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May/June 2010 Living Now
The Mindful Rebel: How to Be Subversive by Slowing Down

by Kim Corbin

Donald Altman, author of The Mindfulness Code, teaches others how to be a mindful rebel: slow down and pay attention to your day.

Q. You say that it’s good to slow down, but is that possible in today’s world? Why do I need mindfulness?

A. Consider that one of every four persons on the planet has suffered from clinical depression, and even more struggle with some form of anxiety. We need to remember that our human nervous systems haven’t changed in the past 100,000 years. But in the past 100 years, we have undergone more changes in technology than all of previous history. These changes have outstripped our innate ability to handle the speed, multi-tasking and weapons of mass distraction that are bombarding us daily.

For example, when I conduct mindfulness workshops, I begin by telling participants that they are going to be learning something that is very subversive because they are going to slow down and pay attention for the day. This really is subversive in our culture and much of the world because we have been mindlessly allowing ourselves to become obsessed with productivity, which turns us into machines. When you become consumed with achieving efficiency and productivity at all costs, you pay a terrible price in terms of ill health, stress and anxiety.

Mindfulness means you can learn to be more skillful in managing your stress so you live in the present moment and be more creative, alive and fulfilled in the process. When you stop defining yourself by what you do and how much you do, you can touch life more deeply and become alive again. In fact, you will probably be more creative and productive without getting burned out.  

Q. How do you define mindfulness?

A. I have come up with an acronym that describes the transforming elements that comprise mindfulness, and I call it “intentionally centering attention now,” or I-CAN. Intention is how we are purposeful, how we set a direction in our lives, even if it’s being intentional in the next moment. Intention is the engine of effort that gets us moving.

Centering is about balancing emotions and finding ways to regulate negative emotions. When you center, you actually influence and bring into harmony different areas in your brain by helping the emotional core (the limbic area) and the thinking center (the frontal cortex) communicate and come into harmony. Centering is also about cultivating an attitude of openness and receptivity.

Attention is about the quality of focus and sustained awareness we can bring to anything, so that we can see it clearly and really penetrate the truth of it. This is vital because we need attention to complete tasks and be effective in the world.

Finally, there’s the now quality of mindfulness, through which we are open and flexible to experience the present moment. When we are not fixed, we can experience the present with joy and fulfillment. Also, it is only with the now that we can participate in the world and experience the body, spirit, nature and relationships with others.

Q. How can mindfulness practices affect the brain in a nurturing way?

A. First, there’s mindful breathing, which stimulates the body’s innate relaxation system to calm down reactivity in the brain’s limbic system. This form of breathing actually lets you listen better because when you’re reactive or arguing with someone, you stop listening.

A second practice I like is loving-kindness, which actually primes the brain for experiencing greater trust and openness. Research has been done in this area by adapting the loving-kindness meditation and has been shown to help people with depression and even schizophrenia feel safer, more protected and secure.

A third practice that nurtures the brain is the body scan, which is a way of experiencing sensations in the body moment-to-moment. At the brain level you are scanning the motor-sensory cortex of the brain while you are also strengthening areas in the prefrontal cortex that enable you to experience thoughts and sensations from a more neutral and non-judging point of view. This creates healthy space from negative views and stories that we tell ourselves and actually creates a more balanced narrative around difficult life events.

Q. Scientifically, what’s actually happening when someone’s more mindful?

A. There are a lot of studies out there, but the ones conducted by Richard Davidson have studied the Dalai Lama’s monks and those who have been taught mindfulness-based stress reduction techniques. Basically, he found that there was a shift in brain activity from those areas of the brain that are active when people tend to feel depressed, anxious, discouraged and unhappy (the amygdala and right prefrontal cortex) toward an area that is activated when people are feeling happy, optimistic and encouraged (the right prefrontal cortex).

It was once believed that people had a set “affective tone,” or a temperament that couldn’t really be changed in the long term. For example, you might win the lottery and be ridiculously happy for a while, but you would return to your previous affective set point. Or something very tragic and sad might happen and your mood would plummet for a while, but eventually you would return to your typical level of happiness.

Davidson’s work shows that learning mindfulness-based skills can produce greater brain activity in the left prefrontal cortex and make people happier over the long term. This is really turning old ideas upside down.

Donald Altman presents a mindfulness workshop on June 17 at New Renaissance Bookshop. Visit www.mindfulnesscode.com.