In 1996, Dr Jill Bolte Taylor, a Harvard-trained, Indiana-based neuroanatomist, had a rare kind of stroke, at the rather young age of 37. It left her unable to walk, talk, read, write or, indeed, recall any part of her life. It took her eight years to recover her physical functions and thinking ability, but what was the most remarkable was that she had memories of the stroke, which she used in order to understand the powers that the brain holds. She harnessed those powers to aid her recovery. In her book, My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey , she talks about managing negative thoughts by acknowledging them and the accompanying emotions, and then observing as your body releases the stress hormones — she calls this the ‘hormone dump’. According to Dr Taylor, the Hormone Dump lasts about 90 seconds, in which the negative feeling dissipates, and keeps you from getting all caught up in it. “You are responsible for the energy you bring,” she says.
What is heartfulness?
It is this ‘energy’ that will help you heal, as it did in her case. But energy, as we know, is not self-contained. It will also spread out around you, touching people you interact with. It’s the point of #mondaymorningmotivation and #powerofpositivity affirmations on social media. This is where heartfulness comes in — as a natural corollary to mindfulness. It’s also called kindfulness, because it is about giving of ourselves.
Research on mindfulness concentrates on the benefits to the individual. It was seen to improve employee focus, attention and behaviour, as seen in a study titled ‘Contemplating Mindfulness at Work’, published last year. It helps reduce rumination, stress, emotional reactivity, while increasing working memory and cognitive flexibility, according to the American Psychological Association (APA).
“It has emotional, physiological and neurobiological benefits,” says Kolkata-based psychotherapist Mansi Poddar. “As Dr Taylor’s case exemplifies, it calms our nervous system, taking it from a sympathetic fight-or-flight posit to the parasympathetic nervous system, which restores and heals our body, post stress, anxiety or trauma. It also lowers the levels of the stress hormones epinephrine, norepinephrine and cortisol.” Plus it’s good for gut health. “It has been found that many digestive disorders are related to mental health,” explains Poddar. “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, or MBSR as we call it, improves your enteric nervous system, which controls your digestion.”
All good things, but how does it impact those whose lives overlap with ours? The APA talks about its benefits to counsellors: empathy, compassion, counselling skills. The new focus of mindfulness, is the positive effect it can have on those around us. Heartfulness is really a product of mindfulness, which in turn comes from meditation that focusses on bringing awareness to the moment. Except that heartfulness takes it a step further, to include everything around you. Contrary to the popular perception of meditation — that it requires you to shut yourself out to ‘the world’ — heartfulness brings you to a state of awareness of the world, not just your own being.
Rohan Gunatillake is the author of Modern Mindfulness: How to Be More Relaxed, Focused, and Kind While Living in a Fast, Digital, Always-On World . His UK-based company, Mindfulness Everywhere, has developed the meditation app, Buddhify. He says, “Mindfulness, when done well, is really all about other people. Through understanding ourselves, we start to understand other people, because while it might feel like our experience is unique, the reality is that human experience is shared.”
Bringing love to life
Prof Karam Tej Singh Sarao teaches Applied Buddhism and works at the Department of Buddhist Studies, University of Delhi. He’s the author of Origin and Nature of Ancient Indian Buddhism . He says, “In this world, no matter how hard you try, you cannot completely avoid being violent, or inflicting injury on another being — whether it is a plant you eat, or bacteria you may have to kill, because it’s making you sick. Non-violence cannot be an absolute in life, for if that’s what you strive for, you will not be able to survive. The way around it, then, is to have a compassionate heart. It translates into the values of empathy, sharing and cooperation. It means we don’t waste (serve ourselves only as much as we really can eat), we share what we have (if we have enough of something and somebody else has none, we give them some, even if it means we have a little less for ourselves), we don’t walk away from somebody who needs help (at an accident site, we stop and help).”
One study this year established that the supervisors’ trait of mindfulness in the office was “positively associated with different facets of employee well-being, such as job satisfaction and need satisfaction, and different dimensions of employee performance, such as in-role performance and organisational citizenship behaviours.” Another study recorded that “individuals high in mindfulness report that they are more likely to act ethically, are more likely to value upholding ethical standards.”
The one area where heartfulness has the maximum impact — as a cause as well as an effect — is relationships. An important aspect of this is being present. “For example, when in conversation with another person, we can work on really listening to them rather than just waiting for them to shut up, so we can say what we want to say,” explains Gunatillake. “Life is relational (not transactional), and so when we listen better to others, they will treat us better,” Poddar concurs.
“In the course of my work, I find that people who practise MBSR are less irritable and more present during interactions,” she says. “They also enjoy more satisfying sexual relationships. This, possibly, has to do with the fact that a person who is focused on loving kindness, will feel less anxious. It helps reduce social anxiety, and even helps with addictions recovery.” All helpful for ourselves, but also helpful for those around.
