Mindfulness is moment to moment awareness.  It is paying attention to what’s arising within us or around us, on purpose, with non-judgment and compassion.  When we are being mindful, we are not preoccupied with the past or the future. Our full attention is in the present moment and we are seeing clearly what really is. We are not judging, rejecting, analyzing, comparing, or retreating from whatever’s before us. Mindfulness is about meeting whatever life offers us with curiosity, compassion, equanimity, gentleness, receptivity, and loving-kindness.

 

Mindfulness is like the opposite of being on autopilot or daydreaming or being lost in a reverie. It involves purposefully paying attention to whatever is happening in the present moment and doing so with conscious intention. This facet of mindfulness strengthens our capacity to focus and concentrate, as we bring our mind back, again and again, to the subject of our attention, which in many cases is the felt sense of the breath in the body.   Mindfulness involves paying attention to one’s interior world and embodied experience, including the emotions, thoughts, and sensations that may be rising and falling at any given moment.

 

When we pay attention to the felt sense of the breath in the body, we become open to a tremendous amount of information about our experience that we would not have access to if we were just focused on our thoughts.  We become more open, more receptive, and more aware of how we are feeling about encounters we have. The body can be a rich source of wisdom that can support us in navigating through the ups and downs of life.

 

Although meditation is as old as our universe, mindfulness meditation is rooted in the ancient Buddhist Dharma tradition of the Four Noble Truths and the Eightfold Path. It was conceived as the remedy for the inevitability of human suffering. Cultivating mindfulness gives us a way to shift our identity from one that revolves around loyalty to suffering and woundedness, to one that realizes the possibility of freedom, release and re-birth.

 

Many people believe that they have to be Buddhist in order to practice mindfulness, but this is not so. Western practitioners, scholars and neuroscientists have demonstrated that people can practice mindfulness and receive benefits from it without having to forsake their own faiths or believe in Buddhist cosmology, philosophy or psychology. When practiced regularly, mindfulness can lead to greater focus, clarity, calm, concentration, wisdom, vitality, self-compassion, joy, and self-control. Mindfulness expands and deepens our inner capacities for awareness, relaxation, insight, and paying attention.

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Alisa is a mindfulness practitioner and teacher and uses the practice of mindfulness in her therapy work with clients.  She offers mindfulness mentoring for those interested in developing or deepening their mindfulness or meditation practice.