Change Your Life 3 Minutes at a Time

Maybe you’ve heard that mindfulness can change your brain for the better.

That it’ll make you more joyful, more peaceful, more present.

But you’re still putting off starting a mindfulness practice, because you’ve told yourself you don’t have time. You’ve told yourself your mind is too busy and distractable to meditate. You’ve convinced yourself it just won’t work for you.

What if I told you that all you need is a simple 3 minute practice to start to reap the benefits mindfulness has to offer.

Introducing: The 3 Minute Breathing Space.

The 3 Minute Breathing Space comes from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, and is a practice I teach all my coaching and psychotherapy clients.

In just 3 minutes you exercise your mindfulness muscle by practicing:

1. Non-judgmentally observing your thoughts, sensations and emotions with curiosity

2. Mindfully labeling your internal experience

3. Creating space from your thoughts, sensations and emotions and releasing over-identification with them

4. Pausing and giving yourself the opportunity to respond instead of react

5. Mindful breathing and catching when your mind wanders and bringing it back to your breath

6. The ability to zoom your awareness in to your breath and back out to your environment

7. Shifting from being on autopilot to being able to consciously make choices, such as choosing where you place your attention, whether or not you’d like to engage with the thoughts you’re having, whether you’d like to engage in a different activity.

8. Accepting things as they are instead of resisting or reacting to them

Even more benefits (!!):

1. increase neural flexibility

2. create the space and opportunity for new neural pathways to form

3. the gift of freedom! aka the freedom of choosing how you want to respond instead of being stuck in habitual reactions

When to practice the 3 Minute Breathing Space:

1. Any time of the day just because you feel like it!

2. At the same time every day just to make sure you’re working out your mindfulness muscle.

3. When you notice the early warning signs of anxiety, depression, or a flare up of pain.

4. When you notice you’ve been living on auto pilot.

5. When you catch yourself rushing through life.

6. When you feel overwhelmed.

How to practice the 3 Minute Breathing Space:

1. Find somewhere to pause. Standing or sitting works fine!

2. Take note of the quality of the thoughts in your mind, or the thoughts that have been in your mind over the last 20 minutes or so. What kinds of thoughts are they? Self-critical? Planning? Rushed? Optimistic? Name this to yourself by saying “_____thoughts are present”, e.g. “worried thoughts are present”.

3. Take note of the sensations you are experiencing. You could use words such as: pressure, tingling, heat, heaviness, ease, sharp, etc… Again, use the words “____sensations are present”, e.g. “heavy sensations are present” or “sensations of heaviness are present”.

4. Take note of any emotions that are present. If you find it challenging to detect an emotion you might look to sensations and thoughts for clues of what you might be feeling, or you can ask yourself “if I were feeling an emotion right now what might it be?”. Again, use the words “____is present”, e.g. “sadness is present” or “the experience/emotion of sadness is present”.

5. Now set a timer for 1 minute and just breathe! Every time your mind wanders, gently, and non-judgmentally usher your attention back to your breath. Suggestions for keeping your attention on your breath: silently count your breath (in 1, out 1, in 2, out 2, and so on…), silently say “inhaling” as you breathe in and “exhaling” as you breathe out, just pay attention to the sensation of breathing. It’s to be expected that your mind will wander, so please don’t get discouraged! This is where you get to practice strengthening your ability to choose where you place your attention!

6. Now zoom your awareness out from your breath to take in awareness of your whole body. Then open your eyes and zoom your awareness out even farther to take in your environment. Now move forward with your day from this mindful perspective!

Why is this helpful for chronic pain?

Chronic pain, like any chronic condition (such as anxiety and depression), is chronic because the same neurons keep firing along the same neural pathways. In the case of pain, one of the factors increasing the likelihood that it becomes chronic is how much an individual fears the pain. The more you fear your pain the stronger the neural pathway to the pain becomes. In order to break this cycle you need to pause, observe the pain, acknowledge and label it without fear, learn to accept it and allow it to be there, and learn how to express the related emotional content. The 3 Minute Breathing Space is an opportunity to pause and create a new neural pathway, a new story, a new experience. Or as Dr. Joe Dispenza would say, it’s an opportunity to “break the habit of being yourself”.

Ready to give this practice a shot? Give it a try now!

It is known as the 5 minute mindfulness check-in here since the audio lasts 5 minutes, but when you get to know this practice and do it on your own it should only take 3 minutes!

