Episode 044: How Mindfulness Can Help You Deal with Cancer
Dec 30, 2018•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
I’m super excited today because we have Linda who is a world-leading expert at applying mindfulness to dealing with worries and uncertainty, both during cancer and beyond. Here are some things that we cover today:
The truth about mindfulness
Untangling past, present and future
Two ways of coping with trauma
Putting mindfulness into practice
Step by step diaphragmatic breathing walk through
and much, much more!
Links
About Dr Linda Carlson
Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery
Mindfulness Based Stressed Reduction
Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery Book
Am Mindfulness Mobile (Apple App store)
Am Mindfulness Mobile (Google Play)
Episode 029: What You Must Know About Clinical Trials Before Starting Treatment
Full Transcript
Joe: Tell me, what’s mindfulness and why is it important when you’re dealing with cancer?
Linda: Okay, well, let’s start with the basic question, what is mindfulness anyway? If you look at the simplest definition, mindfulness is just paying attention in the present moment with an open and accepting attitude. It’s simple but it’s not easy because when you think of where your mind normally is, there’s research saying we have anywhere from 50,000 – 70,000 thoughts every day. 50,000 – 70,000 individual thoughts. Yes, they’ve done research where they ping people with little beepers and they ask them, what are you think about and they ask their moods. It turns out that, make a guess, how often do you think that our minds are not in the present moment?
Joe: Most of the time?
Linda: We might think that, but in this study, they found that about half the time people’s thoughts weren’t on what they were doing. In conjunction with that, they also found that people were happier when their attention and their thoughts were in the present moment. If you ask yourself the question, why would that be? Why is it that when my mind is wandering, I’m less happy? Well, you can look to where the mind goes often. If you look at our habitual ways of thinking, our minds might be in the past.
You might be reliving something and saying thing, or could have, should have, would have, or if only this, or if only that, things would be better. Then you feel really down on yourself, you can have regrets. You can get angry and resentful, right, when you’re thinking on the past, because you can’t change any of that. You can get really wrapped up in blaming yourself for how things went. Or, for a lot of people and a lot of people with cancer, their minds are zooming off to the future, they’re worrying about, what if this? What if that?
I don’t know what’s going to happen. What does my future hold for me, so then you get all stressed out and worried, right? All that ruminating in the past makes you depressed, all that worrying about the future makes you anxious, so you miss the moments when you live your life, which is only in the present moment. It turns out when we are able to keep our attention and our awareness in the present moment, we tend to be happier because we’re not so stuck with things we can’t change or things that may never happen. That’s generally the idea of mindfulness, is learning to be awake and aware in the present moment. There’s also lots of myths around, what is mindfulness, that it’s important to dispel.
One really common myth is that your mind just goes blank, right? There are no thoughts and it’s all blissful and you’re floating like one of those yogis sitting in a lotus position. That’s a common roadblock because people might try mindfulness practice and their mind doesn’t go blank and it isn’t calm and peaceful. They think, “I don’t know how to do it or I’m doing it wrong, or I just don’t get it. I can’t do it, it’s impossible.” Right?
Joe: Yes, I’ve been there, done that.
Linda: It’s really important to understand that mindfulness or awareness in...
