Just about every article on mindfulness will say that it’s about being in the present moment. But if realizing the benefits of mindfulness was simply about paying attention to our present-moment experience, then everything would be easy. You can almost hear the sceptical reader saying, “Well I already do that, so what’s the point?”
For a start, there’s our deeply embedded habit of our attention being disconnected from what we are doing by unintentional thoughts. Imagine that a baby is born, and the doctor says to the mother, “Congratulations, your baby is healthy in every way. There’s just one thing, for half of his waking life his attention will be distracted by automatic thoughts, away from what he’s doing. Although we still don’t understand why, it’s nothing to worry about, as most people don’t even notice that this happens to them.”
When we practice mindfulness, we develop the awareness to notice, and the attention skills to disengage from our wandering mind, when it’s not useful. When we notice our mind wandering, a simple way to return to the present is to bring our attention and awareness to our body and senses. Like the phrase “come to your senses”, our body and senses are always in the present moment.
Another important skill is to clearly observe what’s going on in the moment. It’s the opposite of the expression, “The lights are on but nobody’s at home”. With mindfulness, we’re calm and alert, settled and balanced, fully conscious, and actively connected with our experience. Bringing an objective viewpoint is also about creating a bit of space, or separation, between who we are as the observer and the thoughts, feelings or sensations that we are experiencing.
Although we may not always realize it, there is already space in the background of our experience, in the gaps, silence, and stillness between thoughts, sounds, feelings, and sensations. Thoughts are mental content that help us make sense of the world. Emotions may be more primitive than thoughts, but they are just as powerful feeling-based messages that tell us that something needs attention and drive us to act. When we have no space or separation, it’s all too easy to become tangled up in our thoughts and emotions. By observing clearly, we can see that thoughts and emotions come and go. Although they may be about our experience, they are not who we are.
The third important skill is about noticing our basic impulses of approach and avoidance that unconsciously bias our experience. For instance, we tend to be drawn towards pleasant experiences and avoid unpleasant experiences. Even a single-celled amoeba will approach food and avoid heat. These deeply embedded impulses have a powerful influence on how we habitually perceive and relate to other people and the world around us. By being more aware of how we react to pleasant and unpleasant feelings, we’re more likely to be able to respond skilfully and change the behaviour patterns that no longer serve us.
A practical example is an email that arrives, chasing up a deadline on a project we’re leading. Our attention is focused on reading the email, but we also observe some anxiety and frustration bubbling up. These drive negative thoughts that make reading the email an unpleasant experience. Rather than avoiding them, we acknowledge the negative feelings. Although they are doing their job, they don’t need to influence how we interpret and respond to the email.
Mindfulness can be defined as working skilfully with your present-moment experience. That means grounding yourself in the present, in a state of calm, and alert awareness, as you acknowledge and work skilfully with openness and kindness with whatever arises in your experience. So next time you come across an article about mindfulness, see if it really covers what this useful and transformative practice is all about.
Suggested weekly practice
- Remember to bring yourself into the present by connecting with your body and senses.
- Ask, “What’s going on for me now?” to become more aware of what prevailing thoughts, feelings, and physical sensations are around.
- Use curiosity to notice the low-level impulse to move towards the pleasant and away from unpleasant experiences, so that you can respond skilfully rather than react automatically.
Guided practice
There are two guided practices for this session. You can close your eyes, or lower your gaze while the meditations play.
- Play the settling practice, then read through the session content, which you can print off if that helps.
- Then play the second practice to explore these three areas of mindfulness – present-moment awareness, alert observation and insight and awareness of feelings and thoughts
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