It’s taken many years to comprehend that I am not defined by my mind or my thoughts. This awareness has invited the exploration of a deeper self that quiets the daily internal chatter which, in the past, has attempted to define me and sadly at times has won. The knowledge, however, that I can master my mental state has been liberating.

There is something far deeper that moves, motivates and inspires all of us. We don’t have to be held emotionally hostage by our thoughts, and we don’t need a get-out-of-jail card to be free of the endless chatter that can wreak havoc in our brains and lives. It’s a choice to be stuck in an endless negative feedback loop of coulda, woulda, shouldas; regrets and resentments that endlessly play without a proper edit.

Focusing on breath versus brain

Some months ago, I received an invitation to participate in a breathwork session facilitated by Susan Dunn. I filed her number away until recently when I decided to take Susan up on her thoughtful invitation. After a warm hello and finding a comfortable spot next to friendly faces on either side, Susan taught the group the type of breathing to use during the 90-minute workshop. After placing headphones over my ears and a comfortable eye mask to facilitate privacy, I heard Susan’s soft and supportive voice through the headphones along with some songs that started to bring my thoughts to the forefront. Old stored-away memories, hopes, dreams, you name it; and my mind was in full swing. Then I realized that to find stillness, I needed to experience the havoc of my mind. Susan’s encouraging voice kept me forging further and deeper, welcoming the freedom to move past thought into a state of “beingness” — being alive with myself and the group, and being fully present in the now.

I left that day feeling refreshed and renewed like my mind had been through a car wash. I walked out with what felt like a squeaky-clean brain. As an inner-child work specialist, this experience cemented further how we can be negatively impacted by family of origin issues and if these experiences are not adaptively reframed, they can cause or exacerbate a myriad of mental health challenges. We can — and deserve — to live our best lives, purposeful and motivated, resolving or at least decreasing long-held negative beliefs that cloud our current reality.

Focusing on the present versus permanence

Recently, I learned a term “wabi sabi” — a mindset that refers to life’s impermanence, accepting that we are perfectly imperfect, where finding value in simplicity rather than perfection is the goal. So too with our thoughts. Letting go of the critical mind and as Eckhart Tolle advises, “watching the thinker” impartially and nonjudgmentally, can keep you engaged and present, not trapped in complicated turmoil.

In the Yizkor Prayer, the prayer service for departed loved ones during Yom Kippur, it reads, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow. In the morning it blossoms and grows, in the evening it fades and withers. Teach us to count our days, and we shall acquire a heart of wisdom.”

As we step outside our thoughts and visualize them gently flowing onto the shore, there exists an opportunity to not only count our days, but make our days count.

Dr. Amy Austin is a licensed marriage and family therapist (MFC#41252) and doctor of clinical psychology in Rancho Mirage. She can be reached at (760) 774.0047.