Mindfulness : Two anchor points

One of my readers DonW57 suggested trying 2 anchor points:

"Try 2 Anchor points. Focus on them at the same time and your thoughts will stop. For example, listening to the sounds in the space around you and also focus on colors you see. The 2 anchor points should be from what you sense. Hearing, sight, the feeling of your body (warm? cold? sitting? walking?). One anchor point is not enough to still thoughts, 2 anchor points works wonderfully."


 DonW57 Thanks, I will give it a try.

In the book The Mindful Way Through Depression,  the authors described a method called Breathing With. My understanding is that we can hold the Mindful Breathing in the background awareness, whilst holding the primary focus on the body sensation (pleasant, unpleasant or neutral).

Started Mindful Breathing, Walking and Body Scan

Bought this book: Mindful Way Through Depression
and listened to its audio instruction. Based on the book and the audio, I started practicing the mindful breathing, walking and body scan.

Some useful pointers from the book:

1. being mindful of the anchor of breathing, walking or body means just being, as opposed to
    doing (thinking).

2. objective is not to keep awareness on the anchor points - there is no objective. Objective is an impediment introduced by the thinking mind. The mind thrives on doing and comparing.

3.  Instead, it is more important to catch the wandering mind as soon as it wanders, then, to label it and gently bring awareness back to the anchor point.

4. My mistake when I practiced mindfulness years ago, was that I made it a goal to keep awareness on anchor point. When thinking mind introduces a goal, it becomes a distraction, as thoughts of comparison will arise, eg, "Is my mindfulness improving? Am I going to get better at this, etc" - all doing something which the mind wants to do.

5. Mindfulness is non-doing (aka being)

6. It is normal for awareness to move from anchor point to wandering thoughts and
   from wandering thoughts to anchor point. Remember:  Catch the wandering mind, label, and
   return to anchor, and, repeat again and again...

7. Labelling the wandering thought example:  thinking, comparing, judging, recalling, planning,
anticipating, regretting, worrying, rejecting, etc...  I think labelling is the cognitive shift that eventually frees awareness from suffering - when awareness can just watch and not get drawn into the thoughts.

Started MBCT - Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy

On July 1, I bought this book : Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy For Dummies by Patrizia Collard

I am now trying out MBCT in addition to EFT. At present,  I use EFT to neutralize strong emotions like anger, regret, worry, fear, etc.  And MBCT for the rest - eg, being present instead of getting drawn into thoughts.

How EFT, Byron Katie and Energy Medicine Saved me

Around April 27, I came down with a sore throat. On April 30, I went to see my doctor and she prescribed a very strong antibiotic Clamentin 625mg (antibiotic, amoxicillin,clavulanic acid) - a five day course. On the fifth day, i.e. May 5, I had a bad headache. On May 6, I began to fall very ill - stabbing chest pains, nausea when getting up from a reclining position, extremely low blood pressure around 90/60 when getting up in the morning. But worse of all, panic, fear, anxiety and extreme depression. It became worse and worse each day, and all I could do was just to lie down all day long.

On May 15 while lying down in bed at night, negative thoughts would keep coming up - am I going to get a heart failure, am I sufferring from anemia, etc. I then applied Byron Katie's 4 Questions from Loving What Is, Four Questions That Can Save Your Life:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know it to be true?
3. How do you react when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without that thought?

I didn't apply any turnarounds. But it is enough to release the negative thoughts and relieve the onset of the panic attacks and stabbing chest pains - and I did The Work all night long until I fell asleep.

The next day, May 16, I started doing Donna Eden's exercises, including spinning the crystal over the chakra's - this is based on her Energy Medicine Kit and that helped to improve my condition further, but the weakness, malaise, and occasional stabbing chest pains were still there.

The following day, May 17, I stopped using Byron Katie's The Work and tried EFT instead. And it helped to stop the stabbing chest pains and panic. But I continued to do Byron Katie's Daily Routine.

Over the course of the next few weeks my health became better and better. I used Gary Craig's Basic Recipe EFT which I learnt from his website:  http://www.emofree.com/eft-tutorial/eft-tapping-tutorial.html.

Then, I bought the following book : Heal Yourself with Emotional Freedom Technique: by John Freedom and learnt EFT in more detail.

Then, I bought this book : The EFT Manual by Dawson Church to read more about Clinical EFT and scientific evidence of EFT. By this time, June 19, I was already well on the way to better health. I no longer felt malaise, depressed, panic attacks, and rarely have stabbing chest pains. A total reversal of the condition I was in about a month ago.

I subsequently bought this book : The Tapping Solution by Nick Ortner and its Chinese translated version: 释放更自在的自己.

The Chinese version comes with a DVD The Tapping Solution by Nick Ortner. The DVD is almost a 2 hour long documentary video of 10 people who got together to learn EFT.

Because, I am now convinced that EFT works, I subsequently bought : Tapping Into Wealth by Margaret M Lynch to see how I could remove the blocks about money matters. Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don't by Michael J Losier would be more powerful if resistance does not get in the way.