...intention to pay attention repeatedly

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.