If we’ve talked about mindfulness in a session, this is the longer explanation to come back to in your own time. It covers what mindfulness actually is, what it isn’t, and some practical ways to build the skill.
Mind Full or Mindful?
Have you ever driven somewhere familiar and arrived with no real memory of the trip? Or finished the washing up while your mind was somewhere else entirely, replaying a conversation from work or preparing for something coming up next week?
Most of us spend a lot of time like this. Our minds have this excellent capacity to review past events (so we can learn from them) and to predict future events (so we can prepare for them). In this sense, letting your mind wander to what happened or what’s going to happen can be incredibly helpful.
The difficulty is when this becomes the default, particularly when your mind’s habitual focus is worry about the future or rumination about the past. Spending excessive amounts of time on either can leave you feeling low, stressed, or overwhelmed. The time spent elsewhere in our mind also takes us away from being present at the times that matter most.
Mindfulness is the alternative to that.
What is mindfulness?
Simply put, mindfulness is about paying attention to the present moment in a way that is without judgement.
There are many different ways to practise the skill. You can pay attention to your breath, your thoughts, your emotions, or what’s going on around you, and it can be active or passive. These different practices are essentially about bringing non-judgemental awareness to different aspects of your experience.
It’s a shift from thinking about your experience to directly noticing it. Your mind’s natural tendency is to analyse, evaluate and problem-solve. Mindfulness moves you into a different mode, where you’re simply observing what’s here without getting caught up in it.
What mindfulness isn’t
In recent years, mindfulness has gained a lot of attention. It’s been adopted by wellness culture, big corporations and marketing departments, and in that context it’s often portrayed as a fix for normal human emotions like anxiety or low mood, or used as a buzzword to help sell books and training programs.
Along with the hype has come a lot of confusion about what mindfulness really is, what it’s supposed to do, and how to implement it.
It’s not a way to get rid of uncomfortable thoughts and feelings. This is the most common misconception: that if we’re just mindful enough, we can fix our anxiety. Mindfulness is better understood as a different way of experiencing your thoughts and emotions. Rather than struggling against them, you practise noticing, accepting and non-judgement.
It’s not a relaxation exercise. Sometimes you’ll feel relaxed afterwards, and that’s a welcome side effect rather than the main aim. You can be mindful while anxious, stressed or upset. If relaxation becomes the goal, mindfulness quietly turns into another way of trying to control how you feel, which is the opposite of what it’s for.
You don’t need to be calm, still or quiet to practise. Mindfulness is often pictured as a passive practice: cross-legged on a cushion, eyes closed, perfectly still. That’s one way to do it, and it doesn’t suit everyone. Plenty of people find mindfulness in moments of movement or exercise, or with a busy mind.
It isn’t a fix all. Like any psychological strategy, it’s not a silver bullet. Mindfulness is frequently presented as a standalone solution, as though enough practice will resolve whatever you’re dealing with. It’s better understood as one skill among several, and it tends to be most useful when it’s integrated with other strategies, as is the case in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
The Mindfulness Beach Ball
Clients often find the beach ball analogy a helpful one (I didn’t come up with this, it’s one that’s commonly used in Acceptance and Commitment Therapy).
Imagine you’re in a pool with a large beach ball, and the beach ball represents your thoughts and emotions. When you struggle against them, it’s like trying to push the beach ball under the water. You can usually manage it for a short time, but it takes energy and effort. Inevitably, the beach ball pops back up.
It’s often our attempts to struggle with or control our experiences that make them harder to manage. Mindfulness helps us to drop that struggle. Mindfulness is like sitting back to observe the beach ball rather than trying to control it. You practise watching your thoughts and emotions come and go, whether they’re pleasant or unpleasant.
The core skills
Mindfulness isn’t one single thing. A few distinct skills sit underneath it, and it can help to know which one you’re working on.
Observing. Noticing your experience directly through your senses, rather than thinking about it. What can you actually see, hear, feel, taste or smell right now? The aim is a kind and gentle curiosity rather than analysis.
Describing. Putting words to the fine detail of what you notice. If you’re observing a piece of fruit, you might notice “smooth”, “round”, “cool”. The same applies to emotions: “heavy”, “tight”, “restless”. Naming an experience is different from evaluating it.
Participating fully. Bringing your whole attention to whatever you’re doing, rather than doing it while your mind is elsewhere. Noticing all aspects of the activity, with your full care and attention.
Being non-judgemental. Not labelling your experience as good, bad, right or wrong, and not immediately trying to control or avoid it. This is one of the hardest parts, and it takes time. A lot of prolonged distress comes from trying to avoid or control our own experience.
Focusing on one thing at a time. Holding your attention on a single thing, moment to moment. Distracting thoughts will arrive, and there’s a strong pull to chase them with more thinking. Noticing you’ve drifted from observing into thinking is not a mistake. That noticing is the skill. Acknowledge it, then gently return.
That last point is worth sitting with, because most people conclude they’re bad at mindfulness whenever their mind wanders. Your mind wandering isn’t failure. Catching it and coming back is the entire exercise, and you can do it as many times as it happens.
Formal practise
For some people, setting aside time specifically to practise the skill of mindfulness is what works.
- Breath focus. Rest your attention on the sensation of breathing. When your mind wanders, notice where it went and bring it back. Five minutes is plenty to start.
- Body scan. Move your attention slowly through your body from head to feet, noticing sensation without trying to change it.
- Observe your mind. Notice what your mind is doing. Does it seem busy, quiet, or distracted? Simply notice and label the state of your mind.
- Guided practice. Apps and recordings can be a good scaffold early on, when doing it unaided feels hard.
Informal practise
Bringing mindful attention to things you’re already doing. For most working people, this is where it becomes sustainable, because it doesn’t require finding extra time.
- Your first coffee or tea. Notice the warmth of the cup, the smell, the taste, the temperature. One drink, with your full attention.
- The walk from the car or station. Notice the air on your skin, the sound of your footsteps, what you can actually see around you.
- Washing your hands. Water temperature, the sensation on your skin, the sound. Twenty seconds, several times a day.
- A single task at work. Pick one email or one piece of work and give it your whole attention, without switching tabs. Notice the pull to do something else, and come back.
- Waiting. Lifts, queues, kettles and traffic lights are all small opportunities to arrive back in the present rather than reaching for your phone.
- The transition home. Take a minute before walking through the door to notice where you are, rather than carrying the workday straight in with you.
Informal practice tends to work best when you anchor it to something you already do every day, rather than relying on remembering.
A realistic expectation
Mindfulness is a skill, and like any skill it takes effort, time, patience and ongoing practice. It’s not easy, and it’s not supposed to feel immediately calming or profound.
Being clear about the purpose and limitations helps set your practice up for success. So does understanding which type of practice suits what you’re dealing with.
And if you’ve tried mindfulness before and you’ve thought it hasn’t worked or you can’t do it, that’s genuinely useful information rather than a sign you did it wrong. Other techniques may suit you better, and there are plenty of them.
If you’d like help building a mindfulness practice, or working out what might suit you better, we can look at it together in a session. If you’re not currently working with me and you’d like to talk it through, you’re welcome to book a free 15-minute intake call.
This post draws in part on material developed by the Centre for Clinical Interventions. It’s general information rather than personal advice, and may not be suitable for everyone.
