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Hello, Sam here.
So it can be difficult to explain some of the more abstract elements of mindfulness, especially to children.
When I teach children, I rely on symbols for different modes of thinking and responding.
So, for example, I tell children that we have a wise owl part of our brain that thinks things through and decides how to respond instead of react.
The wise owl represents our prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive functioning.
Mindfulness practices introduce a radical shift in habitual ways of responding to our inner experience.
So we rely heavily on metaphors, using imagery like the blue sky and talking about the mind like a vast landscape.
And this works for adults too.
So I want to share some metaphors that help me understand mindfulness concepts, and hopefully they'll give you a better understanding as well.
One of the first mindfulness metaphors that I learned was when I was introduced to mindfulness by my teacher, Diana Winston, who's the director of UCLA's Mindful Awareness Research Center.
She described watching thoughts like watching trains pass by.
Some trains are fast and flash by in an instant and others are slow and just keep showing up.
She told me to expect my mind to jump on the train often and that catching my mind when it hops on the train and coming back to observing is a moment of mindfulness.
And this metaphor worked really well for me.
Sometimes I would immediately catch myself getting on the train, and other times I'd be lost on my train of thought for a while before catching it.
In his book From Wild Chickens and Petty Tyrants, psychologist Arnold Kozak offers 108 metaphors for mindfulness.
One of the most widely understood metaphors is that of the inner witness.
By imagining that we have an inner witness to our experiences, we create space for a pause where that inner witness can take in what's happening.
And in that pause, we have the opportunity to choose how to respond to the world around us, instead of just reacting.
The last metaphor I'll share is thinking of mindfulness as driver's ed for the mind.
There are so many ways that we can relate our bodies and minds to a car.
Our engines, our brain gets overheated by too much exertion.
And when we're too busy and stressed, it's like we're driving our car at dangerously high speeds.
When we apply the brakes, we often expect our minds to immediately feel calmer.
But what we tend to see, initially, is the effects of how fast we've been moving.
When we turn our attention to body sensations, we notice the stories our mind creates about the sensations.
And then we return to resting our awareness in our bodies.
One personal example of this comes from an experience I had in my own real car.
When driving home from leading a mindfulness group, I began noticing sensations like fatigue and lethargy, and then I watched as my mind started to catastrophize, jumping to projections and worries about the future as a reaction to these sensations.
What if I can't find joy in anything?
What if I'm depressed?
Maybe I'm burnt out.
Thankfully, my mindfulness practice kicked in and I came back to the sensations I was feeling, narrating to myself what was actually happening in the present moment.
My eyes feel heavy.
I'm tired.
My hands are making contact with the steering wheel.
As I began narrating the present moment like this, I felt those what-if scenarios start to dissipate.
There are lots of other metaphors for mindfulness concepts out there.
In fact, if you want to learn more about the metaphorical monkey mind, there's a short and really cute video in the Headspace app.
But it's important to remember that there's no metaphor that can substitute for the practice itself.
It's like that Zen saying that the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon itself.
Instead of getting caught up in the world of ideas and concepts of what mindfulness is, we're invited to return to the practice, exploring our relationship to ourselves and the world around us, and maybe stumbling upon a new metaphor every now and again.
