A Walk in the Wood - Book Review
Contents
This blog post is mostly a collection of quotes from a book titled " A Walk in the Wood" written by Joseph Parent and Nancy Parent.
Introduction
I happened to read this book while going over Mo Gawdat’s books. Deliberate attention is the key behavioral change suggested in Mo’s books. This book was a good follow up book to read as it gives a nice primer to mindfulness and the way all of us an incorporate it in our lives. Various facets of mindfulness are explored using Winnie the Pooh and his friends who live in a hundred-acre wood
What is mindfulness ?
Mindfulness is a state of full awareness, moment by moment, present to all one’s experiences, without judgment or bias. Such awareness encompasses external perceptions as well as internal feelings, emotions, and thoughts.
Practicing mindfulness begins with setting the intention to be more fully in the here and now. After settling into your physical presence, you focus on a sense experience, like the feeling of your breath going in and out. The main work of the practice is bringing your attention back to its focus as soon as you recognize that you’ve drifted off in thoughts.
The goals are to be able to pay attention more completely to what you are doing, to maintain that for longer periods of time, to notice more quickly when your mind wanders, and to bring yourself back again and again.
The benefits of mindfulness are well recognized: peace of mind; calmness and stress reduction; the opportunity to work through and transform painful thoughts, memories, and worries, as well as acceptance of the changes and challenges life brings.
What are the benefits of immersing in sense perceptions ?
When the mind is absorbed in mindfulness and bathed in the sense perceptions of nature, you are less focused on your physical and emotional pain, anxiety, and stress. Feeling better creates a positive momentum toward true well-being.
Mindful and Kind
This chapter explores morning rituals one can follow that will help bring mindfulness in one’s life. How many of us rush to see our mobiles or devices or anything that we might be addicted to, the first thing in the morning as soon as we get up. One could try and see if the following routine makes one calmer
Wake Up Your Body
To start your morning routine, sit upright in bed, or on the edge of the bed with your feet on the floor.
Take a full breath in through your nose, hold it for a moment, then exhale through both the nose and mouth until your breath is all the way out. You can gently pull in your belly to help push your breath all the way out. Do that three times.
If you’d like, imagine that with each exhalation you’re releasing a negative feeling or emotion, such as anger, greed, envy, pride, or stubbornness.
Wake Up to Your Environment
Open your eyes wide to your full field of vision—side to side and up and down. Notice all the colors, shapes, and shades of light and dark you can see, without judgment, preference, or commentary.
In the same way, tune into your hearing, opening your awareness to sounds from all directions, near and far. Notice all the loud or soft, high or low, and sharp or dull sounds you may hear.
Experience what you’re feeling, such as the firmness of the mattress you’re sitting on, the soft carpet or hard wood of the floor under your feet, the texture of the sheet or blanket under your hands.
Set Your Intentions for the Day
First, establish the intention to be as mindful of your body as you can—to notice how you move, how you feel, and what you experience through your senses; and to be kind in your actions.
Second, establish the intention to be as mindful of your speech as you can—to notice the words you use, and the tone and volume with which you express them; and to maintain positive self-talk and helpful communication with others. Intend to refrain from complaints about or put-downs of others and yourself; and to be kind in your speech.
Third, establish the intention to be as mindful of your thoughts and state of mind as you can—to notice your experience as it unfolds without analysis or commentary; and to come back to what’s happening in the here and now when you wander into daydreams of past and future. Intend to be kind in your thoughts and attitudes.
Takeaway
I am yet to get the morning ritual mentioned in this chapter in place. Being a parent of two small kids, most of the times I am woken up from sleep to take care of some emergency - may be one of my daughters peed on the bed or is wailing for milk or crying for no reason. In such situations I really do not have a choice but to attend to the task at hand. For all the days I do manage to wake up with out me having to attend to any emergency task relating to my daughters, I am thankful for the early morning silence granted. Instead of mindfully waking up, I get ready quickly and then head to my room to practice Sitar. May be I should pause and see if the morning ritual makes sense. As far as the other suggestion of setting intentions for the day, that is something that I have been following for quite sometime. My morning pages help me reiterate the intentions on a daily basis. I would not doing it regularly had I not found benefit from it. Setting an intention to be mindful of body, thoughts, words and deeds has provided immense benefit to me and this chapter reinforces my morning pages ritual. Mo’s book titled That Little Voice in your head also says that the same in the form of regular reflections
Just Doing
Practice mindfulness in action by moving slowly enough to notice details of your experience: movements, perceptions, and sensations.
