Mindfulness & Meditation
Mindfulness meditation is a practice that involves being aware of your thoughts, emotions, physical sensations, overall feelings and your surroundings without judgment. The practice allows you to step back from being caught up in any of the above and find the gap between stimulus and response. Being mindful is the opposite to living on auto pilot, we all know that feeling of arriving at a destination and not knowing how we got there, or reacting to someone without pause for thought and later regretting our behaviour.
We know by nature we are habitual and that our mind likes to predict situations, to save energy, by using past experiences to navigate a reaction. However, every situation in our life is different, it may be similar in lots of ways but never the same. Even our own nature can change moment to moment and our perspective may be cloured by something as simple as being hungry or tired.
Just a thought - you meet someone with whom you have a slightly unpleasant encounter. Next time you meet them you have already decided this conversation is not going to go well. Your previous experience with this person has already filtered your reaction. But how much do you know about the other person and their personal struggles and life situation? We often take these interactions very personal as if everthing is about ourselves, in truth it is about the other person and we may be too busy trying to meet our own needs to find out about the other person. In this situation if we are mindful, with an openness to compassion, if we view the interaction with fresh eyes, a beginners mind we may find the conversation goes in a very different direction.
There are many ways in which we can begin to include mindfulness (awareness) into our lives and not all about sitting in stillness on the meditation cushion.
Some techniques include;
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Breathing: Focus on your breath and return your attention to it when your mind wanders.
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Body scan: Focus on parts of the body that feel pleasant or direct your awareness to your hands or feet to feel grounded.
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Mindful eating: Pay attention to the smell, flavor, colours and the texture of your meal while you eat slowly.
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Mindful movement: Be aware of your body and surroundings while moving, take your time, especially if doing something physical for the first time. Listen to your body.
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Mindful walking: taking every step with awareness and connecting to the surface beneath you, how does your body feel? Try to look around and take your time to observer something new. We miss so much with our constant rushing to move onto the next thing and the next.
Mindfulness is a quality you can practice at any point throughout your day and of course throughout your life. Unobserved you can practice in a shopping que, at the bus stop, while washing the dishes, taking a bath or a shower, travelling to work or just taking a break to enjoy a cup of tea or coffee. This regular mindfulness practice helps to support your more formal practice when choosing to still in stillness during meditation.
With regular practice you will begin to notice the calm peaceful state that is always with you resting deep below our busy chattering minds. We just need to take time breathe and be in the moment without our judging stories.
