Four Easy Ways to Practice Mindfulness
Probably the most common question about mindfulness besides “what is it?”… is “how can I be more mindful in my life?” The following are four ways to support and help deepen your personal practice.
Pause
Say Yes to Whatever is Happening Now
Turn Towards Love
Rest in Awareness
Pause
Sometimes we refer to this act of pausing as “the sacred pause” or “the power of the pause” as this simple yet powerful act can have a dramatic effect on our lives. So many of us live our lives lost in thought, lost living from the neck up. Harvard released a study 2010 that found over 47% of the time our minds are someplace other than the present moment, either in the future or the past. Science has also said a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, an unsatisfied mind (The Addicted Mind, Brewer, 2019). To put this into perspective, nearly half our lives could be spent in some other time, some other place, potentially quite unhappy, quite unsettled seems tragic especially when there is something scientifically proven we can do about it, the practice of mindfulness. So, with the practice, we are invited to pause, to slow down and be in our bodies, to be with our breath. In a moment of reactivity, a moment of misunderstanding, a moment of being what we perceived as wronged, can we find a pause? Can we take a moment to feel our feet on the floor? Can we pause to take a few deep, cleansing breathes that can take us out of fight, flight or freeze response? Can we come back to ourselves? There is something quite settling, quite comforting when our bodies and our breath are at the same place at the same time. With the power of the pause, we are given the opportunity to gather ourselves once again, to come back into balance, into alignment. We have an opportunity to remember what matters to us most and act in alignment of who it is we wish to be.
“Sometimes the most important thing in the whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths.” -Etty Hillesum
Say “Yes” to Whatever is Happening Now
Mindfulness is the practice of allowing our moments to be what they are… without trying to fix, manipulate, or control. We don’t even need to like what is happening, but we learn to listen and pay attention. We are developing a receptivity and openness to whatever is happening. Typically, we respond to our experience by evaluating, judging, or labeling our experiences as good or bad, pleasant or unpleasant, liking or disliking. From personally experience, I have discovered that my resistance, that my desire to hold onto my views, to my belief in how I am right, and they are wrong… only causes me to suffer. And whatever we practice, however we habitually respond, this way of being grows stronger. So, what if we were to experience a shift in perspective? What if we were to practice saying “yes” to our experience rather than always judging or labeling? What would saying “yes” rather than no feel like energetically? How would saying “yes” feel in the body? What would happen if we were to say, “yes, this belongs too”? Be curious… and find out for yourself.
“When you say yes to the Isness of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within that is deeply peaceful.” -Eckhart Tolle
Turning Towards Love
The practice of mindfulness reminds us that any shift in outlook or perspectives, any real transformation requires kindness, requires an element of heart. When we choose love over fear, we are reactivating our ability to learn and be open-minded. We can start evolving once again. When we turn towards love, even the slightest of remembering heart qualities, things begin to soften, things begin to change. We can choose love over fear time and time again and feel the effects in our lives.
“Love is my gift to the world. I fill myself with love and I send that love out into the world. How others treat me is their path; how I react is mine.” -Dr. Wayne Dyer
Rest in Awareness
“Resting in the present moment” is a phrase my teachers often say but I did not fully understand what they meant until I recognized how fatiguing a wandering mind can be; how tiring a mind continually judging, comparing, and measuring is. From the practice of mindfulness, we learn to rest in the moment, rest in our being rather than always worrying about what we are doing… striving and accomplishing. We are huan beings not human doings and the practice helps us realize there really is not much to do in mindfulness, nor is there somewhere to get to. Mindfulness is essentially about non-doing which goes against everything we have been taught, all our values of society. We learn to rest and trust the natural unfolding of life, letting things happen versus making things happen. Resting in awareness is the invitation to let life be just as it is instead of fighting it or avoiding it.
“No, we don’t need more sleep. It’s our souls that are tired, not our bodies. We need more nature. We need more magic. We need more adventure. We need more freedom. We need more truth. We need more stillness. We don’t need more sleep; we need to wake up and live.” -Brooke Hampton