Lesley said -
I like the idea of 1st September, it being both the start of the month and the start of the week. Also, if we put it off we really may lose momentum. But there's quite a lot of introductory stuff to read, so perhaps we could make it a 9-week challenge - with the task for the week starting 1st September being to read the prelims (prologue and Dear Reader at least) and the 3 chapters of Part 1 and to do the mini-exercises that are dotted through Part 1 (or through Chapter 1, anyway - I've just re-read that, but haven't re-read Chapters 2 and 3, and can't remember what's in them). Then we could tackle Part 2, Step 1 starting on 8th September.
hang on - am expanding on this but dunno how to look something up without this disappearing so be back in ten
(this mindfulness thread gonna teach u all patience if nothing else
)
right for the benefit of those that havn't got the book yet (am thinking fuzzywuzzy and Michael cos u said wanna do it
) have copied the prologue and dear reader below (editing out as much boring uneccessary bits as can) and have double spaced and changed lot of paragraphs to make it easier to read (- she obviously doesn't know us as well as she thinks she does
)
and this is link for cd
An audio program, available as a free download at
www.shambhala.com/MindfulnessPrescription, will guide you through the key mindfulness practices.
Daniel J. Siegel, MD
In your hands you have a practical approach to helping you focus attention, balance your emotions, improve your relationships, and enhance your life. Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?
Well, research supports the suggestions made in this book: The way you focus your mind can actually change the structure of your brain
. No kidding.
By taking the practical steps in this book, you can strengthen the connections in your brain that support a more focused way of living.
People with and even without ADHD can benefit from learning to develop mindful awareness in their lives. This book is tailored for those with attentional challenges, who will find it especially relevant and accessible to use.
But why would it help to be “mindful” or to learn to have “mindful awareness”?
Think of it this way:
Our attention is the way energy flows through us.
Sometimes we can focus that energy, say, into listening to what someone is saying to us. But then a radio program catches our ear or a television screen catches our eye, and the words of our friend are far from the focus of our attention. Such distractions can make us lose our ability to remember what the other person was saying and they put stress on a relationship. Not so good! If that person is a friend, a spouse, a teacher, or a boss, such distractions can lead to big and lasting problems.
We can feel bad, and the other person can feel disrespected. It’s tough for everyone when attention is on the run. And for young people, being unable to focus attention can make challenges to creating a positive sense of who they are.
It is hard to be told that you are not doing what you are supposed to do, and being told this over and over and over and over and over and over again. Enough is enough!
Now there is a new prescription to such challenges to ADHD, a practical approach that can be used alongside commonly prescribed medications
What’s in this for you?
You can use these practical tools to transform your life. By learning to focus attention in a new way, you can actually strengthen the very brain areas that are creating challenges in focusing and maintaining attention.
You’ll also learn how to balance your emotions and create and nurture more rewarding relationships.
It’s amazing, but true.
You don’t have to be bullied by your brain’s wandering focus anymore. Now you can actually befriend your brain by learning mindful skills of attention as practiced in the helpful exercises throughout this book.
Some people say, “If I was born with a genetic issue like ADHD, how could anything short of a pill help my brain?” What we can now say very clearly, based on mounting research, is that even those with inborn issues—like mood or anxiety or attention challenges—can learn to train their minds and thereby change their brains. The secret ingredient to these changes is training attention, which in these pages you’ll learn how to do.
But why, you might ask, would attention change the brain? And how do we know this can happen? Attention is the focus of energy through the nervous system. When neurons—the basic cells of the brain—are firing off with attention, they actually alter their connections. When you learn a practice like being mindfully aware, you activate and then strengthen the executive circuits of the brain responsible for such things as attention, regulating emotions, being flexible in your responses, insightful, empathic, and even being wise
. No fooling
. We know this in general to be true from a wide set of studies of the brains of those who’ve learned to practice mindful awareness. Mindfulness practice involves the focus of attention—a focus that drives energy though the brain and strengthens it much like exercise strengthens a muscle
.
Mindful awareness training—the lessons of this book—builds up the muscle of the mind.
So why not give it a try? You have everything to gain and it just takes your willingness to say, “Let’s go!” Dive in, learn a lot, and have fun.
Daniel J. Siegel, MD
Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA School of Medicine
Co-Director, UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center Executive Director, Mindsight Institute
Prologue
Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.
—Viktor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning
If there were a mental training that improved your attention, impulse control, and quality of life—would you try it?
If you could step back from old patterns and reactions and create a new way of handling stress and taking action in your life—would you do it?
If you could have more emotional balance and ability for joy—would you be willing to make lifestyle changes?
If you could be more present to yourself and your loved ones—would that inspire and motivate you?
If you could have greater control over your ADHD symptoms—would that make a difference?
