A Case for Living Mindfully

The bad news is that you are falling… but the good news is there is no floor.

I’m sure you’ve heard or read a little bit about mindfulness by now – it seems to be everywhere online and in the best sellers list at our local bookstores. Today I would like to attempt to build a case for cultivating mindfulness in your own life as a potential antidote to things you may be feeling day to day that aren’t exactly “pleasant” like anxiety, depression, listlessness, or just an overall desire to begin living a richer inner life.

What is mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a skill that is practiced and honed in the same way many other things are; by doing it. To be mindful is to “be in the moment”; I think that’s the typical explanation given by many these days and if you’ve heard it enough – it’s probably started to sound a bit repetitive and empty, and I believe that a practice like mindfulness is too potent to be passed over due to “woowoo-y”, ambiguous definitions. I ’d like to really dissect exactly what I think people are talking about when we talk about being “in the moment”.

You are always “in the moment” – it’s just a universal physical law that your body and mind can’t possibly be anywhere else than where you are right now.  Much like when you are travelling across country and begin to feel a little homesick, you can’t will yourself home (maybe in a few decades I’ll have to revisit this example) in the same way that you can’t will yourself out of the moment. So I think a better description of mindfulness would be “paying attention to the current happenings of your local and/or inner environments, on purpose”. I’m sure this definition will seem redundant to those of you who have been practicing for a while, but I really feel that for the newly mindful of you out there, this is a potent distinction to make. The importance of purposefulness lays in the difference between random tangential thought that our brain produces ad infinitum vs concentrated, dedicated focus on a particular “object” of consciousness.

To cultivate mindfulness, you must practice paying attention to the current happenings of your local and inner environments, on purpose. That’s it. What does that look like? We’ll try right now. After you finish reading this next sentence, take a second, and just pay attention to what the bottom of your feet feel like - You don’t have to label anything as hot, or sore, or stinky, just feel it as if you were about to explain to someone what it feels like to have feet.

If you’re new to this, maybe you’ll get 5 good quality seconds that you’ll really feel the bottom of your feet.  Before you know it however, your mind is pulled towards something else; “I think I need some new shoes, my left foot is a little sore, maybe it was that root I tripped on last week, I think I’ll go google some reviews on new shoes to buy…” and off the mind goes into that all too familiar tangential style it often does. If I may, “true” mindfulness is those few seconds you had before your thoughts came and washed your attention away from the bottom of your feet. You were paying attention to some piece of your inner environment, as those sensations were coming in, on purpose. That’s all there is to it.

Why practice mindfulness?

So without attaching too many of the esoteric components of mindfulness, what good does it serve us to periodically tune into some aspect of our sensory experience throughout the day? Well, I think the first aspect may be more obvious than it seems – for every moment you spend paying attention to a piece of local, current stimuli, that is a moment not spent being tugged along by life and our tangential, sometimes negative, mind. For some who are battling with anxiety, panic disorders, depression, PTSD, or many other difficult psychological states, this is the first line of defense and an absolute godsend with enough practice. In addition to that, I think one of the greatest abilities gained through mindfulness is an ability to “note” arising sensations that for some, can lead to a state of curiosity towards your own consciousness and its ever-changing topography, as opposed to a state of reactivity. A sort of “oh wow, is this what anger feels like? It’s so hot, and it completely changes my opinions of people” vs “God I am so angry right now, I can’t believe they would do that to me, I’m definitely not inviting that person to my birthday party!”. This simple adjustment from reactivity to curiosity is an incredibly potent adjustment to make that lends to many positive health and psychological outcomes. Other health benefits of living mindfully could be:

-          Reduced psychological noise and stress

-          Reduced anxiety, depression, and panicked, hyper-aroused states.

-          Improved relationships as you are able to better navigate and label negative emotional reactions in interpersonal interactions.

-          For some, mindfulness is a powerful tool in understanding and working with personal traumas.

-          Cardio-respiratory benefits (Check out Part 2 of the mindfulness series next week or look back on my “Stress Ain’t New” article here.

-          Instills a willful curiosity towards life, as opposed to a half panicked, half distracted life.

- Increases ability to hold concentration for longer periods of time, which lends to improvements in performance across many domains.

