Mindfulness is when we still the mind allowing our true nature to reflect itself
What is mindfulness, any mindful yoga or exercises?
Mindfulness sounds like such a cool word, to be mindful means to pay attention, to focus on whatever is before us or more appropriately for spiritual practitioners; to concentrate, empty the mind of thoughts and go beyond the physical realm; especially during meditation. The photo shows a person looking into the distance, reflecting on what is, and being still like the lake allowing our true self to reflect. Mindfulness is a process, we use something to create the stillness within. It can be pleasant thoughts, imagery, a mantra, chanting, meditation, exercise or anything which helps gain control of our mind and thus focus. That’s what is mindfulness.
In short, mindfulness is to be aware of the present moment; the now; and nothing else. No past pain, no future agony. No ego, no self, nothing. Just be with the universe in a state of stillness. Why? Basically to slow down and be calm, to lessen our emotions and stress levels.
Mostly, if we observe our minds we will find it’s constantly in the past or future. People who suffer from depression will find their minds creating a negative future. Students and those too busy to think so much will find their minds scattered, but primary creating a career based future. People will family issues will be lost in the past.
When we pull the mind back to the now, it is forced to accept life as it is. But to do that is much easier said than done. Here a few methods which can be used to pacify the mind, you can also look under the concentration posts.
These exercises are called mindfulness yoga, or concentration yoga
- Simplify life as much as possible. No need to leave the family, only the attachment to things, and the race to keep up with the Jones. In the past, gurus would recommend to renunciations that they should run into the mountains to avoid the complexity of life. But this is not practical and not needed. What is needed though, is to prevent the mind from desiring too much. Too much money, sex, food, power, etc; they are all traps of the illusion to enslave us, so be moderate. Discipline yourself in order to be great.
- Befriend the mind, never attack it, after all it is am important part of you. You can only injure yourself by being angry or frustrated at yourself. Talk to the mind lovingly, ask it to let you focus when you need to, make a deal with it. For example, it wants to eat so tell it if you let me meditate now we can eat later. Better to slip through its grip by being invisible, not noticeable. When you ignore the ramblings of the mind, it will soon leave it alone. But if you follow its thought patterns, you empower the negative side’ forever trapped.
- Get power over it slowly by being in control of small things. If it wants you to eat, say in 5 minutes. If it wants to go out, say after you’ve finished cleaning or whatever. When it wants to do something, don’t give in immediately or at all. If thirsty, wait. Slowly, it will understand you cannot be convinced so easily. By forming a good habit of not always listening, you can slip past its grasp. It takes about 21 days of constant practice to change a habit
- Meditate using a method which requires concentration and empowers stilling the mind. Practice makes perfect, follow the recommendations of the method/teacher until you master it. There are many methods, so it’s a bit hard to generalize other to say the better methods will allow you to enter Samadhi with 30 minutes. During that time, ignore the mind, treat the chatter like background noise. As long as you don’t follow the thoughts, let the mind run around the world and back. You do your thing, let it do what it wants.
- Some masters recommend chanting a mantra like the lords name aloud and fairly quickly (eg: like Hare Krishna), not letting the mind time to think. This has several benefits, stops thinking for the duration of the chant, uplifts us through blessings, puts us into a sort of trance with an adrenalin rush and feeling of being high; especially if dancing accompanies the chant like with the Hare Krishna movement.
- Some methods which have living masters will ask you to recite holy names, empowered by a master to have a calming effect. It’s similar to reciting a mantra, except the words are normally secretive and suitable for only you. These methods usually teach to sit closed eyes and ignore the body and mind chatter. Since the mind likes to repeat, we replace nonsense with something useful – holy names.
- The mind is just a recorder, what comes out is what you put in. The more media or entertainment you watch/listen to, the more gossip or problems you encounter during the day, the more bad vibes you pick up by going to bad areas, ……all must come out. At the moment you try to concentrate, all the thoughts you encountered during the day will be replayed tainted with your own issues and concepts. Often even we if don’t speak and close our eyes all day, we still pick up things in the air. Peoples thinking will affect us because we are connected. Those thoughts however are not strong if we are not so sensitive. Since you are too busy during the day, it comes out when you want to be quiet.
- To stop rubbish coming in all day, control what goes in. Use an mp3 player to ensure only positive things enter the mind, have some affirmations or mantra to recite when you do not need to use the mind.
- Listen to devotional music during the day if possible, but especially during your meditation. Have is playing in the background softly. It can be your gurus voice, the sound of nature of Heavenly sounds such as those found here.
- Meditate immediately after a good sleep, before you talk or listen to anything; just visit the bathroom if needed then meditate. No food, no thinking. Wake up before the rest of the household, like 5am or any time after midnight.
- Avoid large meals especially before meditating, and consider meals with less karmic burden. Animals killed in pain to feed you would have some residue effect, some turmoil in your stomach and mind. Some foods may excite you like high protein foods, it will cause the body to need to burn off the energy, in turn causing the mind to make you do it.
- Avoid things which excite us too much, be moderate. Addictive gambling, drugs, alcohol all have the opposite effect of what we want. Some drugs seem to pacify the mind, but the effect is temporary and after effects worse.
- Tire the mind through exercise or hard physical work. When the body is tired it will send a strong signal to the mind, when you try to concentrate it will let you relax. Possibly sleep will come quickly, but only because the mind is quiet.
- If you want peace, then give peace to all beings; what you give will return to you. If you take peace from other beings, what you get is their pain and struggle. This also refers to all relationships in your life, with family, spouse, colleagues, pets, etc. Because we are all connected, inflicting pain on another is the same as doing it to ourselves.
What is mindfulness, to be aware of your thoughts. To stop thoughts and be in the now, now!
