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Mindfulness: The Power To Transform
Your Life
What would you say if I suggested
that you were missing half of your own life? What if you were
so driven by your doing mind (the part of us that is trained
from an early age to be busy doing or planning or thinking about
something or someone in each and every moment) that you never even
noticed, or were unaware, that you were missing anything at all?
Thinking
about mindfulness and DOING mindful practices are two very different
things. It is in the repeated and purposeful practice of engaging
in mindful activity that we can start to cultivate a state of
being mind. Most of our lives rush by without our full
awareness. Mindfulness seeks to deliberately keep us in the
present moment, and thereby, to block the tendency of our auto-pilot
minds to wander from place to place, thousands of times in an
hour or a day.
Mindfulness does not require any
changes in your spiritual beliefs. It is not a religion, although
it has its roots in Eastern Buddhist psychology. Mindfulness does
not require that you sit in a full lotus posture while burning
incense and chanting a mantra. Mindfulness is a lifestyle and not
just a therapeutic technique.
Essential
Qualities of Mindfulness Practices
Jon Kabat-Zinn,
Full Catastrohe Living, 1990:
1. Nonjudging:
impartial witnessing, observing the present moment without
evaluation
2. Nonstriving:
non-goal-oriented, unattached to outcome or achievement, not
forcing
3.
Acceptance: openness to seeing and acknowledging things as they
are
4. Patience:
allowing things to unfold in their time with ourselves,
others, moments
5. Trust:
trusting oneself, one’s body, intuition, emotions, life
as it is
6. Openness:
seeing things as if for the first time (aka “beginner’s mind”)
7. Letting
go: intentional non-attachment with thoughts, feelings, allowing (not suppressing)
Shapiro, S.L. &
Schwartz, G.E. (2000). The role of intention in self-regulation:
Toward intentional systemic mindfulness. In M. Boekaerts, P.R.
Pintrich & M. Zeidner (eds.), Handbook of self-regulation (pp.253-273).
8.
Gentleness: a soft, considerate, tender, welcoming capacity
(active not passive)
9.
Generosity: giving in the moment within a context of love and
compassion, without an expectation of gain or a thought of return
10. Empathy:
the quality of feeling and understanding another person’s
perspective
11.
Gratitude: the quality of reverence, appreciating, being thankful
for the present moment
12.
Lovingkindness: a quality of embodying benevolence, compassion, and
cherishing; a quality filled with forgiveness and unconditional
love
The above
essential qualities were prepared by Dr. Pantaleno (©
Pantaleno, 2011) based upon the cited sources.
Additional Resources
You order a set of practice CDs from one of
the master educators on the subject (Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn) at
www.stressreductiontapes.com. You can attend a workshop
given by mindfulness training centers, which offer regularly
scheduled workshops in New York City, with information at
www.nyimc.org and
www.eomega.org.
For education professionals, consider
taking my introductory workshop. Please call me for dates.
For an extensive bibliography on
mindfulness research and applications, click on this address:
http://marc.ucla.edu/body.cfm?id=38&oTopID=38
ENJOY!!
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