Thoughts Feelings Impulses Bliss Stimuli Ideas Pain Memories Fantasies Fear
Thoughts Feelings Impulses Bliss Stimuli Ideas Pain Memories Fantasies Fear
What is mindfulness, anyways?
Mindfulness and meditation can mean a million things, but I like to start by boiling it down to one: Familiarization. The process of mindfulness is one of making an intentional effort to become familiar with our experience. Getting to know ourselves intimately, with the many features of our lives - the sensory world, our bodies, thoughts, fantasies, memories, impulses, etc. - helps us to clarify our sense of self, which is a determining factor in how we navigate the world.
Ok, but why mindfulness?
Much of our sense of self is an automatic process. This can be life-saving, as in circumstances where our instinctive reflexes kick in to steer us from bodily harm. Unfortunately, these unconscious defenses can also be the framework for habitual knee-jerk responses when we perceive more abstract danger: risk in connecting through relationship, fear in trying something new we don’t yet understand, anxiety about the reliability of our lives… All discomforts that we often hide from by keeping stuck in musty cocoons of patterned thought and behavior.
Mindfulness can be a powerful tool for becoming familiar with some of our underlying programming and gaining stability in turning towards the difficult features of old traumas that, when avoided, fuel habitual behavior. The resulting courage to accommodate empowers us to inhabit the vulnerability where a full life can bloom with a greater sense of agency and self-efficacy.
Fine then. HOW?
Mindfulness practice is frustratingly simple, often leading people to give up early because they assume they are doing it wrong. After all, aren’t you supposed to be calm and thought-free as a result of practice?
In the beginning, I recommend setting an intention around duration and focus. Start with as brief of periods as you can allow yourself, maybe 1-5 minutes at most. Pick an “object” of your practice: this is often the breath, but can really be any stimulus that you can gently return your awareness to when it naturally wanders. Many people find going for walks and using the sensation of their feet touching the ground as the object more tolerable, for example.
Observe the object: the cool air on the nostrils, the squish of soil under the soles. The mind will invariably wander into any number of dull, disturbing, or exciting psychic states. When you see that it has, this recognition is its own intervention. Without judgement (or at least judgement of the judgement) simply come back to the object again… And again… And again… It’s that simple. You are developing a muscle through repetition.
A key reminder for beginners and experts alike is that the goal is not to maintain a tight, single-pointed focus on the object through the duration of the practice period. Instead, we are training a compassionate and gentle environment where we can accommodate swells in the play of mind to begin to see them as they are…
Reach out!
Supporting others on their mindfulness journey in whatever way I can is a passion of mine, as well as a valuable part of my own practice.
Though I am far from an expert, my approach is informed by certification through Naropa University as a Mindfulness Instructor and my own 15+ years of practice experience, including a number of two-week retreats.
I am happy to offer instruction and consultation to those with a genuine interest.