What Exactly Is Mindfulness Anyway?

Mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposefully paying non-judgmental attention to the present moment. In this session we breakdown this technical definition and express it in a more approachable manner, allowing beginner practitioners to have an easy way in to the mindfulness practice.

Transcript

So question, What does mindfulness mean to me? For me I go by the definition that mindfulness is the awareness that arises from purposely paying non-judgmental attention to the present moment. The awareness that arises from purposely paying non-judgmental attention to the present moment. That's a bit of a mouthful so let's break it down. There's a lot of different ways to define and sort of discover mindfulness, But ostensibly it means non-judgmental acceptance of the present moment, Of what's arising, Of the here and now. We can approach what mindfulness is by talking about how we practice mindfulness meditation. You set an anchor, For example the sensations of the breath at the nose. When your mind wanders you gently and lovingly bring it back. So the act of mindfulness meditation in this case is attempting to maintain our focus on the breath, But more so being aware of where our mind is at any time. So when our mind wanders and we see that it's lost in thought, That it's distracted, We bring it back to the breath. The act of mindfulness in that case is being aware of the fact that it moved away from the breath. Where is our mind in any one state? Oh it's over here. It's lost in thought, Memory, Mood, Emotion, Sensation, Feeling. We witness that, We notice that, We go okay what do we do now? We bring it back to the focus of the breath. So in this way we are practicing mindfulness. We are actually happy that we've caught our mind. Happy is not the right word, But we are doing the act of meditation mindfully by discovering where our mind has wandered. In that moment we bring it back. We're not trying to empty our mind. We are focusing it, But our overarching goal is to discover where our mind is at any one place. Approaching and accepting it. This is where our mind has wandered to. This is the contents of consciousness in this moment. I accept it. My mind is focused now. Oh now it's not. That is what is arising in this moment. We bring it back again and again and again. And over time and with practice that skill set extends externally. So as we travel through the day we'll discover that our mind has wandered into emotion, Into mood, Into distraction, Into thoughts of the future or the past. And that practice on the meditation mat allows us to go oh our mind has wandered. Then we have a choice. We have a choice to bring it back to whatever we're doing, I. E. The anchor of the breath or whatever we're doing in that moment. Or we can choose not to. We can choose to become more mindful, More focused, More aware. We can allow ourselves to drift, But it gives us a bit more of a choice.