What is Mindfulness and How Can You Practice It?
Mindfulness is a term that has been coined by New Ageist advocates, successful moguls, and life coaches alike, but what does it really mean? Throughout this article, we will dive into the concept that is mindfulness, where it originated, how it can improve your well-being, and how you can practice it in your daily life.
What exactly is Mindfulness?
While the word itself carries many religious and spiritual connotations to the layman, mindfulness is nothing more than a term that means “to be actively aware and attentive in the present moment without judgment or expectation.” In essence, it is complete acceptance of the present as it is without giving unnecessary focus to the abstract concepts of past and future.
Exotic Origins and Secular Applications
The term “Mindfulness” was coined in 1881 by a British magistrate by the name of Thomas William Rhys Davids. During his time in what is now known as Sri Lanka, he learned Pali — a Middle Indo-Aryan dialect and ritualistic language of Theravada, an early model of Buddhism.
Through learning and understanding this language, he created the word “mindfulness” as a synonym for “attention,” which he cultivated as a loose translation of the Buddhist concept of sati — the first of the seven factors of enlightenment, and which translates more directly to “memory of the present.”
Despite its rather exotic and spiritual origins, the term itself has blossomed into New Ageist terminology and has been reinvigorated within the secular world of business, success, and psychological wellness.
Benefits of Mindfulness
When it comes to the ways in which mindfulness can improve your life, its benefits reach far beyond psychological and spiritual wellness; however, for the sake of conveying the big picture, we will start with these two aspects:
In terms of psychological well-being, practicing mindfulness can reduce the effects and alleviate the presence of depression, chronic anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, relationship/marriage conflicts, eating disorders, and even drug and alcohol addictions. This is because many of these “disorders” are rooted in worrying about the intangible concepts of past and future — if you are fully present, you have a greater capacity to love the ‘here and now’ as it is and have less of a desire to escape the possible circumstances of your past and future selves.
On a spiritual level, mindfulness propels one into a state that promotes a positive outlook on life and a fulfilling perspective that propagates satisfaction and true happiness in one’s life. In today’s day and age, this can be hard to come by with all of the advertisements urging us to be anything other than who and what we are. After all, nothing will kill your enjoyment of life more swiftly and deeply than the deadly game of comparison; however, when one is mindful, these illusory needs for approval dissolve and one can be completely fulfilled in who they are, where they are, and what they are doing.
Physically, being mindful in your life can help relieve stress, reduce the risk of heart disease, reduce pain, decrease blood pressure, and improve the quality of sleep. For example, Wim Hof, also known as the “Iceman,” climbed Mount Everest in nothing more than a pair of bicycle shorts because of his overwhelming power of being completely and totally present. Granted, he has trained himself to become a master of meditation and mindfulness, but through his training, he has taught himself how to regulate his body temperature and decrease his sensitivity to pain caused by extreme temperatures.
Methods for Practicing Mindfulness
There are many ways to bring oneself deeper into the present moment such as meditation, attentive breathing, observation, appreciation, and momentary awareness. All of these methods simply require the conscious choice to pay attention to yourself and your surroundings as they are in the here and now.
Meditation is often thought of as something that needs to be done while sitting criss-cross applesauce with Tibetan singing bowls and reverberating “ohms,” but it can be done in a multitude of different manners depending on preference and availability. Obviously, if you have the opportunity to sit or lie down, those would be the best options, but all it requires is being relaxed, comfortable, and allowing yourself to be as you are with complete and total acceptance. While meditation is more simple than people make it, getting into all the ins and outs of meditation can prove to yield a lot of complexities, so we will save that for another time.
As for the other options: it only requires your awareness and attention. When breathing, focus on feeling the oxygen fill your lungs — savor it, taste it, feel it invigorate the cells of your body, and then let it go.
When mindfully observing, simply pay attention to your surroundings: watch how the trees dance in the breeze, feel the breeze brush your cheeks with a slight chill, pay attention to the shapes of the patterns on the hardwood floor — I bet you will find things you didn’t notice before. This also plays hand-in-hand with appreciation and awareness. When petting a dog or a cat, take notice of its fur — what does it feel like? — and truly take a moment to appreciate the things you notice around you.
These are just a few ways that you can practice cultivating mindfulness in your daily life. Even though it is something we all know how to do innately, the more we practice it, the better we become at doing it.
If you are like me — I assume we are all much more alike than we let on — then you have probably let the past and future get the best of your happiness from time to time. So, why not give mindfulness a try? The worst thing that can happen is you notice something you don’t like, which in that case, you can always make a change.