Headaches

Hello, my name is Niels Dietert. I'm a consultant clinical neuropsychologist in Oxford and I'm a mindfulness teacher, and Headway have kindly asked me to make this video to talk to you about mindfulness.

With a little bit of introduction, and then we'll have a go at actually doing some meditation, and I hope that'll introduce you to this extremely useful technique for managing your stress, regulating anxiety and coping with long-term difficult symptoms and frustrations and conditions.

I've been running groups teaching mindfulness now for over 10 years in Oxford and now have some hundreds of patients who've found it very helpful. And of course there is a lot of evidence in the scientific literature for the effectiveness of this technique.

It's not a magic solution to everything, but it is an effective way of taking control of your own stress, reducing stress and being happier, improving your well-being, looking after yourself. So I think this could be very helpful for you too.

Now it takes a bit of effort. It takes a bit of hard work, if you like, because you need to meditate every day. Well, it's not that hard to just sit there and do nothing at all, and yet it takes some persistence, a bit of determination and keeping to a routine to do this.

The real benefits of mindfulness practice come not from doing it once and feeling a little bit relaxed if you're lucky, but from doing it regularly every day and, as time goes by, developing a real skill. A skill in being able to be aware easily, and a skill in being able to be aware even when things get difficult, and a skill in being able to use that awareness to manage your own moods and emotions.

All the more useful if you are having some difficulties with managing your emotions. But then it's going to take a while to get better at that. This, though, can be a way of doing that. If you put the effort in, you're very likely to get the results.

But don't expect instant results. Expect this to take a few weeks of regular daily practice before you really begin to notice those good benefits, and then maybe even some months and years where you'll notice you're getting better all the time. You can even overcome some quite difficult problems given time and persistence and effort.

So what is mindfulness? Well, mindfulness is being aware. It's being aware deliberately. We're all aware all the time, but we're not aware that we're aware very much. We might be off in a daydream or thinking about something else or worrying about things, all kinds of things. We might be on automatic pilot as we get on with the ordinary things.

So mindfulness is being aware deliberately. It's something we can all do, but it's something that most of us are not that practised at. And it's being aware in a certain way, in a non-judgmental way, basically a kindly rather than a judging way.

So it's quite simple. Just being aware. Right now you can see me, you can hear me, you're aware, right? And as soon as I point it out, you're even aware that you're aware, right? So right now you're mindful. That's as simple as it gets. That's all it is.

It's really simple. It's so simple it can be a little bit hard, a little bit kind of subtle, to get a feel for.

So how do we practise getting better at this? We practise getting better at this by meditating. So the meditation is the exercise that we do. The mindfulness meditation is the exercise we do to improve our skill in mindfulness. And the meditation is also really simple. You just pay attention to what's going on in the here and now.

So right now you can feel maybe the pressure of your bum on the seat. You can feel the pressure of your feet on the floor if you notice it. There are some sounds maybe. Of course, it's what you can see and smell and touch. That's basically the five senses, and that's happening right now.

And it's easily accessible to all of us. Even if you've got some sensory impairment, there's some senses you're able to pay attention to. So this is very easy to do, but it takes some practice to do well.

First of all, what you notice as soon as you pay attention is that your mind will wander off. And actually the secret is that'll carry on happening even when you're quite good at this, but you'll get used to it and that'll be all right. You'll learn how the mind works and then you'll be able to be aware also of those distractions, and they'll stop being distractions and just be another thing that you're aware of if you practise.

So that's the possibility.

Now, of course, you'll have to have a reason for practising. We've got all this evidence that's good for your anxiety and stress and mood, and that's solid evidence. That's definitely the case.

But you personally, it might not make much sense to you. And I think the truth is that you really need to do it. You need to do it for a few weeks before you can really get a feel personally for how it might be useful. So it takes a bit of trust and kind of an effort up front.

So in a minute I'll do a very short meditation with you. But before we do that, let me just cover a couple of common misconceptions about meditation and mindfulness.

Misconception number one: that meditation is about clearing your mind. It isn't about clearing your mind. Don't worry about it. You're not going to be able to clear your mind.

Your brain is constantly producing thoughts, and that's just a natural activity of the brain. It's going to carry on doing that while we're all alive. It's not going to stop.

So it's not about clearing the mind, and it can be quite stressful to try and clear the mind. Instead, it's just about being aware of what's actually happening. What's happening in my senses, what's happening in my thoughts, whatever.

But we'll keep it simple to begin with by just focusing on one thing, maybe the breathing sensations. We can do that, or maybe just sounds. So keep things simple just while we're training.

The second misconception about mindfulness is that it's about achieving a certain special state of mind or something like that. And it's not. It's about using your very ordinary awareness to be aware of your completely ordinary experience.

So nothing special. Not trying to achieve anything special. No special state of mind. You've already got everything you need. Ordinary awareness is good enough. Your ordinary experience is good enough.

And I'm going to be aware of your ordinary experience, but also, crucially, the good bits and the bad bits. I'm not going to try to hold on to the good bits or get away from the bad bits. Mindfulness is about being non-judgmentally aware of all of that, whatever comes along.

And the reason for that is that with practice you can eventually, maybe not so eventually, hopefully within a few weeks, see the crucial point which you can learn about how the mind works. And that is, I'll tell you now, but you have to discover it, that the stress reactions we have to the bad bits, the difficult bits of experience, the discomfort, the pain, the inconvenience, the frustrations and so on, symptoms and all the rest of it, the reactions that our own mind has to those difficult things is what causes most of our stress.