Once you’ve listened to the meditation tell me about your experience! And as always feel free to ask me any questions!

Wishing you deeper breaths and greater joy!

MindBody Medicine for Chronic Pain: Where to Start

So, you’ve heard that mindbody medicine, mindfulness, and the like could be helpful in healing your chronic pain, but you’re not sure where to start? Let this be your guide.

Mindbody Medicine is a term used for any healing practice or technique that has at its center the knowledge that mind and body are one system; meaning that what we think of as the mind impacts what we think of as the body and vice versa, but that in reality they are one.

These techniques are immensely helpful for chronic pain, as many studies have shown that what is going on in the mind has a huge part to play in our experience of pain. If we only focus on the body when treating chronic pain (i.e. physical therapy, injections, pills) we are missing a significant piece of the puzzle.

Although mindbody techniques may take longer to take effect than some medical interventions, the results create real long-lasting change, while many medical interventions may only offer temporary relief.

Mindbody techniques I use with my clients include, but are not limited to:

• mindfulness practices

• meditation

• qi gong

• yoga (hatha, yin, restorative)

• breathing practices

• EFT tapping

• journaling

• IFS

• somatic experiencing

So, you want to dip your toe in, where do you get started?

The very first thing you can do is just to start recognizing that your thoughts and emotions play a part in your experience of pain. You don’t need to believe that thoughts and emotions are the only reason you’re experiencing pain, but it can go a long way to acknowledge that they play a role. To begin this journey, you might start tracking flare-ups of pain and noting what kinds of emotions you were experiencing before the flare-up occurred. Make special note of the moments you are feeling fear, especially fear of the pain. Fearing pain feeds a cycle of chronic pain: experience pain —> fear pain —> body tenses —> more pain —> more fear. Keep a pain journal where you track your pain from 0-10, and alongside the number make note of any thoughts you’re thinking, emotions you’re feeling, and the exact physical sensations you’re sensing. This will help you flex your mindfulness muscle as you learn to observe your experience, rather than being absorbed in it.

Once you’ve accepted that your thoughts and emotions play a part in your experience of pain you can begin to practice mindfulness techniques as a way to learn to compassionately witness and be with your thoughts/emotions/sensations. This “witnessing” and “being-with” allows you to create space from your thoughts/emotions/sensations, and choose how you would like to respond to them. This space gives you the opportunity to make new choices that differ from your habitual reactions (i.e. fear might be your habitual reaction to pain).

The next step is learning to express the emotions you’ve recognized with your mindfulness techniques. This can be done a number of ways including through psychotherapy, journaling, art, and movement. Journaling is a practice you can start right away. Writing down thoughts and feelings can help us to compassionately witness, express and accept them. The better you get at expressing your thoughts and feelings, the less power they have over you and your body, and the less your body feels the need to get your attention through pain.

Mindbody techniques can also teach you how to relax more deeply and access a greater sense of safety in your nervous system, both of which are hugely supportive to the healing process. Mindbody techniques that are particularly conducive to initiating the relaxation response include breath practices such as Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) and restorative yoga.

Overall, chronic pain can be greatly reduced by strengthening the skills of observing, expressing and accepting your thoughts/emotions/sensations. Through the practices of observation, expression and acceptance you can develop a greater sense of trust and safety in your mindbody, restoring your sense of confidence in your ability to manage and reduce pain.

Curious to learn more? Subscribe to my newsletter and stay up to date on all the tips and tricks I share as well as any upcoming classes, workshops, and 1:1 offerings for those of you who would like to dive deeper.

Comment below: is there anything that surprises you about the idea of mindbody medicine? Have you tried any mindbody techniques, and were they helpful?

Wishing you deeper breaths and greater joy,

Eve

The 3 keys to effectively dealing with emotional+physical pain

Emotional and physical pain are inevitable.
Suffering is optional.

(or so the Buddha said)

(and Eve says so, too!)

If you follow me on instagram and have been reading my posts you already know Yin Yoga and mindfulness meditation transformed my life- primarily by giving me relief from chronic pain (and the accompanying emotional pain). 
Today I'm sharing with you three tools I learned from yin yoga + meditation that contributed greatly to my healing. 

Here are three keys to effectively dealing with emotional and physical pain:

1. Observe emotional and physical pain with curiosity and kindness.

   • Through mindfulness meditation you can learn to connect with the wise, curious and kind part of yourself that is able to observe your experience without judgment. 

