How to Be Human

by Ruby Wax

  This isn’t a time to retaliate or slide into mudslinging. For example, ‘You never listen to me.’ ‘I don’t listen because you’re always nagging.’ ‘I’m always nagging because you don’t listen.’ The idea is to just try and understand what the other person means. If you can’t remember what they’ve said (it might be because we usually don’t want to hear it) write down what they’re saying.

  Step 3. Using the ‘I’ word

  Now, the listener responds with how they feel about what they’ve just heard. Don’t use the accusatory ‘you’, as in ‘You’re always complaining about everything.’ Stick with feelings, say, for example, ‘When you say that, I feel helpless/guilty/angry/relieved …’

  Step 4. Change places

  Do the exercise again, changing roles: the listener becomes the speaker, the speaker the listener.

  Step 5. Resolution

  Discuss what you can each do to accommodate the other’s needs, letting the ideas free fall. Ask each other what would it take emotionally, physically and financially to fulfil the needs of each other. If you both make a decision, discuss who’s going to do what. If you both decide you’d like to go away, decide who’s choosing the hotel. Who’s making the reservations? Who’s planning how to get there? Better to make the rules now before you fall into old habits.

  Step 6. Reviewing

  Tell each other how you felt about the exercise, trying to be positive. Say things like, ‘I liked how you handled that when it started to get spiky,’ rather than, ‘For once, you held back from yapping.’

  Note: If at any time during the exercise you find that things are falling into their usual rut or emotions are mounting, call time out. Agree on a time when you might want to try the exercise again, or seek a counsellor who knows how to hold the floor steady when partners have conflicts.

  Exercise 2: Using Your Eyes as an Anchor

  If you’re with someone who’s infuriating you, you can use your senses as an anchor to cool down your engines and stop you from retaliating or imploding. I use my sense of sight when I’m about to flip my lid. I’ll focus my attention on a feature of the person’s face: eyebrow, nostril (keep it near their eyes so they feel you’re paying attention). If you focus on the shape, colour, texture, density of the eyebrow, you’re in sensing mode and thoughts like, ‘I hate this person … he’s lying … she’s cheating … I want a divorce will fade. Whenever you feel you’re about to blow your top, focus back to the eyebrow.

  You could also do this by sending your focus to the sound of the other person’s voice rather than the actual content of their words. Listen as you would to music or ambient sound; to the volume, tone, notes, quality and silences between notes. Stay with the noise, not the lyrics. The madder they get, the more it might sound like an opera or a construction site. If you can keep the atmosphere steady by focusing on sight or sound, in the end, they have nothing to bounce their anger off.

  Exercise 3: Who am I?

  Each of us is made up of many personas. My list is endless – what character I’m playing can change hundreds of times a day, depending on the situation. Here are a few labels I give some of my personalities:

  The victim

  The aggressor

  The doer

  The optimist

  The pessimist

  The exhausted one

  The helpless one

  The parent

  The child

  Write down some of your personas. Don’t analyse why you have them, just familiarize yourself with them. With the awareness that comes from mindfulness, you can tell which character you’re playing at any particular moment. If you can observe your role, you won’t be at its mercy, you’ll be in charge. Once you know where your mind is, you can decide if you want to stay with that role or change it to someone more appropriate.

  Over time, it will become easier to recognize and accept your own and other people’s negative and positive personas. The better you get to know yourself, the better you’ll understand others. If, for example, they’re in their devil mode, rather than switching on your devil mode, decide to switch to your adorable mode and then (hopefully) the other person will switch to theirs.

  I do this with Ed. If I’m in a bitchy state and I tell him, he knows to not tell me the boiler’s broken and needs fixing. He knows I’ll go into a rampage. If I tell him I’m in my nice persona, he knows it’s an opportune time to give me bad news. I might even say, ‘Boiler, schmoiler – who cares?’

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  Mindfulness Exercises for Kids

  THUBTEN’S EXERCISES

  Exercise 1: Mindful Breathing

  Breathing regulates stress and the state of the body and mind. It’s difficult for kids to stay focused on their breathing, but here’s an exercise they should find easy and, hopefully, fun. I would suggest avoiding breathing practices if the child has a health issue, unless under the right supervision.

  Step 1. Ask the child to sit upright on their chair, like a king or queen sitting on their throne. Get them to feel where their body is in contact with the chair and where their feet are touching the floor.

  Step 2. Ask them to take three deep breaths, breathing through their nose if they can (if it’s uncomfortable, tell them to breathe through the mouth). Count out loud to guide them.

  Suggest images to them for the out breath:

  Picture the breath being like steam from a steam train

  … or the breath of a dragon

  … or strong wind blowing through the trees.

  Also suggest that, when they’re breathing out, they’re releasing all their anxiety, worry and tension. (They don’t need to use imagery for the in breaths.)

  After the cycle of three deep breaths, they should return to normal breathing.

