Mindfulness has become more and more popular within the education, and it is also promoted within the work place to aid emotional wellbeing. This blog offers a range of examples and techniques how mindfulness can be introduced to students. This will be the start of a series of blogs which will take you through from getting started to delivering mindfulness exercises. Please leave any feedback/comments/suggests as it helps to develop the work that we do at Innovating Minds.
Explaining the Definition of ‘Mindfulness’ and’ Mindlessness’
Explaining what mindfulness is can be very tricky, so if we can use simple everyday language that people are familiar with the more accessible it will be.
Example 1
“Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgementally.” (Kabat-Zinn, 1994).
Kabat-Zinn talks about mindfulness being concerned with the present moment, ‘like it or not, this moment is all we really have to work with’. Being awake to the present moment and choosing where to put your attention, noticing when your mind has wondered and got caught up in your thoughts is mindfulness. We often spend our lives thinking about what might happen or what has happened, and treating those thoughts as facts. This is mindlessness.
Example 2:
Being mindful is living with your eyes wide open. It is being aware of things that you are experiencing (e.g. thoughts, emotions, physical sensations and urges) in the present moment, instead of getting pulled into the future or past. It is also about being in the present moment without making judgement and without trying to change it. It is taking hold of your mind, staying focused on thing at a time. This helps to take control of your mind, rather than it being in control of you.
Bringing the Definition Alive
To help bring these definitions alive and make them real we can use real life examples that people can resonate with. Examples related to being on automatic pilot (doing things without being aware of what we are doing) or getting distracted can help to bring mindfulness to life.
Examples you could use:
Do you find yourself at your destination and don’t realise how you got there? This happens when we are on automatic pilot. Do you find yourself texting someone while you are talking to someone else? When you try and do homework, do you get distracted by thoughts about what happened that day and/or starting thinking about what you are looking forward to? When you are in the classroom and the teacher is teaching, do you noticed your mind drifting to what you are going to eat after the lesson, what you are going to do after school?
Describing Mindfulness using Analogies
We often respond well to analogies, this example is a particular favourite and well-known.
‘The Untrained Puppy’
Your mind is like an untrained puppy, running around wherever it wants, following interesting smells, digging up your flower beds, burrowing under your fence. We can’t train a puppy by just holding it still or putting it in a box. Instead we need to notice where it has gone to and teach it to come back when we call it. It will always wander off at times, but we can bring it under our control. As we start to exercise some control the puppy will still run off, and we have to be patient and gentle with it, being willing to call it back many times until it learns to respond more quickly to our command.
Why bother with mindfulness?
There is a lot of evidence which indicates that mindfulness practice can improve physical and mental health. More specifically, being mindful can:
Give you more choices and more control over your behaviour. Being more aware is very important if you are experience heightened emotional arousal and/or you act impulsively because it can give you some time to catch yourself before doing something you might regret later. You can take the control do you can make choices about how to act rather than impulsively reacting.
Help you focus your attention and you more productive. When we can stay focused, we can learn more effectively and stay engaged in the activity we are doing. When you stay focused on your goals, you are more likely to reach them.
Increase compassion for yourself. Whilst practicing being aware non-judgementally the harshest criticisms turn into descriptions of observable facts. For example, instead of calling yourself a “stupid idiot”, you could stick to the facts and say “I performed poorly on my chemistry test, now I can ask for extra help and hopefully get back on track.
Managing Expectations
‘Mindfulness is not meant to work’. Mindfulness will not take away the ‘problems’ or emotional distress. It will not stop our mind from wandering, only help us to notice that it has wandered and teach us how to guide it back. It is not relaxation and it will not turn us into ‘good’ people. Mindfulness is a skill that has to be learnt and practiced over time rather than something that can be done immediately. Learning mindfulness involves commitment, committing time and energy to practising.
The message to deliver is: ‘in mindfulness we are not trying to get anywhere, we are trying to be somewhere, in the here and now’.
The content of this blog has drawn upon the Mindfulness principles established within Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, a therapy that I am trained in. The guidance and examples within this blog have been put together from the following resources:
Dunkely, C. & Stanton, M. 2014. Teaching clients to use mindfulness skills. Routledge: Sussex.
Rathus, J. & Miller, A. 2015. DBT skills manual for adolescents. Guildford: New York.