This document discusses mindfulness and flow. It defines mindfulness as cultivating awareness of one's physiological and psychological sensations in the present moment. Mindfulness involves focusing attention on the breath or other objects in a non-judgmental way. Flow is described as a mental state of full focus and enjoyment during an activity. The document outlines various qualities of mindfulness like non-judging, acceptance, and patience. It also discusses factors that can lead to a state of flow like clear goals, immediate feedback, and intrinsic motivation from an activity.

1. MINDFULNESS

2. What is MINDFULNESS ?
• It is the age-old process of cultivating awareness
(physiological and psychological sensations).
• In Buddhist traditions and to the modern
therapeutic technique : it is increasing attention in
order to identify distorted thinking.

3. Ellen Langer : Social
psychologist
• It is a flexible state of mind –
• an openness to novelty,
• a process of actively drawing novel distinction
• We become sensitive to context and
perspective.
• We are situated in the present.
• Behaviour is guided rather than governed by
rules and routines.
• It is not controlled processing.

4. “ Doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results” (Attributed to
Albert Einstein)
• Why would we engage in the same behavior again
and again if we know the eventual outcome will be
negative ?
• Passive habits are easy to establish and hard to
break.
• Eg: watching television
• Habitual , mind-numbing experience have some
short-lived, stress-relieving benefits, but more often
it distracts from what is happening in our worlds.
• Mindless pursuit of less-than-meaningful goals or
unchallenging ones leaves people feeling bored

5. Anapana session
• Anapana is observation of the natural breath
coming in and going out.
• Main features:
• makes the mind happy, calm and concentrated.
• Is simple yet scientific.
• Is morality-based but non-relgious.
• Uses a natural object to focus.
• Is non-commercial.

6. The original term
Anapana sati
• Come from Pali language ancient india.
ANNA means BREATHING IN,
PANNA means BREATHING OUT,
SATI means AWARENESS.

7. Importance of mindfulness
• Intentional, moment-moment searches for optimal
experiences give us joy and fulfilment.
• These positive pursuits may bring about sanity in
daily life that is grounded in competence and
happiness.
• We believe that too many of us walk through
everyday life unaware- out of sync with the
significance of our experiences and with our
emotional selves.

8. Daniel kahneman :
Psychologist , noble prize winner in economics(2002)
• Values the currency that is time and understand the
relationship between individual moments and the
broader experience of life;
• His recent addresses:
Now, there are about 20,000 moments of 3
seconds in a 16-hour day, so this is what life consists
of, it consists of a sequence of moments. Each of
these moments is actually very rich in experience, so
if you could stop somebody and ask, “ what is
happening to you right now?” a great deal is
happening to us at any one of these moments. There
is a goal, there is a mental content, there is a
physical state, there is a mood, there might be some
emotional arousal. Many things are happening. And

9. • The moments are plentiful in daily life , and that the
potential that each moment holds is reflected in the
thoughts, feelings and physiological forces connected
to each moment.
• From positive psychology perspective, a day
presents 20,000 opportunities for engagement, for
overcoming the negative, and for pursuing the
positive .
• E.g taking a stroll through a neighbourhood three
year old child

10. Ellen langer research study:
mindfulness mainfestation in the behavior
• Study that examined the effects of perceived control on
older adults in a residential care facility .
• Langer and her colleague gave a group of residents a “
Pep talk” about making their own decisions and then
allowed these participants each to choose a houseplant
to tend over the coming months.
• Another group of residents received a talk focused on
how staff would help them with daily activities and
decisions. These participants also received plants, but
they were told that the staff would care for them

11. • Results : over the 3 weeks postintervention, the individuals
who were encouraged to make choices and to care for their
plants were more alert and happier. They found novelty in
every day as their plants and their lives changes little by little
.
• Follow-up with the facility 18 months later revealed a striking
finding: half as many people in the group encouraged to
make choices had died, relative to the group encouraged to
take advantage of staff support (7 out of 44 versus 15 out of
43).
• Langer explained this finding by highlighting the value of
“minding” daily choices and the houseplant, this observation
launched her into a career dedicated to mindfulness
research.

