Mindful Communication type 1 - Intrapersonal

Does that monkey in your mind run away with your thoughts?  

You’re not alone! We all have that ‘mindless monkey business’ going on in our heads. If you feed it, it will stick around, if you do what I explain below, that monkey will pack its bags and go.

If you’re like most of us, you’ve probably noticed that as you go through life, your mind often engages in a continual stream of internal chatter, known as self-talk. It’s like having an internal narrator commenting on all your thoughts. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, especially when your self-talk is positive and supportive. Other times though, like when you’re under stress, your self-talk just adds fuel to the fire.

Have you ever talked to yourself and made yourself feel worse than you were already feeling? 

Do runaway thoughts keep you awake at night? 

This is the type of self-talk you probably want to eliminate. 

Here’s how…

This first type of mindful communication enables us to defuse negative self talk, or the inner critic, or runaway thoughts (a.k.a ‘monkey mind’). It will help you to fall asleep peacefully and get well needed rest at night. It is also useful in establishing a functional communication channel with your Unconscious Mind, so that you can understand and act on those important signals and impulses, as well as direct your inner self to heal, perform and attract the results that you want in your life. Self talk generally distracts us from these valuable outcomes.

The interesting thing about unwanted self talk is that the more you don’t want it, the more you have it. Resisting self talk, causes it to persist. So in general, a useful way to eliminate unwanted self talk is to stop feeding it with your attention. Your attention is food for your self talk. A parasite needs the optimal conditions for it to exist, similarly thoughts and self talk require nourishment in the form of attention and encouragement for them to reside in our consciousness. Removing this attention and encouragement causes negative thoughts and self talk to pack their bags and leave.

Our approach is not to try block thoughts or distract ourselves from having them, but rather to change the way in which we are aware of them. Instead of focussing our attention on the content of our thoughts and creating stories out of them or criticising ourselves for having such thoughts, we shift our perceptual frame of reference through opening the aperture of our awareness. This results in the unwanted thoughts or self talk loosing energy and thereby disappearing.

The skill of peripheral awareness (one of the open awareness techniques) facilitates an opening of our perceptual frame of reference and creates ‘space’ around the thoughts. Victor Frankl was credited for the quote: “Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space lies our freedom and power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom.” The spacial awareness that this skill cultivates creates distance between the thinker and the thoughts, thereby enabling one to identify less with the thoughts which in turn helps one to not be affected by one’s thoughts or self talk. With practice, the space becomes progressively more easy to tune into and the thought stream tuned out of. With relative ease one can achieve the ability to drop into that serene space at the mere intention to do so. This is a welcomed ability in stressful situations.

Peripheral awareness does not obliterate thoughts or emotions, it creates distance from them so that we can learn from situations, understand ourselves better and respond from a broader perspective. From this space we are less controlled by thoughts and emotions, more able to think creatively and resourcefully or transcend our thoughts completely for the purpose of meditation.

Don’t let that monkey get away with your mind anymore!

Those who have participated in my peripheral awareness research, as well as my course participants and clients have reported that this skill is highly effective at calming the mind and body, accessing a state of inner peace and resourcefulness, while becoming compassionate toward oneself and others. This is the intrapersonal type of mindful communication.

Mindful Communication type 2 – Interpersonal (interacting with others)

Mindful Communication type 3 – Transpersonal (interacting with subtle realms)

Here is an audio-programme integrating mindful communication with practical applications in various contexts.

The key factor in the intrapersonal type of mindful communication is peripheral awareness. Here is a video where I teach this skill.