Mindfulness – what is it?

It’s been hard to escape the word ‘mindfulness’ in recent years. Whether it’s a celebrity singing its praises in the media, or the shelves of ‘mindfulness colouring books’ in your local book shop, the ‘m-word’ seems to be getting more popular by the week.

Great – but what is it?

My name’s Gary Dunne and I teach the stuff. In this short post, I’ll give you a simple explanation of the basics.

If you’re like me, your first port of call would be your favourite search engine. Type ‘what is mindfulness’ and you’ll quickly find that there’s no one fixed definition. In fact, there are many, based on different religious traditions, schools of thought/medicine and individual opinions. For this reason, I’ll avoid definitions and focus on helping you to understand (and maybe even try!) the basics.

The roots of mindfulness are in Buddhism: it’s one of the core pieces of that tradition. However, many people today, myself included, take a secular approach to the practice. Each to their own.

In simple terms, mindfulness is about learning to manage your attention, usually with a focus on keeping it in the present moment. If you’ve done any reading on the subject, you’ll also have heard of important ideas like non-judgment, kindness and acceptance, but I’m intentionally leaving those out for this introductory post.

The thinking is that we spend a lot of our mental lives lost in thought – about the past, future, ourselves, others and so on – and, as a result, miss what’s actually happening right now: our lives!

You know what I mean, you’re sitting in a meeting, but you’re mentally planning dinner. You’re out with a friend, but mentally obsessing on a work thing. Trying to sleep, but your mind’s racing into tomorrow.

Mindfulness helps us to see and manage these patterns. Through mindfulness training, we become more aware of when we mentally drift in this way, and intentionally bring our attention back to whatever we want to focus on.

Sounds good, right? So how do we do it?

This is where the meditation comes in. Think of meditation as the mental gym in which we train the ‘muscle of mindfulness’.

People who do mindfulness usually practise a mix of formal meditation (taking time out to do various exercises/meditations) and informal meditation (practising mindfulness in everyday life).

With most mindfulness meditations, we choose something to focus on – very often the breath – and simply bring our attention to it.

Want to try one?

Let’s have a go at a one-minute ‘mindfulness of breath’ exercise. Worst-case scenario, you can tell your friends you tried ‘that mindfulness’ and it’s a waste of time.

• Grab a chair.
• Get comfortable.
• Sit in a relaxed, upright way.
• Gently bring your attention to your breath moving in and out. You might focus on your belly, your lungs, your nostrils – pick whichever one you connect with.
• Try to keep your attention there for one minute.

Well, how did you get on?

If you’re like most people, you’ll quickly learn that the mind jumps all over the shop. ‘What am I having for dinner? Why did I let him/her say that to me? Did I do that thing for work?’

In mindfulness training, every time this happens, we notice it and then gently bring the attention back to the breath. This ‘bringing back’ is the muscle we are training. You might need to do this fifty times in a single meditation, so I won’t even guess how many times your attention might drift during your average day!

In this way, mindfulness is the means and the end. We practise mindfulness every time the attention drifts, and as a result we develop a more mindful way of living.

So, what use is this in everyday life?

The research base for the benefits of mindfulness is exploding at the moment – have a Google, but let’s talk practical application.

You’re in whatever situation you’re in, and your mind kicks off one of those distracting, unhelpful thought patterns. Rather than run with it, and potentially spoil the moment, we notice it and bring our attention back to whatever it is we want to focus on. This is where the training you’ve done in meditation will be key.

So there you go. Mindfulness is about being fully present with whatever’s going on in and around you at any moment, and mindfulness meditation is how we practise doing that.

Simple, but not easy!