homework 5 and 6

What Mindfulness Is and Isn’t by Stephen McKenzie

Mindfulness isn’t what we think it is. Mindfulness isn’t anything that we think; it’s what we don’t think. Mindfulness isn’t something that other people do; it’s something that we all do. If the only mindful people were the ones doing courses in it or reading books about it or writing books about it, or all three, then humanity wouldn’t last very long. We all need to be at least a little bit mindful to go through our days without being hit by the first bus that we mindlessly wander out in front of or getting hit by the first other totally mindlessly person whose toes we mindlessly step on. On a more refined survival level, being continuously rather than just occasionally mindful can help us get through a day - or even longer – without getting upset by life.

Simply defined, mindfulness is an ancient life-enriching and healing technique that can help us to remember our natural state of happiness and health, even if we think we are too modern and too busy to recognize what’s really important – being fully alive and fully alive to our full life potential.

Mindfulness can be explained as something which contains just two active ingredients: awareness and acceptance. These two basic elements of mindfulness can be seen as two wings of a single bird that can fly us higher than we could have thought possible as long as we recognize and use both our wings together. When we are aware and when we accept what we are aware of – what’s actually happening to us here and now - we are not slaves to our minds, not at war with our lives, and our life circumstances tend to improve.

Mindfulness can be divided into two types, formal and informal. Formal mindfulness is the regular practice of a formal mindfulness exercise, which can be described as “meditation” if you’re comfortable with that term. If you’re not comfortable with the word “meditation,” think of it as “the systematic focusing of attention on a particular piece of sensory reality.”

Informal mindfulness just means giving our complete attention to what we are doing and observing our thoughts about it, no matter how much our mind resists it. A valuable practice of informal mindfulness is simply being fully aware of an activity that our minds habitually don’t accept, such as washing the dishes or the dog, and just doing it without allowing ourselves the potential mental and physical destructiveness of resisting doing it.

In spite of what some of us might think about mindfulness, it isn’t strange or impractical or something that we need to take on faith or practice in a dark room or only practice within a religious or philosophical tradition. Perfectly sensible, respectable and ordinary people formally and informally practice mindfulness (as well as some possibly not quite so sensible, respectable or ordinary people), and it can help all of us.

Unlike some techniques that people sometimes mistake mindfulness for, mindfulness doesn’t involve attempting to change how we think. Mindfulness actually helps us get beyond our thinking, especially the thinking that goes around in circles and worries us. It does this by enabling us to focus on and accept what’s taking place in our bodies and

minds without trying to stop or improve what’s happening. Paradoxically, this process often does improve our bodies and minds, but this is a side benefit rather than a deliberate goal. The purpose of mindfulness is to make us more aware of and accepting of our life responses, and to help us observe rather than be controlled by our thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings are a natural and positive part of our human lives, but thoughts and feelings that consume and upset us aren’t, and mindfulness helps us to notice the difference and choose what is useful and beneficial.

Mindfulness isn’t a life- and wellness-enriching experience that we have to accept on faith or even on the basis of our own experience. There’s a growing body of scientific evidence that mindfulness can help to treat or manage a wide variety of psychological and physical conditions – such as anxiety, depression, pain, and even cancer – as well as make well people more well. Mindfulness is even being introduced into medical courses in Australia, New Zealand, and at Harvard University in the United States. There is considerable evidence that mindfulness can reduce our chances of developing unwanted psychological or physical manifestations of mindlessness, such as insomnia and unhappiness.

Mindfulness is an effective and harmless way of helping us to live our ordinary lives by helping us to learn, make decisions and communicate optimally. And success in each of these aspects of our lives often results in success in others. Acceptance of the benefits of mindfulness doesn’t require us to believe in anything other than our own experience. To be mindful, we simply need to have an open mind and heart.

Source: Mindfulness at Work: How to Avoid Stress, Achieve More and Enjoy Life! by Stephen McKenzie (Wollombi, N.S.W., Australia, Exisle Pubnlishing, 2013)