mindfulness
what exactly is it?
[T]he faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui [master of oneself] if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence.
WILLIAM JAMES, The Principles of Psychology
Mindfulness seems to be everywhere these days. You may have heard about it from your company’s human resources department, from your doctor or therapist, or even at your child’s school. We see it on magazines in the checkout aisle of the grocery store and hear science stories about it on the radio. Dozens of mental health treatments incorporate mindfulness, and there are hundreds, if not thousands, of schools around the world bringing mindfulness to kids in their classrooms. But what exactly is mindfulness? I’ll offer a definition below, but remember that for many kids (and adults), pictures, metaphors, stories, or experiences such as the exercise in chapter 1 that demonstrates the different stress responses using hand position and posture, may be more helpful than words.
While there are many ways to define mindfulness, they all share common elements. I like the definition “paying attention to the present moment with acceptance and nonjudgment.” This definition has three critical elements:
1. paying attention on purpose
2. present moment contact
3. acceptance and nonjudgment
These three elements are the building blocks of mindfulness, the way arithmetic and algebra are the building blocks of calculus. This book includes practices that emphasize each element. Let’s examine each in more detail.
Paying Attention
The idea of paying attention is often loaded. Think about the last time someone told you, “Pay attention.” Did they say it to you in a kind and compassionate way? Did they teach you how to pay attention?
Now think about the last time you told a child in your life to pay attention, and consider the same questions. How disempowering must it feel, whether you struggle with attention or mental health issues or not, to be told to do something you have never been taught how to do. We ask our children to pay attention on a regular basis, but never teach them how. Mindfulness actually teaches kids how to pay attention and strengthens their attention, just as we teach kids to use and strengthen their muscles.
If the phrase “paying attention” still feels too loaded, you can offer words like noticing or bringing awareness in your definition.
Present Moment Contact
Many people, kids included, express skepticism at the value of this element of mindfulness. What is so great about the present moment, anyway? Well, when we are in the present, we are not in the future, worrying about some nightmare scenario that hasn’t happened yet. Nor are we in the past, reliving frightening or maybe just embarrassing experiences. I encourage kids to see the present moment as an opportunity for a rest, rather than a chore, so that they can let go of the past, whether that past involves something truly awful or just something dumb they said in the cafeteria. As we live in and open to the experience of the present moment, rather than the future or the past, we discover that the present moment is okay, maybe even interesting. Lao-Tzu, the father of Taoism, is said to have described depression as being stuck in the past and anxiety as being caught in the future—a description that makes intuitive sense to many of us.
Usually the present moment is not too bad. As human beings, we can tolerate just about anything for a moment, and, as I occasionally joke, the present moment does not last very long. The other good news is that being present makes us happy. A recent study discovered that what participants were doing was about half as important to their happiness as how focused they were on what they were doing in the present moment.1 The same study found that our minds are wandering just about half the time, on average. And where do our minds wander? Usually to the past or the future.
My friend Mitch Abblett, PhD, a clinical psychologist and writer, suggests using the metaphor of the timeless machine, as opposed to the time machine. A time machine carries you to the past or future; a timeless machine keeps you fully in the present. What does the world look like from inside your timeless machine?
Acceptance and Nonjudgment
Being with and accepting what is happening in the present moment means not turning away or resisting, but it doesn’t mean having to like what is happening. Rather, when we accept what is happening and give up the fight against it, we can find greater peace and perspective.
This element of mindfulness has been emphasized in recent years and in Western culture. I’m no anthropologist, but my guess is that the reason has something to do with our competitive individualistic society, which asks us to compare ourselves to others all the time.
In acceptance, we are being rather than just doing. That’s not to suggest that doing is not important; it is, especially doing things in order to survive and create great civilizations. But getting off of autopilot and becoming aware of what we are doing is also important. Mindless doing has created much human suffering, at small and large scales. When we act mindfully, a better outcome is likely to arise.
With acceptance and self-acceptance, we learn to quiet the inner voice that judges us. This critical voice might be the echo of a caregiver, a snippy teacher, or even the voice of the larger culture that tells us we are inadequate or wrong because of our gender, sexuality, fashion sense, musical taste, or other identity markers. When we build self-compassion by accepting that thoughts, emotions, and bodies are what they are, we develop compassion for ourselves and others. As psychologist Carl Rogers put it, “[T]he curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.”2
My friend Fiona Jensen, a mindfulness educator, suggests that with younger children we say “kindness and curiosity” rather than “acceptance and nonjudgment.”
