Mindfulness is becoming increasingly popular worldwide, and many would want to try it and practice mindfulness as it claims a wide range of benefits, from enhanced focus and attention, creative thinking, and emotional intelligence, as well as reducing the extra amount of stress and anxiety, and many more. With all those benefits, practicing mindfulness is believed to improve the overall quality of life.
But the question is, is practicing mindfulness the right fit for everyone?
To know the answer, we should clearly understand what practicing mindfulness is about. And to understand that, we should first know what mindfulness is. So let’s begin with an overview of mindfulness itself.
To be mindful means to be aware. And I understand the mind’s natural response to this statement, asking, “Aware of what?” Now it might confuse the mind even more, reiterating that mindfulness is about awareness itself, the awareness that comes from non-judgemental, caring attention to the present moment.
Okay, let’s explore what it all means by going through the definition. First, let’s see what is the present moment we’re encouraged to focus our attention on it to be mindful.
The present moment is the only time and place we truly encounter life. All our experiences unfold in the present moment. Sense perceptions on the outside and thoughts and emotions on the inside are the fabrics of the present moment through which all our experiences take place. And the collaboration of these three faculties of sense perceptions, thoughts, and emotions shapes our life experiences. These are the contents of the present moment. Now to be mindful, we need to have our attention on the present moment.
And the question is, isn’t our attention already on the present moment? The answer to this question is, interestingly, no for most of the time. But how?
The human mind is an outstanding tool, giving us thinking ability. And it produces thoughts incessantly. But more than eighty to ninety percent of these auto-generated thoughts are repetitive, useless thoughts about rehashing the past or rehearsing the future. Now, every single thought has a magnetic pull to draw our attention toward itself, to the past and future, away from the present moment. Not being aware of this habitual conditioning of the mind, we feed the unnecessary thoughts with our attention habitually, and the body responds by producing feelings compatible with those thoughts. Then felt thoughts become even more fascinating to our attention, and the circle of autogenerated thoughts and emotions engaging our attention goes on and on.
It’s important to know there isn’t anything wrong with the mind-body system producing thoughts-emotions as long as we’re aware of it. Not being aware of it and letting the system run in autopilot mode, we experience an unnecessary amount of useless thoughts, with an extra amount of stress and anxiety related to those thoughts, as well as less mental clarity, less amount of creative, original thoughts, and emotional intelligence.
Now we practice mindfulness to step out of this habitual conditioning of the mind and take the lead to focus our attention in a deliberate way. In the habitual way of the mind, we identify with the thoughts, emotions, and all we perceive through our senses that shape our experience, and we act out our thoughts and emotions. Whereas becoming aware of the totality of our experience, including our thoughts and emotions, gives us the power not to be carried away by them. By becoming aware of thoughts, we can choose which thought to follow and which to let go of. In that space of awareness, we can recognize futile thoughts and unfollow them, and we can recognize practical, creative thoughts and give them our attention for practical purposes. By becoming aware of the emotions we’re experiencing, we can choose not to act them out. It’s important to know that emotions are not harmful, not even anger. Harm is when we act them out unconsciously. And finally, by becoming aware of what we’re perceiving, we can respond to the needs of the present moment from the place of a clear mind, which is mostly the best response. All benefits of mindfulness come out of this state of awareness. And to inhabit this new way of the mind, we have to practice and train the mind.
So, practicing mindfulness is about training the mind to steady its attention in order to deliver the best of its abilities in response to the needs of the present moment. In many ways, it’s similar to sports. All sports aim to train the physical body to enhance its performance in a particular desired way. By doing sports, we strengthen the physical body, and by practicing mindfulness, we strengthen the mind to steady its focus of attention deliberately. Also, when training the physical body, we mostly pay attention to the nourishment we provide the body. And when we practice mindfulness, we also pay attention to what we feed the mind through our attention.
To train the mind, we use some tools the same way we can use tools like weights to train the physical body. One of the most common tools for practicing mindfulness is the breath. And there are different techniques to use the breath to train the mind, as there are different techniques to use weights to train the physical body. But the main purpose of all techniques is to use the breath as an anchor to hold our attention onto itself, not drift off into the habitual circle of thoughts-emotions. And, of course, it’s a matter of practice because we need to return our attention to the breath over and over again, many times in just a few minutes of practicing.
But what does the breath do? Focusing our attention on the breath opens up a space between our attention and the content of the present moment. And in that space, we become aware of our thoughts, emotions, and sense perceptions, whereas before, our attention was too closely absorbed in the content of the present moment. By becoming aware of what’s going on inside us, we realize better and healthier choices we have. It’s like becoming aware of healthier choices for food, activities, and our overall lifestyle when taking care of our physical body.
Mindfulness represents a healthier approach to our minds, and its benefits are beyond the mind itself, positively impacting all areas of our lives. Moreover, mindfulness is accessible to everyone. Anyone can experience the advantages of practicing mindfulness, the same way anyone can benefit from taking care of their physical body. However, breaking free from our ingrained mental patterns and actively directing our attention to the present moment requires effort. But the benefits are worth the effort. We only have to cultivate intention and resilience through regular practice.