What is Mindfulness? The confusion continues.

In the last few weeks I’ve been reading up about Mindfulness - something I’ve heard of before but never quite got to grips with what it means. I’ve been reading various books on mindfulness, tried meditating and a couple of different workshops, but I’m still slightly confused.

At the heart of this is is the question of how do we define Mindfulness, so I guess wikipedia is a good place to start.

In wikipedia it states “Mindfulness is the psychological process of bringing one's attention to experiences occurring in the present moment, which one can develop through the practice of meditation and through other training.”

Another definition from mindfulness for Dummies states “Mindfulness means paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, infused with qualities like kindness, curiosity and acceptance”.

And a third - Dr  Jon Kabat-Zinn states “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally”.

So looking at those definitions I can see that mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment. A good start. And we can meditate to be better at it. That’s fine too. But then we to add in being non-judgmental, kindness, compassion, curiosity. And although at one level, I get this, I think this is where I start to struggle as we are now encompassing all sorts of other ideas as well. Not that it’s a bad idea but I feel like the whole concept of mindfulness has grown out and up into something large and nebulous I can’t quite get hold of. 

Last month I focussed on gratitude and keeping a gratitude journal.  Somehow that seemed natural and easy and specific. I understood what gratitude was. I could write down what I was grateful for, and the act of focussing on those things every day spilt out into my everyday thinking and made me feel happier and more alive.

Mindfulness by comparison seems to be elusive. At one level I’m wondering if this is because if I’m not thinking about it I can be naturally quite mindful (as maybe we all are) - I am often absorbed by what I’m doing, or enjoy being in nature, noticing the sights, sounds and smell of what’s going on. I’m also quite good at standing back and observing my own thoughts when I’m feeling emotional - on the one hand I’m feeling something which might pull me one way, but also I am able to stand back and see things logically at the same time. All of these things are being mindful.  But when I start to think about ‘being mindful’ it feels like I’m trying too hard and it feels forced and counterproductive and I get frustrated.  

This frustration with the process reminds me of trying to improve my serve while playing tennis. When I was 11 years old, my Mum bought me a tennis racquet and as I was an only child with no-one to play with, I used to practice hitting the ball against the garage door or practising serving. Years later I started going to proper tennis lessons with some friends, and although they were much better at  returning the ball than me, I found I wasn’t too bad at serving, and could generally get the ball in the square, albeit not very fast. When we started to learn how to serve properly however, I learnt that the technique I had been using was wrong, and I would never improve the speed of my serve without changing my grip and some aspects of what I had learnt to do already. Changing what you have done for years is easier said than done! When you start focussing on what you are doing, the unconcious suddenly becomes uncomfortably conscious and suddenly you are messing it up completely. It takes a while to put things back together again in a new and better way and for the new way to feel natural.

So maybe that’s what’s going on here. Maybe focussing on ‘being mindful’ is a bit like reconstructing what I was doing already which it why it feels awkward. Maybe it will come with practice.

Or maybe my problem with trying to understand what mindfulness is because there is a core idea, but it has been developed by different people in different ways to be a philosophy of life, rather than a precise scientific concept. I was really pleased when I found a blog post on mindfulness.org  that echoed my thinking on this topic. In the post, the author B Grace Bullock PhD states; 

“Despite the broad coverage of the benefits of mindfulness in the media, we neither have a universal definition of it, nor a common understanding of what mindfulness practice involves. 

Some use the term to refer to activities that cultivate attention, awareness, or the retention of information, whereas others identify acceptance, non-judgment, empathy or compassion as key. Practices run the gamut from meditation, to breathing exercises, to movement, to guided relaxation.”

In the article, she goes on to discuss the problem that this causes - without a clear definition of what mindfulness is and how it is practiced, it becomes hard to scientifically assess whether it works. In the blog she explains further, “The problem here is not with the practices themselves, but the fact that mindfulness interventions lack a common thread necessary to make conclusions about their benefits as a whole.”

Reading this blog post was a welcome relief for me. It wasn’t just me that was finding the concept of mindfulness hard to pin down!  And my struggles with getting to grips with mindfulness reflect where I am coming from - as a scientist who is interested in understanding what something is and how it works, rather than someone looking for a philosophy on life.

