What Is Mindfulness?

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is learning to pay attention to what normally escapes our notice. It's focusing on now, and letting our obsessive worries about the past and future fade. It's not that the past and future cease to exist for us; we simply choose to put less of our energy there. Studies show that the average person generates about 6,0000 thoughts per day. If that's a surprise, it's because many of our thoughts are automatic and repetitive. Unfortunately, much of this habitual parade of thought tends to be negative and directed at ourselves. It does little to enhance our lives, provide valuable information or solve our problems.

Mindfulness is a way to clear the decks of some of this constant internal chatter that does little but dilute our experience of life. By clearing away the distractions, we're able to experience life more intensely.By developing our ability to concentrate on the present, we learn to make the most of each passing moment, instead of letting moments slip by only half lived. This is done through the regular practice of one or more exercises that help us reconnect to our senses, to our inner experience, and to the world around us.

Mindfulness isn't a difficult concept. In fact, children are experts at it, becoming fully absorbed in whatever they're doing, and losing track of time as they lose themselves in play. We're really just trying to recapture a state of being that you probably spent a great deal of your childhood in.

Even as adults, everybody achieves this state of mindfulness once in a while. It's sometimes called. This happens when we become fully rapt in an experience, performing at our best, with every move seemingly effortless and masterful; when we look up, we discover that hours have passed in what seemed like only a few intensely pleasurable minutes.

The goal is to make this more than an occasional, accidental state of being, so that when you kiss (or engage in any other activity), you'll not only enjoy yourself more, but you'll be at your best and more fully present to your partner.

A Very Practical Practice

Although mindfulness is an ancient practice that has its roots in Buddhism, it is not some sort of esoteric religious ritual. In fact, it's not dependent on religious belief at all — an atheist could practice mindfulness with as much success as someone who is devoted to a religious faith.

Mindfulness is a very practical way of developing our ability to live in the moment, and increasingly, psychological research is confirming its benefits. In a recent issue of Psychology Today, the results of an interesting experiment help illustrate how experiencing mindfulness can have a positive impact on our emotional resilience and empathy for others.

Researchers at the University of Georgia began the experiment by splitting volunteers into two groups.Half of the volunteers went through a very simple mindfulness exercise, slowly eating a raisin while savoring its taste and texture in their mouth. The second group did not go through a mindfulness exercise. Afterwards, the volunteers were told that a new group was being formed, and its members would vote on whether each volunteer would be allowed to join.Though no vote activity took place, some of the volunteers were told they had been accepted into the group, while others were told they'd been rejected, receiving the lowest number of votes. Then, during what the volunteers thought was an entirely different experiment, they were allowed to choose whether or not to deliver a painfully loud blast of sound to another person. Among those who had been voted into the group, it didn't matter whether they had gone through the mindfulness exercise or not — they chose not to inflict the blast of sound. But among those who had been rejected there was a remarkable difference .Volunteers who didn't experience the mindfulness exercise used the horn aggressively, delivering long, unpleasant blasts to their victim. For volunteers who had gone through the mindfulness exercise, however, it was an entirely different story. Instead of basting another person with noise, these volunteers were as unwilling to inflict pain as those who had been accepted into the group. Despite being rejected, their self-esteem remained intact, and they kept a sense of emotional connection to others.