During my meditation retreats and workshops, we often explore the theme of mindfulness. But what is mindfulness? Put simply, it is being fully present in the moment whether sitting on a meditation pillow or washing up the dishes. It is being focused on this very moment with dedicated awareness. But why do we bother? Especially in this hectic, modern world where there’s always a hundred things to be thinking about, ten places we should be and a million things on our mental To Do list.

The first thing I noticed when I began practising mindfulness, initially in meditation, but over time, through integrating this practice into my every day life, was how much richer my experiences began to feel. Colours seemed more vivid, tastes more sensational, music sounded sweeter.  I’d notice a bird gracefully gliding past or the leaves rhythmically swaying in the trees and the earth felt more beautiful, inexplicably alive and sacred.

It took longer before I noticed the way mindfulness began having an impact on the way in which I responded to the world.

Have you ever snapped at someone or said something judgemental or thoughtless and regretted it afterwards? Have you ever in some way felt as though you’ve had little control over your reaction to something? I know I have. Have you ever driven 10 miles home from somewhere and arrived home without even realising which route you’ve taken or how you got there? Does a week often pass you by and you can barely even recall what’s happened?

That’s your reactive mind at play. In Buddhism and other traditions you may well have heard people talking of Awakening. If you think about a lot of human behaviour, it can often seem as though we’re somehow asleep-going through the motions of our days on autopilot, barely taking in our experiences. This is when we’re not being mindful.

In this state, we experience something in the world and we interpret this as either pleasant, unpleasant or neutral. In response to this, most of us have learned behaviours that lead to us pulling towards or craving the things we find pleasant and pushing away the things that feel uncomfortable or unpleasant. We do this automatically. Instead of being present in the moment, we respond in ways we’ve been conditioned to react in the past, whether this is actually the best response-one that will lead to our happiness and the happiness of others or not. Our defences go up when someone criticises us. We snap at a colleague who makes a simple mistake.

With the practice of mindfulness, we aim to create a gap between our natural experience of things as pleasant, unpleasant or neutral and our response to them. Through developing awareness, we can sit with in that sensation and experience it fully in our bodies. Then, instead of reacting automatically, as driven by our conditioning, we can respond in true presence, creatively, in that very moment. It is in this state that we can be creative, that we can approach things afresh moment to moment, with new and exciting outcomes that break us away from our fixed and sometimes stifling habits. We are in control of our responses, more aware, somehow ‘awakened’.

But don’t listen to me, try it for yourself. Next time you remember to, when you feel a bit of discomfort, take a deep breath. Become aware of your body and rest in the moment before blurting out an automated response. Then respond,  from a place of presence and peace, in whichever way you feel is right.  Let me know what effect it has.

If you like this post, you may also like this poem which I wrote.

If you want to explore further, join out fabulous weekend yoga and meditation retreat in September.