Key Points
- Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the present moment without judgment.
- Mindfulness is not about suppressing thoughts or other aspects of our life experience.
- Mindfulness need not be religious and it is not a substitute for therapy or other clinical support for those who need it.
- Meditation is time we dedicate to the exclusive purposes of cultivating mindfulness.
Just a few decades ago, mindfulness meditation was considered an esoteric, “new age,” or downright weird activity. Now, you would need to be living in a cave to miss reference to it. It has become so mainstream that it is on the verge of becoming cliché. Meanwhile, misperceptions about the practice abound, with common beliefs ranging from it being an exceedingly difficult and demanding discipline to it being little more than lazy navel-gazing.
In a prior article, I summarized the persuasive evidence that mindfulness meditation can improve mental health, cognition, and overall wellness. In this article, I will explain what mindfulness meditation is and what it is not, with the goals of dispelling the mystique surrounding it and bringing this timeless practice down to earth and into your daily life.
What is Mindfulness?
It may be clearest to start by defining the mindfulness part of mindfulness meditation. Put simply, mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to the present moment without judgment. In this brief definition, you can discover four vital elements:
- Mindfulness is a practice. Once we take it up, we can cultivate mindfulness in meditation (more on that later) and also in the car, going up the stairs, and in conversation with loved ones. Every moment is an opportunity to practice and deepen our mindful awareness, and that practice never ends. After a lifetime of reacting to circumstances automatically, with deeply ingrained habits, we are now setting a new course. It is a simple practice, but it is not always easy, and, as with any other new endeavor, it will get easier with practice.
- Mindfulness is about paying attention. How often do we coast through our lives without focusing on what we are doing? If we pause to observe, we might see that most of the time, while we engage in one activity, we are thinking about another. Taking a shower, we’re thinking about what we’ll have for breakfast. Engaged in a conversation, we are planning how we’ll respond. Going on a walk, we’re recycling an argument we had six months ago. Mindfulness is about coming back to awareness of what is here now. This awareness exists beneath our thoughts and activities, emotions and intentions. It is inherently clear, present, and non-judgmental. With practice, we can reconnect with this precious place.
- Mindfulness is applied to the present moment. Thich Nhat Hanh said, you “have an appointment with your life….[It is] the present moment. If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life1.” Our life only unfolds in moments. It doesn’t happen any other time. So often, we miss it while we’re preoccupied with revisiting our past or planning our future. Mindfulness is an invitation to reestablish an intimate relationship with what is happening right now, both inside of us and around us. In this way, it is about living fully and wholeheartedly.
- Mindfulness is the art of nonjudgment2. We have a deep-seated instinct to rapidly assess each thing we encounter as beneficial or threatening. For the sake of our survival, it evolved over millennia as we learned to avoid predators and find sources of food, shelter, and other sustenance. Unfortunately, though we now live in relative security and comfort, our spigot of judgment never turned off. We apply it to sights, sounds, emblems of social status, our own ideas, and each other. Once you decide to notice your judging mind3, you might find that it is quite harsh, it never stops, and it reserves its fiercest criticism for its host: you. To be mindful is to practice noticing what’s happening before we add that second layer of judgment, allowing the dust we’ve stirred up to settle so we can see things more clearly.
What Mindfulness is Not
So many ideas about mindfulness have flooded into our culture that it is important to take a moment to “myth bust.” Here are a few corrections to common misperceptions about mindfulness:
- Mindfulness is not about stopping thoughts. As you can see in the description above, it is about turning toward the authentic experience of our life, here and now. It is not about suppressing; it is about acknowledging. This may be most important when it comes to our thoughts. We do not have to change them. We start by simply watching them as they rise and fall. Because we are no longer infusing them with more power, they will start to soften of their own accord. We will come back to mindfulness of thoughts in future posts.
- Mindfulness is not a substitute for therapy. While many individuals trained in psychology and other forms of therapy are also qualified to support your mindfulness practice, and the two techniques are often complementary, those who need clinical care for mental health challenges should not hesitate to seek it. This is particularly true for those who have experienced significant trauma. There are some instances where mindfulness when practiced without the support of a professional who is trained to deliver care for such conditions, can pose the potential for harm4.
- Mindfulness is not a religion. The origins of mindfulness5 practice are most often traced to Vedic and Yogic traditions that were practiced in India over 2000 years ago, which we now generally refer to as Hinduism. Analogous mindfulness traditions also arose in aspects of ancient Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism, as well as indigenous religions around the world. Despite these roots, the techniques of mindfulness need not have ties to religious beliefs. Recently, they have been intentionally secularized, perhaps most decisively by the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn in establishing and rigorously testing Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Whether or not you integrate mindfulness practice with your own religious or spiritual beliefs is entirely up to you.
What is Meditation?
While we can engage with mindfulness anywhere, meditation is time we dedicate specifically to the purpose of deepening this practice. It’s the difference between the way we exercise our muscles all day versus the time we might spend in the gym lifting weights.
Even within meditation, there are various forms – walking, lying down, etc. – but the most common, and the one we will focus on in this series, is seated meditation. We will delve into the details of these techniques in much greater detail, but the hallmark of seated meditation practice is finding stability of the body so that we can begin stabilizing the mind. There are forms of meditation that are characterized as “just sitting,” but usually it is recommended to engage our minds by focusing on a simple aspect of our experience, starting with the breath.
While meditation often occurs in groups, and this can be quite helpful, it usually involves turning inward to investigate our own, unique experience and the nature of our own mind. With meditation, we can begin to see, perhaps for the first time, how our mind influences our perception of our circumstances and the ways we respond to it. In this way, as the clutter of our thoughts and judgments can begin to dissipate, we may discover a new way of being in the world and the boundless possibilities that offers. If mindfulness meditation has any “message” for us, it is simply to appreciate our opportunity to be here, now.
Next Steps
Having addressed the “What” of mindfulness meditation in this article and the “Why” in the previous one, my next installment in this series will focus on the “How.” I hope that, with what’s been presented so far, your interest is piqued and you are ready to jump in to this healing, invigorating, and joyful practice.
