Mindfulness
is everywhere nowadays. Like so much else in American life, it’s
become a commodity, a product. Not long ago I was looking over the 2013
course listings for an East Coast conference center and saw 19 courses
being offered with the word mindfulness in the title. And that’s not
counting the ones with mindfulness’s first cousin ‘consciousness’
appearing in the title.
A
quick Internet search showed similar offerings elsewhere on Mindfulness
in Capitalism and Conscious Horseback Riding. If being mindfully
capitalist helps someone gain a widened, less-adrenalized perspective on
themselves (and maybe their cardiac health), their families and
co-workers, then they’re working with themselves in a good way. As for
conscious horseback riding, I’m not so sure but if it helps to keep you
from falling off the horse, well, that too is a good thing.
My skepticism here is certainly not about mindfulness, but the commodification of it, the making it a thing
outside of ourselves to search for, a product to own. Mindfulness is
really about one of the most ordinary things in the world, that is,
using our mind and focused intention to track, observe and follow what
our experience is right now. It’s available to us at any time and its
basic nature belies its potential power and depth for simple
transformation. Even now.
Mindfulness
taught and accessed as a skill set comes from meditation technique,
particularly teachings from the Buddhist traditions. Mindfulness as a
skill or tool to be learned is a de-mystification of meditation.
Teachers of it - I’m thinking of Jon Kabat-Zinn’s work with Mindfulness
Based Stress Reduction - have stripped away much of the cultural and
religious references to Buddhism, revealing a core of valuable life
skills that offer us volumes in this speedy, rev-ed up and sometimes
scary 21st century. It’s an opportunity for our mind - and brain - to
rest, gain horizontal space and perspective and to recuperate.
Mindfulness
is not doing nothing but may involve a letting go; it doesn’t involve
stopping all thoughts or emptying your mind (that’s a tall order) but is
an active, watchful state of mental balance where tension can down
regulate but you’re not sleeping either.
Mindfulness
offers a structured way to step back from our thoughts, observe them
unblended from emotionality and right size them as mental constructs vs.
a felt full on reality we’re being confronted with. As an antidote to
the busyness and pressure of multi-task mind, mindfulness practice
offers us an opportunity to reset the clock, to see the world, this life
we’re living with the simple appreciation of the moment we’re in.
And
mindfulness practice is just that: its a practice to engage with. Part
of that engagement is never fully perfecting it. And the never
perfecting it is part of the practice. It can be as big as you make
it. Right now: at the end of that last sentence there was a period.
Stop. Take a breath. What did you notice?
One reason mindfulness works as a skill set is that it utilizes the frontal lobes of the brain to observe
thoughts, emotions and the comings and goings of our mindstream. These
frontal cortical regions enable us to reason, think through, prioritize
and give order to mental activity. When online they balance and can
override those emotionally reactive - and volatile - limbic regions of
the brain with their jumpy monkey-mind ways seeming to have a life of
their own.
That
ability to access our frontal lobes can be the missing link for people
with trauma and abuse histories. These folks can stay locked in loops
of reactivity, pained memory and split realities leaving little room to
down regulate or self reflect without judgement. That ability to press
pause and right size trauma-triggered mental life is a key benefit of
mindfulness.
Outcomes
from bringing mindfulness into our lives can include a gentler
relationship with ourselves, with increased self acceptance, not marked
so by self criticism but by a sustained view of where we are now, the
world inside and outside of ourselves and our place in both.
Peter Goetz has been working as a therapist for over 25 years often working with people with overlapping psychiatric issues (e.g. PTSD, bipolar, major mood, attention deficit, dissociative disorders), medical problems (e.g., cancer, HIV, chronic pain), drug or alcohol mis-use or behaviors and traits. You can learn more about Peter at petergoetzmft.com.
