Mental Health Matters: Mindfulness

These days, we hear a lot about mindfulness, but what is it and how can you use mindfulness in your own life?

Jon Kabat-Zinn is often credited with bringing mindfulness to both Western medicine and mainstream Western culture. Though he was never a monk, Kabat-Zinn received years of training in the Buddhist tradition, and when he returned to the United States, he began researching the effects of mindfulness on health. He has said the "definition of mindfulness is: the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally to the unfolding of experience moment by moment.” Since he began researching in the 1970s, mindfulness has expanded as an idea and practice throughout our society and is often an aspect of mental health counseling.

In a nutshell, mindfulness is about being aware of, without judging, the moment you are in. Understandably, this can be hard to achieve in the environment of technology, activity and pressure most of us experience in our daily lives. From the moment we wake up, we are flooded with sensory input and thoughts. Just consider a simple shower, which has the sound, wetness and temperature of water, along with the texture and smell of soap and shampoo. Many people like to think in the shower so your thoughts may be far away from these sensory experiences as you think about your daily schedule, rehearse a conversation, reflect on your dreams, etc.

Keeping with the example of a shower, what would it mean to be mindful? What would a person need to do to be in the here and now in the middle of a busy morning routine?

First, clear your mind of thoughts associated with the future or the past and allow yourself to notice the sensory experiences you are having right as you enter the shower. Feel the water hit your skin. Remember you do not need to judge or evaluate the sensation; just notice it for whatever it is. As you pick up your soap, feel the weight in your hand, and as you rub it against your palms, notice the slippery texture. It might be fun to work up a good lather and make a big soap bubble with your hands as you did when you were a kid. If you do, what does the light look like glancing off the surface of the bubble? Can you see the colors of the rainbow? Now, move your attention to other aspects of the shower. What do your feet feel standing on the shower floor? What can you hear, smell or taste? Does your mind feel restless? It is very likely trying to tug you toward thinking about all the things you usually think about as you bathe. “Not today,” you tell your brain. “Today, I want to be here and now, to be part of something I do every day, yet seldom allow myself to experience.”

Since mindfulness requires you to shift your attention to the here and now, it can help to practice deliberately shifting your attention. Meditation is the most common way to learn mindfulness practices, however, one can incorporate attention-shifting exercises into daily life. You can practice attention shifting and mindfulness with anything and everything you do by focusing your attention on your current sensory experience. This includes interoceptive experience (interoception is your ability to experience internal sensations such as hunger, pain, feeling hot or cold, awareness of breathing, awareness of your heart beating and more). For example, while folding the laundry, you can see the colors of the clothing, feel their texture, smell the freshness and also notice you are feeling tired and your stomach is grumbling.

One attention-shifting exercise is to notice how your attention shifts when you are driving. When we drive someplace familiar, it is not unusual to get there, yet not really recall the drive. This is usually because we are skillful enough to attend to our own thoughts or what is on the radio without needing to solely focus on the road. Next time you are in the car, try to deliberately shift your attention to the act of driving. What do you see? What are your arms and legs doing? What can you hear? Then go back to driving as you usually do, and observe where your attention goes. You can do something similar at home by deliberately shifting attention between something on your phone and the TV, or different sights, sounds and other sensory input such as birds singing, how your body feels against the chair you’re sitting in, what you smell, what your snack tastes like, etc.

It takes regular practice, but being more mindful can lower stress and bring you greater connection to yourself and your environment.

Nora Sinclair is a licensed professional counselor and national certified counselor based in Lexington, S.C.