An Introduction to Mindfulness
01/19/12: "Mindfulness" is all the rage right now in counseling and health psychology. I have found that people are either immediately drawn to it and see it as a panacea, or quickly dismiss it as being too "out there". I think the reality of it is somewhere in between. This post will cover the basics of mindfulness, and how to begin applying it today for better health.
Tuning In
Before reading any further, take a few moments and check in with your body and see how you feel. Are you tired? Are your legs sore? What does your face feel like? How is the temperature? What sounds can you hear? Are your shoulders tense?
If you are like most people (including me), about 95% of the information you just gathered was stuff you were not paying attention to seconds before. Sometimes this is great for us, like when we need to tune things out to accomplish a task. However, if we rarely (or never) stop to check in with ourselves, or experience the world around us, we are missing a lot of life. Mindfulness is a practice and approach to life that helps us get a richer experience out of our daily existence, feel more connected to ourselves, and relieve some stress in the process.
What is Mindfulness
The concept of mindfulness is actually quite simple; it basically means "knowing what you are experiencing, while you are experiencing it, without judgment". Putting it into practice is a bit harder. I'll invite you to try another activity. Just take the next full minute and focus on your breathing. Nothing else, just focus on feeling yourself breathe...
So what happened? Most people experience their mind starting to wander within seconds. Maybe it reminded you of something, or you jumped to something else altogether. Maybe you caught yourself wandering and got frustrated. Maybe you heard something that distracted you, or you started to question the point of this altogether. This is the way our are brains are programmed to work in a fast-paced world: quickly moving from one thing to another, multitasking, becoming doing machines, rarely in touch with the person that is actually doing the doing. This is the opposite of mindfulness.
Let's try it one more time. This time, focus on your breathing again for a minute. If your mind wanders or you get distracted, gently remind yourself to come back to your breathing. Just feel the air going in an out naturally and stay with that. Don't judge what happens, just keep coming back to your breathing, over and over.
This "tuning in" is a way of practicing mindfulness. Hardcore mindfulness practitioners believe in doing this stuff for it's own sake rather than or some kind of outcome. Despite that, this simple concept and practice has had tons of legitimate research support for improving our lives. The most notable are that practicing mindfulness regularly helps us manage stress, reduce anxiety, tolerate pain, have compassion for others, sustain our attention, and increase happiness and self-awareness.
How to Start
If developing a mindfulness practice is something you are interested in, there are many places to start. Below are four types of exercises you can try out, and plenty of variations off those if you get more into it. For all of them, remember to take a non-judgmental approach, and if your mind wanders, just gently come back. Any length of time is good, but 5 minutes is a nice beginning point for most people.
1. Open Field: for this one, we turn our attention toward the world around us. Sit or stand anywhere and just observe the environment through all of your senses. Check out what you see, hear, feel, smell and taste. This allows us to get away from worries, and connect with the world in a much deeper way.
2. Open Self: for this one, turn your attention toward your body or mind. Start by closing your eyes and scanning your body, like you did at the start of this article. Just note how you feel and let it be, but keep doing it. You can also decide to focus on the flow of thoughts you may be having. To do this, just observe the thoughts and feelings you are having, and let them pass like leaves floating down a stream. No need to stick with them or analyze. Just notice them and let them float by. This lets us build a new relationship to our thoughts (they are just thoughts after all), and also stay more in tune with our bodies.
3. Focused Field: for this one, pick a particular thing in the environment to stay focused on. Pick something in your field of vision and just stay with it. If you find yourself wandering or zoning out, come back to what you are focusing on and keep going. This allows us to connect with a specific thing in our environment, and can be very calming. I often start any mindfulness experience with this since it is the easiest for me to do, and I then switch into "focused self".
4. Focused Self: for this one, you focus on a particular thing inside yourself. Examples of this include tuning into your breathing (like we did earlier) or repeating a thought over and over again like "be present". Another variation is to focus on controlling your breathing. For example, you can breathe in for 3 beats, hold it for 3, then out for 3, and hold that for 3, then repeat. These can result in a deeper calm as well.
In Conclusion
The best thing about mindfulness to me is that it is available to us all the time. We can choose to tune in anytime, anywhere, and create a brand new experience for ourselves, with some amazing benefits. Mindfulness isn't for everyone, and it isn't a cure all, but it would also be a mistake to see it as some new-agey fad. If you are interested in learning more, a good place to start is with this video of Jon Kabat-Zinn (see below), or his book "Wherever You Go, There You Are". Counseling can also be a great place to learn more about this and work on applying it in ways that will work for your life.
