Psychology Place

Mischievous Mindfulness

The Mischief of Mindfulness

By Dr Karen Weiss

What is mindfulness exactly? You hear it bandied around a lot as a cure all for most anxieties and depression, a way to moderate eating, a method of finding inner wisdom and a path to a higher consciousness. What’s more it’s free and within reach of all of us.

While all of the above might be true, it is most likely that if you could easily achieve any of these things via mindfulness you’ve probably already been practicing for some time or you’re a super mindful action hero. This is why….mindfulness is not something you can learn from a book or a course and off you go, it’s not even a skill….it’s a practice of life, which is why true practitioners of mindfulness devote their lifetime to it.

On the other hand, it is a practice much like fitness, you get better at it the more you do it but initially you may huff and puff, be sore and frustrated and really not want to keep doing it. But you do because you know it’s doing you good and actually you quite enjoy the sense of your self that comes with doing something worthwhile.

So what happens in mindfulness? I’ve already tole you it is a practice and not a skill. The other thing it isn’t is a way to control your mind. Quite the opposite in fact, mindfulness allows you to be more at ease with the mischievous mind, the cheeky monkey inside that just won’t be controlled.

The little voice that torments you but becomes stronger very time you say stop. In mindfulness we sit with this voice and say hello to it, even welcome it, but mostly we just notice its presence and breathe. Sounds simple and almost impossible to think it could help. But think of it this way….when a child is tired and whining and the parent says stop it really loudly over and over, does the child stop or do they cry and whine and want more? (They may stop of the parent is scary enough which is similar to us accessing our own inner tyrant…but that’s another blog!)

When you do mindfulness practice initially you are acting like a good enough parent, you warmly acknowledge  that the emotion, uncomfortable feeling or tension is there and you basically watch over it, even nurture it. So this means you avoid avoiding yourself when you practice mindfulness. This helps solve a lot of problems of the mind because we know that mostly we make our own lives worse through playing with the cheeky monkey. In mindfulness we shake his hand, smile inwardly and move on.