Living the now of mindfulness

By Virginia Winder
The Tasman Sea is roaring like an angry taniwha and the woman walking barefoot just beyond its surging clutches notices everything.
She inhales salt air tossed on a westerly wind, feels soft cool sand suck at her feet and watches a black dog tear along the beach, tongue lolling from a canine grin.
Then, madly, she plunges into the sea, focused only on each wave that rushes at her. Then she dives under a big wall of tumbling white froth and holds on to the sand, feeling the power of water pass over her.
She pops up, takes a deep gulp of air and faces the next wave.
For her, nothing else exists but her body and the sea. Every worry is gone, every looming bill, every job waiting to be done, every smudge of sorrow, all gone, left on dry land in what feels like another life.
This woman is in an absolute state of mindfulness, a concept that is finding favour with university scientists from Boston to Dunedin.
Earlier this year, a story in The Wow! Factor detailed research from Otago University that showed how women taught relaxation techniques and mindfulness had better relationships with food and, after two years, had maintained their weight or even shed a few kilos – all without dieting.
Study co-author Caroline Horwath, from the university’s human nutrition department, used relaxation response training modelled on the Harvard Mind/Body Medical Institute’s symptom reduction programme. Mindfulness was a big component of this.
Now, in Taranaki, a man from India is teaching mental health clients this new and yet ancient way of being – and it’s changing their lives.
Dr Samir Heble, 37, works for the Taranaki District Health Board and is one of the youngest clinical directors of mental health in New Zealand.
He came to New Zealand seven years ago from Goa in India. “I was seeing the different types of illnesses in the Western cultures and I felt the treatments we were doing were helping some but not everybody.”
He thought something from the Eastern cultures might be helpful and decided to run courses on mindfulness, a philosophy that he lives, breathes and writes about.
“Mindfulness is a concept that derived from Buddhism more than 2500 years ago. The basic principle is radical acceptance.”
However, he makes it clear that he is not a Buddhist and the programme is not based on religion.
“What mindfulness basically means is living in the present moment and accepting every moment is unique and has a special grandeur,” he says.
He acknowledges that both the past and future are important. “However, a lot of the time we get so engrossed in the past or engrossed in thinking about the future that we fail to relish and enjoy the present moment.”
In his courses, Dr Heble teaches how to focus on the now. Those who take his courses aren’t in crisis mode, but are heading towards recovery or are well and need tools to stay healthy.
“I tell the clients that this is one of the truths in life, but I don’t tell them it is the truth.”
He believes there are many other ways of living and if people have already found useful tools or treatments, Dr Heble doesn’t tell them to give these up. “I don’t tell them they should stop medicines or other therapies like CBT (cognitive behaviour therapy) because all that is equally as important. It (mindfulness) is another asset to what they already have.”
From a mindfulness perspective, a person’s mind is like a guest house. “All our thoughts, emotions, feelings, wishes, hopes, desires, ambitions, dreams, aspirations, projects, disappointments, pleasures are guests. Some of these are wanted guests and some are unwanted guests.”
People tend to only welcome the wanted guests and not the unwanted guests, like anger, frustration, grief. “That’s what creates the unease or the suffering, because the more we won’t take those unwanted guests in, the more they keep knocking at the door.”
Dr Heble teaches his clients to acknowledge both the joys and pains of life – the wanted and unwanted guests. “As soon as the unwanted are acknowledged, they tend to knock less and people will feel more at ease.”
Then he teaches people how to let go – that’s where a concept he calls “radical acceptance” comes to the fore.
In the first session he asks the group two questions – what is happiness and how do we find it.
The answers, 99 per cent of the time, refer to finding happiness via external forces – through pets, nice partners, good jobs, wealth and more. “From a mindfulness point of view, happiness doesn’t depend on external conditions; it’s a state of mind.”
It’s important for people to deal with thoughts and feelings in a non-judgemental way and remember that thoughts are just thoughts and are not necessarily truths.
“In some people’s lives their minds are like a balloon. If the wind is strong it goes in this particular direction and if the wind is stronger this way it goes in this direction,” he says, moving his head from side to side.
“No matter how strong the wind is we should be able to keep in one place.”
Dr Heble also turns to nature for some powerful lessons about the impermanence of life. “Whatever rises will fall. There are no exceptions.”
In his courses, he illustrates points with poetry and often uses his own works. “My grandfather was one of the national poets of India.”
He is talking of Balkrishna Bhagwant Borkar who, in 1967, received the Padmashree, an Indian national award, for services to literature and education.
People doing Dr Heble’s courses are also encouraged to write their own poetry or find words that inspire them.
The first workshop was held in the middle of last year, the second in November and December and the latest one began this month. The third course is being facilitated by the health board’s community adviser, Nic Magrath.
“It’s a six-week course, but mindfulness is a life-long process,” Dr Heble says.
There are about 20 people in the group and many have found the lessons helpful.
One patient says it has transformed her life. “I feel empowered and in control of my life for the first time in six years.”
The woman, who cannot be named because of privacy reasons, says the techniques are simple to use. “It’s made a huge difference to me. I use the skills I’ve learnt every day to cope with situations.”
She says big crowds no longer cause her anxiety. “I can go to the supermarket and out to dinner with friends – I never used to be able to do those things.”
Dr Heble says another woman who used to be lonely, no longer feels that way because mindfulness has taught her that she is part of nature.
“We are all made up of molecules and are part of the great cosmos,” he says.
“When I told that to one of the ladies in an earlier group, all the loneliness went away from her life. Each time she starts feeling lonely she looks out the window at the sun and the mountain and she feels part of the whole big universe and she’s not depressed now,” he says.
Mindfulness is about letting go of self, of ego and all expectations.
“One must hope and dream, and have aspirations, but do not have expectations because expectations are not always met and expectations are the root cause of most suffering,” he says.
But mostly, it’s about focusing on the moment.
The woman in the sea is deeper now.
She watches a wave rushing towards her and turns ready to ride it. Just at the instant before it breaks she begins swimming furiously towards land, feeling the sea lift her and throw her forward in a rush of white water and speed.
And she’s flying, lost in a pure moment of mindfulness.

