Living Spinefully

When I teach mindfulness to the teenagers I work with, I divide mindfulness into “what,” “how,” and “why” skills, according to Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. The “what” of mindfulness are the practices themselves – whether that be meditation, observing details of your surroundings, or, as I attempted last week, being aware of my pain in the present moment. The “how” of mindfulness is the attitude that you bring to the practice. Last week, my attitude was one of non-judgment, as I tried to notice my pain without having an emotional reaction to it (which, by the way, is still a work in progress). In Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, an evidenced-based training found to reduce symptoms of anxiety, depression, and pain, Jon Kabat Zinn defines the Nine Attitudes of Mindfulness as 1) Non-judging, 2) Patience, 3) Beginner’s Mind, 4) Trust, 5) Non-Striving, 6) Acceptance, 7) Letting Go, 8) Gratitude, and 9) Generosity. These attitudes are not only helpful in formal mindfulness practices but also in cultivating a more balanced and intentional life, which is, after all, what I’m looking for – the “why” of mindfulness. This post will be the first in a series reflecting on how each mindfulness attitude relates to my scoliosis journey, and how I can practice them.

Non-Judgment

According to Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction, developing a non-judging attitude involves “assuming the stance of an impartial witness to your own experiences,” which requires first becoming aware of the constant flow of judgment and categorization that occurs naturally in our minds. For example, I am currently sitting in a coffee shop writing this post. In my mind, I am thinking about how I like the smell of the coffee grounds, how I don’t like the noise of the advertisement playing on someone’s phone, how it’s raining outside and I’m annoyed I didn’t bring an umbrella. These are all judgments, good and bad, that put my emotional state at the mercy of my surroundings and whether I “like” or “dislike” them. This is different from decision-making or discernment (such as checking the weather before I walked here, or deciding whether I can leave my tablet on the table while I run to the bathroom). An attitude of non-judgment of our surroundings allows us to reduce our emotional reactivity to our surroundings and find a place of emotional balance independent of our circumstances.

As a disease in the medical field, there’s a lot of language around scoliosis that implies judgment. If you were to read my medical charts, you would find words including “deformity,” “anomaly,” “protruding,” and “failed segmentation,” just to name a few. And although the words themselves don’t bother me as medical descriptors, it’s hard not to internalize these words into my sense of identity, especially when I was a kid. I think back to the years of hating how I looked in tight dresses for high school dances because of the way my waist is slightly asymmetrical. Back then, I definitely considered myself abnormal and deformed, and judged myself relentlessly for my one “fat hip.” It still bothers me a little at times, though not nearly as much. There’s a movement right now to change the language around scoliosis to be less judgmental – for example, changing “rib hump” to “rib prominence.” I think these efforts are well-intentioned, but honestly what I really needed as a teenager wasn’t different language around my body, but instead more representation. In the awkwardness and discomfort of teenage body image, I wanted to see someone else with asymmetrical hips, waist, legs, shoulders, collar bones, etc. Even in the inclusive body-positive campaigns, showing body types of all different shapes and sizes, I’ve never seen someone whose body looks like mine. Anyway, I know it’s not possible to represent every different disease, disorder, ability, etc., but it would have helped. Shout out to Barbie, who recently came out with a doll in a back brace!

Media and medical terminology aside, I am more than capable of judging my body on my own. When I compare what my body can do now to what it could do before my second surgery, it’s hard not to fall into the mindset that I’m broken. If I let myself, my mind can work up quite the storm of grief, frustration, hurt, denial, hopelessness, hatred, and rage towards my body, for all the ways I feel that it has failed me in the past, the present, and the future. That kind of thinking is a slippery slope and ultimately leads to me sitting in a puddle of tears, with no more answers or solutions than when I began. It’s here that I have to remind myself that a non-judging mindset applies to my mind’s tendency to judge, too. I can accept my past storms of hatred as part of my grief journey, while also acknowledging that they are no longer helpful to me, so I am choosing not to engage in them

 So what does non-judgment look like in my relationship with my body? In judging my body, I fall into the tendency, just as I did as a teenager, to view myself as broken and abnormal and to view everyone else as normal and healthy, which simply isn’t true. I don’t know if I can go so far as to say that I’m happy with the spine that I have, but perhaps I can say that my body is on a continuum of all other human bodies. It doesn’t function the best, nor the worst. It doesn’t require the most special care or the least. My body is the way it is, and beating myself up about it only leaves me less motivated to take care of it, which is what my body needs and deserves. This week, I’m going to continue practicing noticing my pain without telling a story about it, while also doing a daily body scan. A body scan is a very simple mindfulness practie in which you visualize each part of your body, from head to toe, and try to pay attention to and (non-judgmentally) describe any changing sensations you experience. Its benefits include reducing stress, promoting grounding, and encouraging self-compassion.

Until next time. Thanks friends. -Laura

References

mbsrtraining.com

headspace.com/meditation/body-scan.