Mindfulness Is Built In

We begin with an arrival guided practice that I call wandering breathe, where we exhale fully and inhale fully and follow that wave while we wander the body, bringing oxygen to our shoulders, back, belly and limbs. We talk about how mindfulness is not only a practice, it's built into who we are.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

This is Dr.

Tia H.

Ho with Finding Mindful Now.

Guiding you out of your head and into your life with applied mindfulness.

Finding Mindful Now is about starting with a mindfulness practice and then seeing the capacity for us to tune in and be present with life more of the time,

Whatever we're up to.

Today we're focusing on mindfulness being built in.

Before we get going on our talk I like to start with an arrival practice and this is a mindfulness invitation to support attention coming back to this moment.

Maybe from wherever the mind has been wandering in the last hour,

Maybe it's the mind has been over,

The attention is over in the last day,

Or the mind is projecting into the future.

And I just like to call that wandering mind back in to arrive.

So today we're gonna do a little bit of breathing and riding the cycle of air moving in and out of our lungs.

So I'm just gonna invite you,

And again with any invitation you can choose to change this and you can let your attention settle into the sensation of your clothing gently touching your skin or you can feel the support of the land gently holding you.

Or you might find a pattern or texture you love on your body,

The clothing you're wearing,

Maybe something you're sitting on or a carpet or painting nearby.

And either let the eyes follow and appreciate its intricacy or use your fingers to touch it as if for the very first time.

And with any invitation you can change it or stick with something different.

So I call this a wandering breath and I'm gonna start by exhaling out all of my air until there's nothing left and then the body wants to inhale and I'll repeat this a couple times.

So I'm going to exhale all my air out and then when it wants to inhale and I'm just letting the body lead me so then it feels really full so I'm going to exhale again all the air out.

And I notice the body moves a little as I empty my lungs and that it wants to breathe in again so the air is gonna come in.

And I noticed that as the air comes in my chest expands and I just invite you to notice what happens as your air as the air comes in and out of your body.

And as the air comes back in I feel into my lower back and just as the lungs fill and oh it's full and it's gonna come on out again.

And I notice the pressure shifting the ribs in the back.

And this time as I breathe in now it's all full and I'm gonna exhale and notice the sensations in my legs.

And as as the breath comes in each time I'm sending oxygen out to my toes.

As the wave of wandering breath exhales I gently stretch and just feel the breathing moving in and out of the body.

I'm giving thanks for this aliveness and feeling tension leave with each exhale.

So in that exhalation and inhalation process where you're letting your you're nudging more and more air in and more and more air out the air is just wandering in and wandering out like the tide of the ocean.

And this being able this this capacity for being with the breath for being with the body that's simple awareness that's the awareness of who you are.

It's mindfulness.

It's a natural state already built into the human brain-body system.

And it can be hard to see that mindfulness is built in because at a very young age we are taught to prioritize analytical and intellectual capacity that the mind has.

Mindfulness is this capacity to direct attention and it's underneath the intellect.

It's almost like a support.

It's broader,

It's deeper,

It's that awareness flexibility.

When you're intentionally directing that attention to present moment life experience you might notice that sometimes judgments and analysis fade into the background.

And it's almost like awareness shows up through the curtain of a thought as though the curtain were made of thoughts hanging down over awareness.

Maybe you slow down to smell a flower or you gently hug a friend and feel that touch.

Or maybe it's just that you notice that a stretch shows up in your body like a cat and as you stretch your arms or as you stretch your back attention is simply there in the motion of the body.

We talk about mindfulness as a practice and it's really training this natural capacity to be engaged with attention for longer periods of time.

So the mind,

The brain's main function is to protect this body and the mind thinks these circular loops,

This internal self-referential chatter,

Kind of like as a side effect of that continual protection of the body.

And that attention,

That awareness that we are is there underneath that thinking all the time.

And over time it's almost like the amount of thought shrinks a little bit,

That self-chatter thought and awareness,

The observation of awareness expands.

And this is powerful because it allows observation of thought,

Of feeling,

Of sensation processes.

And more and more you might notice when the thoughts the mind brings up.

They're just,

It's just the brain creating thought as a prediction to see like,

Hey is this is this useful?

What about this?

Does this serve you?

And you know we don't have any control over the fact that the brain brings up these thoughts.

Just like we don't control the breathing that shows up in and out of the system.

We might nudge it,

We might direct it,

We can support it,

But there's no con- we're not trying to control it.

We also aren't in charge,

We don't control the heart beating in this body.

And very similar to that heartbeat,

Very similar to the breath going in and out of the body,

The brain just generates thoughts,

Little patterns in the mind.

Like that annoying song you just heard on the radio and then the gets stuck in there.

And you can notice when the analysis mind is judging and that's like another layer of thought added on to that first layer,

That first thought experience.

These are experiences.

Emotions are experiences.

Thoughts are experiences.

They're temporary.

They're just moving through.

And with mindfulness practice the more that awareness is resting in the body,

Resting in the sensations,

Noticing the shift and changes of emotions,

The more wiggle room there is to invite in that capacity to be more present,

To let analysis go.

You also might begin to see that they kind of have a life of their own.

They might come in like a wave,

Just like a breath wave,

And go out like a wave,

Like the tide.

And that awareness of what you are is constant underneath them.

So today I just invite you to notice when there's a transition,

A shift,

And suddenly awareness is in the body.

When you're stretching,

Or you smell a flower,

Or you're washing the dishes,

Or you're going for a walk,

Just notice that that awareness is there all the time.

That capacity for mindfulness is there all the time.

And I'd love to hear what you notice.