What is Mindfulness?
Living in the moment the "art" of a fully conscious life.....
Experience being fully present....
Opening our awareness to the experience of being fully present with ourselves and the world around us, moment by conscious moment.
Nurturing our ability to live in the present, not to worry about the past or be anxious about the future, embracing our life as it is right here right now. After all, this moment is the only moment we can really control.
Through the practice of Mindfulness paying attention in specific ways, on purpose, to the present moment with acceptance, openness, and a willingness to be with whatever is here right now. We can train our brains to focus on now, not yesterday nor tomorrow but this split second, the very moment we are living right now.
We can wake ourselves from our automatic pilot life, so that we may BE in each moment not just DO each moment. By BEing present in each moment, we can savour and enjoy each moment as precious as it is.
Training our mental muscles, so that we can choose to focus in full awareness on this moment and no other. The great news - training our mental muscles requires no expensive gym membership or heavy weights, just a little focused and repeated mindfulness practice.
How many times, perhaps on holiday, have you found yourself doing exactly what you want, exactly where you wanted to do it, and boom your mind flip flops and you’re thinking about something else. Perhaps you start worrying about work or family, and before you know it, feelings of stress and anxiety have bubbled up inside you.
You are not alone, it happens to all of us, that is exactly what our minds do, they wander, they transport us into the past or into the future. But hey, what if here and now is where we really want to be, how can we stay fully in the moment? Mindfulness.
Mindfulness is in a nut shell - choosing in full consciousness to be in this very moment of our life.
We always have a choice, but can we hold onto our choice? Through mindfulness practice we can strengthen our mental muscles, increase our focus and attention, develop our skills to hold onto our choices.
With Mindfulness we can take control of our attention - we can enjoy the art of fully conscious living.
We can live our best life.
An ancient tool for the modern world....
The modern day perception is that Buddhism is home to the origin of mindfulness, but perhaps unsurprisingly, it may go way further back than that, possibly all the way to 2000BC and the Hindu peoples.
Whether it is older than him or not, the practice of mindfulness definitely can be attributed in some form to the Buddha. As mindfulness is the 7th step of the Noble Eightfold Path taught by the Buddha, 2,500 years ago
Although its roots are in religion, Hinduism and/or Buddhism, modern day mindfulness practice is secular.
Introduced to mainstream Western society in the mid-20th century by the Vietnamese Zen master, Thích Nhất Hạnh. Probably the most influential person in bringing mindfulness awareness to the West was Jon Kabat-Zinn.
Born in New York, Kabat-Zinn was first introduced to meditation by a Zen missionary when he was studying for his PhD in molecular biology, later he became a student of Thích Nhất Hạnh.
In 1979, Kabat-Zinn founded the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical Centre. The foundation for his MBSR program was his Buddhist learning which he presented scientifically.
Kabat-Zinn defines the essence of MSBR: “This “work” involves above all regular, disciplined practice of moment-to-moment awareness or mindfulness, the complete “owning” of each moment of your experience, good, bad or ugly”.
It was publication of his first book, Full Catastrophe Living in 1990, in which he detailed his work on the MBSR program and the scientific research proving the medical benefits of mindfulness. Kabat-Zin achieved global recognition for his work and he is now recognised as the founder of the modern day secular form of mindfulness.
In 2004, an invitation was extended to Kabat-Zinn to come to Bangor University by Mark Williams, now a Professor at Oxford University, and popularity for mindfulness in the UK grew from there.
Steeped in thousands of years of teachings and tradition, proven by current empirical research, mindfulness is an efficacious and relevant ancient tool for the modern world.
In today’s foot to the floor society where we have been forced by a global pandemic to review and perhaps reset our thinking, almost unlike ever before, our mental health is firmly in the spotlight,
Mindfulness practice can help us all to lead happier, healthier, and more fulfilled lives. The good news is that we almost all have the skills to do it, we just might need a little training and support to achieve it.
Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery.
Today is a gift, that's why it's called the Present.
