I recently attended a talk on ‘Mindfulness’. This practice is becoming increasingly popular and no doubt you will have heard it mentioned here and there on various forms of media. Doctors are apparently starting to refer patients to Mindfulness coaches to reduce stress and blood pressure and help with depression and some of our celebrities are also now endorsing it. A paper the other day quoted Will Young as saying ‘Mindfulness got my pop career back’. It’s debatable as to whether there ever was a pop career in the first place to get back, but it’s good that Mindfulness is becoming recognised as a practical and effective form of self-help.
You don’t have to be a celebrity or a super stressed business executive to benefit from Mindfulness, it can be useful for everyone and anyone and you don’t have to buy lots of equipment or special clothing or devote huge amounts of time to it, all you need is you.
So, what is Mindfulness? It’s not, confusingly, having your mind completely rammed full! Quite the opposite in fact. The meaning behind Mindfulness is awareness, attention and remembering. It incorporates a number of states of being: paying attention, present moment, non-reacting, non-judgemental and compassionate. Mindfulness meditation isn’t about clearing your mind and thinking about nothing, it’s about paying attention in a specific way to what you decide to focus on. This can include awareness of your thoughts, feelings and habitual behaviour.
Don’t panic, you don’t have to sit uncomfortably cross legged on a cushion, with your arms and fingers poised and the smell of burning incense in the air, a Mindfulness meditation can be done anywhere at any time, even when you’re driving (as long as the thing you are focussing on is your driving!)
We are all guilty of drifting through our days on auto-pilot; getting on with our regular routines without even thinking about it, making a familiar journey without remembering the drive. We are often completely caught up in the business of our brains. Mindfulness is about taking the time to focus on the here and now, being present in the moment. We are often told that we need to multi-task in order to be effective but Mindfulness goes against all this. It’s not just focussing it’s going into microscopic detail of focussing on the one thing that you have chosen to concentrate on. It can be detailed thoughts like taking in everything about the person you are talking to, the sound of their voice, their body language, the smell of their perfume/aftershave as well as focussing on the details of what they are telling you. Or it can be simple things like how your feet feel on the ground as you walk to your next meeting, the movement of your legs and being aware of your breath and how it feels as it moves in and out of your body. Either way, you are probably much more likely to have a more significant conversation with that person or a clearer, prepared head for that meeting.
The details of Mindfulness are vast and the benefits are, I am told, huge. It doesn’t come straight away though, it takes practice so if you attempt it once and feel nothing, don’t give up. In the same way that you would go to a gym to train a muscle, you practice Mindfulness to train your brain. I have barely brushed the surface here so I would urge you to investigate a little more to see if it can help you. At the end of the talk, we were left with this quote which I share with you now, make of it what you will.
“Breathing in, I calm body and mind.
Breathing out, I smile.
Dwelling in the present moment I know this is the only moment.”