What is mindfulness?
- Mindfulness is:
- the practice of purposefully focusing attention on the present moment – the here and now.
- Observing physical sensations (including pain!), thoughts and emotions as they arise (both the negative and the positive) without making judgements and without becoming attached to them.
- One of the key skills that is essential to an ACT-based approach to living well with pain.
What is the point of mindfulness?
- The aim of practicing mindfulness is to shift your experience of life from being caught up in a continuous flow of physical sensations, thoughts, and emotions, to being more of an ‘observer’ – self-aware as different thoughts, emotions and physical sensations arise, run their course, and then pass.
- Practicing mindfulness can allow you to have more agency – in what you focus your attention on, and what you do.
What do you mean by “practicing” mindfulness?
- It’s important to remember that mindfulness is a practice. Just as an Olympic champion was once a novice, someone skilled at maintaining a state of mindfulness has regularly practiced and continues to be in training! There are two main ways to practice mindfulness:
- Formal Practice: This is when you set aside time specifically to practice mindfulness. For example, following a guided mindful meditation audio recording (like those available in this step) while sitting or lying down in a quiet place is one type of formal practice.
- Informal Practice: As you develop your ‘mindfulness muscle’ you may be able to practice mindfully observing all that you see, hear, feel, think, smell, and/or taste while in a busy Doctor’s waiting room, or when waiting in the check-out line at the grocery store. Once you get the basics of how to be mindful, the more you are able to practice being mindful while you go about your life, the more you will be able to strengthen your ‘mindfulness muscle’!
Next Steps
- See: Watch the video
- Cartoon: Watch the animation
- Initiate: Do the exercise!
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Complete exerciseMindfulness
Mindfulness can be practiced in any situation and can be formal (e.g., seated mindful breathing practice) or informal (e.g., mindful eating, or mindful practice while brushing your teeth). If you are new to mindfulness, it can be helpful to start by listening to a guided recording and following along. For that reason, we’ve provided four recordings here to support your new mindfulness practice:
- Mindful Movement
- Mountain Meditation
- Observing Physical Sensations
- Sorting
We recommend you try out each one. They can all be used as part of a regular practice, but you might like one of them more than the others – that’s ok! Here’s a step-by-step guide to get you going:
Steps for mindfulness practice
- Choose the mindfulness recording that you want to practice along with today from the options below.
- Select the recording from the ‘Mindfulness practice’ drop down list in the blue box.
- Get into a comfortable position, gently close your eyes, press play, listen, and follow along with the recording. Thoughts may come and go. Let them. If you get carried away by a thought, take note of it, be thankful that you noticed, and return to following along with the recording.
- When you’ve finished the practice, take a note of how long you’ve been listening to the recording and practicing mindfulness. The time will be shown next to the play button of the recording that you listened to. If you’ve listened to multiple recordings, or the same recording more than once, add up the minutes for a total time. If you find it challenging to listen to a whole recording to start with, that’s fine – you may want to set a time limit for yourself, starting with a 5-minute practice. As you practice more, you can gradually extend the time to 20 minutes or more.
- Select the time duration from the ‘Duration of practice’ drop-down list in the blue box.
- If, during the practice, you notice anything that seems important to you, including thoughts or feelings, make a note of them in the “Notable occurrences’ box.
- Finally, press on ‘log your activity’. This will save a record of your practice and your notes so you can look back and see how often you’ve been practicing mindfulness. You will be able to see the details of the recording you listened to, how long you listened to it, and any notes you took when you click on the date of the practice in the list below. You will also see a check mark for each day you practice on the calendar at the bottom of this page. This is an easy way to see how regularly you are practicing mindfulness.
We hope you enjoy practicing being mindful!
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