Choosing What to Do Next
Mindfulness teacher Amy Saltzman adds another phrase to the end of the definition of mindfulness: so we can choose what to do next. Choice and freedom are what kids—what all of us—want. When we explain to kids that mindfulness is about their own choice and freedom, we pique their interest. Teens, especially, find themselves, and more freedom, among the most interesting subjects of all. An educator I met recently speaks of mindfulness as teaching “response-ability,” or the ability to respond rather than react to challenging situations.
How We Develop Mindfulness: Practice and Practices
When people hear the word mindfulness, they often think of Eastern meditation—sitting cross-legged, back straight, very still, for long periods of time, with maybe some om-ing in there. But just as there are many different types of physical exercise, there are many different types of mindfulness practice. These include everything from guided visualizations to body-based relaxations to practices that boost concentration and compassion. We can think of them all as contemplative practices. All cultivate the three elements of mindfulness: paying attention, being in the present moment, and acceptance and nonjudgment.
To show you how mindfulness practices work, I will first explain the difference between mindfulness and concentration as forms of awareness. Most of us know what concentration means: a focused, single-pointed awareness—a zoom lens, a spotlight, a narrowing of attention onto something. Mindful awareness, or mindfulness, is the opposite; it is a wide-angle lens, a floodlight, an open and all-encompassing awareness. Both types of awareness are useful in our daily lives. Concentration, or focused awareness, is helpful when shooting an arrow, swinging a golf club, or doing homework; mindfulness, or open awareness, is important when driving, playing soccer, or brainstorming.
All practices that strengthen concentration or mindfulness use an anchor. They suggest resting our attention on something—the body, the breath, movement, the senses, an image, numbers, a word or phrase—to anchor ourselves to the present moment. While our thoughts might dwell on the past or race into the future, our bodies and five senses are always in the present and thus make good anchors. At teen mindfulness retreats, the typical recommendation is to make the anchor the breath, body sensations, or sounds. The anchor can also be movements, as movement in yoga, tai chi, and qigong. It can be music, chanting, or chimes; short phrases or prayers; or a visual image.
No matter what the anchor is, it is the nature of mind to wander away from it. Try resting your mind on something, and you’ll soon find it wandering in the past, future, or elsewhere altogether. In a concentration practice, the goal is to notice this wandering and bring it back to the anchor, over and over again. This builds the strength of our concentration, as lifting a weight over and over again builds the strength of a muscle. The internal process might sound something like this: “Breathing . . . breathing . . . Mind is wandering. Okay, back to breath . . . Breathing . . . breathing . . .”
With a mindfulness practice, the goal is notice not only when the mind wanders, but also where the mind goes, before bringing it back to the anchor. The process sounds like this: “Breathing . . . breathing . . . Mind is wandering to worries about family . . . Gently bring it back to breath . . . Breathing . . . breathing . . .”
Mindfulness practices can be summed up with four Rs, which I learned from Vancouver-based mindfulness instructors Brian Callahan and Margaret Jones Callahan:
Rest awareness (the mind) on an anchor.
Recognize when and where it wanders.
Return awareness gently to the anchor.
And repeat.
Another way to understand the difference between mindfulness and concentration practices is to picture the mind as a puppy.
Concentration practice: Inevitably, the puppy wanders off. We bring it back as often as we need to.
Mindfulness practice: Inevitably, the puppy wanders off. We notice where it has gone and then gently, affectionately, we bring it back.
A BASIC MINDFULNESS MEDITATION PRACTICE
Take a moment right now to try a basic mindfulness meditation for yourself. Before you begin, adopt a posture that is both comfortable and sustainable for a few minutes, and then set a timer for three minutes.
First, bring your awareness to an anchor: sensations or movement in your body, the breath, ambient sounds, counting, or even something visual. Anything can be the anchor for your attention. Just invite your mind to rest there.
Pretty soon, you will notice your mind begin to wander. That is completely normal. Each time you notice it wandering, notice where it goes and then gently guide your awareness back to your anchor.