This is the practice that one should often be doing. If you are taking bath, then take bath. If you are brushing your teeth, brush your teeth. However we are all distracted by our thoughts. There have been countless times that I would have done all these in auto-pilot mode. While taking bath, some unattended office email pops up in my brain and my brain starts formulating a response to it, all the while when I am in a nice shower. The experience of a nice and hot shower is lost of me and all I am thinking is a way to get back to my colleague on that nasty email. My mind keeps playing lots of tricks to drag me in to incessant chatter. Most of the chatter is useless and pointless but the more they come, the more I do stuff in auto-pilot mode.
Well, what is the point in thinking and paying attention to the task you are doing ? It is a way of preparing your mind to single-task. By default we might think we are masters at multi-tasking but all we are doing is multi-switching. We are not doing anything but switching from one task to another. Whenever we switch from one task to another, there are countless studies that have shown that we can’t snap in to the new task without thinking about the previous task. So all the times we engage in mindful thinking, we are exercising our brain or restraining our brain from multi-tasking.
A recent hack that I found to be working is to repeat the task again if I do something in autopilot. Strangely this has worked very well. If I take a a bath in auto-pilot mode and realize that at the end of it, my brain was thinking something else, I take bath again. I did this for a 3 or 4 days and ensured that my brain learns this. In a week’s time, my brain conveniently switched off all the chatter and instead allowed me to be mindful while taking bath. I have resorted to this hack and this seems to be working well so far. I am not sure whether I have the luxury to penalize myself of repeated acts in all the activities that I do in auto-pilot mode. May be there are other hacks but it is safe to say that there are loads of stuff that I do on auto-pilot mode and the takeaway from this chapter is that it ALWAYS pays to be just doing a task while doing a task and not let your mind wander.
Body and Mind
Energetic movement
To start your practice session, it’s good to do some stretching and movement (not too extreme) like gentle yoga, tai chi, or other similar disciplines. You can softly move in ways that activate the flow from your core throughout your body. Make gentle circles with your hips, shoulders, and arms; then do the same with each leg, knee, and foot.
Mindfulness of Body
Sit upright, but not rigid. Gently close your eyes. Let any tension, other than what you need to hold your posture, flow down and out of your body.
Let your awareness drop gently into the deep core of your torso, like a leaf settling slowly down to the bottom of a clear pond. Feel how your breathing slows and deepens.
As each breath goes out, imagine that you feel more and more like you are merging with the earth. That’s as grounded as you can be.
Mindfulness in breathing
Gently open your eyes, looking slightly downward without tilting your head forward. Focus your attention on your posture and the sensations of your breathing. Feel that your torso is filling with air as you breathe in and then emptying as you breathe out.
When you realize that your mind has drifted into a series of thoughts like a daydream, just acknowledge it and return your attention to your posture and breathing, without judging or criticizing yourself for becoming distracted.
To help you maintain focus, you can also count your breaths. A traditional practice is to mentally count at the end of each out-breath: in-and-out one, in-and-out two, in-and-out three, and so on. As Pooh did, count to seven, then begin again at one. As you progress in your practice, try counting to a higher number. To sharpen your attention further, you can count backwards.
Takeaway
Out of the three practices, the only ritual that I have managed to incorporate is daily meditation. As far as energetic movement and mindfulness of body exercises, may be I should do it for a few days and see if it is beneficial and helps me to bring mindfulness in my day to day life. I guess the first thing that comes to my mind is the time element. When do I find time to do this ? Truth be told, there are many instances in a day where I can consciously carve out a few minutes ? May be I should do it while I go for my daily walks ? I think it is my sheer resistance that is speaking now. I should get over this resistance and try out some of these rituals
Kindhearted and Caring
Without an accepting and kind attitude toward ourselves, it’s difficult to be caring and compassionate for others. In general, we give ourselves a hard time, and have a hard time giving ourselves a break. When you make a mistake, instead of being negative toward yourself, make the positive choice to be kind. Making friends with yourself makes you more available for friendship with others.
Caring-kindness Practice for Yourself
Begin by sitting comfortably, in a good upright posture. Good posture makes it easier to breathe fully and stay attentive. Gently close your eyes and relax any tension you’re feeling.
Move your awareness to the center of your body at heart level. Say to yourself, My nature is goodness, and I deserve peace and happiness.
Tune in to any negative feelings toward yourself—anger, sadness, shame, and so on. Notice how and where you experience them in your body.
Like an air conditioner turns hot air into a cool breeze, imagine that, as you breathe in, the negative emotions are gathered and transformed into peace and contentment.
As you breathe out, radiate that peace and happiness from your heart to all areas of your body.
Repeat this sequence for a few minutes.