There clearly is something at the heart of practicing mindfulness that is of value, but I can see now why I am struggling to get to grips with what mindfulness means, and that it may take a while longer before I can both understand it from a scientific point of view, and to find how whether I can benefit personally from practising mindfulness.

In the meantime, I am glad that February is a short month, and in a week and a half I can turn my attention to something new!

The bad beginner's guide to meditation

This month I am focusing on learning about mindfulness and meditation. Unlike keeping a gratitude journal, which I found very easy to start and keep going, meditation is a bit harder to get into, as it's something that requires the discipline of regular practice. 

I have tried meditation before on the odd occasion, such as at the end of a yoga lesson, but I have never tried to meditate regularly, and it was something I was keen to try as there are so many scientific studies that have shown the benefits of regular meditation.

Scientific studies on meditation have shown that it can have a positive effect on happiness and other positive emotions, lessen anxiety and depression, lower stress and even improve physical health. Measuring brain activity during and after meditation shows increased activity in the left side of the brain, and there is even evidence that meditating regularly can actually change the brain. Regular meditation can increase grey matter in the brain, increase cortical thickness in the hippocampus (which is responsible for memory and learning) and decrease volume in the amygdala (which is the part of the brain which is responsible for fear, stress and anxiety).

With that evidence, it really seemed like I should give it a go, but where to start?

There are lots of different types of meditation and ways to go about it - one of the most accessible ways to start is to use an app on your smartphone or download a guided meditation from the internet, so this looked like a good place to start.

I started by trying out  Headspace and Calm -  two well-known meditation apps that I had seen advertised.  Both have some free meditations and resources, but then other content that you can pay for. In the last week I have tried the beginner's sessions on both apps.

So what have I found so far ?

1) Evening is not the right time for me to meditate - I fall asleep!  

Ok, so maybe I should have tried sitting on a chair as instructed, not sitting up in bed, but after dozing off a couple of times I got the message.

Looking at what other people have written about meditation, it's important to pick a time that's right for you. Some people meditate in the morning to clear their mind before a busy day, some people like to meditate before they sleep. Clearly I hadn't quite got the distinction between 'before' and 'sleeping' so it looks like I might need to find a time earlier in the day.

2) It's not that easy to do. 

The basic idea behind meditation is that you are trying to focus your attention one one thing (in the meditations I was trying to do, this was paying attention to your breath) and not letting your thoughts wander. I found it was a bit like trying to put a large octopus in a small string bag. After the first couple of days I was feeling more frustrated than I started.

I even tried a local drop in meditation session ran by my local Kaddampa Buddhists led by a lovely warm lady called Anne.  It was an interesting evening, but the focus was on buddhist teaching, and although she spoke a lot of sense about the evening's topic of anxiety, I really wanted help with how to do meditation, not a new spiritual direction in life.

So I went back to the drawing board and did a bit of reading and googling to see what the experts had to say. What I found out gave me encouragement  Firstly, even the experts have good and bad days. Secondly, it doesn't matter if your mind does wander. You just notice that thought, then gently bring your mind back to your focus. And lastly, it's like running. When you start, you can't expect to run a marathon the first time. You start with a few minutes at a time and build it up. You will get fitter if you run regularly.

So I came back to my meditation apps and I am going to persist and keep meditating for a few minutes every day . I will see how it goes over the next month. Hopefully I can stay awake long enough to find out.

Cultivating Gratitude and Increasing Happiness by keeping a Gratitude Journal

Towards the end of last year, when I started learning about positive interventions to increase our levels of happiness and wellbeing, I was intrigued to learn about the part that cultivating gratitude can play in this process.


Ask people what they think of as gratitude, and our first thoughts might lead us to remembering saying 'Thank you" for a gift received, but gratitude is much broader than that. 

It's a wonder and appreciation of life and the amazing natural world around us. 
It's comparing ourselves to those less fortunate than ourselves and counting our blessings. It's acknowledging the role that other people have had in our lives. It's about savouring what is good in our lives, and focussing on things and events that have made us happy and being thankful for that.