  Step 3. The next step is for them to mentally count their breaths (in and out is one cycle) while breathing totally naturally and without effort. Ask them to breathe through their nose, but if it’s uncomfortable then through the mouth. As they count each cycle, they can use their fingers – using the forefinger and thumb of the left hand to gently pinch the end of the thumb and then each of the finger tips, one by one, of the right hand.

  Tell them to count, silently, for five or ten cycles. Whenever they get distracted, tell them not to get frustrated but simply to go back to number 1 and start again.

  Repeat for a few minutes.

  Step 4. Ask them to make a wish for happiness and peace for all. This is a little moment of compassion training. With all mindfulness practices, it’s good to add a compassionate intention to the session. Kids can relate to this if it’s very simple, like making a wish.

  Exercise 2: Play Dough

  This exercise helps young people to get in touch with mindfulness using physical sensations.

  Tell them to hold a lump of soft clay or putty (play dough is best, but anything that can be squeezed and moulded) in one or both hands. Tell them to squeeze it and to focus on all the sensations in their hands: the weight, texture and other qualities. When they become distracted, tell them to return their focus to the feeling of the clay or play dough in their hands.

  Exercise 3: Grandmother’s Footsteps

  This game can be played with any number of participants. It’s a well-known game, and it naturally encourages mindfulness, with a sense of fun.

  All the kids stand at one end of the garden except one kid who stands at the other end, facing away from the others. The kids walk very slowly and carefully towards the one with his/her back turned. That kid can turn around at any time, and then all the other kids have to freeze. If anyone is caught still moving, they have to go back to the start line. The winner is the one who manages to make it all the way up, and touch the back of the main kid. The winner then takes their place and the game starts again.

  This is mindfulness training through playing a game. As the kids are quietly creeping forward they have to be completely present and aware of their bodies, but also be totally focused on when the kid in front might turn
around.

  Exercise 4: What’s the Time, Mr Wolf?

  This one is a bit more intense, but kids love it!

  One kid is ‘Mr Wolf’. They stand at one end of the garden with their back to the others, who stand at the other end in a straight line.

  As in the previous game, they creep forward, this time, chanting, in unison, ‘What’s the time, Mr Wolf?’

  Mr Wolf with their back turned says, for example, ‘One o’clock’ and the kids take one step forward; two steps for two o’clock, and so on. They’re aiming to reach Mr Wolf, but at any time Mr Wolf can shout, ‘Dinner time!’ and chase the kids back to the start line. The first one to be caught becomes Mr Wolf and the game starts again.

  Some kids will take huge steps to try and reach Mr Wolf; others will take cautious little steps so they can run back to safety when Mr Wolf turns around. When the children notice this about themselves, it can help to nurture self-awareness and emotional intelligence.

  As with the previous exercise, begin the game by telling the kids how to be mindful while they walk.

  Exercise 5: Exam Nerves

  This exercise is good for exam nerves. It can be done any time before an exam or even for a few seconds during the exam.

  Step 1. Sit in a chair and take three deep breaths, breathing in through the nose, out through the mouth. With each out breath, feel that all nerves and tension dissolve out of the body. Imagine the out breath as dark smoke, as if the body and mind are being cleansed of discomfort.

  Step 2. Return to normal breathing and feel your shoulders drop and the stomach relax.

  Step 3. Mentally count five or ten cycles of breathing. Breathe naturally, with no effort, and silently label each complete cycle; in and out breath is one, then in and out is two. If the mind becomes distracted, just go back to number 1. Do this a few times.

  RUBY’S EXERCISES

  If you’re teaching a child mindfulness, pretend it’s a game and, above all, NEVER BORE THEM!

  From an early age you can start helping them sharpen up awareness of their senses. They don’t need to know that awareness of senses lowers stress or that it creates neural rewiring for the better, just make it fun.

  Exercise 1: Cloud-spotting

  Ask your child to think of their mind as a clear blue sky and their thoughts as clouds. The conditions of the clouds change, just as thoughts do; sometimes they’re heavy, thunderous, dense, foggy, sometimes fabulously fluffy. Whatever the state of the clouds, the clear blue sky is always above them. If your kid doubts you, tell them to buy a plane ticket, go up there and check it out.

  Exercise 2: Mouthing Off

  Another game that helps a kid to learn to focus on a sense is to ask them to describe what the food in their mouths tastes like right now. They’ll love that you’re breaking the rules, encouraging them to talk with their mouths full. They probably won’t get many words out because they’ll be laughing and, when you get someone to laugh, they’re at their most open for learning. Encourage them to really get into the taste, the texture, the temperature, and so on.

  Exercise 3: Breathing Buddy

  As adults, it’s hard to sit and focus on your breath; for a child, it can be challenging and scary. On the other hand, the fastest way to learn to self-regulate emotions and thoughts is through steadying the breath. Breathing patterns reflect our internal states. With hard, fast breathing, we’re usually in our fight-or-flight mode; with relaxed breathing, we’re calm. Again, you don’t need to mention anything about mindfulness, just make experimenting with different kinds of breathing into a game.