Caring-kindness Practice for Others
Imagine that, as you breathe in, you gather all the unhappiness of your friends and family into you. Their suffering transforms into peace and contentment.
As you breathe out, radiate that peace and happiness from your heart to all your friends and family.
Then, as much as you can, expand the extent of your gathering and radiating to a wider circle of beings—those you know and don’t know, and even those you find difficult.
Is it even possible to take timeout from the daily hustle bustle of our lives to get this practice done ? Not sure
Aimless Wandering
If we’re really engaged in mindfulness while walking, we will consider the act of each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality, a miraculous and mysterious reality.
An important part of Aimless Wandering is Just Noticing: the practice of observing impartially and without overlaying thoughts, whatever appears to any of your senses.
Aimless Wandering and Just Noticing require you to move your mind into the role of an observer. It can feel awkward and difficult at first, because we are so used to functioning as a director. It feels strange to take a back seat.
Pay particular attention to how thoughts appear. Do they come and go, leaving no trace, like a bird flying across the sky? Or do they take hold of your awareness, replacing your sense perception with a daydream?
In the course of Aimless Wandering, thoughts will come up that try to direct you one way or another. It is actually part of the practice to recognize those thoughts and the impulse to get somewhere.
Sometimes when you simply follow where your body leads, a slight feeling of panic sets in, a fear that you are not in control. After a few sessions, you’ll get more comfortable with letting go and being more curious than afraid of where you’ll wander and what you’ll experience.
I came across this practice many years ago while i was talking to someone in Mumbai. Despite the traffic and noise in Mumbai, I was surprised to know that aimless mindful wandering was possible. In the my daily walks, I am yet to incorporate this practice. As with many suggestions in the book, my brain comes up amazing justifications for not doing it.
Explore your senses
Guided by Sense Perceptions
Another approach to Aimless Wandering is to let your senses guide you. Let yourself become immersed in your perceptions of nature. Go deeper by exploring each sense in turn. Noticing a patch of color, you take a closer look. Hearing the sound of a stream or a particularly captivating birdcall, you turn or move closer to listen. You touch sticks and stones, moss and dirt, bark and leaves. You stop to smell an aromatic tree or fragrant flower.
Whether going along aimlessly or following your senses, or even while on your way somewhere, let yourself experience the magic of the present moment, appreciating perceptions and then letting go as you move on.
Feeling
Stand, sit, or lie in your garden, in a forest, in the park, or at the beach. (You may want to bring a thin blanket or yoga mat with you if the ground is too damp or cold.) Bring your awareness to the parts of your body that are in contact with the ground. Can you feel the earth supporting you? Can you relax and let yourself sink in and be part of it?
Feel the air on the skin of your face and hands. Feel your body moving as your breath flows in and out. Can you feel your heart beating in your chest, or your pulse in your fingertips, wrists, or neck?
Tasting
You might not want to try to get honey from a beehive as Pooh did, so bring some food with you to practice tasting (also, it’s a good idea to have nourishment if you’re on a long walk). You can carry a trail mix that includes raisins, nuts (or granola if you’re allergic), and chocolate chips. Can you taste the saltiness of the nuts? Notice how the sweetness of the chocolate appears more vividly when it melts, and how the raisins release their flavor only when you bite into them.
You have everything you need
The chapter revolves around Pooh imparting the message that we already have everything inside to start noticing and wander aimlessly. Stopping oneself from doing is often the difficult part. Once you realize that one has to watch, see and observe things around without judgment, there is so much the world has to offer to you.
Walking Mindfulness
In walking mindfulness, you still maintain a nice upright posture. However, instead of noticing the breath going in and out, focus your attention on the sensations of your legs swinging and the placing of your feet as you walk.
When you realize that your mind has wandered into a flight of thoughts, just think, Back to here and now. Return to focus on your posture and the movement of your legs and feet, without judging or criticizing yourself for becoming distracted.
Continuing Your Practice
Mindfulness practice shouldn’t be thought of as something you do on an “as needed” basis, like taking an aspirin if you get a headache. It’s better to regard it more like brushing your teeth, something you do regularly, a couple of times a day.
So, it’s important to establish an intention to be as steady as you can about practicing. Please be kind to yourself, not negatively judgmental, if you need to change your practice time, or even miss a day. Think of it as trying to be consistent without being rigid.
It’s helpful to set yourself up in a place that’s relatively quiet, where you won’t be disturbed for the length of your session.
