April 11, 2014 By Admin

Basic Practice for Pacifying Your Mind

-Steps to Mind Training

Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC

To pacify your mind you need to train your mind. Mind training leads to liberation from brain-mind-heart-body automatic processes and reactions. A well-trained mind allows you to utilize executive functions (attention and concentration) to alter auto-reactions of the brain, body and heart. A trained mind liberates you from unhelpful thoughts, emotions and behaviors via reduced attachment, craving and clinging. A trained mind liberates you! Often this liberation appears as both the dearth of cognition and the expansion of experiential awareness.

As you practice mind training, you may notice improved attention and concentration skills. These important skills allow you to have improved personal control over cognition, affect, behavior as well as sensory processing (visual, auditory, kinesthetic, olfactory and gustatory) in the present moment. Prolonged mind training enables you to better deal with such CABS-VAKGO experiences in your past and in your future. So often humans are stuck in the pain or longing from the past as well as fear/anxiety about the future. A very basic way to begin mind training is to practice breath meditation (or meditation on a selected object of mind). Let’s begin with a basic breath meditation – meditating on your breath.

Basic Steps

1) Sit in a dignified meditation posture, loosen your jaw and relax other body muscles, and begin to breathe gently in slower, calmer, deeper fashion. Do not force your breath; simply allow your intention to focus on a relaxed breath to guide you. It is rare that this form of breathing causes anxiety. However, if it does for you, you may need to find another breathing practice to do. Or you may breathe in a way that does not cause anxiety for you.

2) On each exhalation count one via your private speech. Hold your inner speech all the way to the end of the exhalation. This will reduce the possibility of other thoughts distracting you from attending to your breath. Count all the way to ten exhalations, then begin at one again. If you lose count, simply begin at one again. If you find yourself counting beyond ten, simply begin at one again. If you have difficulty doing this, you can visually imagine the number you are saying. Tracking the breath is a very common way to begin basic mind training in meditation.

3) Pay close attention to the nature of your mind. You may notice that you experience “monkey mind,” in which your thoughts just keep on coming into awareness – thus blocking you from improved attention and concentration. You may wish to practice simply observing your thoughts and letting them go. Each time bring your attention back to your breath and your counting. Be very gentle with yourself; this is not so easy to do. Use your mind-intention to remain focused on your exhalations and counting.

4) Each time you become aware of your brain’s autopilot taking over your mind, simply bring attention back to the breath and counting. Be gentle! Simply note and let go of your thoughts and allow your MIND to focus attention on your breath and counting. Becoming aware that you DO have some control over what you think may be an important discovery for some.

5) Continue this basic practice for as long as you can, but do not do it beyond your kind heartedness. If continuing this practice makes you upset or aggressive with yourself, stop and begin again at another time. Remain interested, self-compassionate and kind in this process.

6) You may note some small gratification that you were able to use your mind to counteract auto processes of the brain, heart and body. Try not to become attached to your success. Just practice more.

Anthony R. Quintiliani, Ph.D., LADC

Author of Mindful Happiness

CLICK HERE to Order!

Breath as the Object of Meditation A Deeper Understanding In the Satipatthana Sutra the Buddha noted that meditation practice was necessary for success on the path to liberation and enlightenment. He noted that it could take many, many years of practice to achieve this experiential goal. The good news is that Buddha also noted it could take […]

Mindful Happiness – Brain on Meditation Reports from various MRI and self-report measure studies support the proposition that your brain changes (neuronal plasticity) when you practice meditation on a regular (daily) basis. The same is likely true when you practice yoga on a regular basis. Here are some noted changes in brain functioning that […]

Winnicott’s Ideas – Best Possible Clinical Alliance To develop and maintain a strong clinical alliance it is best to follow some of the well-known clinical advice on this topic. Rogers, Kohut, Winnicott and many others have suggested just how to do so. Here are some general clinical recommendations for enhancing the clinical alliance. Develop authentic […]

Alternative to Buddhism as Religion – Simply put and Clearly Stated In case you become too serious about yourself in this life, note that there are reportedly 400 trillion subatomic vibrations every second. So be humble! And being humble is something I have had to do regarding my experience with Zen Buddhism as my […]

Deepak Chopra Ideas on “The Future of God” – Part 1 Deepak Chopra’s new book, The Future of God… (2014) presents some very challenging perspective on spirituality, atheism, and formal religion. Here I will simply present some paraphrased details and my own ideas on these topics. Basic Foundations Human beings have special talents for searching […]

