What is Mindfulness? |
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What is Mindfulness?Mindfulness has a history dating back over 2500 years. Although mindfulness originated within Buddhism, it can be thought of as a kind of mental training, the usefulness of which stands independently of Buddhism or any other religious system. Its rich and intricate phenomenology make it difficult to define and it is often emphasised that to know it one must practise it rather than study it. At its simplest, mindfulness is ‘moment-to-moment awareness’ - knowing what you are doing while you are doing it. Jon Kabat-Zinn, the pioneer of mindfulness applications in Western medical settings, defines mindfulness as ‘paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally’. Teasdale, Segal and Williams, the authors of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, elaborate on the texture of mindfulness as follows: ‘to be fully in the present moment, without judging or evaluating it, without reflecting backwards on past memories, without looking forward to anticipate the future… and without attempting to ‘problem-solve’ or otherwise avoid any unpleasant aspects of the present situation. In this state, one is highly aware and focused on the reality of the present moment ‘as it is’, accepting it and acknowledging it in its full ‘reality’ without immediately engaging in discursive thought about it, without trying to work out how to change it, and without drifting off into a state of diffuse thinking focused on somewhere else or some other time. The central feature of the mindfulness state seems to be a heightened awareness of being in the here and now, rather than operating in a ‘mindless’ ‘automatic pilot’ mode, in which one ‘automatically’ reacts rather than ‘consciously’ and ‘mindfully’ responds. The mindful state is also associated with a lack of elaborative processing involving thoughts that are essentially about the currently experienced situation, its implications, further meanings, or the need for related, but not immediate, action. Rather, mindfulness involves direct and immediate experience of the present situation.’ In this state, the moment is experienced in its ‘multi-dimensional splendour’. This may appear elementary, but the mind has an almost compulsive tendency to plan for the future and reflect on the past. Mindfulness can be thought of as a way of being which anchors the mind in the present. It involves letting your experiences unfold from moment to moment and accepting them as they are. There are multiple pathways through which mindfulness meditation might produce its effects:
As a technique mindfulness can be learned and its benefits made accessible for anyone to try. In fact, the idea of simply paying attention to everyday experiences lends a quality of ordinariness to the practice which makes it accessible to people of all walks of life. |
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The art of becoming deeply aware of the present instant
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Ten thousand flowers in spring, the moon in autumn This being human is a guest-house. Lost
We shall not cease from exploration
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One instant is eternity; Seek the wisdom that will untie your knot A billion stars go spinning through the night,
The Summer Day
Always,
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Mindfulness as Stress Management The term “stress” originated in engineering; it referred to the demand, pressure or strain placed on a structure. For example, one might speak of the stress a 5-ton truck would place on a bridge. This idea of stress is an excellent starting point in the application of the term to human life. Thus, at its simplest, stress can be thought of as the experience of pressure placed on a person. This idea of stress is broad enough to encompass the full range of demands from getting out of bed in the morning to loosing a spouse or child. Of course the amount of stress getting out of bed places on us is far less than stress of being told you have to get a seven page report in the following day. That amount of stress is less than being fired, which is less than the stress of loosing a spouse. The point is that different life events or demands place one under different amounts of stress. 50 years of stress literature is replete with the view of stress as a necessary part of living. Too little stress and we become bored, lethargic, demotivated and slow; too much and we become anxious, worried, worn-out, and depressed. Thus, both too little and too much stress is sub-optimal. There is an optimal level of stress balanced somewhere between these two ends of a continuum. This optimal point corresponds to demands that work on the edges of our capacities. This is a situation where we are challenged (so not complacent) but not pushed beyond our capacity (so not overwhelmed). The ideal is to be working at our limits, discovering the edges of our capacities and working around them. The pervasiveness of stress management books, workshops, courses, lecturers, and articles indicates that, at best, only a small minority of people are working at optimal levels of stress. In 1997, research on stress in America revealed that the fees for stress management services and products exceeded 9 billion dollars. In fact, most studies reveal that people feel they are being stressed way beyond their limits. Recent research conducted in the UK revealed that 70% of their workforce was suffering from stress in the workplace. 