Takeaway
Thanks to my spouse, I have learned to enjoy really long walks. A decade ago my feet would cry if I walk for more than 30 minutes. I was missing on stamina to walk, I had cracked feet all over, I had never thought walk could replace time in a gym. Naturally it took me sometime to get to where I am today where I can walk for 3 hours without feeling any discomfort. However most of my walks I listen to podcasts, read books as I feel that there is a massive amount of learning that happens when you are reading as well as walking. The fact that your mind associates various places when you are reading certain thing will help your brain have location cues for things that you learn. In my long walks along many walking paths, my brain has encoded various places for certain principles, concepts that I learn while walking.
This book though says that one must be practice mindful walking. I have tried incorporating this practice but somehow my mind always wants me to read books or listen to Sitar or listen to audio books. My brain wants to squeeze productivity out of walks too. Will keep trying on inculcating this practice in my daily life.
Forest Bathing
What is Forest Bathing
Forest Bathing, or Shinrin-yoku, is the Japanese practice of going to the forest to receive mental and physical healing. When we walk through a forest, nature’s benevolence flows into us as sunshine flows into trees. Beneath soaring pines and giant, spreading oaks, thoughts naturally become expansive and harmonious. As you breathe in and out, be aware of how interconnected you are with the forest, and of the reciprocal relationship all beings have with one another.
Why suspend thought ?
In the mindfulness tradition, the perceiving mind is likened to a monkey in a room with six windows. The monkey can only look out one window at a time. In the same way, when a given sense perception is in the foreground of your consciousness, it becomes your main experience. All the other senses go to the background. We’re familiar with the five senses of sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, so what is the sixth window? It is the perception of our own thoughts. When thinking is in the foreground, all the other senses go to the background. When thinking subsides, the other senses emerge more vividly.
Takeaway
The default window that is open in my life is “thought” window, the sixth window. The six door analogy is a reminder to me that it is important to explore the other five windows to make my life richer. Practice of playing Sitar regularly is one such activity where i consciously involve my left hand and right hand to coordinate with the sound emanated from various frets. In a way playing Sitar forces my touch, sound and sight senses in to the foreground while thought remains at the background serving the physical senses. This experience is of course very different from activities that are mostly cerebral in nature such as programming, reading an ebook or being part of meetings etc. I think this chapter reminds any reader that one must have a healthy dose of activities in one’s daily life where the senses are at the foreground and thought process is in background.
Taming Your Mind
Mindfulness practice is not about stopping thoughts. Trying to stop thinking only invites more thoughts. Instead, as thoughts arise, you simply let them come up and go by, neither inviting them to stay nor trying to get rid of them. Noticing them is enough; there’s no need for analyzing or judging.
With this perspective, thoughts and feelings lose their power. Watching them come and go, and seeing them dissolve as easily as they arose, you have a choice about what you pay attention to and what you disregard. By simply observing your thoughts and feelings, you can choose how to respond, rather than impulsively react. Instead of being swept away by the waves of thoughts and feelings, you can ride their energy.
Takeaway
Came across “Meet the Becky” exercise in That Little Voice in your head that was one of the best exercises in the book. It was a quite a revelation to me when I realized that following a few prompts, I could tame my mind from a constant chatterbox to one that was devoid of any thought.
This chapter suggests a similar hack - Observe the dialog , Observe the drama in your mind and all those thoughts that take you in to a suffering cycle will automatically lose their power
More Curious than Afraid
Training in Fearlessness
The first step toward going beyond fear is acknowledging it. We can recognize our fears and learn to respond rather than react to them. Mindfulness practice includes directing our awareness toward what we fear. Within the space of inquisitive awareness, we gain insight into what’s behind our fears and can take a more courageous attitude toward our experiences. As the old saying goes, “Life is like a turtle. You never get anywhere if you don’t stick your neck out.”
When you conquer your own fears, you have a greater capacity to extend kindness to others and encourage them to be more fearless as well.
Takeaway
There are always circumstances when fear overpowers us. I am vacationing with my family for the last few days. Am I completely relaxed ? Not necessarily. My kids have fallen sick, I have fallen sick too. I think it is something that has to do with food. I was a bit afraid that we will find it difficult to get a few tasks done. That was the main reason for the vacation - we had to get a few tasks done relating to a new house. With almost everyone falling sick, I was afraid that we will not be able to get the tasks done. Thanks to the turn of events, we all got better in time and managed to get the tasks done. Today is our last day of vacation before we head back. I guess what I have experienced is a tiny version of fears that most of the people experience. For some, the fears are physical. Think of all the children abused, women abused because of domestic violence, the harmful crimes committed in the name of war - these are much larger fears that some of the humanity experiences. But most of us in the modern world, who are in a position where their survival is taken care of, there is an adequate level of comfort in life, there are certain kind of fears that appear in life that are largely brain driven or thought driven. Some of these thoughts paralyze us from moving forward.
