Mindfulness is huge in psychology at the moment. No matter where you look there are mindfulness treatments being proposed for a range of very different psychological disorders and problems such as depression, anxiety, eating disorders, personality disorders, trauma, insomnia, relationship difficulties etc. I am generally wary of fads but everything I’ve read so far (and it’s quite a lot) makes me believe that mindfulness is indeed a very useful direction in psychology.
Because mindfulness just makes sense.
So, people usually have two questions about mindfulness: 1) what is mindfulness, and 2) how is it going to help me?
Mindfulness has been defined by Christopher Germer as “moment-by-moment awareness”. Thus, mindfulness is the opposite of being on autopilot where we are physically present but mentally absent (think driving home from work). Other terms describing mindfulness include: being present, being conscious, paying attention, being aware, being engaged or being in the now.
Rather than being present in a moment-to-moment manner, human beings spend a significant amount of their lives mentally time-travelling – either worrying about the future or ruminating about the past. There are several problems with this: a) constantly worrying about the future increases anxiety; b) getting stuck in the past is often associated with depression; c) while you are stuck in your head either imagining things that will never happen or regretting things that have already happened, you miss out on what is happening in your life right now.
When I ask people what things stand out in their lives, they usually say things like: travelling, being with family or friends, seeing a beautiful sunset, having sex, eating a good meal, watching a movie, spending time with children etc. Some will even mention being in therapy. What I believe that all these experiences have in common is that we are really present for them. So whether we are watching a sunset or a movie, talking to another person or eating a delicious meal, the experience becomes rich and imbued with life if we are mentally as well as physically present. Often quite mundane things can become interesting and engaging when we pay attention to them.
Unfortunately, being fully present is not something that comes to us human beings very easily but rather seems to be something that we have to learn. The good news is that being mindful is something that we can become better at with practice.
So how can being more mindful help you? I think there are two ways that an increase in mindfulness can improve our lives. First of all, it can decrease negative feelings such as fear, sadness, anger, and frustration by limiting the time spend stuck in our heads and by allowing us to observe these feelings without being completely swept up in them. With increased mindfulness we can observe the impermanence of even very powerful emotions and learn to allow them to come and go without taking them quite so seriously. Second, mindfulness has the potential to enrich our lives enormously. Experiences acquire texture, substance and colour when we really pay attention. A common mindfulness exercise is to eat a single sultana slowly and really pay attention to the colour, texture, smell and taste. People are generally amazed by how rich an experience eating a single sultana can be when it’s done mindfully.
If you want to learn more about mindfulness check out the book section. I have recommended the best books on mindfulness that I’ve come across so far.