Reading the Future

The benefits of a healthy mindfulness practice are numerous and well-attested, but not easy to put into words. Practitioners, when asked, tend to use indefinite descriptors like feeling more alert and aware, or being more attuned and open-hearted. This is because gains are subtle – so much so that that we aren’t necessarily conscious of them. This is true for one of the more profound benefits: the ability to decide a wise course of action by predicting its effect.

Mindfulness allows us to become more aware of the presenting conditions – some of which relate to past experiences – that guide future decision-making. We can use this knowledge to evaluate our response options, discern how pursuing each of which might affect us or others, then choose the best action to take. This is called using a ‘mindful gauge’, a term originally employed for trauma-sensitive practice by David Treleaven and based on the work of psychotherapist Babette Rothschild and neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. 

Mindful Gauges

A mindful gauge is some part of our subjective experience (e.g. a bodily sensation, feeling or thought) that we use as a reference point for deciding what to do next. It functions as a kind of inner radar that helps to maintain self-regulation. It supports stability and safety by respecting our limits. Like all mindfulness skills, mindful gauges involve pausing and noticing in order to determine a beneficial path forward. They are also a good example of how the mental quality of mindfulness is traditionally understood as having protective characteristics.

Mindful gauges facilitate an intuitive knowing about whether it’s best to proceed with a particular action, bring it to a halt and/or do something else. This is crucial when working with traumatic material because the gauge grants the meditator the capacity to self-regulate in the presence of intense or painful thoughts and feelings, and so avoid re-traumatisation. Gauges are also useful for a range of normal (non-trauma-related) human experiences because they support our potential to engage skilfully with events heading our way. To get a better grasp of how this process works requires a dip into Damasio’s work on somatic markers.

Somatic Markers

Damasio hypothesises that our experiences in life leave traces of pleasant and unpleasant feelings and impulses inscribed in our bodies that, in turn, guide future decision-making. These traces, called somatic markers, are each associated with particular situations from the past and their outcomes. Somatic markers work as a kind of screening agent. They highlight advantageous response options and rule out disadvantageous ones by selecting what enters our working memory and, by extension, what gets our attention.

To make a decision – something you do countless times every day – requires your mind to look for a reason to select one option over others. Reasoning is a goal-orientated process. Deciding is a selection process that follows from reasoning. We are rarely aware that selection is not just based on the available facts and intellectual analysis but also on their affective accompaniment – the particular intensity and quality of evoked emotions – which is associated with past situations and outcomes.
 
Gut Feelings

A simple example of how somatic markers influence decision-making is smelling two different foods when deciding which one to have for dinner. If you’re super-aware as you sniff, you will notice subtle changes in bodily sensations, mental feelings, thoughts and memories. These are triggered by somatic markers associated with each aroma. Past pleasant experiences with a food will condition an agreeable feeling; unpleasant experiences will condition a disagreeable feeling. You will instinctively feel motivated to pursue one choice over another. This is how the decision gets made. 

Where somatic markers really come into their own is through their screening of negative outcomes, that is, anything perceived as threatening or dangerous. When the selection process is underway and a ‘bad’ outcome connected to a particular response option comes to mind, the somatic marker forces attention on the ‘bad’ outcome by way of warning. What happens next is a momentary felt sense, often visceral, that what is spotlighted in the mind would be a bad idea. That response option is automatically rejected and, as far as your mind is concerned, a danger has been averted.

En-gauging Mindfulness

Somatic markers can be conscious, though it is more common for them to operate covertly, that is, outside of awareness. Developing mindful gauges, however, can bring somatic markers into awareness, which will enhance wise decision-making. How so?

When (the mental quality of) mindfulness is strong, the clarity and sensitivity of the resulting awareness enable a keen noticing of the various somatic, mental and emotional factors, past and present, affecting the mind and body. We are able to ‘see’ the traces and feel the impulses that comprise somatic markers. We might glimpse the memories that a somatic marker is associated with (maybe, too, the feelings and imagery that precipitated those memories). We become emotionally reacquainted with our past in the present and our present in the past. This is the power of mindfulness.

What results is a recognition of unmet organismic needs, how well (or not) we are resourced, and what might be a skilful response to what is going on in the here and now. This quietly awesome process is what mindfulness does. It cannot be forced. It happens all by itself. A mindful gauge, then, is just a chosen and intentionally employed reference point (e.g. particular changes in breath sensations) that channels the power of mindfulness in order to make the best next move.

Once you have set up a mindful gauge for yourself, the cue for applying it is when you become aware that you don’t know how to proceed with something, whether that be through confusion, anxiety, doubt etc. First, pause and notice what is showing up throughout your entire psycho-physical experience. Feel into this. Investigate it patiently and closely. Let the information you need to make a decision come into awareness in its own time.
 
Next, consider or imagine possible response options in turn, noticing how your gauge is affected each time. For example, if your gauge is the breath, note in detail what happens with these sensations, how they change in quality and intensity. Let the sensations tell you, in their own way, whether or not this particular response option is the right one now. Your gauge will guide you to a wise decision without you having to go through the experience. It’s as if you are living the future, based upon the past, fully in the present. A little taste of timeless magic.

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