If you could have greater appreciation for who you are, both with your ADHD and non-ADHD sides—would you be happier?
If you’re intrigued by any or all of these questions, this book is for you. The Mindfulness Prescription for Adult ADHD will deepen your understanding of ADHD and provide a new set of tools and techniques for managing it.
Any change and growth starts with awareness.
And while there are many ways to increase awareness—education, life experience, others’ feedback—the ability to tune in to the present moment, where everything happens in real time, creates tremendous opportunities for change.
Mindfulness is a training in such present-moment awareness, and this book describes how this type of training can help adults with ADHD.
As a psychiatrist specializing in adult ADHD and mindfulness-based therapies, I’ve helped many adults learn to manage their ADHD symptoms through mindfulness training. Mindfulness has been shown to be an effective approach to stress, anxiety, and depression, and it has positive effects on brain health.
There is still much to learn about this powerful tool for ADHD, and I hope this book will ignite more interest in mindfulness across the ADHD field. I invite you to discover and explore this treatment with me.
Dear Reader,
Do Something Different This Time
If you’re like me and often skip book introductions, I invite you to do something different this time.
I invite you to notice with curiosity any impulse you may feel to jump ahead, and yet please resist that impulse and read on
. This introductory letter will give you a sense of where I am coming from and lay the groundwork for the rest of the book.
If you take the time to read this section, this could be your first opportunity to practice mindful awareness. You can notice your habitual or automatic response (in this case, to not read the introduction), and you can explore having a new sense of awareness and choice about your actions.
If, on the other hand, you’re the type of person who usually reads introductions, I encourage you to read on with the enhanced awareness that not skipping the introduction this time is not just your habit, but it is also a deliberate choice.
So, first things first. This book is for those who have, or think they may have, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD.
(have deleted all bits about symtoms - we all know them well enough already
)
If you have ADHD, problems with unruly attention, disorganization, restlessness, impulsivity, and intense emotions can create a lot of difficulties in your life and can stop you from reaching your full potential in school, at work, and in relationships. These problems are not just an occasional nuisance or frustration—they are frequent occurrences that can give you a chronic sense of not being able to rely on yourself.
Overall, ADHD leads to difficulties with self-control, or what professionals call self-regulation.
Here is an example: One minute you may be getting ready to leave home for a job interview, but an incoming e-mail grabs your attention. You then start reading all of your e-mail and lose track of time, only to realize that now you’re late for the appointment. You berate yourself for getting distracted and feel panicked about getting going. Feeling frazzled, you rush out the door without your résumé! The whole day becomes highly stressful as you try to make it to the meeting, even though it’s already too late. This ADHD cycle can repeat itself over and over again, leading to chronic stress, self-doubt, and ever-increasing difficulty getting things done and reaching your goals.
Since ADHD interferes with the development of a person’s self-control, tools and techniques that improve self-regulation can be of great help. Mindfulness or mindful awareness—a type of mental training derived from meditation practices—is one such tool. This book invites you to explore mindfulness as a way to understand and manage the symptoms of adult ADHD.
Try It for Yourself
Let’s do a quick experiment. (you need to pick up a book for this bit
)
Can you turn your attention to the experience of holding this book right now?
Shift your attention to your present-moment sensations.
If you are sitting, notice how your body makes contact with the chair.
Do you notice any points of pressure or weight?
If you are standing, for example on a crowded bus or subway, notice your body posture.
Now shift your attention to your feet. Notice any sensations such as tingling or pressure in your feet.
Perhaps you notice a lack of sensation.
After a few moments, shift your attention to your hands.
What are your hands doing right now? Notice the point of contact with the book and how it feels to be touching the paper.
image
The essence of mindfulness is intentionally bringing your attention to the present moment with openness and curiosity.
Mindfulness puts you in the driver’s seat, directing your attention where you want it to go. Much of our daily experience is just the other way around.
Our attention is often pulled in many directions, or we are lost in thought, preoccupied. Multitasking, the scores of demands at home and work, and constant e-mail messages or phone calls create a slew of opportunities for distraction. After all, as people say, we live in an “ADD culture,” and even many people who don’t actually have ADHD feel they can’t concentrate
.
If you have ADHD, the pitfalls of such distracting environments are magnified, since your attention naturally tends to jump from one thing to another.
Mindfulness (or mindful awareness) is the opposite of being distracted, lost in thought, or daydreaming. Mindfulness is about being alert and aware of what we are doing as we are doing it. It involves tracking our experience moment by moment to see clearly and simply what is—without being limited by automatic responses, judgments, and expectations. Mindfulness brings awareness, reflection, and choice—and is the opposite of being on autopilot.