Pretty simple, right? So simple, in fact, that it might seem like you’re not doing very much. But don’t be fooled. Every aspect of this practice is building the muscles of your mind.
Each time you focus on or return to the anchor, you are building your concentration capacity.
Each time you focus on the anchor, you detach from your thought stream. This is a practice of letting go in the moment, which translates to letting go in the rest of the world.
Each time you notice that the mind is wandering, that is the moment of mindfulness—not a moment of failure.
Each time you notice where the mind is wandering, that is an opportunity for insight into your mind’s habits and patterns—what we might call wisdom or self-understanding.
Each of the mental actions in this practice strengthens neural connections that, with practice, rewire your brain, over time making mindfulness and compassion the automatic response to stress. As the saying goes, “neurons that fire together, wire together,” and in this case, these are the concentration neurons, the awareness neurons, and the compassion and self-compassion neurons. We could all probably use more of those in our brains.
Over time, through mindfulness practice, we can build a map of the mind, notice our habitual thought patterns, and develop patience and compassion for our minds. Sakyong Mipham, a well-known Tibetan meditation teacher, speaks of this as “turning the mind into an ally.”
MENTAL FITNESS
Humans evolved to need both physical exercise and mental exercise. Physically our ancestors were kept in shape by traveling as nomads, chasing animals, and harvesting food. Likewise, as I recently heard mindfulness teacher Jan Chozen Bays point out, we kept in shape mentally with activities such as being aware of the night sky as we navigated or gazing at the flowing river while we fished. These days, we need to build time into our lives for both physical and mental exercise.
Being Gentle and Compassionate With Ourselves
There is no problem with your mind wandering; that’s the human mind doing what it does 47 percent of the time. The most important moment in mindfulness practice is the moment after the distraction. What do you do with it? What attitude do you have toward your mind? What tone of voice do you use when guiding it back to the anchor? Can you make a note of what your mind has done? Can you let go of any judgment and begin anew?
When we begin to practice mindfulness, our minds are untrained, but that’s no reason to judge them harshly. We can just smile and recognize them as untrained, not judge them as bad or lazy or weak. Many of us drawn to mindfulness tend to be hard on ourselves, which, in moments of stress, leads to being hard on others. So, in mindfulness practice, it is important to bring the wandering mind back to the anchor gently and compassionately.
Think back to a puppy as a metaphor for the mind. How do you train a puppy? With a gentle firmness. If we train a puppy with nothing but harsh punishment, we end up with a mean and anxious puppy. If we don’t train a puppy at all, we have other problems. It makes a mess, chases its own tail, or barks at nothing. Perhaps it becomes lazy and spoiled, or aggressive for no reason, or chases down every distraction. Having a well-trained puppy is a lot more fun than having an untrained one, even though the training may be hard work. A well-trained mind makes life easier and happier. So let’s treat our minds as we would the puppy, with patient, good-humored encouragement.
Being gentle and compassionate with our own minds builds a habit of self-compassion, so that when we make a mistake we are kind to ourselves, rather than beating ourselves up. In turn, compassion for ourselves builds compassion for others, and we are able to approach stresses and disappointments with an attitude of befriending, rather than attacking.
Formal and Informal Mindfulness Practice
Mindfulness practices can be divided into two basic types: formal and informal. Ronald Siegel, Susan Pollak, Thomas Pedulla, and other mindfulness teachers use the metaphor of physical exercise to explain the difference.
Formal practice means setting aside a time of the day or the week to practice mindfulness meditation specifically. It is the mental equivalent of regularly going to the gym, to a yoga class, or for a run. Some people do their meditation at home; others go to a meditation center. Formal practice can also include setting aside a day or more for mindfulness meditation, usually away from home and regular life. Going on a mindfulness meditation retreat is roughly analogous to taking a weeklong backpacking trip or competing in a triathlon.3
Informal practice means deliberately bringing the elements of mindfulness to whatever we are doing in our daily lives. It’s the mental equivalent of choosing to take the stairs instead of the elevator, biking to work, or carrying extra groceries. In an informal practice, we essentially make life itself the anchor of our practice, and learn to live life according to the insights of our practice. This doesn’t have to be complicated; we can just pause and ask ourselves every so often, “What am I doing right now, and how do I know that?”