     • Yin yoga is a fantastic opportunity to practice connecting with this part of yourself while experiencing discomfort so that when you experience discomfort or pain when you're off the mat you are better prepared to handle it. 

2. Consciously relax the body when experiencing emotional and physical pain (the pelvic floor in particular!)

   • Next time you are experiencing physical or emotional pain or discomfort notice what happens to your body. Most of us will find that the whole body tightens as a way to protect itself. Sometimes we truly do need to protect ourselves but often this is only creating more pain. Consciously relaxing the body while experiencing pain can help you to integrate and process the experience in a way that minimizes the possibility of trauma and minimizes the possibility that the pain will linger in your body. 

     • The pelvic floor is the only part of the body that when you relax it the rest of the body follows suit! The same cannot be said for relaxing the shoulders, the jaw or any other body part! 

       • All of this is easier said than done which is why it takes practice! In yin yoga we can practice relaxing the body while experiencing discomfort.

3. Take it one breath at a time! 

   • You'll be amazed at what you can withstand when you take it one breath at a time. 

     • When you wonder how long something is going to last...like...the pain of a heartbreak...or...the pain of a sprained ankle...your suffering is exacerbated. Pain is amplified as you project it into the future and get lost in fantasies of how the pain is going to impact your life. 

       • In yin yoga we learn that the pose becomes increasingly uncomfortable the more we wonder how long it's going to last.

         • The pose becomes increasingly more comfortable when you focus solely on the present moment by taking the experience of the pose one breath at a time. 

In this week’s mini yin practice I’m contemplating the “powerful unbounded consciousness” that I am. As I practice I visualize softening the boundary of skin and flesh that “separates” me from all that is. I allow my mind to soften along with my skin, my muscles, my ego. As I allow all this to melt my breath is allowed more room to expand and my spirit to expand with it. I am not “trying” to expand, but allowing it to be as powerful and unbounded as it is.

Shoelace: this pose can be quite intense in that it creates a lot of sensation in the hips. The knees are meant to be stacked one on top of the other but if this is too uncomfortable feel free to place a block/blanket between the knees or outstretch and straighten the bottom leg so only the top leg is bent. Breeaaaathe deeply in this pose. Continuously remind yourself to soften your face. Often the pleasure in this pose is in the release! Stay upright for 3-5 minutes or begin to fold forward after a minute if it feels good in your body.
When you release this pose you might feel creaky and achey. Take your time as you outstretch your legs, lean into your hands and let yourself feel the echo of the pose in your body.

Melting Heart: If hanging out here feels uncomfortable you might like to try this with a prop under your elbows/triceps! Inhale expansive energy through the crown of your head, exhale limiting beliefs through the heart center. 

Bridge: In the image the block is at the highest setting but you could even try this with a couple of pillows under your sacrum for a more restorative version. What is your relationship to having your heart open and vulnerable? Do you feel better able to allow the heart to be open when the back feels supported? As you lie here, with each exhale can you soften your resistance to allowing the front body and the heart to open?

Legs up/snail: Lie here and contemplate the existence of your toes! If it feels good in your body you can drop your legs straight back behind your head into Snail pose (or what you might know as Plow Pose) either keeping you legs straight, or bending them and bringing the knees to the ears. 

Always take several breaths between each pose to rest+feel

Hakini Mudra

Finding it easier to drop in to your meditation session when using a mantra but want to take your level of focus (dharana) to the next level? Hakini mudra to the rescue! This is the mudra for focus, concentration, memory, and clarity. ⁠

This is my go to mudra before I need to sit down for a couple hours of paper writing. ⁠

In Hakini mudra we create a complete circuit of energy in the body by bringing the fingers to touch. It is said that this mudra helps to bring together the right and left hemispheres of the brain. ⁠
When I practice Hakini mudra I like to imagine all my scattered energy being drawn back into the center where I can allow it to settle. ⁠

Sit with this mudra for anywhere from 2-10 minutes or until you feel ready to focus on your task at hand!

Let me know if you try it out! ⁠

This sequence begins with 3 forward folds for encouraging introversion and focus. 

Hold each pose for 3-5 minutes. 