At its core, mindfulness embraces heartfulness, as it requires being kind and compassionate to yourself and your experiences. So often we end up criticizing ourselves for how we are or what we feel, and that stops us from learning from our experiences. This judgmental or hypercritical perspective can leave us stuck, ashamed, or hypersensitive. It can also lead us to pretend nothing is wrong with our behavior, when we know full well that something is amiss. Mindfulness helps us accept ourselves as we are right now and, paradoxically, through acceptance, leads to possibilities for growth and change.
Mindfulness = Heartfulness
The practice of mindfulness, derived from meditation, is a way to strengthen your attention skills, develop self-awareness, and improve your emotional well-being. It is a type of mental training that can be done in many different ways, with or without formal meditation—great news for those of us who, like me, have trouble sitting still for a long time!
My Introduction to Mindfulness
I first learned about mindfulness in the late 1990s during my psychiatry residency at the University of California–Los Angeles (UCLA). Curious about using complementary and alternative medicines for psychiatry, I decided to do a fellowship at the UCLA Center for East-West Medicine. While there I was exposed to mind-body practices, including meditation. I learned about existing programs like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, and I quickly became fascinated with the power of mindfulness training both for myself and my patients. I read all I could about it and then started attending mindfulness workshops or training sessions, where I got to experience the mindful awareness firsthand. It was transforming.
My big epiphany came when I realized I could pay attention to my attention. I learned that I could observe my thoughts, feelings, or body responses in a new way, without being caught up in them or without wanting to change them. At my first weeklong meditation retreat, I experienced brief moments of observing my busy mind in an entirely different way—by witnessing it rather than being controlled by it
. At one point, I noticed that upsetting feelings began bubbling up inside me, but rather than pushing them away or being completely overwhelmed, I chose to pay attention to how my body felt when I was really upset. That’s when I realized that my thoughts were often judgmental or unkind to myself or others, and I discovered that the introduction of gentleness and kindness allowed me to learn about the places where I was “stuck.”
I also realized how hard it is to keep mindfulness practice consistent in my life, despite my best intentions. As with physical exercise, knowing that it is good for me is not always enough to get me to do it! So I learned to bring moments of mindfulness into my life as much as I could throughout the day, even if for just one breath.
Our initial study tested this program with a group of adults and teens with ADHD.3 The eight-week training was well received, and we found that it made a significant positive difference in how participants experienced their ADHD symptoms and their well-being. Afterward, a majority of the participants reported decreased ADHD symptoms as well as less anxiety, depression, and stress. Most of them also performed better on selected cognitive tests that measured different aspects of attention, memory, and reasoning. In particular they appeared to have had an enhanced ability to pay attention under distracting conditions.
One participant in our study told us, “I understand better what goes on in my head, and I’m less critical of myself which is a positive result from the class. . . . I’m less reactive and I’m more forgiving of myself.” Another said, “The idea that you can see yourself getting distracted and then you can bring yourself back was probably the most pivotal thing. . . . And the experience of practicing it in the meditation—going off and then coming back. So, when I’m aware now that I’m distracting myself from a task, I’m able to see it better and then get back a little better.”
mindfulness training led to improvements in certain aspects of attention, ADHD symptoms, anxiety, and depression.
How This Book Is Organized
Part 1 of the book describes mindfulness in more detail and shows how this approach can help those with ADHD. In part 2, the core of the book, I present mindfulness training as a series of eight sequential steps that can be done over a period of eight weeks; however, feel free to proceed at your own pace.
An audio program, available as a free download at www.shambhala.com/MindfulnessPrescription, will guide you through the key mindfulness practices.
The concluding chapter of the book discusses how to use mindfulness in daily life with ADHD and answers frequently asked questions. And so, this book will:
Introduce mindfulness as a helpful tool for adults with ADHD and their families
.
Show how you can use mindfulness to neutralize the negative effects of ADHD symptoms and to thrive despite having ADHD.
My hope is that this book will engender your curiosity about different ways you can attend to and relate to all your daily experiences. I also hope that you’ll continue learning about mindfulness throughout your life, make it your own, and keep exploring your inner resources for insight, self-compassion, and positive action. As you explore mindfulness, feel free to let me know what you discover.
Best wishes on your mindful ADHD journey!
Dr. Z
(thank you dr z xx )
after you've read all that today
done the excercise holding the book - then had a little break - checked recent posts on the forum etc
but not tooo long a break so's that you lose interest or forget that your doing this (dkl would suggest an alarm at this point i think
)
then read part 1 and ACTUALLY DO THE 2 EXCERCISES IN IT
- michael ,jj, fuzzywuzzy and anyone else who hasn't got book - just gonna pop off now and work out how to get that info on here for you to do it
(only cos i loves ya
and don't want you to miss out - OR maybe cos i'm a well bossy control freak
)
and i think that's enough for day 1 in it
when you can - do a post of what you think of the book so far
and what your experience of doing the excercises was like
and any tips you found/think may help the rest of us
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