Mindfulness Meditation and Smoking Cessation

Stop Smoking Cigarettes By Applying

Mindfulness Meditation As A Strategy

By George Shears

Summary: Mindfulness is a powerful aid for anyone who wants to stop smoking cigarettes or any other compulsive habit. Although challenging, it's profoundly simple and has a huge positive payoff.

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For anyone who is a long-time habitual smoker, the challenge to stop smoking cigarettes is usually overwhelmingly difficult. As is well known, even for smokers who are successful in quitting, relapse rates are very high. In order to be successful, therefore, it's essential to utilize the most powerful long-range strategy that's available.

There's a strong argument to be made for including mindfulness meditation as one part of such a strategy. It can be very helpful in two distinct ways.

On the one hand, it can provide an effective means of coping with the intense symptoms of nicotine withdrawal and craving that inevitably arise with smoking cessation. There is now abundant evidence that this particular application, which is commonly called mindfulness-based stress reduction, provides a highly effective way to cope with all forms of physical pain, discomfort, or distress.

Secondly there's growing evidence that mindfulness, when applied consistently over time, can help weaken the subtle but powerful mental habits that underlie all compulsive forms of behavior and which make them so strongly resistant to change. There is now also solid neuroscience evidence that the consistent practice of mindfulness can actually alter the structure of the brain in measurable and seemingly positive ways, giving rise to increased equanimity and positive affect.

So what is mindfulness? Most basically, it consists in simply paying careful, moment-to-moment attention to all internal and external experience while simultaneously accepting it and allowing it to be just as it is, without judging or trying to change it in any way whatever. It is, in other words, a means of living fully, consciously, and non-reactively in the present moment, instead of reacting negatively, or getting attached, to current experience and/or getting lost in thoughts about the past or the future.

This tendency to get "lost in thought" is strongly habitual for most people. At the very least, it tends to deprive us of "capturing our moments"--i.e., of living fully in the present. Even worse, however, since much of our thinking is negative, it's a major root cause of what we commonly call "stress."

Since mindfulness training has been shown to decrease stress, which is known to be strongly correlated with both smoking rate and smoking relapse rates, there is reason to expect that mindfulness training might lower these two measures.

Mindfulness training has also been shown to decrease negative affect, which is a potent stimulus for drug-seeking behavior and smoking relapse. So, again, such training can reasonably be expected to have positive effects.

Some initial research studies have utilized mindfulness meditation in helping people stop smoking. In one of these studies, 56% of the subjects showed biologically-confirmed smoking abstinence six weeks after quitting. It was also found that "compliance with meditation was positively associated with smoking abstinence and with decreases in stress and affective distress."

These early results, then, along with the strong theoretical basis for the probable benefit of mindfulness training in smoking cessation, supports its inclusion in an effective stop-smoking strategy. This is especially true in view of its many other positive benefits

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction--Some Basic Assumptions

1. The universe (or "Great Nature") is a constantly changing process.

2. At any point in time, however, it is just the way it is. There is absolutely no other way it can be. THIS IS IT!

3. We humans are seamlessly interwoven into the fabric of Great Nature. We are none other than Great Nature.

4. As such, we too are constantly changing, but at any point in time there is absolutely no other way we can be than how we are--including whatever we are experiencing in this moment.

5. To be consciously aware and accepting of this is skillful or wise--that is, in harmony with basic reality. To not recognize/accept it is to oppose reality. This inevitably creates suffering. This suffering is essentially a form of friction.

6. The more we are aware and accepting of how we are--that is, what we are experiencing in this moment--the less we suffer and the more we experience happiness and peace of mind.

7. When we experience pleasure, we tend to become attached to it and want it to continue.

8. When we experience pain--whether physical or mental/emotional--we dislike it and want it to end. We tend to resist it automatically, avoid it, condemn it and try to escape from it. All such attempts to escape from pain--whether gross or subtle--can be understood as "terminating reactions." They range from highly skillful to highly unskillful. Many of them develop into addictions. Automatic reactions to physical pain typically add to the pain. Observing such pain mindfully and learning how to "relax into it" can be a much more effective way to cope with it. The greater the resistance to pain, the more suffering is experienced. In principle, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. The following formula generally defines how pain, resistance, and suffering are inter-related: Pain X Resistance = Suffering.

9. Attachment to pleasure and aversion to pain causes suffering. Both are forms of resistance to a basic universal law--constant change or impermanence.

10. The human mind has two very different aspects or modes: A) Pure awareness (the unconditioned mind or "Big Mind")); and B) the mind of habit formations (the conditioned mind or "little mind"), including concepts, beliefs, assumptions, judgments, interpretations, images, attitudes, intentions, and feelings. Very importantly, the conditioned mind includes the construct or concept of an enduring self, with which we tend to be very strongly identified. Most of our energy is channeled automatically into sustaining, promoting and trying to protect this mentally constructed "I" or self. This is the basis for much distress and suffering.

11. The unconditioned mind of awareness is unchanging and always available. In order to be "in this mind," however, it is necessary to let go of all mental formations and to shift consciously into non-interfering, moment-to-moment awareness or "bare attention." Learning how to make this shift and to sustain it requires commitment and persistent practice. Through such practice, most people can develop this skill in high degree and, as a result, experience increased peace and fulfillment and much less suffering in their lives. Until it is developed, however, we continue to be strongly identified with, and at the mercy of the automatic reactive mind, suffering all of the distress that it entails.

