“Mindfulness is wordless. Mindfulness is meeting the moment as it is, moment after moment after moment, wordlessly attending to our experiencing as it actually is. It is opening to not just the fragments of our lives that we like or dislike or view as important, but the whole of our experiencing” – White Wind Zen Community
Many of us find life continuously unsatisfying, or even distressing. We are constantly thinking about how we can achieve more and accumulate more. You may have noticed yourself thinking ‘everything will be better when I’ve acheieved…’ or ‘if only we had…, then we would be happier’. I’m definitely guilty of doing this myself sometimes. You’ll be pleased to know that there’s another way to live. Mindfulness can completely change your life. However, when you’re just getting started, it can seem a bit confusing and too abstract to get your mind around. In an attempt to help you understand, whether you’re completely new to mindfulness or simply looking to find out more, I will walk you through exactly how to practice mindfulness in a simple and effective way.
What is mindfulness?
Mindfulness, sometimes also refered to as ‘awareness’ or ‘consciousness’, it the ability to see reality objectively for what it is. Our thoughts about our lives and the world are almost entirely responsible for our suffering. Therefore, being able to ‘watch’ our thoughts without feeling attached to them enables us to distance ourselves from the negative meanings we give to things. In his book ‘The Power Of Now’, Eckhart Tolle talks about the power of mindfulness (which he refers to as ‘presence’) and it’s ability to free you from your constant negative thoughts. He describes how cultivating more mindfulness can eventually lead to ‘enlightenment’, a state of consistant presence and awareness. He quotes the Buddha’s definition of enlightenment, which is simply ‘the end of suffering’.
History
The idea of mindfulness is though to originate from early ‘Zen’ Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, practicing mindfulness is what lead to Gautama Buddha reaching ‘Nirvana’ or ‘Enlightenment’ during his life in ancient Nepal. Now, mindfulness is growing increasingly popular in the west with many people starting to practice themselves, and even developing popular mindfulness meditation apps such as ‘Headspace’ and ‘Calm’. Mindfulness has also been integrated into clinical psychology research and practices, such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) and Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT).
How to practice Mindfulness
The most common way to practice mindfulness is by doing ‘mindfulness meditation’. Although, it’s probably more accurate to describe meditation not as something that you do, but as something that you don’t do. In a nutshell, meditation consists of stopping what you’re doing and just ‘being’ in the present moment, whilst noticing your thoughts, and watching them go by rather than getting caught up in them. In his book ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are’, author Jon Kabat-Zinn uses a great metaphor for this:
“The incessant stream of thoughts flowing through our minds leaves us very little respite for inner quiet… We get caught up in the torrent and it winds up submerging our lives as it carries us to places we may not wish to go and may not even realize we are headed for. Meditation means learning how to get out of this current, sit by its bank and listen to it, learn from it, and then use its energies to guide us rather than to tyrannize us.”
So what else can you do to become mindful? Here are some additional methods you can use, taken from ‘The Power Of Now’. You can use these either during meditation or at any point during your day to bring you back into awareness.
Watch your thoughts
As mentioned above, Eckhart Tolle recommends observing your own mind and noticing your thoughts. Are they true? Are any of them particularly recurring or repetitive? Don’t judge, just see what comes up without labelling it as good or bad. Watching the mind from a third person perspective allows us to detach from it and see our thoughts for what they really are. Doing this frequently throughout your day can lead you to realise that you are not actually your mind, and the constant noice of the inner voice will gradually reduce. This way you can use your mind when you need to, rather than allowing it to use you.
Feel into your body
Eckhart also introduces the ‘inner body’ and how feeling into its energy can ground us in the present moment. For example, if your close your eyes and hold your hand up in from of you, you can still feel where your hand is even though you can’t see it. This way of feeling can be applied to your whole body which can allow you to really acknowledge where you are as well as give the mind something to focus on rather than producing endless noice.
Watch the breath
Watching the breath is another similar anchoring technique that is very common in meditation and mindfulness practice. Noticing and observing how the breath feels coming in and out of our body gives us something constant to focus our mind on and awaken us to the present moment. When the mind starts to wonder again, we can simply refocus it on the breath.
Listen to the silence behind the noise
A technique that I’ve found particularly helpful during meditation is ‘listening to the silence’. We do this by listening to and focusing on the small gaps between sounds, or if there are no gaps, listening to ‘the silence behind the noice’. The latter can be done by acknowledging that underneath all noice there is silence, and focusing on this. It doesn’t really matter how you think about this, as long as it helps us create space in the mind and a pause in the stream of thought by giving it something to anchor into in the present moment.
End the delusion of time
Finally, Eckhart encourages us to realise that the present moment is all we ever truly have. He points out that right now, the past is only a memory for us and the future is only in our imagination. What is real right now is the present moment alone. Acknowledging this creates gaps of no thought in the mind, as the mind uses time to get lost in. Right now in the present moment, there is nothing to think about. Notice that almost every thought you have is concerning either the past or the future, and they are often negative or anxious thoughts about them as well.
It is helpful to use the mind to solve problems in our direct experience in the present moment, and it’s good to plan for the future and learn from the past. However, when we get pulled away from the present moment in streams of repetitive and stressful thoughts about what happened in the past and what will happen in the future, we can bring ourselves back to the now by realising that it’s all we really have. If you find yourself stuck in these kinds of thoughts, stopping and asking yourself ‘am I in the present moment?’ will immediately bring your back into it, as you can’t be both aware of the present moment and lost in thought.
As that was only a very brief introduction to mindfulness, I’m planning to write many more article on the topic in the future. For now though, see if you can start using these exercises to bring you into awareness during your daily life, or even start a meditation practice by setting aside some time in your day to sit and be mindful. You can even start with just five minutes in the morning and gradually increase it if you’d like to practice for longer.
As mentioned above, there are some very popular apps that provide guided meditations by, for example, reminding you to focus on the breath. I recommend ‘Headspace’ and ‘Calm’, although there are plenty of others to choose from. You can also find guided meditations on YouTube. However you choose to practice it, incorporating mindfulness into your everyday life can really positively impact your sense of wellbeing!
Try it for the next week and see how you feel, and for further reading on the subject, I highly recommend ‘The Power Of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle, and ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are’ by Jon Kabat-Zinn. You can find these, and other amazing reads on my book list!