Mindfulness in Eight Weeks: The revolutionary 8 week plan to clear your mind and calm your life. Michael Chaskalson

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СКАЧАТЬ with regular daily mindfulness practice real changes are possible. What is on offer here is a significant increase in your level of well-being and personal effectiveness. I’m personally committed to teaching mindfulness and I’m inspired to do that because I see real changes taking place from week to week in the people I work with. It’s not always a smooth journey. There are ups and downs and we tell people on our public courses that engaging in the stress-reduction courses we offer can sometimes be stressful. After all, for many people these days finding 40 minutes a day to fit in the practices really isn’t easy. But practice is what this is all about and, if you commit to your stream of practice and do it with whatever regularity you can muster, real change can follow.

      And here’s the really wonderful thing: as you set out on your journey into mindfulness you don’t have to try to change yourself. In fact, striving after results can inhibit the process. All you have to do is engage in the practices – again and again and again – and change will begin to emerge. Over time, some people find that, once they have begun to experience for themselves the attitude of kindly self-acceptance that lies at the heart of this programme, they want to engage in further processes of development which build on that foundation. In the ‘Further Resources’ section (see here) I discuss a few of the many options that may be available, but for now the main thing is simply to engage in the practices described for each week. As best you can, put aside any idea of getting them right or doing them perfectly. That striving attitude is perfectly normal, it’s part of our being human, but in this context it just gets in the way.

      Don’t strive to get the practices right. Just do them.

      And here’s another great thing. On this course you’re completely liberated from any obligation to enjoy the practices. Sometimes you may enjoy them, sometimes you may not. That’s not the point. You don’t need to enjoy them to get the benefit – but you do have to do them.

      What Exactly Do We Mean by Mindfulness?

      Mindfulness is not the same thing as meditation. Meditation, especially ‘mindfulness meditation’, is a method of practice whose outcome is intended to be greater mindfulness.

      Mindfulness is the quality of awareness that comes from paying attention to yourself, others and the world around you in a certain way. Jon Kabat-Zinn (of whom more later) speaks of it as the awareness that arises from paying attention on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgementally.

      Let’s look at that in more detail.

      Mindfulness Involves Paying Attention on Purpose

      The act of choosing to pay attention is rarer than you might at first think. Even as you’re reading these words, how attentive are you? For most of us, the act of reading is fairly automatic. An impulse moves us to pick up a book, we open it, begin to read ... and all the while our attention flits.

      This is neither right nor wrong – it’s just how we are, and even as you have read just these few pages so far, part of your mind will quite naturally have wandered off many times to engage with other things that call on your attention. Maybe part of your mind spent some time turning over a problem at work or at home. Maybe you thought for a bit about some of the tasks on your to-do list right now. Or perhaps something you read sparked a memory and an image from the past came vividly to mind. Maybe you began to think about your next meal and you ran through a quick inventory of one of your kitchen cupboards.

      As I said, none of this is right or wrong. It’s just how our minds work. And when we’re mindful we bring a much clearer intentionality and awareness to the process of paying attention. When we’re mindful, we choose – to some extent at least – where our attention goes. We pay attention on purpose.

      Mindfulness Involves Paying Attention in the Present Moment

      Our attention wanders and much of the time it wanders off into the past or into the future. Sometimes there are elements of anxiety or regret involved in this. We may look to the future with a kind of anxious anticipation for what is to come, maintaining an uneasy alertness by constantly scanning the future for the challenges it may bring: encounters with other people we must prepare for, tasks we need to tick off our list – stuff coming our way. Or we may find ourselves constantly reviewing the past, especially the things we regret. There might even be some unconscious sense that by doing so we’ll be better prepared for the future.

      Perhaps there are evolutionary processes at work here. Maybe we’ve survived as a species and become the planet’s top predators in part because we’re good at doing these things. But there is a price for this and that price may be the whole of our lives. If your attention is always in the future or always in the past, right now you’re simply not here. Right now, you’re not fully alive.

      When you’re mindful, your attention stays in the present moment. Right here, right now.

      Mindfulness Is Non-Judgemental

      This doesn’t mean that we don’t make judgements when we’re mindful, or that we stop discerning what is appropriate at any time from what is inappropriate. That would be simple foolishness. But think of what we mean when we speak of someone being ‘judgemental’. A thesaurus gives these synonyms: critical, hypercritical, condemnatory, negative, disapproving, disparaging, pejorative. Quite a list.

      The non-judgemental attitude of mindfulness, on the other hand, is neither condemnatory nor prejudicial. There are two dimensions to this.

      Firstly, there is what we might think of as a wisdom dimension. This involves letting what is the case be the case.

      Much of the time we may feel, instinctively almost, unwilling or unable to do this. We can put huge amounts of mental and emotional energy into refusing to allow things to simply be as they are. ‘They shouldn’t be like that!’ ‘It shouldn’t be like this!’ ‘I ought to be somehow different ...’ But things really only ever are as they actually are. However right, however wrong, however just or unjust, desirable or undesirable – they are as they are. And it’s only ever when we can allow this to be fact – that things are as they are – that choice can begin to open up for us. When we let what is the case be the case, whatever it is, then we can begin to choose how to respond to it. What shall we do about what’s showed up right now? What would be the most appropriate next step for us and for the situation as a whole?

      When we can’t let what is the case be the case, then we’re stuck. We’re already rooted in a defensive posture of denial and we’ve closed down the possibilities for a more creative engagement with the situation. The wisdom element in the non-judgemental attitude of mindfulness opens up the possibility for a more wholehearted creative response to the situations we find ourselves in. It allows for more creative choices.

      Then, there is a compassion dimension to the non-judgemental attitude of mindfulness. Here, to some extent at least, we still our inner critical voice.

      For much of the time, many of us find that we run a kind of inner critical commentary on our experience. Sometimes that commentary can be directed at ourselves – ‘I’m not good enough.’ ‘I don’t measure up.’

      How many of us actually think we’re thin enough, good-looking enough, smart enough, fit enough, strong enough, witty enough, rich enough, clever enough, fast enough ... anything enough?

      Sometimes we turn that inner critical commentary on others – on their appearance, their intelligence, their emotional appropriateness and so on. Sometimes we run critical commentaries on our immediate environment – somehow or other, in one way or another, things just aren’t right. Nothing is quite as it should be. Nothing, ourselves included, is quite enough.

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