Mindfulness training after brain injury with Dr Niels Detert

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 to do this and 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 uh 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 practiced at and it's being aware in a certain way in a non-judgmental way basically a 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 uh kind of subtle to to get a feel for so how do we practice getting better at this we practice 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 uh you're able to pay attention to so um this is very easy to to do um but it's uh 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 uh actually 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 not be just another thing that you're aware of if you practice so that's the possibility um now of course you'll have to have a reason for practicing 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 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 um takes a bit of a bit of trust and 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 mind 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 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 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 you can 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 and that is that the uh stress reactions we have to the bad bits the difficult bits of experience the discomfort the pain you know the inconvenience the frustrations and so on

uh symptoms and all the rest of it um that the stress that we react with uh 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 oh that is um uh 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 practicing and discovering for yourself i'm pointing it out right now because it's really important because 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

try if this experience right now is difficult try to get rid of it um or try to strive after some better experience right that's exactly what causes our stress okay you're gonna have to take it take my word for it right now but you can discover that for yourself so that's the key so let's um what is this mindfulness let's do a little uh short example of a meditation um and this will be enough to be going on with if you if you want to uh because it's very simple so we'll do a simple meditation with awareness of breathing and 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 and in fact some people when they get more experienced they 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 so 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 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 then 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 realize 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 prayer

probably the mind wanders off at some point then a little bit later we realize 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 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 and 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 10 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 uh short meditations and daily if you'd like you can do it a couple of times a day that would also be good but 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 you what you'll notice is how you're not feeling relaxed because that's the experience you're having but um if you uh but it will tend to be relaxing on the whole for most of us most of the time but 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 um stress reactions are the true cause of the stress that we feel the stress reactions to unpleasant experiences in the moment uh are causing most of our stress and those stress reactions come from our own our own mind but that's something to to discover

in the meantime best thing to do if you like it is just to do this regularly and then see what you discover and 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 um we might put a list of some of those um underneath this video and

i recommend using those guided meditations because it can be really helpful when you're 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 and i also recommend the books of john cabots in 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 and i really recommend uh that if you got this far that you take it a bit further and uh practice every day for a month or so and see uh 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