What is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness is described as a mental state of awareness, focus, and openness to the present moment. It involves paying attention to your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surroundings in a non-judgemental and accepting way.
Being someone with limitless energy, taking time out to be mindful once felt like an unnecessary hiccup in a productive day.
Why stop to engage in the present moment when you are making successful strides forward?
Why pause and focus on your breathing when your lungs do a good enough job on their own?
Is there any benefit in taking a transcendental-beam-me-up Scotty-zen type of break?
Yes.
Scientific Evidence supporting Mindfulness
There is a growing body of scientific evidence that supports the benefits of practicing mindfulness.
Studies have shown that mindfulness reduces stress, anxiety and improves emotional regulation. There is also evidence that it improves cognitive control and working memory and that the practice of meditation improves sleep quality. A meta-analysis of 38 studies found that mindfulness-based interventions were effective in reducing symptoms of chronic pain as well as improving immune system function.
This article from the Harvard Review of Psychiatry directly links the practice of mindfulness with behaviour change and how this is key to the prevention and treatment of most preventable chronic medical and psychiatric illnesses.
There is evidence and it continues to grow.
The benefits of practicing Mindfulness.
The benefits (as seen above) are varied and numerous but a key one is that it enables you to shut out the internal noise. Honestly, if your internal noise consists of the sounds of water lapping on a sandy shore, raindrops pit-pattering in a rainforest or birds chirping lovingly to one another, fantastic! Read no further. The noise I’m referring to is the intrusive thoughts which cause stress, worry, anxiety, guilt, fear – basically any emotion that has the potential to cause your mind to spiral.
What mindfulness offers is a choice. Either you can continue to feed the negative emotion, or you can shift your mind away from it. Mindfulness is the catalyst.
I love the life story an old Cherokee Indian chief share with his grandson.
“A fight is going on inside me,” he said to the boy.
“It is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One is evil – he is anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.”
He continued, “The other is good – he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you–and inside every other person, too.”
The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: “Which wolf will win?”
The old Cherokee simply replied, “The one you feed.”
Which wolf do you want to feed and what will the impact be? I am going to suggest more of the same.
Moving yourself away from negative emotion requires mental fitness and this can be achieved by the consistent practice of mindfulness.
Here’s a current example;
My teenage son has now interrupted me one too many times. He has left with much huffing and puffing and rolling his eyes concerning something I have repeatedly asked him to do. His approach is to take every short cut known to man to convince me that the job is complete. It’s not, and my levels of frustration and annoyance concerning his attitude, approach, and moodiness (as well as the slammed door) began to escalate a while ago.
I recognise the need for a shift because if I don’t, I am going to end up matching his behaviour (our neurons are skilled at doing this) with an all-out mother meltdown. It’s not pretty.
In the past, if I was on the verge of such an explosion and someone had asked me to ‘smell the roses’ or focus on what I am grateful for, I think I would have punched them purely because what I am really after is the satisfaction of an immediate win. I know because I’ve been there and have gone down the path. And then what? How does this serve us in the long run?
It doesn’t.
Ideas for Mindfulness practice.
Present moment awareness can be achieved by simply tuning into your senses, which is why you will find me regularly looking up from my screen and pausing to focus on what I am seeing in my garden. Such glances are often fleeting, but I have trained my mind to deepen my gaze, to marvel at the colours, the shapes, the shadows, and appreciate my Spring garden as it bursts into life.
Each time my son has stomped out this morning, I have paused and taken a few deep breaths reflecting on each one, the sound of each inhale and exhale and the temperature of air as it enters and exists my nose and mouth. The alternative is to allow the audible frustration and the slammed door to ignite my natural feelings of frustration and yell back something along of the lines of ‘if you don’t…. I’m going to…. You’d better…. Or else!!’
The practice of mindfulness presents me with a choice that leads to behaviour change!
Pressing my feet into the floor and feeling the sensations is another technique I use. We are on our feet so much during a day. How much time have you taken to focus on the vast number of sensations under your toes, your heels, or the arches? Have you noticed how these sensations change when you scrunch and then flatten your toes? What about when you slide your bare foot across a smooth surface versus a rough one?
Learning to take notice and be more self-aware is a point where you are no longer beating yourself up about what has been or the uncertainty of what’s to come. Your focus is simply on what you can see, hear, smell or touch around you.
Next time you are out and about, try closing your eyes and listening for the sounds you can hear that are furthest away and then tune into those that are closest.
What about linking a current habit to mindfulness. I practice mindfulness while brushing my teeth. Who would have thought? I focus on the different sensations of the bristles in my mouth, on my palette, my tongue, between my front teeth and around the back. Why had I never noticed the acuteness of these sensations?
With every action, there is a choice. Mindfulness trains your brain to be in a space where you can make better make that choice.
Doubts, fear, anxiety, and worry are real feelings. I am not suggesting a deep breath will eliminate all such threat. What I am saying is that we can act in spite of those feelings by feeding the right wolf. This requires mindfulness.
Mindfulness needs Momentum.
Fun fact. It’s much easier to feed the first wolf. Left to my own devices, unleashing my mean mom superpower would give me a short-term victory over my son. Who doesn’t like to pull a bit of rank? And I am sure for a mere second, that release of tension would make me feel better.
Instant reward.
Instant gratification
Very little effort.
Instead, I have acknowledged the wolf that is ready to fight. I am entitled to feel frustrated by my son’s behaviour because it’s not something that aligns with my values. A few mindful exercises have enabled me to put a pause on a reactive response. I get to choose which wolf to feed. My relationship with my son and being an example to him is more important than an immediate half-baked win. This is what I value. I choose mindfulness and I have become so practiced at it that my recovery from these regular teenage spats is now far quicker.
What one small step could you take to master mindfulness?
In what way could you keep the momentum of mindfulness?
How could mindfulness become a part of your daily routines?
Next time you are feeling negative emotion, try pausing before moving on and then look at the impact of your choices. Which wolf will you be feeding?