61% of the UK population say that they “often” suffer from stress. This represents a steady upward trend in stress levels over the several years this research. Attempts to manage their stress often exacerbate the problem as they smoke too much, drink too much, and eat too much (especially unhealthy foods). Since these behaviours place additional demands on the human body, in excess they lead to more stress, and are therefore dysfunctional. Rosemay Anderson, Chair of the International Stress management Association (UK) says “What people need to understand is that stress isn’t something that will simply go away if left to its own devices. There are many active measures that we can take to reduce the effects of stress in our lives.” I would like to suggest two ways. Firstly, we can reduce the demands made on us. This is like reducing the number of 5-ton trucks that ride on a bridge. Fewer trucks equals less stress on the bridge. To be able to do this effectively, we need to take note of what we do in a day and familiarise ourselves with all the elements that cause us significant stress. Once we have this awareness, we can sift through the different elements and determine what is necessary and what we choose to do. I recall a story of a man who made “to do” lists every morning and once a task was on the list, it had to be done before he went to sleep. This man eventually had a myocardial infarction. Even after his recovery he continued to make the lists and like an automaton did what they said. After discovering himself washing his car at 10:00 at night, he had an important insight: the car did not have to be washed that day, this was a pressure he was placing on himself. Fortunately, once he realised that it was a self-imposed pressure, it led to significant behaviour change. There are many people who suffer unnecessary stress, because of what they believe they have to do, rather than what is actually necessary. But stress is an inevitable part of life and many of our demands cannot be discarded by simply taking them off a list. These could include providing for our family or cooking, cleaning, socialising, spending time with our families, filling out forms, sitting in traffic, and many others. This brings us to the second way we can work with the pressures placed on us: we can build our capacities so that the stress will not be experienced so intensely. This may be likened to reinforcing the bridge so that the stress of the 5-ton trucks riding over it will be felt to a lesser degree. Mindfulness-based stress reduction adopts this approach: it increases our capacity to deal with stress by building our healthy internal capacities. It builds our capacity to relax, to pay attention, to see clearly, to obtain insight and change our behaviours. Mindfulness has been around for 2500 years, but the culturally independent form, known as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) was started by Jon Kabat-Zinn in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre. The Centre for Mindfulness is the oldest stress reduction programme in the U.S. Since its inception it has treated over seventeen thousand people with diverse problems and presentations, including chronic pain, AIDS, bereavement, anxiety, panic disorder and excessive work and family stress. Kabat-Zinn defines mindfulness as a particular way of paying attention: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. In a state of mindfulness, we are immersed in what is going on when it is happening, without any ulterior motives to achieve anything or get anywhere. Mindfulness refers to a state of being fully present in the here and now, as opposed to our all too common state of being lost in different forms of thought such as reverie, fantasising, ruminating, worrying, or planning. Being fully present brings all our capabilities to the present moment. With presence, we know what’s going on in an unusually clear and precise way. This is the critical prerequisite to effective stress management, because we will not effectively intervene to address our stress unless we clearly recognise the symptoms of stress as they uniquely manifest in each of us in the moment. It is all to easy to learn the theory of stress management, but it is exceedingly difficulty to remember to use the techniques at the time, when you are in the stressful experience. By enabling us to be fully present, mindfulness brings the best of our abilities and skills to bear on the situation. It is not only external phenomena that create stress; we ourselves are a considerable source of stress. Negative thoughts such as “I’m no good” or, “I’m a complete failure”, and catastrophising thoughts such as “I’m going to lose my job” or “nothing will ever work out for me”, can lead to severe stress. These thoughts become giants of stress when they flow through us unexamined. In this circumstance, we are more likely to immidately accept the truth of the thought, which might make us feel sad or anxious. Through mindfulness, the thought becomes the object of our awareness, which