Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Scientists have even found that quite a few of us would rather give ourselves painful electrical shocks than wait in a distraction-free room for 15 minutes. Most people would agree that we need an occasional break from constant activity, but we seem unable to take advantage of our time off; rumination rushes in, spoiling what should be a period of respite. Distraction is one option – but why does taking time to “chill” now require Netflix?

And what if trying to busy yourself during those quiet moments did more harm than good? At this point, you may be thinking “Why not fill up my spare time with things I enjoy?” The problem is that keeping our brains busy isn’t an effective form of relief. Instead, sensing the world – the sunlight on your skin, a gurgle in your belly, the thump of your heartbeat – without rushing back into thought and judgment, is what enriches and restores us. Before you label that emotion that seems to be bubbling up, ask: what does it feel like? Because when we are unable to stay with raw sensation, defaulting instead to ideas about those sensations, it can actually have disastrous consequences for our mental health.

That’s what we’ve found in our research, which explored how the balance between thinking and sensing impacts wellbeing…

It isn’t our ability to control internal judgments and narratives that determines our happiness. Instead, wellbeing depends on whether such thoughts are informed by new information, the source of which is the dynamic flow of sensation…

Keeping in touch with sensation, particularly in times of stress, may be a potent but overlooked resource for mental health. What we call “sense foraging”, purposely shifting attention to the sensory world with a willingness to be surprised, is one way of practising doing this, and it’s a skill that almost anyone can develop. If staying busy and distracting ourselves are both modes of largely automatic thinking, to truly give ourselves a break – and reduce the risk of becoming depressed – we need to switch into sensing, a fundamentally different mode that is receptive rather than agenda driven. By developing sensory “muscles”, we get better at taking in new information, which stimulates new trains of thought. This provides relief from rumination, potentially bouncing you out of the mental rut you’re stuck in.’ (from the Guardian)

This is not something novel to anyone who practises mindfulness, but it is good to hear it from the scientific perspective, and I have been using ‘sense foraging’ in my teachings this past week.