. It felt like being at a showing of some obscure arthouse movie in black and white at the end of which everyone gets up and applauds emphatically. I get up and join them, of course, because I don’t want everyone to think I just didn’t get it, even though I did not get it at all, not one bit. And while I may be a bit of a philistine when it comes to cinema, in the case of mindfulness I really tried my hardest to understand. I read and listened to everything I could get my hands on. I followed breathing exercises and meditation techniques. I even got out my highlighter and marked passages in the massive books I bought. In hindsight, I recognize that my failure to wrap my head around it at first is ultimately on me. At the same time, I think that mindfulness as a concept doesn’t get explained very well generally. There is too much focus on the what instead of the why. Like yes, I am actively focusing on my breathing and the physical sensations that go along with it. I am attending to what is taking place in the present. What now? What does that do for me?

My path to enlightenment

Before explaining what ended up helping me see the light, I want to get one quick disclaimer in. I’m still not convinced by the meditation aspect of mindfulness. I’m not quite ready to discount it completely, saying it has no benefit for anyone. It never worked for me though, and I doubt it ever will. Maybe it could help you, but I’m not the right person to teach you. That being said, I do believe that understanding and internalizing the core idea behind mindfulness will get you at least 99% of the benefit you’ll ever get out of it. And the best news is, in theory it only takes about five minutes to explain it. From a return-on-investment standpoint it’s the best bang for your buck sport psychology has to offer. I’d say it’s true even for me, despite taking significantly longer to finally get it. So let’s not lose any more time and get back to the steps that got me there.

Hint #1: Pushing down the waves

The first major breakthrough for me came at a time when I had already given up and resigned myself to living a life of mindlessness or whatever the opposite of mindfulness is. I wasn’t actively seeking out related content and instead stumbled upon it while trying to learn more about ADHD shortly after getting my own diagnosis. I was watching a video by psychiatrist Alok Kanojia in which he talked about the principles and benefits of mindfulness for the condition. I recommend watching it yourself, but as a quick summary, he uses the analogy of waves in water and how trying to get the water to be perfectly still, actively pushing down the waves won’t do you any good. In fact, it will do the opposite. At the time I didn’t quite understand how exactly it relates to mindfulness. It took a second realization shortly after for that.

Hint #2: Blood Pressure

Little known fact about me: I suffer from a condition called hemophobia, a.k.a. the fear of blood. Well, I say suffer but unlike my ADHD it’s very rarely been an actual problem in my life. I hadn’t passed out from seeing blood in over a decade, but one day my index finger had a quick altercation with the blade of my food processor. No, it wasn’t spinning just idly lying in my cabinet when I clumsily reached in. That’s the irony of it. The size of the injury seems to be irrelevant when it comes to when my phobia gets triggered. I looked into it after it happened that day and am still none the wiser. However, in the process I found out a couple of other interesting tidbits. Like other phobias, hemophobia has a strong genetic component, but it is unique in the response it elicits. Instead of common markers of anxiety it usually results in something called vasovagal syncope. Sounds fancy. In reality it just means that your blood pressure drops which reduces blood flow to the brain until you briefly lose consciousness. In and of itself it’s not a big deal. Worst-case scenario is that while passing out you fall and hit your head on something.

Internal Power Struggle

You may now say, thanks for the biology lesson, but what does that have to do with anything? Well, while I learned a new word that day, I technically knew all of it already. It did make me reconsider my approach though. Before my strategy was basically to try to suppress any thought about blood as I felt in danger of passing out. The problem is that trying not to think of something tends to make you think about it even more. In other words, I was very much pushing down the waves and created even more in the process. Since my brain does most of my thinking and guides my behavior, it naturally thinks of itself as in charge. It became a little arrogant and this was the humbling experience it needed to snap out of it. Sure, my blood pressure doesn’t help me remember my girlfriend’s birthday or write overly convoluted blog posts, but it can at any moment call a timeout on my cerebral hubris. Without enough oxygen in my brain the lights go out and no amount of grey matter between my ears can prevent that. The only choice I have is if I go down safely and with grace or if I risk getting injured. Yes, it seems like a silly response to a tiny cut on your fingertip. Yes, it’s embarrassing, especially if it happens in public. But if you really fancy yourself as that smart, brain, you better do the smart thing. And that’s really what mindfulness boils down to in the end. It doesn’t matter what we want to believe, what we want to see when we look in the mirror. Some things are stronger than us. Trying to fight them anyway is valiant, but also stupid.

Equanimity

The fact that it took an experience like that to put two and two together made me think I must have missed something before. I went back and reviewed all my mindfulness-related material. And indeed, it was definitely in there. Here’s a quote from page three of the book “The Mind Illuminated” by John Yates and Matthew Immergut.

“A fully Awake, fully conscious human being has the love, compassion, and energy to make change for the better whenever it’s possible, the equanimity to accept what can’t be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Granted, there probably would have been a more concise way of putting it, so I’m not too hard on myself for not knowing what equanimity meant (I now use it to express why a three-and-a-half-hour-long black and white movie about a Parisian park bench compelled me to provide standing ovations). But I believe that one sentence concisely explains how mindfulness works and why it’s beneficial. It saves you the trouble of trying to change what is unchangeable and instead helps you focus on what you can change. The keys are self-acceptance and self-knowledge, and you don’t even need to meditate to gain either. I know that especially the former has become somewhat of a divisive term lately. Accepting realities about oneself is often interpreted as a way to resign oneself to the status quo. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. If you take a closer look at the philosophy that mindfulness practices are based on, you’ll find the word transience everywhere. It’s all about constantly changing. There is ongoing debate whether the concepts of mindfulness with stronger roots in the realm of Eastern spirituality are compatible with Western ideas about competition and performance culture. I think they can be reconciled perfectly as long as you approach it with an open mind. As I mentioned earlier, the meditation and spirituality are purely optional if you’re in it for the performance benefits. Take it from a Catholic school alumnus and former choir boy, who hasn’t seen a church from the inside in almost a decade. There’s not a single spiritual bone in my body, not even the one that feels ghostly when I hit my elbow on something, and yet I was able to adopt some mindfulness into my life. So, if that sounds like something you might be interested in, we’ll go over the how, why, and when you can do it too in more detail in future blog posts.