WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?

Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR, defines mindfulness in the following way: “Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally”.

Mindfulness practice teaches us to direct our attention to our present moment experience with an attitude of kindness and curiosity. It helps us cultivate the ability to be present with what is already here, moment to moment. This allows us to bring even the most subtle parts of our experience to the foreground, such as sensations in the left big toe.

Imagine you're sipping a cup of tea. Instead of gulping it down while planning your next move, you savour each sip, feel the warmth, notice the flavour. That's mindfulness in action—being aware and engaged in your current experience. So often in life we are operating on automatic pilot or preoccupied with worrying, daydreaming, planning, or judging. Rather than try to change anything, mindfulness helps us to simply become more aware of our habitual patterns of thinking, allowing us to explore the difference between “doing” and “being”.

It's not about clearing your mind, but rather bringing a mindful awareness to your thoughts and feelings without getting caught up in them, like watching clouds passing by in the sky without trying to alter their shapes. We are not trying to eliminate or fix problems, but instead explore our ability to create some space around them, and maybe in doing so, change our relationship with them.

Through our mindfulness practice, we can deliberately cultivate this ability to be with ourselves and become more present in our lives, while simultaneously cultivating our ability to be kind and compassionate towards ourselves and others. This can have a profound effect on our mental and emotional health and wellbeing.