What is Mindfulness?

Simple Definition of Mindfulness

According to Jon Kabat-Zin, mindfulness is paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally...as if your life depended on it.  We ALL have tons of thoughts every minute of the day.  Do you ever feel like your thoughts/feelings are out of control and creating anxiety, depression or just way too much stress in your life?  Learning how to navigate this territory can make a huge difference in our lives.

Benefits of Mindfulness:

• Better enjoy our food, routines, friends, relationships, and work
• Reduces anxiety and fights depression
• Notice destructive habitual patterns and change them
• Understand ourselves and our relationships more deeply….being less reactive and more empathic
• Enjoy just being, in addition to doing

What REALLY is mindfulness?:

• Mindfulness is originally a Buddhist term
• Thich Nhat Hanh, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk, teacher, author, poet and peace activist, who has brought mindfulness to the attention of westerners, has defined mindfulness as:
  • “…the energy of attention.  It is the the capacity in each of us to be present one hundred percent to what is happening within and around us.  It is the miracle that allows us to become fully alive in each moment. It is the essential basis for healing and transforming ourselves and creating more harmony in our family, our work life, and our society.”
• Mindfulness has also been popularized in the West by Jon Kabat-Zinn, the US medical doctor who created the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program at the University of Massachusetts
• His working definition of mindfulness is: “…paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally….as if your life depended on it.”​

5 Ingredients to Mindfulness

1.  Paying Attention (differently):

• Listen to, watch or consider what naturally exists without trying to deny, avoid or alter it
• Attending to things we might habitually ignore, like our internal process of thoughts, feelings, body sensations, memories, beliefs, etc…

2.  On Purpose:

• Turning off the auto-pilot
• Intentionally increasing our awareness of our experience let’s us see all of the options available to us we might not have seen before
• Can bring unconscious material to the light of day

3.  In the Present Moment:

• It requires a focus on the here & now…the only place that true happiness can reside
• Can get stuck in the resentments/regrets of the past and the hopes/fears of the future whereas we can only really LIVE in the present moment
• Nothing we can do about the past (but learn from and take responsibility for) and we can’t predict the future

4.  Non-judgmentally:

• More objective/curious stance where we radically accept whatever arises into our awareness without judgement
• Judgements keep us unconscious because it becomes unsafe to look more deeply whereas curiosity allows us to see things and connect the dots

5.  As if your life depended on it:

• Carpe diem:  why waste time ruminating about what we can’t change (past/future) instead of opening up to all that life has to offer us, including a sense of aliveness and connectedness to our present moment experience​

​How to develop greater mindfulness in your life:

• It’s like learning another language.  It requires us to practice that language.  Meditation, yoga, and some forms of psychotherapy can be ways of learning the language of mindfulness.
• However, we can also learn mindfulness by going back to our body, our five senses and using our daily lived experiences
• Mindful eating, mindful washing dishes, mindful walking, mindful brushing our teeth, mindful showering, mindful waiting in traffic or in line…slowing down, doing one thing at a time, and noticing all the nuances of movement, using all of our senses to really feel what it is that we’re doing instead of multi-tasking and losing the experience of the present moment.

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