enables us to see it as just another thought, a simple mental event. We recognise it as a visitor to our mental home: one which we soon discover to be insubstantial. When the thought is processed in this way it becomes grist for the mill of growth, and not an instrument of distress. Mindfulness allows us to observe our thoughts, see them for what they are, and allow them to fade away without reacting to them. This helps in two main ways: firstly, it gives us insight into our thinking, which implies we don’t react to our thoughts as if they represent a true state of affairs. Secondly, people experience an increased sense of control over their internal environment, which decreases their stress. This might sound easy, but our minds have an almost compulsive tendency to drift off. We therefore need to develop our mindfulness skill, and this is achieved through practice. The approach of MBSR is to ground our attention in our bodily sensations and the experience of our senses. Our body provides the anchor to the present moment and a safe place from which to observe our minds rather than being swept away by it. In MBSR, the three main formal techniques to develop mindfulness are sitting meditation, body scan and gentle body movement (hatha yoga). On hearing “meditation”, some people immediately close off thinking it is some esoteric form of Eastern mysticism. One common MBSR sitting meditation focuses on the breath: one attempts to follow the sensations of breathing. Very soon the mind wonders off the breath. When it does, your “job” is to gently escort it back to the breath. This might sound simple, but a short exercise will demonstrate that it’s not easy. Perhaps you might want to test this for yourself: in the box below is an awareness of breath meditation. Take a minute to do the exercise and see what happens. Awareness of Breath Exercise:
What you probably found is that after a few breaths you suddenly discovered that your attention was no longer on your breath. You were lost in thought about some topic or other; perhaps about a conversation you had earlier or something you still want to do, or perhaps you just went into reverie. Then, at some point, you realise that you have been off and you directed your awareness back to the breath. However, after a few breaths, attention again slips off the breath and back into thought. This process is completely normal and forms the basic training of mindfulness. By undertaking it, you increase your awareness of your internal experience and train your mind to remain present. This is meditation, or mindfulness training, and its many benefits include increased relaxation, increased concentration, increased positive mood and increased self-regulation. One important benefit of using the breath as a support rather than for example, a candle, is that, wherever you go, the breath is always with you – right under your nose. This makes it easier to bring the benefits of the practice to the area of your life where you need it most – the daily grind. Mindfulness is a natural state that can be active whether you are sitting quietly in a room, showering, cleaning, or conversing. You can write a report mindfully, talk with colleagues mindfully, make coffee mindfully, walk up stairs mindfully, and answer the phone mindfully. If it is something you can experience, you can bring mindfulness to it. The idea is to build your mindfulness skills in meditation so that they will be available for you in your everyday lives (in what is called informal practice). Its benefits don’t depend on the type of activity, but on whether you bring mindfulness to it or not. Mindfulness is simply paying attention in the present moment, non-judgmentally; there is nothing more mystical about it than that. Like anything worthwhile, it takes some discipline and effort to develop. To the extent that we cultivate mindfulness we will have an effective and sustainable approach for dealing with the myriad stresses and strains of living in the contemporary western world. And guess what… it’s free! |
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Why pay attention to attention?Consider these quotes: William James, known as the father of American psychology, once said: "The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgement, character, and will ….an education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence ."
“For the moment, what we attend to is reality.” – William James “…each of us literally chooses, by his ways of attending to things, what sort of a universe he shall appear to himself to inhabit.” – William James “ You are where your attention is…make sure your attention is where you want to be.” Reb Nachman of Bratslav. “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.” - Sir Isaac Newton Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear? Can you remain unmoving till the right action arises by itself? - Lao Tsu
“Observation is like a flame which is attention, and with that capacity of observation, the wound, the feeling of hurt, the hate, all that, is burnt away, gone.” -- J. Krishnamurti
“Mindfulness has to do above all with attention and awareness, which are universal human qualities, “ Jon Kabat-Zinn
“You can observe a lot by watching,” Yogi Berra
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