What’s Mindfulness Anyway?
Mindfulness can be understood through many lenses – religious, spiritual, scientific, and secular. At its simplest, mindfulness is a way to get to know your own mind – and the quiet wisdom of the body and heart that lives alongside it.
The way we learn anything is the way we can learn our own minds. How do you do it? You study it. You set up a coffee date. You observe it, like watching someone who has a skill that you want to develop. You engage in study and observation to gain information, clues, and tips. This is the exact strategy of mindfulness. If you want to get to know your own mind these are the steps: sit down with it, watch it as though you were a research scientist with complete interest - curious and fascinated.
When coming to know your own mind the first thing you may notice is that it is a slippery pig, hard to catch, moving and darting all over the place. Mind wandering is just the nature of this brain organ, it is a form of scanning the environment making sure everything is okay. It’s similar to what an air traffic control radar does, scan the environment. There is also an air traffic controller who is observing the radar, reads and deciphers what is critical to act upon. The air traffic controller doesn’t react to every blip.
The human nervous system is designed to scan, predict, and move quickly. When we hone the skill of mindfulness we become like the air traffic controller - observing the scanning radar (in this case our brain) and then discerning what is worthy of action. We learn not to judge or react to every blip on our mental radar. This is the mindful art of noticing rather than judging, allowing rather than fixing, and returning to yourself right here in the present moment just as you are.
If you’d like to explore this, consider carving out time each day, 2-3 minutes to start, practice sitting quietly and observe the brain scanning. Like learning scales on an instrument, it takes time and repetition to see improvements. To get better you must keep practicing.
And this is where mindfulness begins, not by changing yourself, but by learning how to notice everything, especially your mind.
In-joy practicing mindfulness,
Debbie