Have you ever felt overwhelmed at work? Or perhaps noticed your mind wandering when you needed to focus? In today’s fast-paced world, maintaining mental well-being and focus can be a challenge. This is where meditation and mindfulness come in. Mindfulness training programs are increasingly popular. Even Google offers mindfulness-based programmes for its employees, which lately they have come to publish a book called “Search Inside Yourself.” Other companies have adopted mindfulness as you can see in Gelles’s book found here. Mindfulness practices are not just trendy, they are essential for improving workplace well-being and health.
Understanding meditation and mindfulness
Mindfulness is an experiential practice. Therefore, I invite you to take a moment: pause reading for a few minutes, find a comfortable position, and join a guided meditation that you can find here. Take this opportunity to look inward and observe your present experience. In mindfulness, there is no right or wrong, nor any expectations. Perhaps after the meditation, you will feel more present and connected with yourself. This is at the heart of what mindfulness entails!
While mindfulness is linked primarily with meditation, its practical exercises extend beyond formal meditation. Mindfulness is defined as “the awareness that arises through intentionally attending in an open, caring, and discerning way”. The goal is to transform one’s relationship with thoughts, emotions, and sensations in everyday life, not just during formal practice or as a tool to cope with stress. Mindfulness is about being present without clinging to labels. Despite its apparent simplicity, it requires effort. Achieving a mindful state may occur after a single practice, but developing mindfulness as a constant trait requires ongoing time and practice.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, who systematized mindfulness in the Western world in the late 1970s and guided you during the meditation practice in the link I provided, has numerous videos and books available for those interested in mindfulness practices. I recommend starting with his book “Full Catastrophe Living”, in which you will find many meditation techniques and learn how patients have improved their health and well-being through his program. For those more interested in his program, consider exploring the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program available nearby. Alternatively, you can explore Palouse Mindfulness MBSR resources online.
The core elements of mindfulness
There is a model that suggests mindfulness involves three core elements:
- Intention: Knowing why we are paying attention. Reflecting on our values, motivations, and intentions.
- Attention: Training the mind to stay present and see clearly the nature of reality so that we can respond effectively. To practice this, during a formal mindfulness practice, we may use one object to focus our attention, such as the breath. If distracted by thoughts, feelings, or sounds, attention is brought back to the initial object. Rather than being present in the moment, we often lose ourselves in distracting thoughts or opinions about what is happening, what happened in the past (worries), or what might happen in the future (anxiety). Mindfulness helps us detect when attention wanders, strengthening our capacity to monitor thoughts and behaviour.
A regular mindfulness practice may decrease mind wandering. We expend approximately 47 percent of our time with our mind wandering! This shifts attention from a task to unrelated concerns, negatively affecting task performance. Mindfulness helps us bring attention back to the task. - Attitude: Observing experiences with acceptance, openness, caring, and curiosity, without trying to change the experience. For example, if anger arises during mindfulness practice, it is noted with acceptance and kindness without expectation. The attitude is about relating to whatever is present without judgment or manipulation.
Practical tips and resources
Starting a mindfulness routine can significantly enhance your well-being. Beyond mindfulness programs, you may explore local yoga classes which can help you to increase awareness of your sensations, breath, body, and mind.
Additionally, a simple and powerful tool is the three-minute breathing exercise, which can disrupt automatic thinking patterns and increase acceptance-based coping. The exercise involves three steps, one for each minute:
- Ask yourself, “Where am I? How am I? What am I thinking?” to introduce awareness of the current experience, disrupting habitual patterns.
- Direct attention away from thinking and focus on the breath.
- Expand attention to include awareness of body sensations, focusing on your body as a whole.
By incorporating mindfulness into your daily routine, you can foster your well-being. Let’s give it a try? Interested in learning more about the links between mindfulness and your brain health? Explore the GetBrainHealthy tool here.
