Mindfulness

What is Mindfulness?

Dr. Kabbat-Zinn defines mindfulness as a way of connecting with your life in which you cultivate attention in a particular way.  It's living in the present moment, experiencing your own thoughts non-judgmentally.  Your life depends upon it because attention is "the faculty by which we navigate our lives".  It doesn't matter what you are paying attention to as long as you are paying attention.  Because it is only when you are paying attention to what you are doing can you truly experience what is happening around you.  It's not a technique that you can turn on and off when you want to.  In order to be mindful, we must cultivate it into our everyday lives so that it is a way of life for us.  It makes life more fulfilling and experienced.

All It Takes is Ten Mindful Minutes

Andy Puddicombe suggests that we should spend at least ten minutes each day doing absolutely nothing, no Twitter, Facebook, books, or anything else taking our attention.  Simply sitting and clearing our minds in order to do absolutely nothing.  According to the Harvard report that he quoted, our minds are lost in thought almost 47% of the time.  At the same time, meditation allows you to step back and view your thoughts and emotions as they pop up, viewing them non-subjectively, and allowing them to pass as they come without becoming stuck on any particular thought.  He demonstrates this with juggling the balls.  If he were to focus too much on the balls in his hand, he wouldn't be able to speak to the audience because all of his attention would be on what he was doing with them.  But if he were to relax too much, he would drop them.  This is symbolic of how we must approach our lives, finding the equilibrium of thought and emotion, and what we are outwardly doing.

Mindfulness Exercise Response

This one was a bit tougher than I remember it being.  I used to spend most of my time in meditation, slipping into that state very easily.  Now, my mind is very much wanting to jump to what I'm going to be doing in the future and what I've done in the past.  It took me a few minutes of mindfully moving things aside as they came before I was able to just sit, breathe, and move through the emotions as they came without judging them.  I actually ended up sitting there like that for forty minutes before I felt I was ready to come back out of the little cocoon I had made.  It was refreshing.