3 mindfulness breathing

Now that you have more of an understanding of how to be mindful, it’s time to actually practice a mindfulness exercise. For the next few moments, just focus on your breath. Don’t change the way you’re breathing; just notice how it feels to breathe. Notice the feel of the air as it enters your nostrils; notice your belly expanding as the air inflates your lungs. Simply pay attention to whatever you notice about how it feels to breathe. At some point, you’ll likely become aware that your attention has wandered—maybe you’ll start thinking that this seems weird and wondering what the point is; or maybe you’ll get distracted by sounds; or perhaps your thoughts will wander to lunchtime, wondering what you’re going to eat. Whatever comes to your attention, just notice it; then, without judging yourself for wandering, and without judging whatever you’re experiencing, bring your attention back to your breath. Do this for about a minute or so and then answer the following questions about your experience:

What did you notice while you were focusing on your breath?

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Were you paying attention to your breath the whole time or did your attention wander? If it wandered, where did your thoughts go?

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Did you accept whatever came to your awareness? For example, if you noticed yourself being distracted by a barking dog, did you just accept it (“I hear a dog barking”) or did you find yourself judging it in some way (“That barking dog is really annoying”)? Or perhaps you noticed your attention wandered a lot; did you accept this (“I’m really having a hard time staying focused right now”) or did you judge yourself for this (“I can’t even do this right!”)? Write about anything you noticed here:

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It’s normal for your attention to wander, so as best you can, don’t judge yourself when this happens—accept it, and bring your attention back to your breath. We’ll be looking more at judgments and acceptance in chapter 4, so if it doesn’t quite make sense yet, don’t worry—it will!

For now, this might help: Think of your mind as a puppy being trained to sit and stay. When you first start to teach that puppy, it’s not going to listen to you. Then it will start to catch on and will stay for a few seconds before straying again; as time goes on, it will get better and better at staying when you tell it to. Your mind will behave in the same way—it’s never been trained to stay before! So you might need to bring your attention back again, and again in just one minute, and that’s okay. You wouldn’t get impatient and angry at the puppy when it doesn’t stay, because you know it’s just learning, so be patient with yourself as well. Remember to accept whatever you happen to notice and bring your attention back to the present moment, without judgment.

Since mindfulness is about returning to the present moment when your attention wanders and accepting whatever you become aware of, you can do absolutely anything mindfully. So if you’re listening to music mindfully, you are just listening to the music, not judging it, and bringing your attention back whenever it wanders from the song you’re listening to. If you’re cleaning your bedroom mindfully, you are focused on just doing that one thing; when you notice your attention wanders, don’t judge yourself for wandering; just bring your attention back. When you notice that you’re judging your mom for making you clean your room, notice that, and bring your attention back.

Here are some other activities you can do mindfully. Add your own ideas on the blank lines.

Reading a book

Talking to a friend

Watching TV or a movie

Skateboarding

Paying attention in class

Updating your Facebook profile

Rollerblading

Dancing

Playing with a pet

Doing your chores

Doing your homework

Taking a walk

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If you had a hard time thinking of activities you can do mindfully, think about things you really enjoy doing. Starting to practice mindfulness will be a bit easier if you begin with activities that you’re able to throw yourself into. The goal here is to live your life more mindfully, though, so you can start out with these easier activities, but you’ll still have to move on to doing other things mindfully as well.

Mindfulness and Your Emotions

You might be wondering what listening to music or cleaning your room has to do with your emotions. Remember that when you’re not in the present moment (and that means this immediate moment), you’re often triggering painful emotions for yourself. So when you’re listening to music, for example, you might find that the music reminds you of something (like a past relationship or someone you like who’s already dating someone else) and get caught up in those thoughts and memories. When you’re living outside the immediate present in this way, you actually experience the emotions as if you were going through that event again—maybe not to the same degree, but you still have those same emotions.

You probably have enough to deal with in the present that brings up painful emotions for you, without bringing up stuff from the past. Listening to music, cleaning your room, or doing anything else mindfully means that you are bringing your attention back to the present moment instead of letting your mind take you wherever it wants to go. This helps you manage your emotions more effectively in two ways: First, by being mindful, you’re preventing painful emotions from being triggered by thoughts of the past or worries about the future. Second, mindfulness reduces the number and intensity of emotions you experience regularly. When you’re spending more time in the present moment (even if that present includes pain), you’ll have fewer painful emotions coming up from the past and future. When you have fewer emotions on an ongoing basis, they’re easier to handle.

In your mind, picture a bucket full of water. It’s full right up to the brim so that adding even one more drop of water is going to make it overflow. Now imagine that the bucket represents your emotions.

When you’re walking around full of emotions to begin with, because you’re angry, sad, ashamed, or anxious about the past or future, adding just one more emotion, even a small one, can make you overflow emotionally. This overflowing can mean different things for different people, or even for the same person at different times. For example, you might explode at your mom for asking you to clean up your room; you might have the urge to hurt yourself because your best friend had to cancel your plans to go to a party; or you might get to a point where you feel so depressed that you stop getting out of bed to go to school. The point is, mindfulness helps you reduce the number and intensity of emotions in your bucket so you’ll be more in control of your emotions.