To be able to console children, it is often enough to turn their thoughts to something else, as Mickaël Foessel writes in his book The Time of Consolation… And if, in a similar way, it was enough to succeed in focusing his attention in another way, to manage to stop this kind of hamster which runs, very often, in our head as in its wheel, when we ruminate, when we rehash? What if, instead of getting lost in a bunch of sentences like “why is this happening to me”, being fully in what you do could allow you to finally, greedily enjoy the beautiful spectacle that is life? ?

“I invented a little character called Pensouillard the hamster: this little beast that runs incessantly in our head as in its wheel. I used this metaphor to illustrate this space of day and night noise, a bunch of little phrases like why does it happen to me or why does it never happen to me ”… Doctor in Quebec for thirty years, world expert in stress management and prevention of psycho-social risks, Serge Marquis explains: “If attention is taken over by the hamster race, it is no longer available to be in the present.”

The doctor and neuropsychologist Bernard Anselme specifies, moreover, that rumination is distinguished from other negative thoughts – doubt, worry, regret – by its repetitive nature, as well as the absence of action.

Serge Marquis, also author of the book We’re screwed, we think too much, however, affirms it: if we train, we can all develop this extraordinary capacity that is vigilance. This allows us to observe our attention. “And so, as soon as we realize that the hamster has just started running, we can be like, ah, he’s started running again. It does not matter ! And we bring our attention back to the present ”. Being able to do this indeed requires training!

We can, for this, like the writer Philip Delerm, start for example by savoring the first sip of beer, start by listening to all our tiny pleasures … And so, when we taste a puts, fully analyze all the flavors, distinguish the tastes and multiple sensations in our mouth … Which is, already, a form of meditation.

Self-deprecation and other negative ruminations very often manifest themselves in the form of small sentences, like recurring “mantras”, which one says to oneself. These toxic thoughts and emotions were described as early as 1967 by the American psychiatrist Aaron Temkin Beck, who then defined the concept of cognitive distortion.

Indeed, our brain must every day process and record multiple information. But the psychological processes that allow it to do so, from perception to learning, language, thought, attention, memory, or even motivation and emotion, are limited: thus, they do not allow it is always up to the brain to decode this information properly.

Interpretation and analysis errors can then arise deep inside us, making us believe things that are not real: psychotherapists call this phenomenon of thought “cognitive distortion”. This leads to seeing the world in a biased way, for example by retaining only the negative in a situation, and by obscuring the positive.

Psychologist David Burns, following Beck, identifies a dozen cognitive distortions, often at the origin of our negative emotions and our ruminations. One of them, for example, is designated by the term filter: it is this tendency in us to dwell negatively on a small detail in a situation, which makes us perceive all of this negatively. situation.

Serge Marquis believes that the discipline requires training, but that it is essential to combat all these forms of ruminations. “We are constantly invited to train physically. I dream of the day when we will be invited to train psychically ”, he slipped again, during a lecture he gave at the University of Nantes in May 2016. For him, “Discipline is not a constraint on freedom. It is a magnificent word, which comes, like the term disciple, from the Latin digere, to learn ».

And this stress management specialist gives a concrete example to acquire this discipline: the simple fact of turning, every morning and every evening, on your back, and paying attention only to your breathing. Thus, by stretching the muscle of the abdomen, the parasympathetic nervous system, that of relaxation, is stimulated; in addition, another nerve, which goes up to the brain, sends the message to stop the secretion of stress hormones.

Finally, it has become in a way urgent to know how to stop … Whether in spaces of meaning, for example, or in spaces of speech. In our rapidly changing society, our relationship to time and to others is changing, as is our relationship to effort. However, making the most of your life requires mindfulness, the one that allows you to let yourself be completely dazzled by the spectacle of life, the one that keeps the flame alight in us! The philosopher Charles Taylor defines human dignity as follows: “This is what makes a person’s life worth living”. It requires that what we do has meaning, whether we have one or more interests in life.

Mindfulness meditation allows, precisely, to stop, it is also a path towards the attainment of such inner well-being: its practice makes it possible to be truly who we are, and at this moment- there we live totally in consciousness. Presence to oneself and to the other, attention, but also support, mutual aid and mutual recognition: these essential engines of life lead us to be in harmony with our values. While being aware of our limits, we will then manage to tame the little beast that comes to trot in us in the form of rumination, to stop the hamster’s race.