 Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to the mindfulness session for the M.H.P.N. All Together Better Conference. I hope you've been enjoying the conference so far. My name is Kim Siao, for those of you who have not attended the previous mindfulness sessions before. I just want to first give you a little heads up that if by any chance my internet fails me, which can happen sometimes do bear with me. But I don't think it will happen, fingers crossed. I think it should just go smoothly and hopefully you'll have a pleasant mindful experience today with me. I do want to first acknowledge that I'm delivering this session from the land of the Ghana people in Adelaide and that I recognise the importance of their connection to land, water, culture and community and that I respect the elders' past, present and emerging. Now I also for those who haven't attended the meditation or mindfulness session in the conference before just to give you a picture of what the format is like for this session. I will talk for about 10 minutes about what mindfulness is. Most of you would be very aware of what it is already and may have also got a regular practice but I still think it's worthwhile to just get us all on the same page. I would also then go into busting some myths about mindfulness especially for those of you who don't think you can do it, that you do it well etc. And then I also want to share some benefits in terms of the research to date about mindfulness. And then after that I will take you through mindfulness practice. Now I want to make sure that everyone here stays safe so if at any point in time you do feel any strong emotions coming up for you during the guided mindfulness practice just resource yourself so what that means is if you have your eyes closed, open them, look around you, listen up for sounds, get in touch with your senses and if you need to take a break, stand up, walk around, go and get yourself a glass of water. So the main thing is that you want to feel that you are okay and safe. So I wouldn't like to think that the guided meditation I'm planning to guide you through would give rise to any difficult emotions because ideally I've planned it so that you'll leave here feeling more centered, more spacious and possibly even more uplifted. Okay so what is mindfulness? I am reusing Joink about Zin's definition which is that it is awareness cultivated by paying attention in a sustained and particular way on purpose and in the present moment and non-judgmental. So really in simple terms paying attention to what's right here right now not judging whether it's good or bad. Sounds pretty simple right? But the reality is that it's actually quite difficult to practice because our mind has been conditioned from the day we're born to think and we then have this tendency or at least our mind has this tendency to either be thinking about the past, the stories that's happened and the I'm so sorry, that's my dog. Okay so yeah our mind has this tendency to go into the past or worrying about the future but so what we need is really to give it an anchor to stay present. How do we do that? Well we can use the breath as an anchor because it's readily available it's accessible for us here and we can also use our five senses our sight, sound, hearing, smell, taste, touch. When you think about that though then it means that really anything we do during our day can be a mindfulness practice. When you're drinking your cup of tea you could sense the heat of the warmth of the tea you know on your in your cup you can look at it you can then smell whether it's tea or coffee letting the taste be in your mouth and then letting the tea or coffee go down your body and feeling the warmth and when you're sharing sensing the water on your back and when you're walking really noticing how your legs move really noticing how you feel in your body and of course there's other parts of our body that we can use to anchor us right the beating of our heart and we can also do mindful movement whether it's yoga, tai chi, even when you go to the gym and the key thing I think here one of the the myths is that people think that when they try and be mindful the mind wanders and therefore they fail but the reality is that when our mind wanders that's actually very normal. I trained to become a meditation teacher with one of the world's most renowned meditation teacher Jack Confield and he still talks about the fact that his mind wanders during meditation and really the other thing to remember is that doing practicing mindfulness is not about getting rid of thoughts or emotions and it's not really about relaxing yes eventually when we become calmer and more relaxed that is the fruit of the labor but it's not really something that we can force to happen. So using John Kabat-Zinn's words what he said is that we need to embrace these seven attitudes when we practice mindfulness and that is that we put on that beginner's mind so we become curious if we are using our breath as our anchor we can become curious of our breath because each breath is a new breath each breath is the fresh breath so how can we take on that curious stance and you know explore our breath we also when we're practicing mindfulness we want to be non-judgmental so whatever that arises for us we just allow it to happen we accept it we let it be and we be patient with ourselves we're not striving as I say we're not trying to get anywhere we're just here in this present moment being really intimate with what's happening right here right now so the evidence of the benefits I was really surprised to discover the other day that there are now 17,000 publications showing the positive effects of mindfulness it ranges from improving our general well-being to making us feel younger again and you know and lowering depression anxiety helps us deal with our pain makes us less stressed and generally I think it's because we have better self-regulation because what we're learning is skill really that helps us to ground and center ourselves and when we're able to do that we are activating our parasympathetic nervous system we're coming down the part of our mind that is you know going to fight flight or freeze when there are uncertainties or threats the amygdala and this once the amygdala gets to calm down it activates our prefrontal cortex it means that that part of our brain that is important for executive functioning making decisions having relationships regulating our emotions are able to then start working in terms of being someone in the mental health profession you might be delighted to know that it actually helps when we regularly practice mindfulness it helps us with our therapeutic presence we are better at attuning to what's going on inside while we're listening to our clients challenges we gain them better perspective of suffering of our clients which then helps us cultivate our compassion and empathy for our clients and of course all that goes to strengthening our therapeutic alliance with our clients and it's really interesting for me to know that there are actually research out there now that shows that mental health professionals who are meditators are getting better results better improvements of their patients showing symptoms reduction and rate of change so I also want to talk a little bit about what's the difference between meditation and mindfulness so meditation really is just a formal form of mindfulness so a formal form of training the mind to to increase our awareness but also improve our concentration so both work side by side right and there are many many different forms of meditation mindfulness meditation which is something we will do in a minute and also actually guide you through a loving kindness and meditation but you can also practice mantra visualization as a form of meditation ultimately the aim of meditation or mindfulness is really to free us because it allows us to see our condition mind allows us to see our patterns of thinking our patterns of behavior