How practicing Mindful Acceptance can change your life
If you are a part of the Empowered Healing Practices community, you might have seen or been a part of our recent Mindful Acceptance practice. If you are not part of the community yet, I invite you to check out this practice and come join us! Either way, as I reflected on our Mindful Acceptance practice, I was really struck by just how powerful it can be. And so, I wanted to take the time to dive deep and provide even more insights and clarity around why and how this practice can support anyone on their healing journey. So grab a cup of your favorite beverage, perhaps a journal and pen to take notes if you feel so inclined, and settle in as we deep dive Mindful Acceptance.
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Section I: Introduction
Empowered Healing Practices is a space for those on a healing journey. Our practices are designed to support those seeking relief from suffering due to pain, illness, disease, and other physical conditions. A core tenant of the Empowered Healing Practices is that shifting your body from its stress response (sympathetic nervous system) to a state of rest and restoration (parasympathetic nervous system) moves your body into a space more conducive to healing. The four core Empowered Healing Practices of Mindfulness, Gratitude, Deep Relaxation, & Guided Imagery are designed, at least in part, to do just that.
With Mindful Acceptance in particular, we recognize that our response to our pain, illness, or disease is often conditioned and automatic marked by judgment and story-telling; They can sounds something like:
I hate this. Why is this happening to me? I don’t want this. This situation is unbearable. I don’t think I’ll ever get well.
Right away, even just reading these words, you may begin to feel stres--I know I do!--which signifies that the body is shifting into stress response--away from a state conducive to healing. But there is hope! Once we bring our awareness to the stimuli (pain, illness, or disease) the practice of mindful acceptance empowers us to choose our response. Before we dive into the practice itself, it’s important to spend a little time talking about mindfulness. What is it? And how can it help? If, however, you’re short on time or already know about MBSR and DBT definitions of Mindfulness, you can skip ahead to Section IV where we focus on the practice.
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Section II: Mindfulness
The definition of Mindfulness I most like to use is one I learned while taking a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course at the Grand Rapids Center for Mindfulness in Grand Rapids, Michigan. There, they taught that Mindfulness is:
Paying Attention
On Purpose
In the Present Moment
Without Judgement
I love this definition of mindfulness for its simplicity, prescriptiveness, and gentleness. Using a different but overlapping framework, Dialectic Behavior Therapy (DBT) separates mindfulness into what skills and how skills; What am I doing? And How am I doing it?
What How
Observing Non-Judgmentally
Describing One-Mindfully
Participating Effectively
Laid out this way, you can see how these frameworks overlap with “Paying Attention in the Present Moment” resonating with the DBT What Skills of Observing, Describing, and Participating; Then the MBSR portions of “On Purpose” & “Without Judgement” resonating with the DBT How Skills of Non-Judgmentally, One-Mindfully, and Effectively.
In the mindful acceptance practice we focus especially on Observing and Describing and doing so Non-Judgmentally to shift our response to our pain, illness, or disease. Here utilizing Describe means using labels and descriptions that simply describe an object, person, or condition, using facts alone. For example, if we are describing our pain, illness, or disease we could describe it by answering the following: Where is it located in your body? What temperature is it? What texture does it have? What color is it? What part of the body is involved? Can you describe it with your five senses? Is there a sound? A touch sensation like pressure or tightness? You can see how these labels and descriptions are purely physical facts and not descriptions of emotions or stories about how you feel about the pain, illness, or disease.
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Section III: Stimulus and Response
Victor Frankl said,
“Between stimulus and response there is a space.
In that space is our power to choose our response.
In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
I would add that in our response also lies our healing. So how do we do it? How do we utilize mindful acceptance to relieve our suffering and respond to bring our bodies into a state more conducive to healing and well-being?
Mindful acceptance begins as all mindfulness practices do--with awareness. Becoming aware of the stimulus (pain, illness or disease) within your body that you wish to bring healing to. Make no mistake, this practice can be challenging. We have already seen how our automatic and conditioned responses are often steeped in judgment and story-telling which brings about stress. But, again, there is hope! The practice of mindful acceptance empowers us to choose our response, and when we respond differently our bodies respond differently-we shift from stress to restore. The practice looks something like this:
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Section IV: The Practice
Become aware of the stimulus. I like to start practice by becoming aware of a neutral stimulus--an object in the room or part of my body that doesn’t evoke much sensation or emotion. Once I have run through the practice with that stimuli, I will start over with my awareness now on the stimuli of my pain, illness, or disease.
Step inside the space between stimulus and response by using the DBT skill of describing, with facts alone, your experience of this stimulus.
By describing with facts alone, you pause in that space between stimulus and response thereby removing the automatic and conditioned response of judgment and story-telling that leads to fear.
Next, choose to move into a response of acknowledgement and acceptance by simply stating “this is”.
Once you have chosen your new response, you can simply release the stimulus from your awareness by focusing your attention on something else.
Bonus: End with gratitude. Releasing your awareness from your stimuli, move into statements of gratitude such as the following:
I am grateful for this breath.
I am grateful for this moment.
I am grateful that I chose to practice mindful acceptance today.
With these steps you have successfully shifted your response from one of judgment and storytelling (stress) to one of acknowledgement and acceptance (rest and restore).
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Section V: The Benefits
There are many benefits to shifting your response but I’ll focus on two here.
Benefit 1: You have shifted from your stress response to your rest/restore response. From this state, your body experiences less harmful inflammation and has more resources available to heal that which may need healing.
Benefit 2: By shifting your automatic response of judgment and story-telling, you have shifted your relationship to the pain, illness, or disease that you are looking to heal. In doing so, you have relieved your suffering and improved your quality of life.
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Section VI: Conclusion
“Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional”
This quote has been attributed to several speakers, including the Dali Lama. But it gets at the heart of this mindful acceptance practice which says that even if we cannot control our stimuli (pain, illness, or disease) we can control our response and, as Victor Frankl reminds us (and I add), in our response lies our growth, freedom, and healing.