Mindfulness

Being mindful refers to awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment without any judgement.

We live in a busy world surrounded by distractions from everywhere. It is natural to feel overwhelmed and anxious on a daily basis. Fortunately, we can keep all these distractions in check and try to appreciate life a little more by a slight albeit significant change.

What exactly is mindfulness?

Being mindful simply refers to awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment without any judgement. Mindfulness involves observing our thoughts and feelings without any judgement or pre-conceived notions. It might seem easy except for one aggravating fact that we so often veer from what we want to focus on. Our mind wanders, we lose touch with our inner self, and soon enough we’re engrossed in obsessive thoughts, or depressive ruminations about ourselves and our futures or what other say to us or about us. If we pay attention to our thoughts we would realize that our mind is all over the place, flitting from thought to thought every 2 or 3 seconds. This results in energy spent, not utilized, our mind being busy but nor productive and either thinking of the past which we can do little about or thinking about the future which is not here yet. While planning for the future is important, it is based on how well we gather our thoughts at the present moment.

We’re continually scanning the phone, or looking at people around us for anything that catches our eye. You’d find people walking down a street on a beautiful day and find their eyes glued to their phones, wondering “Did someone text me?”, “Is someone calling me?”, “Is there any piece of new information for me?”. We’re so interested in what we might be missing, that we actually miss the present moment. We forget the “Now”. Practicing mindfulness helps us focus on the “now”.

How to practice mindfulness

Mindfulness is not really a technique; it’s a way of being. Being mindful without judgement doesn’t mean that you will no longer be judgmental; it just makes us realize how judgmental we are.

Choose some object to pay attention to. The most convenient one is our breath. You should try to focus on the region in your body where the breath sensations are most vivid for you right now. It could be in the belly, where you may be experiencing the gentle ballooning out of the abdomen on the in-breath, and the gentle receding of it on the outbreak. Or at the nostrils, where you are actually feeling the passage of the air as it comes in and out.

Do not try to mould it or pace it. Just be an observer.

Now start observing you thoughts wandering off. You will realize that even with the strongest of intentions to keep your attention on the breath and sustain it breath by breath, it’s hard not to notice after a while that mind is wandering.

Try to focus on your thoughts without any judgement. They can be depressive ruminations, stressful pondering, basically anything that occupies your mind most of the time. Just observe these thoughts come and go instead of pushing them away, suppressing them, (or worse) pursuing them.

Try and do it over and over again. Note when your mind has wandered and instead of being self-condescending, simply and open-heartedly note what’s on your mind in that moment. If the breath is no longer the center of your attention then what is? It is the perceiving, seeing, feeling, knowing what’s on your mind that we are calling mindfulness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, creator of the research-backed program ‘Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)’, sums it up beautifully when he says “Be awake with no agenda other than to be awake. So sitting or lying or standing as if your life depended on it. Breathing and knowing the breath moving as if your life depended on it, which of course it does, moment by moment by moment by moment by moment, resting here fully awake with no agenda other than to be awake, to be knowing of this breathing. You’re not shutting out the soundscape or anything else in the field of awareness, but simply featuring the breath center stage and allowing everything else to be in the wings.”

Benefits of mindfulness

Helps develop a healthy mind — Many researches have shown that mindfulness has had a significant impact on tackling depression, anxiety, eating disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, stress, ruminations and much more.

Improves physical health — Mindfulness isn’t just good for mind but also for the body. Many studies show that mindfulness helps relieve stress, treat heart disease, lower blood pressure, reduce pain attacks, improve sleep, etc.

Improves overall well-being — Increasing capacity for mindfulness supports us in leading an overall healthy life. By focusing on the here and now, we are less likely to get caught up in qualms about the future or regrets over the past, and will be less concerned with the things that don’t actually matter.

Try practicing this for a few minutes every day. You will find your mind wandering off; don’t be disheartened. Keep bringing it back to the focus point until you are fully aware of your thoughts and are able to steer your mind in the direction you want. It is not likely to be easy, nor will the benefits become visible very quickly. However, if we practice with determination, mindfulness can become a habit, leading to positive, life impacting changes in ourselves. You would not merely be awake but really awaken to everything happening around you and inside you.

In the end, it is important to remember that mindfulness is not just some fancy new theory, but something that can be achieved by any human being. Even you can cultivate it with grit and discipline.