12. Langer (2002) argues that “ aspects of our culture
lead us to try to reduce uncertainty”
• Our desire to control our surroundings by reducing
uncertainty often leads to more uncertainty .
• Eg: a child’s effort to hold a spirited kitten or puppy , the
more the child attempts to hold the little pet still, the more
it tries or wriggle away.
• Langer contends that we should exploit the uncertainty
and proposes that “mindfulness” ‘ make clear that things
change and loosens the grip of our evaluative mind-sets
so that these changes need not be feared.
• uncertainty keeps us grounded in the present, and
awareness of all that is happening in the present creates
more uncertainty.

13. Mindfulness requires
• To overcome the desire to reduce uncertainty in
daily .
• To override a tendency to engage in automatic
behaviour and
• To engage less frequently in evaluation of self ,
others, and situations.

14. Mindless behavior
• Also called as automaticity of behavior.
• Eg: what do most people do when a phone
rings?
• We get distracted from the novelty of the stimuli
right before us when a phone rings.

15. Langer, blanl and chanowitz (1978)
• They explored the automaticity of behavior by
sending an interdepartmental memorandum to
university offices that requested that the recipient
handle the memo in a particular manner :
 “ pls. return this immediately to Room 247” and
 “ this memo is to be returned to Room 247”
• To examine the effects of novelty on behavior, half
the memos were formatted in the usual form for
interoffice memos, whereas the other half of the
memos were formatted in a distinctly different
manner .

16. • In the end. 90% of the memos that looked like
the typical interoffice missive were returned to
Room 247; 60 % of those that looked a bit
different from the typical memo were returned .
• The automaticity of behavior is quite evident
that the majority of the memos were returned.
• Hence, mindfulness will occur when we become
less automatic in our daily behavior and search
for novelty.

17. Bishop and colleagues (2004) two-
components of mindful engagement
• Self-regulated attention : honed on current
personal experience ,
• Emotional openness: facilitates the acceptance
and appreciation of all internal experiences.
• Hence, mindfulness from this perspective
involves metacognition and emotional
awareness .

18. Shapiro ET.AL., 2002 :
MINDFULNESS QUALITIES
• Nonjudgning: impartial witnessing, observing the
present moment by moment without evaluation and
categorization.
• Nonstriving: non-goal-oriented, remaining
unattached to outcome or achievement, not forcing
things.
• Acceptance: open to seeing and acknowledging
things as they are in the present moment;
acceptance does not mean passivity or resignation,
rather a clearer understanding of the present so one
can more effectively respond .

19. • Patience: allowing things to unfold in their time,
bringing patience to ourselves, to others, and to the
present moment.
• Trust: trusting oneself, one’s body, intuition,
emotions, as well as trusting that life is unfolding as
it is supposed to .
• Openness: seeing things as if for the first time ,
creating possibility by paying attention to all
feedback in the present moment.

20. • Letting go : nonattachment, not holding on to thoughts,
feelings, experiences; however, letting go does not mean
suppressing.
• Gentleness: characterized by a soft, considerate and
tender quality, however, not passive, undisciplined, or
indulgent.
• Generosity : giving in the present moment within a context
of love and compassion, without attachment to gain or
thought of return.
• Empathy: the quality of feeling and understanding another
person’s situation in the present moment-their perspectives,
emotions, actions(reactions)-and communicating this to the

21. • Gratitude: the quality of reverence, appreciating
and being thankful for the present moment.
• Loving-kindness: a quality embodying
benevolence, compassion, and cherishing, a
quality filled with forgiveness and unconditional
love

22. THANK YOU

23. FLOW
AND
SPIRITUALITY

24. Anapana session
• Anapana is observation of the natural breath
coming in and going out.
• Main features:
• makes the mind happy, calm and concentrated.
• Is simple yet scientific.
• Is morality-based but non-relgious.
• Uses a natural object to focus.
• Is non-commercial.

25. The original term
Anapana sati
• Come from Pali language ancient india.
ANNA means BREATHING IN,
PANNA means BREATHING OUT,
SATI means AWARENESS.

26. FLOW
• Flow is also know as “the Zone” or the mental
state of operation in which a person performing
an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of
energized focus, full involvement, and
enjoyment in the process of the activity.
• According to part time motivational speaker, B.
Altantsetseg, Csikszentmihályi, flow is
completely focused motivation.
• It is a single-minded immersion .
• It represents the ultimate experience in
harnessing the emotions in the service of
performing and learning.

27. FLOW
• In flow, the emotions channeled, positive,
energized, and aligned with the task at hand.
• The hallmark of flow is a feeling of
spontaneous joy, while performing a task.
• Although flow is also described as a deep focus
on nothing even oneself or one’s emotions.

