A Year of Living Mindfully: Every time is like the first time in the practice of making mental space

Every time I sit and practise mindfulness, I do so for the first time. When I open my awareness to the present, I step into a moment that has never happened before. And the “me” who is sitting here now is different from the person I was at any time before. Remembering this helps to keep my practice fresh.

Recently, a friend of mine commented that everywhere she turned, someone seemed to be talking about mindfulness. Between courses and teachers and books and CDs, and mindful yoga and mindful living it was getting harder and harder to enjoy a quiet mindless moment and not feel guilty.

She felt that there was a real risk that mindfulness could end up as just another fad. Something that everybody felt they “should” be doing, and doing all the time, to make them “better” people.

I think this would be a shame, but if it did happen, it wouldn’t be the first time that we flogged a good idea to death until it lost its power. I think of “Games People Play”, a really brilliant insight about how we tend to repeat certain dysfunctional patterns in the way we relate to each other. Gradually it was applied to every possible human interaction and our fascination turned to cynicism.

I also think of the notion that the unresolved pain and trauma we carry in our bodies, our “Unfinished Business”, often accounts for the mental health difficulties we experience as adults. Another great idea until we tried to explain every possible mental and physical symptom this way.

Powerful idea
Mindfulness is a simple but powerful idea that has captured our collective imagination, primarily because it helps us to live with the stress and pain of our lives.

It shows us how we can use our breath to steady ourselves, to ground us in the here and now, and not be carried away by the stories we keep telling ourselves about how disappointing we are.

Mindfulness also opens our eyes to the magic of our everyday lives, the smile of a stranger, the way the light plays on the garden, some act of kindness that shifts our whole day into a different key.

We live somewhere between the mess and the magic that make up our lives. Mindfulness reminds us to keep an eye on both.

But we can’t always be mindful in the strict sense of focusing on what is happening in the present moment. And it would probably not be good for us to try. There are times when we need to reflect on past experiences so that we can savour them, learn from them, and avoid repeating mistakes.

There are also times when we need to anticipate the future, to plan ahead, to weigh up in our mind the pros and cons of taking particular steps towards some important goal. Thinking ahead, both alone and with others, helps us to put some shape and order on our lives. There’s nothing wrong with any of this.

Life becomes problematic however when we spend all of our time chewing over the past or trying to second-guess the future, and forget about the present. Our minds can be everywhere except on the place where we actually are now.

We can become trapped into tunnel vision, where our thinking is dominated by fear rather than by possibility.

Spark of creativity
Our logic may be flawless, but lacks that spark of creativity needed to deal with a complex and challenging situation. Being mindful draws us back inside our bodies, and connects us with our deeper intuitive intelligence.

Mindfulness creates mental space. It makes room for a variety of perspectives so that we are less likely to be trapped by any one. We remember who we really are; we become reconciled with our past, without feeling we have to keep repeating it; we draw deeply from what life has taught us and take the time to imagine new ways of doing things. Small changes can make a world of difference.

We are all a work in progress. Mindfulness opens our eyes to fresh possibilities. We may acknowledge our past, but we don’t need to allow it to define our destination.

Tony Bates is founding director of Headstrong – The National Centre for Youth Mental Health..