  Ask your child to lie on their back and put one of their favourite toys on their stomach (their ‘breathing buddy’). Suggest they give their toy a ride by breathing in and out, and watch the toy move up and down. They may begin to notice that the toy becomes steadier as their breathing gets calmer. The steadier the breath, the happier the toy. Not a bad image for them to carry around.

  Exercise 4: Making Homework not Work

  I mentioned in the chapter on kids that not everyone learns best when sitting at a desk. Each of us is equipped differently, so we’re all going to have individual learning techniques, and kids need to figure these out for themselves. (Schools don’t usually help you find it.)

  If your child isn’t learning anything during homework time, and this will be easy to identify, because they’ll be slumped over with eyes shut, now is the time to experiment with what might ignite their curiosity. You’ll be able to tell when it works, because their eyes will be open and lit up. When it comes to taking the test, if they’re relaxed and happy when they studied, they’ll be relaxed and happy when they recall the information. If, before an exam, you recall a happy memory, cortisol levels are reduced by about 15 per cent.

  My Story

  I remember my parents almost bolting me to the chair and forcing me to do homework. It was not a success. No matter how long they made me sit there, nothing would go into my head. I’m not going to lie to you, when I was around twelve, a few times I cheated in tests. We were being tested on the Declaration of Independence and nothing was sticking in my brain so I wrote it out on my upper thighs. This is probably why my body is so flexible to this day: from having to be able to do a backbend to read what’s on the back of my legs. I do not recommend these methods but, due to personal problems at home, I couldn’t learn anything. Eventually, when I left home later in life, I no longer needed to resort to tattooing American history on my flesh.

  Have your kid figure out how and where they learn best. Make sure you tell them that everything is possible. If they need to study something, they need to do the reading and then go over and over it in their minds wherever they feel most relaxed: while swimming, skipping, dancing, singing it out loud, playing ping-pong, lying in bed, teaching their pet or teaching their toy.

  The most important thing to teach your child is emotional intelligence. They’ll probably never have to repeat the Declaration of Independence ever again in their life, but they’ll always need emotional intelligence. It ensures a longer, happier life, more friends, less freak-outs and helps create peace on earth. Is there a better Christmas present?

  Exercise 5: Dress Up

  When your kid dresses up, which they all love to do, have them tell you what it’s like to be in the other person’s shoes. If they’re trying on Daddy or Mommy’s shoes, ask them to tell you what Daddy and Mommy are like inside, how they think and feel. This goes for dressing up as fairies, goblins, monsters, ghosts. This exercise teaches them empathy at an early age.

  Exercise 6: Noticing

  Suggest to your child when they’re walking down the street, watching YouTube, playing a video game or watching TV to imagine what the person or character on screen is like. You can turn the volume off, if it’s on a screen, and have them imagine where the character lives, who their friends are, what makes them laugh, were they ever abducted into a UFO? This is early training for empathy, and that’s the greatest training you could ever get or give anyone.

  If you get really good at this, you can even start imagining what people are thinking behind their tweets. Probably, Help me, I’m lonely, please know I exist.

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  Mindfulness Exercises for Addiction

  THUBTEN’S EXERCISES

  Through mindfulness we can gradually become less controlled by addictive impulses. They, too, are thoughts and, through training, we can learn to let go so that the addiction will have less of a hold over us. Mindfulness needs to be practised regularly, not just in emergencies. Just as regular exercise helps your body to retain less fat, regular mindfulness practice will get the mind to cling less to habitual patterns.

  Working with the body scan, or the breath, as in the exercises for thoughts, are good ways of focusing the attention away from the craving, breaking the cycle of addiction.

  Exercise 1: Investigate the Craving

  There are two ways to investigate: one is through directly focusing on sensation, the other is through cons
tructive thinking.

  Sit upright in a chair in a quiet place, with good posture, or lie on the floor.

  Become aware of your body where it makes contact with the floor or the chair, just for a few moments.

  Method 1: Then focus directly on the feeling of addiction itself; maybe the craving feeling is already present as a sensation in the body. Don’t chase the object of the craving, in fact drop all the stories and zoom in to the exact sensations. The feeling has now become your object of meditation, just as you would use body or breath in mindfulness practice.

  As you shine the light of awareness into the feeling, it may even start to dissipate and dissolve.

  Method 2: This is different from previous mindfulness exercises. It’s called contemplative mindfulness, where you use your thoughts to gain insight or a different perspective.

  Gently ask yourself these questions without getting caught up in story lines. • ‘If I feed this addiction will it just come back stronger?’

  • Or, ‘Is there a loneliness or a sadness underneath this?’

  • Or maybe there are other questions you’d like to ask.