Hello, Namaste and Shalom!
In the last couple of
years we have all heard the term mindfulness. Some of us know about it, others
wondered what it was, still others read about it and either started practice or
teaching. One interesting observation
worth noting was, many who practiced it, experienced a sense of relaxation and
calm.
So what is Mindfulness?
Mindfulness means paying attention to our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and
the world in a particular manner with purpose, in the present moment, and not
judging the experience. Now if we look
at the description of Mindfulness, it seems to be a hard way of life; why,
cause we are used to living with a crowd of thoughts, the turmoil of emotion
that makes life a frightening roller coaster, by adding our prejudices and
judgement to every experience in life.
Interestingly Mindfulness has been practiced for thousands of years and
it can still refresh your attitude towards life and living.
So how does one start to
become mindful? Let me give you a simple
example. Recollect the first time you
started to ride a bicycle. You had
someone to support you, your mom, dad, sibling or friend, you may have had even
training wheels. You were focused, with
your hands on the handle bar, feet firmly planted on the pedal moving it
forward you made corrections on balancing the handle bar straight. As you progressed the corrections became
smaller and smaller and your ride became longer. You began to enjoy this act of riding the
bicycle with confidence.
One can use the above
example in practicing the art and science of being mindful. Just as in riding the bicycle you made micro
actions repeatedly on balancing the handle bar until it became a seamless
activity. You brought your attention to riding the bicycle with
full awareness and continuously remembered to do all those actions. You wouldn't get distracted or fall asleep
else you would lose your balance. You
now have to do the same with being mindful in everyday life.
To be mindful one has to
have attention, awareness and remembering.
Attention we know as having focus. Awareness is knowing about knowing
and remembering means a reminder to be aware and pay attention again and
again. So we can say that mindfulness is
an intention to pay attention repeatedly.
So let us apply the above, to the skill of
focusing on your breath, which is a practice to develop your mindful
skill. Let’s do this, find a quite place
without distractions for 1 minute. Focus
your attention to your breath, sounds simple! You then notice that your mind
starts to focus on other thoughts, that keep coming up, and that is OK. You just keep the attention on your breathing
with awareness, and remember to keep repeating even when your attention shifts, without
chastising or shouting at yourself in your mind.
Keep doing that for a minute and when
finished you can find time again to do it for another and another till you are comfortable,
then increase the time slowly.
Have a wonderful time practicing to be mindful. You will hear from me soon on how you can apply this simple skill to different areas of your life.