The two types of practice complement each other, and your mind will be in the best shape if you do both. However, doing both may not be realistic for every busy adult or kid.
What Mindfulness Is Not
What mindfulness is not is just as important as what mindfulness is, as many people continue to have misconceptions about it. This is important for you, but also important when you speak with kids and other adults about mindfulness.
MISCONCEPTION 1
Mindfulness Means Doing Nothing
Mindfulness really is doing something, even if, in a sense, it’s doing nothing. Researchers have put mindfulness meditators in MRI machines to map their brains, and compared them to brains engaged in other activities. A brain doing mindfulness meditation is different from a brain that’s spacing out, sleeping, relaxing, thinking, or working.4 They also found that different types of meditation activate different parts of the brain.
MISCONCEPTION 2
Mindfulness Is Spiritual or Religious
One of the bigger misconceptions about mindfulness practices is that they are inherently religious or spiritual. Contemplative practices exist across cultures and across history, and they need not be associated with any one religion or even with spirituality at all. They can be completely secular mind-training practices. Many meditators do not identify as religious; many identify as atheist, and others do identify as Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist.
Jon Kabat-Zinn, who has done more to bring mindfulness into the mainstream than almost anybody in the West, deliberately kept his mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) curriculum secular. Today, at least in many parts of the world, the word mindfulness holds not much more spiritual association than the word concentration. The word meditation, however, can still attract raised eyebrows; depending on where you live and work, mindfulness may as well.
Many people associate mindfulness with Buddhism. The historical Buddha did not invent mindfulness; no one can invent a state of mind. Nor did he discover it—at least, he was not the first, as everyone has had moments of quiet contemplation and present moment contact. But he did describe mindfulness and a system for cultivating it. Likewise, Sir Isaac Newton did not discover or invent gravity, but he studied and described it in ways that hadn’t been done before.
MISCONCEPTION 3
Mindfulness Is Mysterious, Exotic, or Mystical
Most meditation teachers I’ve studied with are quick to point out the ordinariness of meditation and mindful awareness. But because of the way mindfulness has been portrayed in popular culture, many people think it is mystical or mysterious. The associations, accurate or not, with mysticism can be a draw for some kids and teens and an easy source of mockery for others. With a little experience, they soon discover that mindfulness practices are not necessarily mystical or transcendent.
MISCONCEPTION 4
Mindfulness Is a Way to Get High
Many mindfulness practices can make us feel very good, even blissful, right away, and mindfulness meditation’s past association with the counterculture leads some to associate it with feeling high. Unfortunately, any “highs” we experience are not only not the point, they rarely last. A long-term practice means highs and lows and fascinating internal journeys—sometimes scary ones, sometimes mind-numbingly dull ones. In that sense, contemplative practice is a lot like life.
MISCONCEPTION 5
Mindfulness Is a Distraction Technique or Way to Escape Reality
Anyone who begins practicing mindfulness soon discovers it is not a way to escape or distract themselves from reality. Quite the opposite: it means facing reality in all its pain, boredom, and excitement. It may distract our thoughts from the past or future, but to do so, it will bring them into what’s actually happening in the here and now.
A friend of mine refers to mindfulness as “universal exposure therapy.” Exposure therapy is the idea that to overcome phobias, we gradually expose ourselves to them. Mindfulness exposes us to all the internal and external events that we fear, push away, and avoid.
We find many strange and wonderful things when we look inward. Sometimes we also find some frightening material, reminding us why we avoided looking within in the first place. The unpredictability of what we’ll find when we look inward is also why, when we’re getting started, we need the guidance and support of more experienced teachers.
A Jewish proverb suggests we “ask not for a lighter load, but for bigger shoulders to carry it.” The quote captures how mindfulness works—not through dulling our perception of reality the way certain distractions, behaviors or substances will, but by strengthening us and making us larger in relation to life’s pains. This is a radically different approach from what we in our culture usually teach our children, which is to fight, distract, or avoid. If some people find meditation an escape from reality too often, they are probably doing it wrong.
MISCONCEPTION 6
Mindfulness Is Shutting Off Your Thoughts
The point of mindfulness practice is not to shut off our thoughts, but to become more aware of our thoughts and distance ourselves from them. Shutting off thoughts is mindlessness, not mindfulness. This is important to remember, as many beginners give up when they discover they cannot shut off their thoughts. You cannot (and probably should not) shut off your thoughts, just like you cannot and should not stop your breathing.
