Mindfulness has become a popular term, and like all words that enter everyday language, meaning can be lost. Sometimes people are referring to meditation or ‘mindfulness meditation’, other times they may even have mistaken beliefs associated with a state of mindfulness, believing their mind should be ‘blank’. The brain is always doing something, even when we are sleeping. Focusing all our attention on what is actually happening is a nice way of feeling that our mind is clear, as we are not distracted. It results in great presence and attention.
So mindfulness is being able to be aware and paying attention to what is actually happening. This could be what is happening around us, or inside us. It involves using our senses. To notice what is actually happening outside of us we must pay attention to what we see, hear, feel, taste and smell. To notice what is happening inside us we pay attention to body sensations, notice what thoughts arise, or notice what emotions arise and where emotional sensations may be located in the body. Thoughts and emotions are tricky to just notice, as we can easily lose attention and become swept up in the thought or feeling. No longer just noticing it but reacting and emotionally experiencing past events associated with the thought or imagining future events. At that point we are not mindful, we are not in the here and now, we are in an imagined ‘default mode’ world created in our heads. The default mode feels like when our minds wander, or we experience feeling being on ‘automatic pilot’. This is where we worry about the future trying to predict or control, or dwell on the past remembering past judgements, past criticism. At a neurological level different parts of our brain operate in default mode, compared to when we are paying attention being mindful.