Tuning In
Before reading any further, take a few moments and check in with your body and see how you feel. Are you tired? Are your legs sore? What does your face feel like? How is the temperature? What sounds can you hear? Are your shoulders tense?
If you are like most people (including me), about 95% of the information you just gathered was stuff you were not paying attention to seconds before. Sometimes this is great for us, like when we need to tune things out to accomplish a task. However, if we rarely (or never) stop to check in with ourselves, or experience the world around us, we are missing a lot of life. Mindfulness is a practice and approach to life that helps us get a richer experience out of our daily existence, feel more connected to ourselves, and relieve some stress in the process.
What is Mindfulness
The concept of mindfulness is actually quite simple; it basically means "knowing what you are experiencing, while you are experiencing it, without judgment". Putting it into practice is a bit harder. I'll invite you to try another activity. Just take the next full minute and focus on your breathing. Nothing else, just focus on feeling yourself breathe...
So what happened? Most people experience their mind starting to wander within seconds. Maybe it reminded you of something, or you jumped to something else altogether. Maybe you caught yourself wandering and got frustrated. Maybe you heard something that distracted you, or you started to question the point of this altogether. This is the way our are brains are programmed to work in a fast-paced world: quickly moving from one thing to another, multitasking, becoming doing machines, rarely in touch with the person that is actually doing the doing. This is the opposite of mindfulness.
Let's try it one more time. This time, focus on your breathing again for a minute. If your mind wanders or you get distracted, gently remind yourself to come back to your breathing. Just feel the air going in an out naturally and stay with that. Don't judge what happens, just keep coming back to your breathing, over and over.
This "tuning in" is a way of practicing mindfulness. Hardcore mindfulness practitioners believe in doing this stuff for it's own sake rather than or some kind of outcome. Despite that, this simple concept and practice has had tons of legitimate research support for improving our lives. The most notable are that practicing mindfulness regularly helps us manage stress, reduce anxiety, tolerate pain, have compassion for others, sustain our attention, and increase happiness and self-awareness.
How to Start
If developing a mindfulness practice is something you are interested in, there are many places to start. Below are four types of exercises you can try out, and plenty of variations off those if you get more into it. For all of them, remember to take a non-judgmental approach, and if your mind wanders, just gently come back. Any length of time is good, but 5 minutes is a nice beginning point for most people.
1. Open Field: for this one, we turn our attention toward the world around us. Sit or stand anywhere and just observe the environment through all of your senses. Check out what you see, hear, feel, smell and taste. This allows us to get away from worries, and connect with the world in a much deeper way.
2. Open Self: for this one, turn your attention toward your body or mind. Start by closing your eyes and scanning your body, like you did at the start of this article. Just note how you feel and let it be, but keep doing it. You can also decide to focus on the flow of thoughts you may be having. To do this, just observe the thoughts and feelings you are having, and let them pass like leaves floating down a stream. No need to stick with them or analyze. Just notice them and let them float by. This lets us build a new relationship to our thoughts (they are just thoughts after all), and also stay more in tune with our bodies.
3. Focused Field: for this one, pick a particular thing in the environment to stay focused on. Pick something in your field of vision and just stay with it. If you find yourself wandering or zoning out, come back to what you are focusing on and keep going. This allows us to connect with a specific thing in our environment, and can be very calming. I often start any mindfulness experience with this since it is the easiest for me to do, and I then switch into "focused self".
4. Focused Self: for this one, you focus on a particular thing inside yourself. Examples of this include tuning into your breathing (like we did earlier) or repeating a thought over and over again like "be present". Another variation is to focus on controlling your breathing. For example, you can breathe in for 3 beats, hold it for 3, then out for 3, and hold that for 3, then repeat. These can result in a deeper calm as well.
In Conclusion
The best thing about mindfulness to me is that it is available to us all the time. We can choose to tune in anytime, anywhere, and create a brand new experience for ourselves, with some amazing benefits. Mindfulness isn't for everyone, and it isn't a cure all, but it would also be a mistake to see it as some new-agey fad. If you are interested in learning more, a good place to start is with this video of Jon Kabat-Zinn (see below), or his book "Wherever You Go, There You Are". Counseling can also be a great place to learn more about this and work on applying it in ways that will work for your life.
