An introduction to mindfulness

There are all kinds of studies describing the numerous benefits of mindfulness meditation practices. Sitting quietly, observing your breath, noticing the sensations in your body, and watching one’s thoughts pass by for some amount of time each day is undoubtedly beneficial for the mind and body.

Mindfulness is nonjudgmental present-focused emotion awareness.

Let’s start by discussing nonjudgment. Judgments artificially inflate emotions. As an example, imagine that I am crossing a street while a car is flying towards me. The fear I feel will urge me to run out of the way and it will save me. If afterwards I started piling on criticism, I would feel embarrassment in addition to fear. My embarrassment would be a manufactured emotion. When we learn to be nonjudgmental towards our emotion, we try to identify and stay with the first emotion without adding an addition emotion on top of it. Sometimes the additional emotion happens so automatically that we don’t recognize the first emotion. Sometimes the additional emotion feels really true. Identifying and staying with the first emotion is a skill you can acquire with practice. You can develop the skill through self-monitoring, through formal mindfulness meditation, and through mindfulness skills practice in everyday life.

Now, let’s discuss present-focused. Why would we want to be present-focused? Humans are unique in our ability to plan for the future and the way our thoughts can match our emotions to the past and the future. For instance, I can get really angry just thinking about something in my past. Sometimes it’s helpful to think about the past, but it crosses into rumination when I don’t turn my thinking into action. We can use our thoughts to generate feelings that gives us data about the past and prepares us for the future. If this is happening too frequently or automatically, our feelings stop being data and cause us distress and interference in everyday life. When we are present-focused we are noticing that our emotion, like anger, isn’t meeting the context of the present moment and we try to allow it to be there without fueling it.

Finally, let’s discuss emotion awareness training. When we pay attention on purpose to the present moment without judgment, we have the chance to get to know and respond effectively to our real emotions. Mindfulness is like weight training in that practicing it changes the way that your brain works. In general, you want to think about mindfulness like weight training where every experience is a bicep curl. One bicep curl doesn’t change your body, but the habit of bicep curls over time makes you physically stronger. The habit of mindfulness over time changes how your brain pays attention.