12. Being aware, moment to moment, on purpose, without judgment (that is, without attachment or aversion) is to practice MINDFULNESS.

13. As long as we are able to shift into awareness--that is, to be mindful--there's more "right" than "wrong" with us. That is, we are in position to shift into "just being" and to experience the intrinsic meaningfulness that this entails.

14. This moment is the only time we have to practice and to live. To miss our moments is to miss our lives. THIS IS IT!

The Characteristics of Mindfulness

Adapted from Mindfulness in Plain English by Bhante Gunaratana:

1. Mindfulness is very much like a non-distorting mirror. That is, it reflects only what is presently happening and in exactly the way it is happening.

2. It is completely non-judgmental. In observing mindfully, there is absolutely no evaluation of any kind. Whatever is happening in the mind/body in the present moment is accepted just as it is. There is no taking sides. There is no clinging to what is pleasant and no fleeing or avoidance of what is unpleasant. All experiences are regarded as equal: All sensations are equal; all thoughts are equal; all feeling states are equal. Nothing is suppressed. Nothing is repressed. Nothing is emphasized. Mindfulness does not play favorites--it just experiences "what is."

3. It is not thinking. While thoughts can be important objects of mindfulness, they are not identified with in being observed. In mindfulness, moreover, they are not regarded as having any intrinsic validity; rather, they are rcognized as "just thoughts." Mindfulness does not compare, label, analyze, or categorize. It observes every experience as if it were occurring for the first time. This aspect of mindfulness has been called "beginner's mind." All of reality is experienced directly and immediately in mindfulness. Very importantly,it comes before thought in the perceptual process--just as it came before thought in our personal development as well.

4. It occurs totally and continuously in the present. When you are mindful, you are always experiencing what is happening right now. It is like riding perpetually on the crest of the ongoing wave of passing time.

5. It is completely non-egoistic or non-personal; that is, all phenomena being witnessed mindfully are simply experienced as the flow of nature, without any reference to concepts like "me," "my," or "mine." So, for example, a pain in your right foot would simply be observed as sensations changing across time--not as "I have a pain in my right foot." This thought may, indeed, occur; and if it does, it too could be observed mindfully. Mindfulness, however, does not add the concept of a self who is "having" the experience. It does not add anything to, or subtract anything from, what is perceived. It just observes exactly what is there in the moment--without distortion.

6. Mindfulness has no goal. It does not try to achieve or accomplish anything. It does not try to achieve or accomplish anything. It does not try to change anything. It observes just to observe. Although there well may be many expectations or preconceptions in the mind about the effects of practicing mindfulness, these are just ideas--not mindfulness.

7. Mindfulness is awareness of change. It observes the passing flow of experience. It witnesses the ongoing "flow of impermance" in the mind/body--how all phenomena are born, continue for a time, and then die. This process of change is observed precisely and continuously and includes how these phenomena are inter-connected--how, for example, a sound may be followed by a thought, which may be followed by sensations or feelings in the body, which may be followed by aversion or desire, etc.

8. It is non-interfering observation. That is, the practice of mindfulness does not in any way interfere with whatever is being experienced. For example, if you are experiencing intense fear, you may be mindful of it while also experiencing it fully. The same is true for all of your experience. This is a very important point to understand. In practicing mindfulness, one is defnitely not escaping from, or avoiding, feelings or any other aspect of inner experience. Mindfulness is not "numbing out;" in fact, it is a means for being fully present to all that we experience--pleasant, unpleasant, and neutral. In effect, it is a means of "escaping into" our experience. It is for this reason that Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn calls the practice of mindfulness "full catastrophe living."

My Personal Background in Mindfulness Training

An Introduction

By George Shears

I'm a retired psychologist and psychotherapist living in the northwoods of Minnesota. My main mission in retirement is to live in harmony with Great Nature as fully as possible and to serve others in whatever ways I can.

I've been a student of Buddhist Psychology and have personally practiced mindfulness meditation since 1975.

Recognizing clearly that these disciplines are strongly complementary to Western psychology and psychotherapy, I incorporated them actively in helping my clients.

During the late 1970's, I learned that Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester, MA was pursuing a similar path.

After participating in a week-long workshop with him and his colleague, Saki Santorelli, in 1992, I developed and taught the first hospital-based program in Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction in Minnesota. I continued to teach this course until I retired in 1999.Since that time, similar courses have proliferated all over the world as mindfulness training has increasingly become mainstream.

In 2002, I collaborated with Laura Kimmes in carrying out a 6-week pilot program in mindfulness training with sixth-grade public school music students in Duluth, MN. This pioneer project, which showed modestly positive results, was a predecessor of many similar projects with school children throughout the U.S.

I'm strongly convinced, both through personal experience and from the impressive growing body of research on mindfulness training, that it's one of the most powerful interventions available in coping with chronic pain, anxiety, depression, and the generalized high levels of stress that nearly everyone experiences in the modern world.

Especially exciting is the emerging neuroscientific research showing that the practice of mindfulness meditation tends to modify the brain positively in measurable ways. This blog will include up-to-date links to these research findings.

I remain highly dedicated, therefore, in helping others to develop this profoundly valuable skill.