The chapter is a beautiful reminder to all of us that one should substitute curiosity in all such situations where fear immobilizes us from taking a specific type of action.
If we are curious about something, there is always a learning associated with the outcome. Even if the outcome is not something that we desired, the experience of learning that comes out curiosity will help us move forward.
I guess as I grow older, I see that the fear of leaving something that is comfortable and doing something that is new, risky, challenging and error prone is growing day by day. This chapter reinforces my belief that curiosity about life in general will make you go on a path that might not be financially rewarding but at the end of the day, you might just be happy the way it has turned out to be.
Believe in Yourself
If you’re so used to feeling bad, you might forget how to feel good. That presents a challenge to overcoming negativity, and to changing habits and perspectives. The familiar, even if painful, is hard to let go of when you don’t know how to be some other way. That’s why it’s good to start with small steps.
Working with mindfulness to overcome negative attitudes and believe in yourself is a journey, not a quick fix. It is simple, but not easy. In the process, it’s important that you not reject or throw away qualities of your personality, even ones you think you don’t like. Instead, find a way to use them to open up to a bigger world.
One Thing at a Time
If I am incapable of washing dishes joyfully, if I want to finish them quickly so I can go and have dessert, I will be equally incapable of enjoying my dessert. With the fork in my hand, I will be thinking about what to do next, and the texture and the flavor of the dessert, together with the pleasure of eating it, will be lost. I will always be dragged into the future, never able to live in the present moment.
Even if you are doing one thing at a time, you might drift off into thinking about what’s next. You can be so concerned with how things will turn out in the end that you miss the experience of the journey. When you recognize that you’re getting ahead of yourself, gently return to appreciate your experience in the here and now.
Waking Up
Life is like a stream,too. There are places where it slows and it’s clear all the way to the bottom. When it’s rushing along in a hurry, it’s white and cloudy and you can’t see through. In the same way, when my mind is busy, it’s all muddled. But when my mind is calm and peaceful, I can see clearly.
The analogy of muddled water with confused/chattering mind is a good one to return to from time to time so that we appreciate the importance of developing sense awareness.
Peaceful mind is calm and clear.
We have a calm presence when we immerse ourselves in awareness of our sense perceptions, which are always here and now. Being attuned to our moment-to-moment experience creates the clarity and openness necessary for insights to emerge. We have the possibility of interesting, fresh ideas coming to us only when we free ourselves from thoughts of stressful situations, worries, and to-do lists.
Love and Gratitude
The combination of mindfulness and appreciation connects us fully with reality and brings us joy. There can be a sense of gratitude to everything, even difficult emotions, because of their potential to wake us up. Really communicating from the heart and being there for someone else requires openness.
When we are at peace with ourselves, it’s easier to appreciate the qualities of others, without envy or criticism. We can accept another person for the whole of who they are—the parts we like as well as the parts we aren’t as fond of. That enables us to share in their joy, and support them when things aren’t going so well. It’s gratifying both to give and to receive.
There is much to be gained from interacting with difficult people. They provide the opportunity to practice patience when they push our buttons. They require the development of sharp communication skills. They offer a mirrorlike reflection of our state of mind: our hopes, our fears, and even what we find uncomfortable about ourselves. If we don’t react defensively, difficult people can be a catalyst for our waking up.
Mindfulness allows you to be more authentically responsive to others, beyond personal preference and emotional reactivity. That is the basis for genuine communication.
Sandwich of the day
Make each day a sandwich. Every day starts with intention and ends with recollection, and all that we do is sandwiched in between.
First thing in the morning, sit quietly and establish your basic intentions for the day: how you would like to work with your own experience and relate to others.
Divide your intentions into three areas, corresponding to body, speech, and mind. Although they are interdependent, you can choose an intention for each one.
Overall, be as mindful as you can with respect to how much you are keeping to or straying from your intentions throughout the day.
The other part of the sandwich happens in the evening. At the close of the day, take a few moments for reflection. Review in a nonjudgmental way how well you fulfilled your intentions. It’s not a contest; you don’t win or lose. Just take stock of what happened without praise or blame.
To whatever extent you were not mindful and kind, make a commitment that you’ll do your best to improve tomorrow. To whatever extent you maintained mindfulness and acted with kindness, think happily that it benefited others as well as yourself.
Takeaway
There are many practices mentioned in the book that are worth incorporating in one’s life. The short book is well worth your time if you want to learn about mindfulness in a story form where Pooh and his friends teach all the basic tenets of mindfulness needed to be peaceful and calm in one’s life.
This book is not one of those book that you read and move on. One has to revisit the contents of the book from time to time to reap the benefits of all the practices mentioned in the book.