Freaky Facts to keep in mind

1. Mindfulness is being used in research programmes around the world to help people improve their physical and mental health. It’s been trialled for many things, including the treatment of fibromyalgia, stress reduction, helping people to stop smoking and for cancer outpatients with sleep, mood, stress and fatigue symptoms.

2. One of the world’s leading advocates of mindfulness is Jon Kabat-Zinn.
He is the founding director of the Stress Reduction Clinic and the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care and Society at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. He teaches mindfulness meditation as a technique to help people cope with stress, anxiety, pain and illness. “The present is the only time that any of us have to be alive, to know anything, to perceive, to learn, to act, to change, to heal.”

3. Harvard Medical School is also backing mindfulness. It says mounting evidence shows mindfulness can increase life enjoyment, expand the ability to cope with illness, and possibly improve physical and emotional health. It says one of the more popular ways to practice mindfulness is through meditation, which involves sitting or lying down quietly for 20 or 30 minutes, once or twice a day.

4. The practice of mindfulness is being taught and researched at universities all around the world. Even Bangor University in northern Wales now has the Centre for Mindfulness Research and Practice. It is committed to the relief of suffering and the promotion of wellbeing through the application of mindfulness-based approaches.

5. Mindfulness has been integrated with Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to help people with mental illness. Researchers say the integrated treatment is a paradigm shift in psychotherapy.

