What is Mindfulness?
You have seen the instagram posts, the self help blogs, and heard it mentioned in your friend circles, “I am working on being more mindful”. But you may still be asking “what is mindfulness and is possible or even helpful for me? “
It is a common misconception that mindfulness involves sitting crosslegged on your living room floor imagining you on the beach with the breeze flowing gently against yours skin. It sounds like a great picture, but for most people that idea sounds a bit unattainable.
So what is mindfulness and is it for me?
Mindfulness is a mental skill of presence. Mindfulness, on the most basic level, is the idea of being connected with our brain and our body so that were able to be more present and have a more objective perspective related to our present circumstance. It is about being able to take a step back and observe what's going on rather being than being so wrapped up in the midst of all the thoughts and feelings that we lose our ability to take a step back and observe all the possible options or contributing factors.
Think about the last time you were really stressed or anxious or overwhelmed by a life circumstance. Maybe you received the sixth urgent email of the morning or the dog knocked over the water dish right after you cleaned up the juice spill and two minutes before you needed to leave the house, or maybe it was that time you knew the test was coming up or the challenging conversation with the boss needed to happen and you just kept replaying those "what if” mental movies in your head or crafting the perfect response. Now, when you think about those scenarios, what stands out the most or what was the strongest part of that experience? What is the thoughts and the mental movie that was on replay? Was it your emotional response? Was it the body sensation? For most people one of those three categories tends to take over when we slip into one of those anxious or upsetting thought spaces.
Our goal with mindfulness is to be present with our thoughts, our emotions, and our body sensations. Most often when we are upset or stressed, we lean too far into our thoughts, or lean too far into our emotions, or are overwhelmed with the feeling in our body. This leads to us feeling our of balance and on wobbly ground.
If we can notice all three (thoughts, feelings, body sensations) and get connected with all three, rather than being focused completely on one, we tend to feel more balanced and in control of our next move. It is the same principle that climber and hikers use when encountering tough terrain. Three points of contact with the challenge, prevents falls.
Mindfulness and obtaining this objective perspective is not something that is intuitive or unnatural for most people. It is something that we have to practice in order to develop the neural pathways to be able to implement this skill when we need it.
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