1. Caterpillar: unlike your classic seated forward fold make sure your feet are not flexed and the muscles in the legs are relaxed. USE AS MANY PROPS AS NEEDED! Sit on a blanket/cushion. Place blocks/bolster/blanket under knees. Place a bolster/pillows on your legs to support your torso. Prop up your head with fists. As you rest here you might imagine thoughts draining out of your forehead as you allow the earth to absorb them. After 3-5 minutes slowly release the pose by bringing your hands behind you to prop yourself up. Sit & feel the echo of the pose in your body.

2. Butterfly: Same rules apply here: make sure you support yourself as much as necessary. If you find it hurts to have your knees bent in this way make sure you place something underneath. Now that you have dropped in to your body with caterpillar you might be ready to begin shifting into the “flow” phase. Connect with a sense of flow in your body. Even if you do not feel any flow you can encourage it by deepening your breath and/or visualizing that the sensations you feel are flowing through your entire body instead of remaining stagnant. 

3. Sleeping Swan: (aka pigeon). This pose often stirs up a lot of sensation. Can you take a step back from the sensation and observe it without judgement? Notice the ebb&flow of sensation&breath. In this pose practice cultivating your ability to witness your experience without reacting. Even when you have a desire to move can you observe the sensation and just let that be? (if you have a desire to move because you are in pain- please move!)

4. Supported Side Bend: in this pose you place a bolster/pillows under the side of the torso underneath the armpit. You can have the knees bent or straight. The arms can be alongside the ears if comfortable. After a minute or so you might keep the knees/legs where they are as you roll on to your back into a supine twist. This is the pose to “let go”. To let yourself be. Allow. Surrender. Nothing to do but just be. 

Taking 20 minutes to do this could totally turn your day around! Let me know if you try it!

Mantra Meditation

"Dharana", the sanskrit word for “concentration” is the sixth limb of the eight limbs of yoga. Once the mind is focused you can meditate, which is “dhyana” the seventh limb. Then comes “samadhi”, or “enlightenment”, the eighth limb. These three final limbs can also be thought of as “focus, flow, and let go”. (I think I first heard that from my teacher Sudhir Jonathan Foust). ⁠⠀
📿⁠⠀
For there to be freedom in the mind there must first be focus. We can find that focus through mantra meditation.⁠⠀
As I mentioned last week 98% of our thoughts are the same thoughts we thought yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that! Mantra meditation is a great way to insert a new thought into your daily thought carousel, and a great way to focus the mind for meditation.⁠⠀
📿⁠⠀
So far I’ve shared the mantra “my roots run deep into the center of the living earth” and I will continue to share more. You also can make up your own phrase or just choose a word.

Some to get you started:

1. OM

2. I am that I am

3. I am enough

4. I am where I am meant to be

5. Peace

📿⁠⠀
In meditation you can choose many things to focus on: breath, sound, sensation, etc… no matter what you choose to focus on all you have to do is come back to your point of focus every time you realize you have wandered off into some fantasy or a rabbit hole of thoughts. In this case you will come back to your mantra. ⁠⠀
You can repeat the mantra in your mind until you feel you’ve “dropped in” to a flow state and are ready to let go of it. You could also begin by repeating it out loud, then whisper it, then just repeat it in your head. ⁠⠀

Try it out and see how it goes!⁠⠀
Happy mantra-ing! ⁠⠀

Ksepana Mudra

The mudra for letting go. ⠀
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I have experienced feeling fairly “empty” after practicing this mudra so If you would like to add Ksepana mudra to this week’s Yin practice (see previous post) I would suggest sitting in meditation with the mudra for a few minutes and then transitioning into the yin poses to ground you and get you back into your body. ⠀
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Ksepana mudra is for emptying yourself of negative energy to make space for new and positive energy! Negative energy includes physical ailments and negative thoughts, experiences, and memories. ⠀
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As you hold the mudra visualize what you want to let go of and imagine you can let go a little bit more with each exhaaaaale. ⠀
You can hold the mudra in front of your heart, or point your fingers down in a gesture of letting go and releasing. If you are lying down you can point the fingers towards your feet. ⠀

Sit with this mudra for a few minutes, add it to your meditation, or begin and/or close your yin or other asana practice with it!
⠀
Let me know if you try it- and how it feels!! Happy mudra-ing! ⠀

Allot about 20 minutes for this sequence. No props needed!

Hold each pose for 3-5 minutes. (Insight Timer is a wonderful app with tibetan bowl sounds for the alarm instead of the harsher alarm sounds that come with our phones.)