For some people, gratitude has a religious context; when I was younger and an active Christian I would pray each night and saying 'Thank You' to God was an important part of those prayers. Recently I have been watching Marie Kondo's "Tidying up" series on Netflix and I was struck by her instructions that when sorting out old clothes you should say 'Thank you" to them for the service they have given you, and that this makes it easier to part with them. I'm sure that this is related to her own spiritual upbringing. 

Whether you are religious or not, gratitude is a really powerful tool that we can all use to improve our lives.

So why does a grateful attitude make us happier?

There's a whole body of scientific research which I have been reading which probably explains this much better than me, but here's my take on what I've read.

Gratitude helps us savour the good things in our lives, and makes us feel more positive. It's so easy to get caught up in thinking and worrying about the past and the future, but gratitude draws our attention to what is good right here and now, makes the most of the present moment.  This helps us create happy memories which are good for our wellbeing and  creating a positive mindset. 

Gratitude helps us connect with other people. If you consciously think about the good things that you appreciate about your family, you are less likely to be irritated by your teenagers thinking that a floor is a good place for clothes and other irritating habits! 

Gratitude reminds us that almost all of the time, there is a silver lining, however big the cloud, and helps us to be resilient when things aren't going well. 

Gratitude helps us make useful comparisons. Our levels of happiness are strongly related to what we compare them to. If we constantly compare ourselves to our perception of other people having a better life than ours (more money, more friends, better looking) then this has a big negative impact on our self esteem and satisfaction with life. But if we start to draw our attention to what is good in our life and think about it with gratitude, we can redress this balance and get a much more even keeled view of our own lives which will make us happier in the process.

Gratitude stops us taking stuff for granted.  The way our brains are wired is that we adjust to stuff more than we think we do.  This adjustment can be useful when we face tough times, we can adapt to the circumstances and not be down for too long, but the downside is that we very quickly get used to good things in our life, and take them for granted. For example, if you have been driving for a few years, think back and remember the excitement you felt when we drove your first car as a young person - then think about how you feel when when you hop what is probably a much nicer car now - I'm guessing it's not nearly as exciting.

I volunteer in Oxfam one morning a week, and it's a great charity to work for, but one of the benefits for me is that it reminds me of how well off we are in the UK compared to many people living in poverty. I might be having a bad day, but our family has food, shelter, warmth, water, medical care. So just thinking about the people Oxfam supports makes me feel very grateful for what I have, and I'm sure that boosts my happiness levels.

There's lots more that can be said about gratitude, but that's good for a start.

So how can we take an active step to cultivate gratitude in our lives and the benefits it brings?

One method that I have been trying for the last couple of months is to keep a gratitude journal.  This is based on scientific studies that have shown that the simple act of writing down three to five things that you are grateful for, on a regular basis, can significantly improve your wellbeing.  

It's very simple - find yourself a notebook and pen, and set yourself a regular time when you will sit down and jot down 3 good things that you are grateful for. You can aim for once a day, or less often depending on what suits you. The important thing is to be regular, but so that it doesn't feel like a chore! Feeling you ought to be grateful for something isn't the same as really feeling it, and won't have the same effect.

Just write down what you can think of that you are grateful for today. 

It might be something that you have done that you have enjoyed. A conversation with a friend. A lovely sunset. A fun day out. The fact that your day at work was OK when it's normally really hard. The fact that it was raining but you didn't have to go out. Or that you did, but the feeling of rain on your face made you feel alive. Fish n chips. A roof over your head. That you managed to finish tidying a pile of mess. Whatever it was that made you happy today that you feel grateful for, write it down.

You don't have to write loads. It can be a simple list, or you can expand as you wish. 

I write my journal most nights before I go to bed. Thinking about the good stuff before I nod off has also helped me sleep better. I aim for 3 things but some days there's lots more! Looking back on what I've written in the last couple of months also has made me realise what are the best bits of my life. It's often the simple stuff, dog walking with friends, eating a meal with my family. 

And has it helped me feel happier? Yes, I think it has. I feel more positive and even when things don't go well, I think it helps me keep stuff in perspective. I feel closer to some of my family members too.

Try it for a couple of weeks, and see if it works for you.

Let me know how you get on.  I would love to hear how it works for you if you haven't tried it before, or if you keep a gratitude journal already, drop me an email or add a comment and tell me about your experience.