NZ pigeons flock to park

By Virginia Winder

Pukekura Park is the New Zealand pigeon capital of the world.
So says Taranaki ornithologist David Medway who has been taking count of the plump birds that swoop-whir overhead like miniature Hercules helicopters.
“We have got more pigeons in New Plymouth city than any other city in New Zealand. I think I’m pretty safe in saying that because there are some cities like Hamilton that don’t have any pigeons and they are busy trying to attract them back.”
The native pigeon (Hemiphaga novaeseelandiae), also known as kereru, has become firmly established in the New Plymouth park and Medway believes there are about 20 birds in residence.
“It’s because of the variety of food that’s provided by the vegetation in the park year round that we are able to maintain such a good population.”
Also, the pigeons’ major foes – possums, ship rats (Rattus rattus) and stoats – are either in such low proportions in the park they don’t pose problems, or simply not there at all.
Perhaps that’s why they don’t venture far from the park boundaries.
During the day some of the pigeons will make flying visits to neighbouring properties, but generally, they don’t go far.
“But they tend to go back into the park – that’s their home base,” says the Friends of Pukekura Park vice-president.
When the Department of Conservation surveyed the park three or four years ago, they discovered the birds stuck close. “They were somewhat surprised at the little movement of pigeons here compared to elsewhere. In other areas, such as Invercargill, where they did their studies, pigeons travel kilometres to get to food sources, but they don’t need to do that here.”
Medway can back this up through his own observations.
“I embarked on a definitive study in Pukekura Park about 10 years ago,” says the retired lawyer.
He visits the park three to four times a week, for a few hours at a time, quietly, methodically, recording his observations of the birdlife.
During his studies, Medway has found that not only is the 52-hectare botanical garden (including the adjoining Brooklands Park) the native pigeon capital; it’s also the tui centre of the world. But that’s another story.
He also notes that pigeons are not easy to spot because after feeding they perch silently in trees for a couple of hours. “You might actually walk under a dozen pigeons and not even know they are there.”
Pigeons are herbivores, but they don’t just go for native plants.
That’s why Pukekura Park, which boasts a wide botanical collection of both home-ground plants and exotics, is such a bird magnet.
Because of this, Medway has had to become an amateur botanist and learn about the plants that lure the birds.
One of his most surprising discoveries is the fact that New Zealand pigeons are partial to magnolias. But not all varieties.
Medway says he’s never seen a pigeon eating a Magnolia grandiflora, or any other evergreen magnolia.
But he has seen them dining on the deciduous, especially sargentiana robusta, stellata and soulangeana magnolias. “The big old historic magnolia on the Brooklands lawn is Magnolia soulangeana.”
“The part the pigeons eat depends on the season. They eat the leaf buds and new leaves, flower buds and flowers of quite a variety of magnolias and magnolia cultivars.”
To make this clear here, the New Zealand pigeon doesn’t like all deciduous magnolia. Just like a person picking from a box of chocolates, the birds have their favourites.
Medway doesn’t know why they prefer some and ignore others.
“My studies show that from about June to October the pigeons in the park are feeding primarily on the foliage and flowers of a variety of different magnolias,” he says.
“That’s pretty unique in New Zealand because I know of nowhere else where pigeons rely to such an extent on magnolia. That’s one thing special about here.”
In fact, he hasn’t found any mention of pigeons feeding on magnolia anywhere else in the New Zealand and so plans to publish a scientific paper on the topic.
The pigeons do eat other plants, he says.
“In the later periods, they also rely on the new leaves of kowhai,” he says.
Bird watching is about being open-minded. “You’re learning all the time.”
But he is a man of pedantic accuracy.
He doesn’t totally dismiss stories of pigeons “drunk” on fermented fruits, or birds too full on berries to fly. But he does wonder if they are urban myths. “In my 50 or so years of bird observations I’ve never seen any of those things. I don’t deny that those things could happen, all I’m saying is I’ve never seen.”
But he has observed many pigeons munching magnolia.
And so, when he says Pukekura Park is the New Zealand pigeon capital, it’s best to believe him.
Caption: A New Zealand pigeon eating a loquat fruit in Pukekura Park. Photo: James Harmsen

NB: This story first appeared in the Taranaki Daily News on January 5, 2009

Freaky Facts about kereru

1) In Northland the New Zealand pigeon has the Maori name kuku or kukupa. Other places it’s known as kereru. On the Chatham Islands the native pigeon is called parea, but that’s a different species altogether, called Hemiphaga chathamensis.
2) The kereru has an important job helping the spread of native trees. Since the moa became extinct, back in the 1500s, the native pigeon is now the only seed disperser with a bill big enough to swallow large fruit, such as those of karaka, tawa and taraire, the DOC website says.
3) A New Zealand pigeon is a big bird. They can measure up to 51cm from tail to beak, and weight 650g.
4) Nest-making is not one of the kereru’s greatest skills. The pigeon throws together a flimsy nest of twigs and lays a single egg, which takes 28 days to hatch. Both parents take turns to sit on the egg.
5) Pigeon chicks are fed on a fruit smoothy mixture that helps them grow fast. This is made from a protein-rich milky secretion that comes from the walls of their parents’ crops, which is mixed fruit pulp. The chicks generally leave the nest after 40 days.

When the silverfish start to dance...

By VIRGINIA WINDER

A SMUDGE on the car windscreen won’t go away.

A squirt of water and quick flick of windscreen wipers makes no difference, neither does a firm, fast rub with a cloth on the inside glass.

Damn. The smudge has become a silverfish that slips out of sight.

Within minutes it’s joined by a line of quicksilver critters doing a zigzag dance in the peripheral vision of the driver’s eyes.

Slow-moving commuter traffic becomes a terrifying distortion of movement and flashing metal. So, with exaggerated care, the young woman noses her car to the side of the motorway and waits until a policeman finds her slumped over the steering wheel, hands covering light-sensitive eyes.

I got a police escort that day more than 20 years ago, because the man in blue knew what was going on in my head.

He was a migraine sufferer too. We are among 400,000 New Zealanders affected by this neurological disorder.

Of those sufferers, called migraineurs, 300,000 are women. The 3:1 ratio can possibly be blamed on hormone irregularities, which are listed among the triggers for this invisible illness.