And we can learn with practice to see that those reactions are optional. We don't have to do those, and so we can reduce our stress by doing that. But that's something you need to learn by practising and discovering for yourself.

I'm pointing it out right now because it's really important. A lot of us might start mindfulness from a difficult place and wanting to feel better, right? That's completely natural, and it's actually going to help with that.

But the way to get there is not to try and achieve anything special. The way you get there is just to observe everything as it already is. So this practice is just observing how things are right now, in this very moment.

And the good benefits of that will come in time, but not if we try to get rid of this experience right now. If this experience right now is difficult, try to get rid of it, or try to strive after some better experience. That's exactly what causes our stress.

Okay, you're going to have to take my word for it right now, but you can discover that for yourself. So that's the key.

So let's do a little short example of a meditation. This will be enough to be going on with if you want to, because it's very simple.

We'll do a simple meditation with awareness of breathing. You can do this sitting, you can do this lying down. It doesn't matter what posture you're in. If you like, you can close your eyes. A lot of people like to close their eyes when they're learning to meditate.

You can also do meditation with your eyes open. It's also fine. In fact, some people, when they get more experienced, might choose to have their eyes open so that they've got that visual sense to work with as well.

But for now you might like to keep your eyes closed, just adjusting your posture so that you're comfortable.

All right. Slightly adjust your position in your seat. You might relax your shoulders.

Have your feet flat on the ground and have your back sort of straightish, but no pressure. Just making sure that your posture is comfortable for you.

And then noticing some of the sensations in your body which are more obvious, like the pressure of your feet on the floor.

The pressure of your bum on the seat.

Posture and sensation of your back, shoulders and neck.

And then noticing the sensations of breathing as you're sitting here or lying here.

You're naturally breathing in and out and letting that breath come and go naturally without interfering with it, just letting it do its natural thing.

Noticing, though, that as it goes in and out there are some sensations.

In your chest and abdomen there might be sensations as your chest expands, it inflates, deflates.

And you can feel that. I'm just resting your attention, resting your awareness, on those sensations in your chest and abdomen. I'm doing this for a short while while I go silent.

Now what'll happen is that from time to time, quite often probably, during the meditation your mind will wander off onto something else. It won't be on the breath. It'll be somewhere else. It's probably happened already because it usually just takes a few seconds.

And so what you do then is you just notice where the mind is briefly and then, without judging yourself and without giving yourself a hard time, you just come back to the breath and you follow the breath again. Following the breath going in, going out.

Very often a few seconds later, for many of us, our minds will have wandered off again and be somewhere else, not on the breath. And then when you come back to awareness, when you realise that, then you just notice where the mind is and let go of it, come back to the breath, and you do this over and over.

During a short meditation you might do this many, many times. That's the way that we train the mind, just coming back to the breath, following the breath.

Probably the mind wanders off at some point, then a little bit later we realise it, and then just come back to the breath without judging ourselves and giving ourselves a hard time. It's perfectly natural. This is how things are. By doing this over and over, we gradually train the mind to be more aware.

So continuing with following the breath and just letting the breath be as it is, letting your attention on the breath not be tight, just letting it be quite light, and just breathing and awareness. Breathing is natural. No effort needed. Awareness is natural. No effort needed.

Your attention will wander off from time to time, but concentrating super hard will just tire you out. So your attention can be quite light. No effort.

Just following the breath.

Noticing where the mind is right now and, if it's not on the breath, accepting that it's perfectly fine. This is quite natural.

Okay, so I'm going to bring this meditation to a close. I'm going to open my eyes. You can open yours.

So that is a little example of meditation practice, just for a few minutes.

If you want to do this, you might like to do that for about 10 minutes at a time. Ten minutes is a good solid amount of time. If you want to start even smaller than that, five minutes at a time.

Ideally you need to do it every day. Little and often is the way to begin. Don't go for long meditations unless you're actually on a mindfulness course and you have all the support that that brings with it.

Short meditations and daily. If you'd like, you can do it a couple of times a day. That would also be good. But the main thing is short meditations and regular, at least daily.

Don't expect results immediately. You might find it relaxing, you might not. If you do it when you're not feeling relaxed, then what you'll notice is how you're not feeling relaxed because that's the experience you're having.

But it will tend to be relaxing on the whole for most of us, most of the time. If you do it regularly then the real benefits will start to come with practice, once you get better at it and once you start to see how those stress reactions are the true cause of the stress that we feel.

The stress reactions to unpleasant experiences in the moment are causing most of our stress, and those stress reactions come from our own mind. But that's something to discover.

In the meantime, the best thing to do, if you like it, is just to do this regularly and then see what you discover.

If you want some more support, which I really recommend, then there are some very good books and online resources which you could use. There are some guided meditations available in lots of different places, and we might put a list of some of those underneath this video.

I recommend using those guided meditations because it can be really helpful when you're learning.

The one I'll just mention, which is easily accessible, is the app and website Headspace. That is quite good and quite well produced and easy to use, but there are many others.

I also recommend the books of Jon Kabat-Zinn, especially the book Full Catastrophe Living, which is a good read and very helpful.

So I hope that this little introduction to mindfulness has been interesting and also helpful. I really recommend that, if you got this far, that you take it a bit further and practise every day for a month or so and see how that is for you.

You might well find that turns out to be one of the most helpful things that you learn.

So thank you for listening, and I wish you very well and good luck.