you know we gain insights into those because and once once we get insights into those it means that we can change if we don't like it right and ultimately to it really helps us to cultivate acceptance and openness to to uncertainties to things that constantly change and and improves our self-awareness and what this really means is that it actually increases our window of tolerance there is a meditation teacher who actually said this he said well when we put a table of spoon a tablespoon of salt into a cup of water that water is undrinkable because it's so salty but if we put a tablespoon of salt into a pond we can certainly drink it we might taste a little bit of that salt still but we can drink it and this is what mindfulness and meditation does for us it expands our mind so that we can hold more we are more tolerant of challenges uncertainties because we've got that spacious awareness to hold it or we've got that emotional regulation to be able to do it I like what my teacher said he says we all have within us unlimited capacities for extraordinary love for joy for communion with life and for unshakable freedom and the unshakable freedom to me is this capacity to stay equanimous if you were in the session this morning I talked a little bit about that meaning to be balanced and peaceful in the midst of difficulties because we can self-regulate we have we have many choices in terms of how we want to respond to situation challenging situations rather than just being reactive okay so today this afternoon I want to take you through a loving kindness meditation and the reason I decided on that is because today's topic has been you know rather heavy you've been talking about family violence and and social isolation and loneliness and I sense that there will be people in your life that you want to wish for them to be well for them to be happy especially maybe clients you work with so I thought loving kindness meditation is is is fitting if you find that it's rather mechanical that's okay just go through the motion think about this as this opportunity to sit and be present and I also would like you to you know consider shifting your perspective about loving kindness meditation and something that is you know all we're really doing is instead of writing a card to our self or to someone else to wish them well we're just saying it quietly and feeling it in our being our heart and there are actually lots of scientific evidence to that shows that it's really effective for helping with anxiety social connections etc so I invite you now to take a moment to sit back in a way that you're comfortable and then if you're comfortable close your eyes if you're not then bring your gaze down towards the floor and then just take some really slow and long deep breath and then making the exhale even longer and with each exhale imagine or feel that whatever tension you're feeling in your body is being relaxed released down to the ground washed away by the exhale and you might want to also just check in with your body so perhaps start by noticing if you're frowning maybe a little smell when your face will iron out the frowning relax your jaw placing your tongue the top of your mouth slight tuck of the chin helps to release any tension in the neck rolling your shoulders back relaxes your shoulders allow your arms to be loose by your sides also noticing how your knees are placed maybe sensing the ground supporting you and also invite you to quietly set an intention that for the next 15 minutes you are giving yourself permission to just be here as a form of self-care that you're putting aside all your concerns your worries your responsibilities just just breathe naturally but use your breath as an anchor so with your beginner's mind what are you noticing about your breath this one and then the next and then the next maybe you're noticing that the in breath is slightly cooler than the out breath notice the breath at the back of your throat all the rice and fall of your belly now a sense of calm and ease to grow mind wandering is of course very natural as soon as you become aware that your mind had wondered off that moment of awareness is mindfulness and so with loving kindness you guide your attention back to whatever anchor you're using whether it's the breath whether it sounds around you maybe sensations in your body I invite you now to bring awareness to your heart space and breathe into that space allowing the heart space to be relaxed and open now I invite you to bring to mind someone who is easy to love easy to be friendly with might be your best friend your partner maybe your cat or your dog and as I say these words feel them in your heart as you giving that wish of these phrases to them may you be filled with loving kindness may you be safe from inner and outer dangers may you be well in body and mind may you be content happy and at ease may you be filled with loving kindness may you be safe from inner and outer dangers may you be well in body and mind may you be content happy and at ease now I invite you to bring to mind yourself might be your younger self or yourself sitting here and I'm going to say these phrases again but this time using I and really all you are doing is wishing yourself well so do your best to feel it for yourself or you could imagine your best friend or the person of being that you have been just saying the well wishes for saying these phrases back to you may I be filled with loving kindness may I be safe from inner and outer dangers may I be well in body and mind may I be content happy and at ease be filled with loving kindness may I be safe from inner and outer dangers may I be well in body and mind may I be content happy and at ease now I invite you to bring to mind people in your community and it could be the community here the mhpn community who are all here doing this meditation and as I say these wishes know that you are getting this wishes back for yourself so visualizing this very large supportive community in your mind we wish each other may you be filled with loving kindness may you be safe from inner and outer dangers may you be well in body and mind may you be content happy and at ease be filled with loving kindness may you be safe from inner and outer dangers may you be well in body and mind may you be at ease content and happy we now sit in silence for a couple of minutes as you bathe yourself in these loving wishes and this positivity in stillness calm and peace I invite you to acknowledge the sense of spaciousness calmness perhaps ease and contentment that you're feeling right now as I close the meditation with the sound of three bells thank you everybody I hope that was a pleasant experience for you and I just want to say one thing or two things one thing is that it is my hope that we will all one day treat mindfulness practices as brushing like like we treat brushing our teeth we don't think twice about brushing our teeth we don't arm and arm and consider whether we have time or not whether we feel like it or not we just do it because it's just part and parcel of what we do every day I hope after hearing about the benefits of mindfulness you will treat mindfulness the same way and you can start by just doing a couple of minutes a day allowing yourself to sit and be with your breath to sit in silence and I think this poem that you see on screen is really something that is worth kind of remembering little by little I'll learn to know the trash it wisdom of long ago and one of these days perhaps we'll see that the world will be the better for me and do you not think that this simple plan made him or her a wise and useful man or lady and the only other thing I wanted to offer is that I do offer free online meditation on Wednesday as a midweek research if you want very happy to share the zoom link with you and you can also visit my website and cheetah live.com for other talks and and blogs I hope you have a lovely evening and I hope you enjoy the rest of the conference thank you very much everyone