It's easy enough to give a definition of mindfulness but actually to really understand what mindfulness is you need to know what it's for actually,
What's the point of it,
What you actually do when you practice mindfulness and how it actually works.
And so I'll give a very brief outline of those three things here.
And in its simplest terms what mindfulness is for is being okay actually.
It's a way of meeting what's happening within you and around you with an open mind and an open heart that really helps to reduce stress and anxiety and depression and all of the ways that we actually get caught up with things that aren't so helpful.
And so what it's actually for is a deep and abiding sense of well-being or we could simply say being okay.
And the way it works is by learning to actually notice what's happening when we're experiencing anything,
Learning to pay attention to the details of our experience and to start to discover well how are we meeting that.
If you're hearing a sound for instance are you meeting that with patience or impatience or if you're feeling something like anxiety again are you meeting that with resistance or acceptance.
Anything that's happening in your life there's always the thing itself and the way you're meeting it.
And so mindfulness is really a way of starting to become aware of that process and then being able to nudge it in useful directions so we can learn more and more to meet things with patience and acceptance kindness and curiosity and that that actually really helps to reduce the impact of whatever's happening on us.
You know one of the central mechanisms that really fuels stress within us is what psychologists call experiential avoidance.
And this is simply the very instinctive tendency we have to pull back or to push away things that we find unpleasant,
That feel bad and on a very basic biological level that makes very good sense.
You know you touch something hot you draw away from it.
You know it's a really good idea.
You feel cold you do something to get warm.
So on a very simple level this works brilliantly well but when things are a little bit more complicated it turns out it doesn't work so well and it actually fuels stress,
Anxiety,
Depression and other difficult mind states like those.
And so mindfulness provides an antidote to experiential avoidance which as I've mentioned is one of the drivers of stress but there are other unhelpful things about experiential avoidance.
So for instance if we're feeling stressed and we eat lots of ice cream,
Nothing wrong with ice cream necessarily of course,
But if we do too much of that it has negative consequences right.
Same with alcohol,
Same with all the different things that we tend to go to to try and cover over what we feel is unpleasant,
Difficult,
Stressful,
Annoying.
And so this is not about being puritanical and getting rid of all those things but actually giving ourselves alternatives.
So we can still enjoy things in moderation of course but we have other alternatives that actually work better.
And the last thing that's not so helpful about experiential avoidance is that it doesn't really solve the problem.
You know if something's complex then drawing away from it means we're not engaging with it.
And many of the complex situations,
Things that we're experiencing in our lives and the world around us,
They need us to actually engage with them but in a way that's helpful with balance and patience,
With wisdom,
With compassion.
And mindfulness really supports that process.
