What is Mindfulness?
“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally,” says Kabat-Zinn.
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.
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.
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