Great, so how can I start practicing?

Mindfulness serves as a parachute for when difficult thoughts or feelings bombard their way into our psychological experience. Though it may not completely remove the initial cause of the difficult feeling, it gives us great pause to briefly alleviate that feeling and can halt that avalanche of emotion that many of us know all too well. And much like working out for a functional purpose, practicing before you really need the skill is the first step. Before you leave here, I want to give you what I would call a “introductory mindfulness workout”. You can use anytime of day, no matter what you’re doing, to give yourself a few moments to put a comma in your day, improve blood flow to the brain, slow your heart rate, and reorient your attention to things that really matter. It’s the difference between white knuckling your way through your entire day vs. releasing a 4 hour-long-contraction of every sphincter in your body by taking a second to relax; this small difference will change everything from your neurophysiology and your immediate psychological experience to the way you greet strangers, hug your friends, or taste your favourite food.

Body Scan Practice

This practice is deceptively simple, in fact I remember for the longest time when I started doing them, I always thought that I was doing it wrong because it felt so simple. When you’ve finished reading this little blurb, go ahead and give it a shot.

Take a seat, lie down, or stand where you are – the only requirement here is consciousness. The pace or speed of this practice is entirely up to you, but I always say that longer sessions (5+ minutes) really hit the spot.

With your eyes open or closed, close your mouth, take a breath in through your nose and like we did before, tune into your feet. Feel what it’s like to have feet, while breathing slowly and deeply in and out through your nose. See if you can “cover” your feet with your attention, get as closely as you can to that feeling. After a few moments, see if you can then shift your attention from your feet to your ankles. Among all the sensations coming in, if you happen to notice a bit of tension, see if you can lengthen your exhales and relax the musculature surrounding your ankles. For the creatively inclined of you, you might benefit from visualizing your breath actually going down into your ankles and loosening up all those tight wires that do such a good job keeping you standing throughout the day. Really see just how close you can get with your attention. After a few moments (or minutes – its completely up to you), move on up to your shins, using the same protocol, relax and release all the tension that’s bound up in your shins by relaxing with every exhale – like layers to an onion, this may take a few breath cycles for the extra tense of us out there. At your discretion, take this protocol and work up and down your body however you would like, noting all the sensations that come in to the select limb or body part.

For a quick down and dirty body scan that can be used before something that you perceive will be difficult or arousing, my favourite areas to scan are often my neck, jaw, upper back, shoulders, and butt – I’m often amazed at just how tightly I am contracted without noticing. Give it a shot the next time you notice some feelings of stress coming on.

Disclaimer: I can guarantee that throughout this practice, even for the well practiced of us, your mind is going to wander much like how I mentioned before. The brain is really great at feeding us associations; sore feet? Let’s go google new shoes we can buy. A little shin pain; remember that time way back when we wiped out on a bike in front of our crush (how embarrassing!). The real aim of this practice is to recognize that we’ve wandered, and to come back to what we intended to do, to pay attention to our inner environment. Although it may be a tad infuriating when you first start and realize just how many times you’re having to reorient your attention, believe it or not, this is where the real practice happens. Much like how you perform bicep curl repetitions to build bigger, stronger biceps, the wandering and noting of the wandering and reorienting back are the repetitions for cultivating mindfulness. Through practice, you are building up and educating dense packages of neurons that will better equip you to hold attention for longer periods of time, recognize and note arising sensations, and manifest many positive outcomes in your life and for those around you.

Okay, I hope this was an appropriate first time exposure for those of you who had yet to learn a bit about mindfulness, and for those of you who are already on the journey of cultivating mindfulness, I hope I’ve managed to reaffirm some of your incentives that drive your practice. This is going to be a topic that I will explore at great length for the years to come, so if you feel like I’ve missed something, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment, suggestion, or critique down below. For those of us who are on a journey to improve our day to day psychological experience, I recommend installing a mindfulness practice into your life. It has been a potent source of meaning, resilience, and healthy living in my life, and I hope it can serve you in a similar way. So, the next time you’re washing the dishes, or driving to work, tune in, even for a moment, to the water on your hands, or the gas pedal under your foot.

All the best,

-          Our Blue Sky Minds