ON THE COVER Our Easy Guide To Mindfulness
Eve Menezes Cunningham explains how to get started on this powerful practice…
Mindfulness is a matter of paying attention, on purpose, to the present moment, with curiosity and self-compassion. Without compassion, mindfulness becomes yet another stick to beat ourselves up with.
Although it has been practised by Buddhists and others for thousands of years, Jon Kabatt-Zinn is credited with bringing mindfulness out of the monasteries and into the mainstream.
Advances in neuroscience have added to its popularity. Brain activity can be measured, and study after study shows the benefits.
It can help everything from concentration to pain, clarity and focus, boosting our moods and reducing anxiety, stress and depression. Mindfulness can help us get better at discerning between what we need to accept and the things we can improve.
An easy starting point is with the breath. Life’s complicated enough and mindfulness of the breath means we can practise any time, anywhere without needing any props.
We’re also generally less judgmental about our breath than we are about our bodies and thoughts. Compassionate curiosity can be easier here.
Pause to notice your natural breath. Without trying to change anything, notice whether you’re breathing from the top of the lungs, middle of the lungs or lower lungs. Do you inhale longer than you exhale? Is it the other way round? Maybe they’re balanced?
A deeper breath with a lo longer exhalation can help a activate the rest/digest re response from the a autonomic nervous system.
By using this calming b breath as a mindfulness p practice, we can, in time, r retrain the nervous system. W We also make it more likely t that we will remember to s soothe ourselves with our breath when life is hectic.
Concentrating on different parts of the body top to toe can help us pay attention to naturally arising sensations. If this is too challenging, we can bring our awareness back to the breath any time. Feeling the ground and recognising its support can help.
Mindfulness of the mind is most challenging as our thoughts move so quickly, but it can be illuminating.
I remind clients, students (and myself) that it is normal for our minds to wander; we can simply notice this and bring our awareness back to our breath (or whatever we’re using to anchor us). Yet just a little time can bring big benefits, both for our own wellbeing and in being more present to those around us.