What is mindfulness and how can it help me as a student?
These are good questions for a busy student to ask. More than likely, like Sophie, you’ve come across mindfulness in different contexts: it’s a new buzzword and there are more and more books on the subject, from mindful colouring books, to mindful bee-keeping, mindful baking and mindful running. But with everything else you have to do as a student, is it really worth making the effort to find out about and practise mindfulness? And if it is, how can you do that?
Mindfulness has emerged in the West over the last thirty years or so, principally from Eastern philosophy and in particular Buddhism. It is just one aspect of the Buddhist eight-fold path to enlightenment (or nirvana). Because it was not, in its original context, intended to be practised as a stand-alone concept, we have to be careful in the West that we don’t ignore other equally important aspects of that eight-fold path such as ‘right living’ or ‘right speech’. Mindfulness was never, and should never be, seen as an end in itself, a kind of spiritual navel-gazing: unless it is part of a deeper philosophy of living, it’s unlikely that it will be something you find particularly helpful or life-enhancing.
But what is mindfulness? The most common definitions describe it as a way of paying attention, in this moment, to whatever thoughts, feelings or bodily sensations we are experiencing, without judging or trying to stop them. For a while, we step outside our automatic ways of reacting to life and become observers or witnesses of our internal and external world: this helps us develop more helpful ways of responding to ourselves, our problems and neuroses and, just as important, more helpful ways of responding to others, their problems and their neuroses. Key to this more helpful way of responding is the development of self-compassion (and other-compassion).
Mindfulness is similar to, but not the same as, concentration. Imagine that you are walking through a beautiful wood, following an easy path, not thinking about anything in particular, just relaxed and enjoying the day. Then the path takes you to a deep, fast-flowing river. There is no bridge and the only way across the water is over some rather small stepping stones. You can see that the stones are spaced just a little too widely for you, and you also notice that the river is very deep in the middle. As you take your first hesitant step across the river, your mind is intensely focused on what you are doing: you are assessing every movement you make, testing each stone before committing yourself to it, trying to keep your balance. Everything else around you disappears from your mind as you try to make sure you don’t fall into the river. This is not mindfulness. This is concentration.
Now imagine that in the middle of the river there is a large, flat stone where you can stop, relax and take stock of how you are doing. As you step onto this rock, you relax a bit and tune in to the sound of the river; you notice the sparkling water rushing past you; you sense the warmth of the sun on your body; you hear some birds singing on the riverbank; you notice your heart beating quite fast and sense your breath moving in and out of your body more quickly than usual. You look around; you notice that you are looking around, and you are aware of standing on a rock in the middle of a river. And you realise that although crossing this river is quite difficult and that you are a bit worried about actually making it to the other side without getting wet, you accept that this is how things are and wishing for them to be different is not helpful. This is mindfulness: awareness of yourself; of thoughts, sounds and sights and bodily sensations; and acceptance of things just as they are right now – even if they are not entirely as you wish they might be.
The four key concepts of mindfulness that we’ll be exploring and practising in this book are:
- awareness and acceptance of thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations;
- realisation that we are not just our thoughts, feelings and bodily sensations, but that we are also the awareness that contains those thoughts, feelings and sensations;
- development of compassion towards our human vulnerability and frailty (and that of other people);
- familiarisation with the way our minds work, the stories they can create about life, ways they can lead us into unhelpful patterns of living and how we can begin to free ourselves from those stories and patterns.
If I practise mindfulness, will I be a more successful student?
Unfortunately, in its translation into Western culture, mindfulness has too often been presented as another tool for self-improvement, greater success and enhanced productivity. It seems that in the West, the only way we know how to justify an activity is by measuring improvement: greater fitness, more calm, more influence, higher profits, more, more and more. Think about your own life for a moment. Since the day you were born, it’s likely that you’ve been measured against innumerable standards to determine whether you are ‘normal’, whether you are succeeding in life, and how you are doing when measured against your peer group. Height, weight, IQ, exams, interview results – and more. With social media playing such a huge part in many people’s lives, our field of comparison has broadened enormously. In previous years, people only had the others who lived on their street or in their village to compare themselves with; now, we have endless airbrushed, Photoshopped images, alongside unrealistic, unattainable images of wealth and success via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on. No wonder so many of us suffer from what one author calls ‘the trance of unworthiness’ (Brach, 2013). We berate ourselves continually because we don’t look as good as we think we should, we’re not as confident as we think we should be and we aren’t as successful as we want to be. We have turned into a neurotic, anxiety-driven generation, never satisfied and often looking in the wrong places to feel better about ourselves – such as plastic surgery or expensive consumer goods.