28. Psychology expert, Kendra Cherry,
• "Immediate feedback" .
• Feeling that you have the potential to succeed.
• Feeling so engrossed in the experience, that
other needs become negligible.

29. CONDITIONS OF FLOW
• A flow state can be entered while performing any
activity, although it is most likely to occur when
one is wholeheartedly performing a task or
activity for intrinsic purposes.
• Passive activities like taking a bath or even
watching TV usually do not elicit flow
experiences as individuals have to actively do
something to enter a flow state.

30. • Flow theory postulates three conditions that have to be
met to achieve a flow state:
• Involved activity with a clear set of goals and
progress.
This adds direction and structure to the task.
• The task must have clear and immediate feedback.
This helps the person negotiate any changing demands
and allows them to adjust their performance to maintain
the flow state.
• A good balance between the perceived challenges of
the task and their own perceived skills.

31. The 8-channel model of flow.(1986)
• The Experience Fluctuation Model depicts the
channels of experience that result from different
levels of perceived challenges and perceived
skills.
• This graph illustrates the aspect of flow: it is more
likely to occur when the activity at hand is a
higher-than-average challenge (above the center
point) and the individual has above-average skills
(to the right of the center point).

33. • The center of this graph (where the sectors
meet) represents one's average levels of
challenge and skill across all activities an
individual performs during their daily life.
• The further from the center an experience is, the
greater the intensity of that state of being
(whether it is flow or anxiety or boredom or
relaxation).

34. Schaffer (2013) proposed 7 flow
conditions:
1. Knowing what to do.
2. Knowing how to do it.
3. Knowing how well you are doing.
4. Knowing where to go.
5. High perceived challenges.
6. High perceived skills.
7. Freedom from distractions.

35. What Is Spirituality?
• Spirituality is a broad concept with many
perspectives.
• In general, it includes a sense of connection to
something bigger than ourselves, and it typically
involves a search for meaning in life.
• it is a universal human experience—something
that touches us all.
• People may describe a spiritual experience
as sacred or transcendent or simply a deep
sense of aliveness and interconnectedness.

36. • Some may find that their spiritual life is intricately
linked to their association with a church, temple,
mosque.
• Others may pray or find comfort in a personal
relationship with God or a higher power.
• Still others seek meaning through their
connections to nature or art.

37. Spiritual questions
• For many, spirituality is connected to large
questions about life and identity, such as:
• Am I a good person?
• What is the meaning of my suffering?
• What is my connection to the world around me?
• Do things happen for a reason?
• How can I live my life in the best way possible?

38. Experts’ definitions of spirituality
• Christina Puchalski, MD, Director of the George
Washington Institute for Spirituality and Health,
contends that "spirituality is the aspect of humanity
that refers to the way individuals seek and express
meaning and purpose and the way they
experience their connectedness to the moment, to

39. • Nurses Ruth Beckmann Murray and Judith
Proctor Zenter write that “the spiritual dimension
tries to be in harmony with the universe, and
strives for answers about the infinite, and comes
into focus when the person faces emotional
stress, physical illness, or death.”

40. Relationship between religion
and spirituality
• While spirituality may incorporate elements of
religion, it is generally a broader concept.
• Religion and spirituality are not the same thing,
nor are they entirely distinct from one another.
• The best way to understand this is to think of two
overlapping circles like this:

42. • In spirituality, the questions are: where do I
personally find meaning, connection, and value?
• In religion, the questions are: what is true and
right?
• Where the circles overlap is the individual
experience, which affects the way you think,
feel, and behave.

43. health
• Many practices recommend for cultivating
spirituality for improving emotional wellbeing.
• This is because there is a connection between the
two—emotional and spiritual wellbeing influence
one another and overlap, as do all aspects of
wellbeing.
• Spirituality is about seeking a meaningful
connection with something bigger than
yourself, which can result in positive emotions,
such as peace, awe, contentment, gratitude, and

44. • It is hard to find meaning and connection in life if
you are ruminating over negative emotions.
• Likewise, it can be difficult to cultivate positive
emotions, such as gratitude and compassion, if
you don’t recognize a larger perspective or
sense of interconnectedness in the world.
• Thus, emotions and spirituality are distinct but
linked, deeply integrated with one another.

45. Thank you