3 Need-To-Know Truths About Mindfulness
Are you curious about mindfulness? Do you wonder if it could help you with a specific challenge?
You’ve probably read about its many empirically supported benefits.
According to the American Psychological Association, mindfulness can reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. It can improve mental clarity, concentration, and working memory capacity.
And, the benefits of mindfulness don’t stop there.
Before you rush to sign up for a mindfulness course, however, there are few truths you need to know. Many myths circulate about mindfulness that make it sound easy. But I think you should know what you’re getting into before you start.
Having taught mindfulness to hundreds of people, I’ve seen every possible struggle you could encounter when you set out to learn the practice. Here are three big truths to consider that can help you decide whether mindfulness is the right approach for you.
1. Formal Practice Required
The practice of mindfulness is simple. Whenever you find yourself distracted by thoughts of the past or present, you bring your mind back to the present moment.
Beginners can use an anchor like the breath or an object like a flower to make mindfulness easier. You place your attention gently on the breath or the flower. Whenever you find yourself distracted, you bring your mind back to the object.
Eventually, you learn to be aware in the present moment without the use of a specific anchor.
Simple, right? But not necessarily easy!
Your mind has an incredibly strong habit of thinking about the past and future, which you have unknowingly cultivated your entire life. That’s why you need to start with formal practice.
“Formal” doesn’t mean rigid, however. The ego-mind has clever ways to make mindfulness meditation harder than it has to be. It will happily encourage you to get tense, perfectionistic, or rigid about your practice.
But you actually need to mix relaxation with alertness to get the most out of mindfulness.
The “formal” part means sitting in regular sessions for a specified amount of time, usually on a daily or close to daily basis.
If you miss a day, it’s okay. If you do a shorter meditation one day, it’s not the end of the world. If you neglect meditation for a week, you just get back on board.
You can also be mindful when engaged in daily activities like walking from the car to your office, practicing yoga, or taking a pee. That’s encouraged because mindfulness isn’t just limited to formal meditation. It’s meant to permeate your entire life.
Mindfulness isn’t just limited to formal meditation. It’s meant to permeate your entire life.
But if you think, “I’ll just be mindful in life,” forget it. You might be able to do so a time or two. But without the stability of a formal practice, you’ll be easily distracted, and the intention to be mindful in life will easily escape your mind.
Whereas, you’ll find mindfulness naturally begins to infuse your life when you engage in a regular sitting practice.
How long should you practice? You can start with short periods like five to ten minutes and build up your capacity for sitting. However, you’ll be more likely to gain the real benefits of mindfulness if you practice for longer periods.
For example, more than 25,000 people have taken the evidence-based Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course offered by the Center for Mindfulness at UMass Memorial Medical Center.
During the official MBSR course, people are asked to practice for 45–60 minutes per day over the eight-week course. The MBSR course involves sitting meditation, a body-scan meditation, mindful gentle yoga, and informal mindfulness practices as well (like mindful eating).
You don’t have to take an eight-week MBSR course to learn mindfulness. But a great deal of the research on mindfulness has been conducted on people who have. Which seems to indicate you need to practice mindfulness in formal sessions and on a regular basis to see significant results.
So please don’t think you can read an article or watch a video and start practicing mindfulness willy-nilly in life. It doesn’t work like that. Without a stable formal practice, you’ll easily become distracted.
“Mindfulness is deliberately paying full attention to what is happening around you– in your body, heart, and mind. Mindfulness is awareness without criticism or judgment.” — Jan Chozen Bays
2. You Have to Keep It Up
Mindfulness practice is similar to strength training.
You get stronger and stay strong as long as you keep working your muscles. But once you put down the weights for an extended period, your muscles become flabby again.
With sufficient practice, mindfulness requires less effort and it may even begin to feel effortless. But this isn’t a permanent change.
Once you stop your formal practice of mindfulness, you may continue to be mindful for a while. But gradually, you’ll find distraction and extraneous thoughts set in again.
Many studies have shown that regular meditation can change the structure and function of the brain. Changes can be seen even after an eight-week MBSR course. But the brain networks of long-term meditators are far different than those of novice meditators.
These positive changes can occur from meditation because the brain is neuroplastic in nature. But when a brain pathway goes unused, it looses cells. That means the positive changes you gain from a daily mindfulness practice aren’t necessarily permanent.
If that’s true, how long do you need to practice every day to continue to gain benefits from mindfulness?
The MBSR course recommends practicing 45–60 minutes per day during their eight-week program. Afterward, participants are encouraged to continue their mindfulness practice “as it fits and supports” their lives.
Unfortunately, there is no absolute answer to the question. You’ll have to experiment for yourself to discover the length of time that works best for you and continues to bring benefits you have enjoyed.
You’ll hear claims that you only need to practice mindfulness ten minutes a day to reap its benefits. You might experience some positive gain from that amount of mindfulness practice.
But will you really be able to reduce anxiety or depression? Will you really be able to reduce the intensity of chronic pain or avert insomnia or get the full benefits of mindfulness?
“Meditation practice isn’t about trying to throw ourselves away and become something better. It’s about befriending who we are already. “— Pema Chödrön
3. You Won’t Become Permanently Calm
Regular mindfulness practice, when down correctly, can calm your mind and make you less emotionally reactive.
But, you can still get triggered.
Traditionally, the mind is compared to a glass of muddy water. When left alone, the mud will settle to the bottom leaving the remaining water crystal clear. But when stirred, mud particles will infiltrate the entire glass of water again.
The mud particles are like our thoughts. The habit of continual thinking and reacting emotionally keeps the mind stirred up. But once you stop engaging with the content of the mind, it gradually settles and you feel calm.
Like the mud, however, that content isn’t gone. It’s just waiting to be stirred again.
You can indeed find greater peace and stability through the practice of mindfulness. You will likely be less emotionally reactive. But when the right trigger comes along, chances are, you’ll react.
But that’s understandable. You’re only human. Mindfulness can help you accept yourself as you are while also assisting you in positive change. Psychotherapy can help you root out the deeper causes of your reactivity as can some forms of advanced meditation that are beyond mindfulness.
“Mindfulness is the aware, balanced acceptance of the present experience. It isn’t more complicated than that. It is opening to or receiving the present moment, pleasant or unpleasant, just as it is, without either clinging to it or rejecting it.” — Sylvia Boorstein
Concluding Thoughts
The last two decades have brought an enormous surge of interest in mindfulness and a wave of research that has substantiated many of its benefits. Science suggests mindfulness can help with everything from hot flashes to HIV to heart disease.
But will mindfulness work for you?
To figure that out, you need to have a realistic idea of what mindfulness takes. I’ve challenged three common myths about mindfulness so you can get a better idea with these three truths:
You need to engage in formal mindfulness practice.
You have to keep the practice up.
You’ll feel more peaceful, but you won’t become permanently calm.
One thing for sure, mindfulness won’t work if you give up on it due to unrealistic expectations. But don’t worry, there are many ways to improve your mental and physical health. Mindfulness is just one.
Thank you for your presence, I know your time is precious! Don’t forget to sign up for Wild Arisings, my twice monthly letters from the heart filled with insights, inspiration, and ideas to help you connect with and live from your truest self.
You might also like to check out my Self-Care Shop. May you be happy, well, and safe – always. With love, Sandra