1. CHILDS POSE: knees as wide as feels comfortable, big toes together, arms extended but remember to allow the muscles to be passive! If too much weight is in your knees when you bring your forehead to the floor bring something under your forehead so the weight goes back towards your heels.
2. SPHINX: if you have tight neck and shoulders this pose can be uncomfortable at first but stick with it! See what it’s like to just be supported by your bones and let the muscles “melt”.

3. HALF FROG: take just 1 minute on each side to give your lower back a break after all that compression from Sphinx pose!
4. STIRRUP: for those of you who have done Happy Baby in a yoga class you might be surprised at how holding Stirrup for a few minutes can be a bit uncomfortable. What is it like to breathe into the discomfort? (note: do not breathe into pain! If it’s pain just let the pose go/back off. Discomfort is different than pain!) Between the poses take a minute to just breathe and feel the echo of the pose in your body. 

I heard someone say once that Yin yoga is a bitter practice with a sweet result (was it Bernie Clarke who said this?). Some of the poses can be very pleasurable when holding them, but more often than not the real pleasure comes from the release. 

PRANAYAMA FOR LETTING GO:

To deepen the experience of letting go of the old to make room for the new add some breath and a visualization to your Yin practice! This breath works especially well in Childs Pose and Sphinx. 
1. as you inhale imagine drawing the breath in through the crown of your head and visualize the breath/energy moving down your back all the way to the base of the spine. 
2. as you exhale visualize the breath/energy moving back up your spine and pouring out of your heart (or you might visualize it pouring out of your chest)
3. Continue like this or add the visual of drawing into your body on the inhale what you would like to draw into your life and on the exhale releasing what you would like to get rid of. 

note: illustrations are a collaboration between me and my mom but most of the credit goes to her

My Roots Run Deep Into the Center of the Living Earth

Post holiday rest  *part 2*

Did you do the yin poses from part 1 but still feel a bit disconnected, scattered and ungrounded ? Calm and center the mind and body even more by adding the very grounding “bhu mudra” either in seated meditation before and/or after the yin poses, or even incorporate it into the yin poses. 

To do the Bhu mudra simply place the tips of your peace fingers on the ground as shown in the image. 

Option to add the mantra: 

“my roots run deep into the center of the living earth.” 

(not sure if the credit for this mantra goes to Jennifer Reis or Joseph LePage?)

Close your meditation practice or yin practice with the intention of offering some of the peace and joy you experienced in the last 20 minutes to those who made it possible for you to have these 20 undisturbed minutes to yourself 🙏

What is Yin Yoga?

In the future I will go even more in depth into Yin yoga but for now here is what you need to know:

• Yin yoga has its roots not only in the yogic practices from India but also in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Taoist yoga. Just like TCM uses acupuncture to help unblock Qi/energy by inserting needles along meridian lines (channels in the body through which energy flows)  the practice of yin yoga unblocks energy by applying pressure to those same meridian lines. (If you’re familiar with yogic “nadis”, meridians are essentially the same thing). 

• Yin yoga accesses the fascia, connective tissues, tendons, and ligaments instead of the muscles (which we access in yang yoga styles like vinyasa). We do this by entering the poses without warming up and holding the pose for 3-5 minutes which is the amount of time it takes to rehydrate the connective tissues and restore flexibility. 

• In the 3-5 minutes we hold the pose we only move if we are in pain and need to modify or if the body begins to open up and allows us to sink more deeply into the pose. Otherwise we find stillness and surrender. In Yin yoga we have the opportunity to allow, accept, and be (as opposed to do). 

• Sometimes when we come out of a yin pose we feel a bit stiff and achey- this is normal. Exit the pose slowly and take a minute to just sit and feel the effects of the pose. 

 A COUPLE OF MY THOUGHTS ON YIN YOGA…

1. People who practice yoga often talk about having an experience of a “yoga high” after practicing and I have to say that the particular yoga high I experience after a yin yoga class is what really got me hooked on this approach to yoga. 

2. After ten years of trying different meditation techniques I finally figured out how to approach meditation after diving deep into yin yoga. Yin yoga taught me how to be with discomfort and observe my experience without needing to change it. This profoundly shifted my meditation practice, and my whole life. 

Have you tried yin yoga? what did you think? 

Stay tuned for the first in my 20 minute self care series!!