Lack of sleep, stress, relaxation after stress, fatigue, overuse of over-the-counter pain relievers, irregular exercise, bright lights and smoke are named as other possible migraine starters. So is diet, including cheese, red wine and yes, coffee. Double damn.

While there are hundreds of research programmes going on around the world, scientists have yet to locate the definitive cause of this often debilitating disease.

“It is thought a migraine attack is triggered within the brain itself,” says the National Headache Foundation, in the United States.

The foundation says that once an attack begins, it is believed the pain and other symptoms of migraine stem from an inflammatory process.

This may be caused by an interaction between the trigeminal nerve (the fifth cranial nerve responsible for sensation in the face) and blood vessels in the coverings of the brain.

The brain chemical, serotonin, is linked to this inflammation, but its role is not yet clear.

Scientists in Japan are studying this connection.

While researchers have yet to pin down the underlying culprit, or culprits, there is no doubt it’s painfully real for the afflicted.

“Migraine is a legitimate, biological disease characterised by throbbing head pain, usually located on one side of the head, often accompanied by nausea and sensitivity to light and/or sound,” the American foundation says.

“Migraine is more common than asthma, diabetes or congestive heart failure,” its website says.

Similar information is echoed throughout the internet, including on the Neurological Foundation of New Zealand’s site.

“Though the causes are not precisely known, it is clear that migraine is a genetic disorder,” it says.

Global research isn’t good news for children of migraineurs. If one parent is a sufferer, there’s a 50% chance their children will also be afflicted. But if both parents get migraines, there’s a 75% probability their kids will inherit the illness.

The highest incidence of migraine occurs in both men and women aged between 20 and 45, but even toddlers can get migraines.

In fact children can get stomach migraines, which present as severe tummy aches.

Among all sufferers, only about 20% of people experience visual disturbances that herald the onset of a pounding head. This telltale sign is called a migraine aura.

People may see light flashes, blind spots, shimmering lights, or zigzag lines.

Or a smudge on a windscreen that turns into silverfish…

Unlocking the migraine puzzle

By VIRGINIA WINDER
AN Auckland University scientist is trying to unlock the key to migraine treatment.
Senior lecturer Dr Debbie Hay is leading a study into a group of molecules believed to play a role in the painful illness.
Dr Hay, from the university’s School of Biological Sciences, uses a lock-and-key metaphor to explain the basis of her study and how it is opening the door to migraine knowledge.
The key is a hormone called calcitonin gene-related peptide (CGRP), which is found in people’s nerves.
“People who have migraines have more of this in their blood,” she says.
This hormone fits into a lock, called a receptor.
When this happens, it causes blood vessels to open up. In medical terms, the hormone is a naturally occurring vasodilator. Migraine pain is thought to be caused by blood vessels in the brain opening up, allowing more blood to flow through them.
“That’s one of the reasons we think CGRP might be involved in migraines,” Dr Hay says.
But she is frank about scientists’ knowledge of the hormone’s role in migraines. “We don’t know if it’s causative or part of the process.”
In fact, the hormone is proving a bit of a mystery. “We don’t know exactly why we have it…we don’t know its true function yet. We know it has this relationship with migraines.”
Clinical trials overseas have shown that a new drug, which prevents the key fitting into the lock, or the hormone activating the receptor, is effective in treating migraines.
“The problem is that it has to be given by injection, which is not ideal,” Dr Hay says.
“We need to be able to design a better drug.”
This is where her research programme comes in. “I’m working very much at the molecular level to see how this drug interacts with the receptor so we might be able to design more useful drugs.”
a $492,000 biomedical grant from the Health Research Council of New Zealand is funding the three-year Auckland study.
“It’s an ongoing thing – it contributes to the global drug discovery process.”
Dr Hay says her work does not involve human samples or clinical trials, but she does consider the reality of her research. “I know people in the building who have migraines and I’m always very interested in them; it’s always important to talk to the end user.”

FREAKY FACTS... A pain in the head

1) The World Health Organisation ranks migraines in the top 20 of disabling medical conditions.
2) Botox treatment for frown lines may also help prevent migraines, according to a case report in Auckland.
3) Migraines cost the American taxpayers $US13 billion ($NZ18.4b) in missed work or reduced productivity annually.
4) Spanish researchers have found that treating inflammation in the eye’s trochlea tendon can relieve migraine pain.
5) Famous migraineurs include Elvis Presley (right), Albert Einstein, Julius Caesar, Joan of Arc, Cervantes, Pascal, Nietzsche, Robert E. Lee and Karl Marx.