Buddha talked about mindfulness 1500 years ago as a way to promote inner and outer peace. It is recognized scientifically as a way to improve performance and promote relaxation. Mindfulness can be defined as the effort of focusing non-judgmentally on simple sensations in the present moment without judging.
Why is this important? Because we tend to get lost in our heads, becoming the chaos in our minds. We may find ourselves scattered, upset, tense, or overwhelmed with the negativity, judgment, and complexity of the churning thoughts our mind constantly creates. Buddhists call this “monkey mind,” and the intensity of our thinking often takes us away from being peacefully present. Becoming our thoughts can separate us from the world, causing us to lose touch with the power of our own physical experience and set us up to resist, push away, or fight the way things are. We don’t even see the way things are. We become immersed in our judgement about things, trapped in our fears, anxieties, triggers, and prejudices.
When we practice mindfulness, we cultivate the ability to notice the chaos in our minds without becoming it and making it worse. We stop “awfulizing” and start accepting as we shift the spotlight of our attention from the chaos in our brains to being with our experience. This does not make the mind’s activity stop, but it settles our nervous system. It allows us to be more connected to the tranquil power at the core of our being. It conditions us to move forward from a place of centered peacefulness better able to engage with the world as our best selves.
One of the most pleasant side effects of simply noticing thoughts without becoming them is we are able to stop judging ourselves, or at least stop beating ourselves up as we notice such judgements taking place. We become able to see thoughts as just thoughts. With practice, we are able to mindfully attend to our lives with less chaos, judgement, and defensive resistance. The practice of mindfulness makes us calmer and renders any therapy more effective.
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© Rennet Wong-Gates Psychotherapy |
