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!
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