Being 100% in the Here & Now…is the definition of mindfulness.
Hello, dear friends, and welcome back to my blog!
Today I was thinking to open a new and fascinating chapter, so it’s time to “talk” about mindfulness.
My connection with mindfulness is about as personal as it gets. I mean, I know I could write definitions of what mindfulness is or isn’t. And I was thinking to :). But as I started writing, I remembered that the lessons we take from personal experience are always much more appreciated and they kind of stick better to our memory. So I will dare share my story with you, and I hope it will be helpful.
Everything was brought on by the pandemic, like for many of us. I know very many of you out there were troubled due to either loss or some other sort of trauma caused by Corona.
Without going in too many details, everything started in December 2020, when my father got a very bad case of Covid. The kind that affected some neurologically. Imagine a father (parent), who has always been a very level-headed person, smart and almost pedantic, who solved killer sudoku for fun every day, a very healthy active person who had been gardening until 79 years of age – and would have probably continued doing so if it wasn’t for Covid.
Now imagine this same person suddenly change so drastically that he was mixing up the rooms in his own house, and was waking up at 3 o’ clock in night to take my husband to school. For me it was heartbreaking and, as it turned out some months later, traumatizing. Which is also kind of “normal” when the family members, as opposed to professionals, are the ones taking care.
Since it all happened around the winter holidays and he was extremely weak when he came home from the hospital (where they did not treat him neurologically), we were taking care of him in shifts for 3 weeks, before a specialist could see him in January 2021.
In September 2021 we were able to come back home. And to restart our normal lives – theoretically. After such events, nothing can be as it was before. That’s when my trauma started kicking in. I could feel something was not right, because I was literally jumping up at every unexpected sound and other things like this (trouble sleeping, foggy brain, frequently reliving the event), that together turned out to be classic symptoms for PTSD.
But what made me take action was the fact that I was not in the mood for scrapbooking anymore (= another PTSD symptom = reduced interest in favourite activities). By then, scrapbooking had been my hobby for 12 years, and I was always very excited about it. Now I felt like it was something that I HAD to do.
This got me so scared that I started looking for ways to “fix myself”. I did go to a few therapy sessions, but I also found MBSR – mindfulness-based stress reduction. I liked what I read about it and I jumped right in. I started practicing mindfulness meditation every day, and I started seeing clear results after 2-3 weeks.
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I was basically clinging to this meditation practice, like someone lost at sea who was thrown a life-vest. I did not consider interrupting it, being afraid I would fall back.
So I can honestly say that mindfulness meditation is what brought me back to normal. A new type of normality, of course, but one that I’m grateful to live in. Actually, I’m very grateful for the whole thing that led to this. Because it led me to grow as a person, both personally and professionally.
So, mindfulness can be practiced in 2 ways:
The informal way is to “JUST BE“100% in the “here and now” – all it takes is to REALLY be there, no matter what we do. It basically means to be present in every moment of the day :).
For example: when taking (our dog out for) a walk we can pay attention to the trees, the leaves, the grass, the flowers – no matter the season, we can really breathe in the air and see what we can feel: is it dry, is it cold, is anyone around cooking or baking, and if so, what :)? We can of course engage and play with our dog, the benefits will be on both sides.
Even when we are washing the dishes, we can focus on feeling the warmth of the water as it infuses our body, and the cleanliness of the dishes as they squeak.
A very important time to be 100% in the “here and now” is when we eat. See if it’s possible for you to focus on enjoying first the colours on your plate, then the aromas.
Then, as you start eating, see if you can think of the whole chain that brought the food onto your plate: from the veggies that have been cultivated and watered, both by the nature and the farmers, to the driver who transported them to the store, to the worker who placed them on the shelves and tagged them. All these efforts will make us appreciate our food much more.
But, in the same time, something very important for our health: we will eat slower and this will give our brain the time to give us the signal that we reached the state of satiety (we are full). By contrast, when we eat quickly we don’t give the brain the time to realise we reached satiety, and therefore we will eat more than we need to.
The other way of practicing mindfulness is the formal way – that is when we meditate.In the mindfulness meditation we always use an object of focus: i.e. our breath (can also be a mantra or an image). As we pay attention to our breath, we learn to notice when our mind wanders away – which it will do, inevitably. When we notice that our mind wandered away, we gently bring our attention back to our breath. This simple exercise of noticing and bringing our attention back builds the muscles of our attention and mindfulness.
I will get back with an article about different types of mindfulness-meditation that I have tried and helped me very much, each solving a different issue.
Among others, the benefits of practicing mindfulness are:
- being aware that our mind is dominated by thoughts
- being aware of the nature of these thoughts (positive or negative), as they happen
- being aware that our thoughts are just like the clouds on the sky, they come and they go
- knowing that when we are not aware of our thoughts we basically identify ourselves with them and this is how they dominate us and our lives
- knowing that once we start to notice our thoughts, we basically set ourselves free, because then we don’t identify ourselves with them as much
- being able to detach ourselves from our own thoughts – to look at them as if they would belong to a friend
Mindfulness will also increase our emotional intelligence. A high IQ is not enough to have a fulfilled life. For that, intellectual intelligence has to be paired with a high enough emotional intelligence.
And here are some of the effects that mindfulness has on our health, both mental and physical:
- it decreases depression, stress and anxiety
- it reduces rumination
- brings a greater feeling of calm
- it boosts our working memory and focus
- leads to better sleep
- reduces chronic pain
- it can decrease blood pressure
- it improves our immunity
Mindfulness can even help us at work:
- it decreases our stress levels
- it increases our productivity and creativity
- it leads to better focus
- it promotes higher cohesion and bonding between teams
They say that the only ones that are being naturally mindful (without an effort) are the children. They live 100% in the moment and they can just be :). I would say “let’s see if we can learn from them”, and I know it’s easier said than done, but we actually can and it does not take much. Just knowing that is empowering, right :)?
I do hope I made you a tad curious about mindfulness and maybe even encouraged you to give it a try.
Until next time, stay positively well, lovely people :)!