Mindfulness or Awareness Training
Mindfulness meditation or awareness training uses the senses of sight, sound, smell, sensation or touch and taste to bring people into awareness of their bodies and into the moment. Over time this practice of coming out of the mind and into the body with awareness enables development of the ability to observe your own thinking objectively.
Mindfulness is simply the experience of being in the here-and-now in your body, observing non-judgementally the thoughts, feelings, images and sensations that are arising both internally and externally in that moment.
We humans spend an extraordinary amount of time remembering the past or imagining the future. Most of the time this is not problematic and in fact our capacity to do this is what has enabled human kind to learn from the past and to thrive and survive as a species. However many of us can waste so much valuable energy and time going over the past wishing we could change it and worrying about a future which does not yet exist that we can make ourselves very unhappy.
With practice you can learn to shift your attention from the relentless world of your thinking mind into the here-and-now and be more present with yourself, the world around you and the people in your life. In addition to reducing stress this will allow you to make choices with awareness and to gain valuable control over your behaviour and where you focus your attention.
Here is a very simple exercise you can try now if you want to.
Take a look around you and bring your attention to about five things you can see, try to look at the details of things like you are looking through a microscope.
Close your eyes and listen attentively see if you can hear five different sounds.
If you get distracted by your thoughts just bring yourself back to listening.
Now shift your attention to your body, try to feel five different things inside or on the skin of your body, for example: your own breathing, the feeling of hair tickling your skin, the touch of your clothes.
Finally attempt to bring awareness to sight sound and sensations all at once.
If it is not possible to focus on all three domains at once just focus on one or two domains.
This is what we mean by using your senses to be in the moment.
Mindfulness is simply the experience of being in the here-and-now in your body, observing non-judgementally the thoughts, feelings, images and sensations that are arising both internally and externally in that moment.
We humans spend an extraordinary amount of time remembering the past or imagining the future. Most of the time this is not problematic and in fact our capacity to do this is what has enabled human kind to learn from the past and to thrive and survive as a species. However many of us can waste so much valuable energy and time going over the past wishing we could change it and worrying about a future which does not yet exist that we can make ourselves very unhappy.
With practice you can learn to shift your attention from the relentless world of your thinking mind into the here-and-now and be more present with yourself, the world around you and the people in your life. In addition to reducing stress this will allow you to make choices with awareness and to gain valuable control over your behaviour and where you focus your attention.
Here is a very simple exercise you can try now if you want to.
Take a look around you and bring your attention to about five things you can see, try to look at the details of things like you are looking through a microscope.
Close your eyes and listen attentively see if you can hear five different sounds.
If you get distracted by your thoughts just bring yourself back to listening.
Now shift your attention to your body, try to feel five different things inside or on the skin of your body, for example: your own breathing, the feeling of hair tickling your skin, the touch of your clothes.
Finally attempt to bring awareness to sight sound and sensations all at once.
If it is not possible to focus on all three domains at once just focus on one or two domains.
This is what we mean by using your senses to be in the moment.