Not surprisingly, then, many people who come to mindfulness hope that it will be a magic bullet to finally help them to feel permanently calm, to develop a Zen-like peace that is never disturbed whatever outer circumstances they are facing, or to be able, once and for all, to switch off their anxiety-provoking, depression-inducing thoughts. It’s fine to have those hopes. However, being completely honest, mindfulness is not a magic bullet that will, if practised hard enough, deliver an eternal inner peace while at the same time enabling you to absorb academic material faster and more easily. Sorry, that’s the bad news.
Mindfulness, as I see it and as I have practised it, is best approached with as few expectations as possible, at least in terms of the kind of outcomes you hope it will deliver. Paradoxically, the harder we try to ‘get it right’, the less we are likely to feel it is worthwhile or to experience any benefits. In that sense, we might be better to approach mindfulness rather as we approach going to sleep: when we go to bed at night, most of us don’t lie there thinking, ‘I hope this sleep makes me a better person’, or ‘If I just sleep in the right position, maybe I’ll be a calmer person’. You’ve probably had the experience of lying awake at night, desperately trying to make yourself fall asleep, but realising that the harder you try, the more awake you feel. Trying too hard with mindfulness suggests an anxiety to ‘get it right’, or to achieve a certain state of being – which is likely to backfire. But unlike going to bed in order to sleep, mindfulness can be thought of as ‘falling awake’ – coming back to our senses and reconnecting with the present moment, stepping out of our thinking, emotional, instinctive minds.
Another way of thinking about mindfulness would be to think of it like going for a walk just for the pleasure of it, rather than trying to get somewhere specific. There’s a big difference in walking for pleasure and walking with the specific aim of getting fitter, reaching a particular destination or covering a fixed distance in a certain amount time. For me, the first kind of walk is the most enjoyable. Every day I set off for a pleasurable walk with my dog, Harry. I have a general sense of the route we’re going to cover and how long I expect to be out for, but I allow myself just to enjoy whatever arises as we walk: sounds, sights, smells, meeting other people (and dogs), and occasional unexpected treasures such as seeing a kingfisher flash past on the river. Harry and I become absorbed in the moment – he in his doggy way and I in my human way. We are not trying to get anywhere in particular or feel a particular way; we walk in the rain and the sun, and some walks are more enjoyable than others. Harry runs around, sniffing, exploring, fully ‘in the moment’, not worrying about what time we’re going to get home or whether I’ll feed him tonight. Sometimes, I see people running past us, gasping, red in the face, clutching water bottles, timing themselves, seeing how many steps they can cram into thirty minutes. How different is their experience of the same route. There are also some times when I come back from our walk and realise that I’ve experienced very little of what was going on in the world around us, because I was completely lost in my thoughts: worrying, regretting, fretting, planning, dreaming, scheming.
So mindfulness is not, primarily, about achieving any particular state of mind, or stopping thoughts, or clearing your mind. It’s not about emptying your mind so that you can sit like a statue, empty of feelings and desires. Instead, it is about deliberately and consciously stepping off the hamster wheel of incessant achievement, and it’s about stopping trying to always get somewhere, or make things better. It’s about tuning in to what is going on right here, right now, both within ourselves and around us. We deliberately ‘wake up’ from autopilot and tune in for a period of time to the world around and within us: we stop ‘doing’ and allow ourselves to just ‘be’.
Mindful exercise
Just for a few moments, see what happens when you deliberately and consciously direct your attention away from the outside world and turn inwards to sensations in your body. Tune in to the feeling of your breath: you are breathing all the time, but are rarely aware of this. It is an automatic process that normally passes you by. For five minutes, see if you can keep your attention focused on your breath. Just five minutes. Gently allow your focus to come away from any worries you may have, any anxiety or concerns – for a few moments, come into your body and out of your thinking mind. Feel your chest and stomach rising and falling, expanding and contracting; notice any gaps between an in-breath and an out-breath. Just notice; don’t try to control or change. Each breath is unique, a never-to-be-repeated moment of your life with a different texture, speed and intensity. Your task is simply to become aware of this ever-changing life-giving aspect of your life.
How easy was this for you? It sounds very simple to focus your attention on your breath. However, I’m guessing that, as with most people, you found that your attention started to wander away from your breath fairly quickly and that you began to get caught up in thinking about what you were doing: ‘How long have I got to go?’ ‘What’s the point of this?’ ‘I know he said five minutes, but I think a minute is enough.’ ‘Am I doing this right?’ And so on.
For the moment, simply register your experience of trying this simple exercise. Whether you found it enjoyable, boring, easy or difficult, just notice...