Healing Meditations for Destructive Emotions Based on the mountain of research supporting the use of regular meditation practices and yoga, it is safe to say that Buddhism and its practices have merged with modern scientific investigation. From the early days of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (the MBSR of Jon Kabat-Zinn) and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (the DBT […]

Liberation of the True Self Socrates is reported to have noted that “the secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old but on building the new.” In Buddhism there are clear relationships between “no-self” and the force of impermanence, that reality that ensures constant change and thus personal […]

Participate in Groups for Meditation, Problem-Solving, and Task Completion Meditation With The Sangha Among regularly practicing meditators and various meditation traditions, the sangha is the social, emotional and spiritual collective that continues to support ongoing serious practice and progress along the Path. Given that so much has been written about the many benefits of practicing […]

Counseling/Psychotherapy with Self-Compassion Please begin by ending all conversations, and PLEASE shut-off your phones and/or laptops. Simply be for a moment in the quietude of your inner self. Please close your eyes if you wish to do so. Contemplate the sacred nature of your profession – saving lives, reducing suffering, being a constant object, practicing […]

Pursuit of Happiness – Mindful Happiness Gilbert, a professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of Stumbling on Happiness, implies that we make mind-errors in our search for happiness. Happiness is a core human emotion, most often activated into consciousness via the midbrain reward centers and dopamine activation. Perhaps our hardwired brains are made to […]

About Interoception and It’s Importance Interoception (some may also call it neuroception) is the conscious detection and perception of sensory signals in the body and on the skin. Most often these signals are processed as sensations. Sensation, as the foundation of emotional experience, is always there in our bodies; however, we are not always fully […]

How to be Happier in a Relatively Unhappy World In today’s fast-paced, digitized, unstable world – with it uncertainty, childish tweets from on-high, and general dissatisfaction with things as they are – how may one become a happier person. It is clear that isolation will not work; it is clear that aggressive actions in opposition […]

Wind Ridge Press NEW Publication! Author Anthony Quintiliani, a licensed psychologist with more than 35 years professional clinical experience, casts a wide net into the personal, clinical, and societal causes of prolonged human suffering and unhappiness in his book Mindful Happiness. The book’s guided interventions are aimed at helping to relieve depression, anxiety, traumatic reactivity, and […]

Interoception and Your Inner Self-Helper Interoception (sometimes called neuroception) is a sensory experience, in which you feel sensations in your body (viscera, heart, throat, etc.) that may be warning signs of limbic surveillance or inner continuity of your inner self-helper – that part of you and your brain that hopes to help you in whatever […]

Yoga Nidra and Your Inner Peace Yoga Nidra will allow you to relax like you may never have relaxed before. Follow these modified instructions for your best relaxed state. If at any time during Yoga Nidra you feel uncomfortable, simply stop and breathe in a manner that restores equilibrium. Although this uncomfortable outcome is highly […]

How Suicide impacts Psychotherapists One of the greatest fears of psychotherapists is that one of their clients will commit suicide. Here are some common reactions of psychotherapists when one of their clients commits suicide. In some ways these reactions are sequential, but no exact concrete sequence is well documented. Here is a list to consider. […]

Mindful Movement as Part of Practice Mindful movement is an accepted part of regular practice. Such practices as walking meditation, more vigorous yoga asanas, qi gong, and tail chi are all part of this respected mindfulness tradition. Here I will introduce you to a very simple pre-meditation movement sequence. Hope you practice it very soon. […]

Basics of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction is, perhaps, one of the major contributions to evidence-based mindfulness therapies. Jon Kabat-Zinn’s development of this model of intervention was both timely and exquisite. In clinical care of psychological and physical problems, these skills and practices are of utmost importance for improving (according to the most recent […]

The Basics of Teaching Mindfulness and Meditation Training: Clients,Consumers and Professional Helpers No matter how experienced you are as a mediator and therapist, and no matter how helpful mindfulness practices could be for your clients, it will not matter if your clients do not DO the training practices. I have noted below a few common […]

Advanced Buddhist Practices Abiding in Emptiness The various impediments (enemies) to abiding in emptiness are noted below. We have strong attachment to objects of mind and our sense door pleasures. We experience strong desire and cravings as our norms. We over-attach to forms of affection. We may become stuck in grief related to our experienced […]