When some organisations ask me to do Mindfulness training for their staff, I often find they are actually saying “Michelle, we need to get more productivity out of our people. They aren’t coping. Can you train them in mindfulness so they manage all the stress better and get more done?” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA hilarious! Thank you corporate world for taking a rather liberating therapeutic framework and making it your own!
– Mindfulness is not relaxation
– Mindfulness is not positive thinking
– Mindfulness is not a calming technique
Mindfulness is a “form of non-judgemental and non-reactive attention to experiences occurring in the present moment including, bodily sensations, cognitions, emotions, and urges as well as environmental stimuli such as sights, sounds, and scents.” (Kabat-Zinn, 1990; Linehan 1993; in Baer 2014)
In other word, what we are hoping to do is live, laugh, love, hurt, cry, be angry, or whatever the hell else we feel… BUT …take time to notice this feeling without labelling it as good or bad. What we are really focusing on with Mindfulness, is giving ourselves the psychological space to notice what we feel, kind of accept that it is ok to have that feeling, and then take time to decide what we want to do next.
In the real world – our busy, judgey, stressy, Western world, we don’t really afford ourselves the courtesy of psychological space. We “react” instead of slowing down to “respond”. Its not a great way to self-regulate.
Here is the kicker though – given that we live in this busy, judgey, stressy Western world, it is near impossible to be mindful without cr@ploads of practice! Yes that’s right lovely people. Mindfulness is a skill. Like all other skills, it takes time, repetition and practice to get your groove on.
Here are some ways to access the skill set we use when being mindful:
- Do yoga. Not the version that some personal trainers use to get you harder abs and a tighter butt! I mean taking time for a real connection with the body and how poses feel.
- Try meditation. Mediation is a process of being able to sit with feelings, observe them, and then watch them pass.
- Daily mindfulness routines. For example, if you usually drink a cup of coffee in the morning, try doing this mindfully. Observe the practical tasks you do to make the coffee, step by step. Observe the temperature, smell and sight of the coffee in its cup. Observe what it feels like to swallow a sip and the way it glides down your throat.
Remember. It is Mindfulness is a skill. You may observe in the early days of your practice, that you feel frustrated by how easily distracted you are. Or you may find yourself judging your practice as inadequate. This is all part of the process and a practical reminder to observe your feelings with suspended judgement.