A useful analogy I’ve heard is that the brain secretes thoughts like the pancreas secretes insulin. Thinking is the brain’s job, and we can’t control it. But we can study the brain, learn its patterns and habits, and adjust ourselves to respond to our thoughts in different ways. (In fact, if we didn’t have a wandering mind, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to study and learn from its patterns and habits.) Meditation is not about simply what is or isn’t happening in our minds, bodies, thoughts, or experiences; it is about how we relate to what’s happening. The goal is to change our relationship to our thoughts.
MISCONCEPTION 7
Mindfulness and Meditation Are Quick Fixes
Our culture wants quick fixes. Yes, these practices can feel good, especially at first, which reinforces the motivation to practice. Some positive changes, including shutting off the fight-or-flight response when it is neither needed nor wanted, can occur quickly. But for the most part, mindfulness practices are about creating a slow internal evolution, rather than a quick revolution. Like physical exercise, the more we practice mindfulness, the more we benefit.
MISCONCEPTION 8
Mindfulness Is (Just) Relaxation or a Trance State
As described earlier, meditation is often relaxing and can trigger the relaxation response, but it is far more than that. Nor is it a trance state or hypnosis, though some guided visualization–style mindfulness practices are close cousins to certain kinds of hypnotic states.
Mindfulness Practices Are Self-Indulgent
When someone suggests that mindfulness is self-indulgent, I respond with a simple question: Do you know what the three leading causes of death are for young people in America? Cancer doesn’t make the list, nor does drug overdose. The three leading causes of death among young people aged fifteen to twenty-four, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, are, in order, accidents (“unintentional injury”), suicide, and homicide.5 Knowing this, consider what it would look like if our society was a little more mindful, paying attention to the present moment with gentleness and nonjudgment, compassion and self-compassion. We would likely have far fewer people dying before their adulthood has even begun. Bringing mindfulness practices to kids and teens is a public health intervention. (It’s worth noting that when mindfulness teacher Thich Nhat Hanh was recently honored with an award from Harvard, it was not from Harvard Divinity School, nor from the Graduate School of Education, nor even the medical school, but from the Harvard Chan School of Public Health.)
Our culture tends to confuse and conflate ideas of self-care and self-indulgence. What some might call self-care is often self-indulgence, and vice versa. Bringing mindfulness to a wide audience truly is a public health intervention, because when we learn to care for ourselves, we are able to care for others. The research also shows that people who practice mindfulness eat and exercise better, along with other healthier decisions. Building compassion and more skillfully caring for the world around us is hardly self-indulgent.
MISCONCEPTION 10
Mindfulness Makes Us Passive or Weak
Mindfulness won’t turn anyone into a doormat, or make us indifferent to danger. In fact, the research shows that meditators still get stressed and have emotional reactions, but bounce back faster than non-meditators. To put it another way, the storms still rise, but we can sail our ship through them calmly. That is what we want to give our young people: the ability to read their own emotional forecast and respond, to handle the stormy emotional times that are the stuff of life, rather than turning back or remaining stuck. It starts by being in the present moment, seeing what is, rather than escaping from it or distorting it. In this way, mindfulness practice makes us stronger and more able to respond to life, rather than passive and apathetic. And the science backs this too; mindfulness helps people become more resilient to traumas and setbacks, both large and small.
The idea that mindfulness strengthens us is an empowering one that resonates with today’s kids. What I hear over and over again from young people who practice mindfulness is that they feel empowered, often for the first time, in their bodies, minds, and lives. This is because mindfulness is theirs; it is something no parent, no teacher, no bully, and no prison can take away. It is not a pill that a doctor tells them to take or a problem that a parent, teacher, or cop tells them to fix. No one even has to know they are practicing. Most of the exercises in this book are subtle enough to do silently in a chaotic classroom, in the outfield of a softball diamond, or backstage at the school play. Anyone can practice mindful movement in their room, while waiting in line, or even in a juvenile hall. Kids, and teens in particular, crave authenticity, ownership, and empowerment; mindfulness practice offers all three. Offering children the tools to find answers within, rather than by looking outside, is offering them the lifelong gift of independence.
