10 Awesome Mindfulness Tips for Beginners

So, you've read a magazine article, a blog post, or maybe had a conversation with someone about mindfulness. Maybe it's not the first time you've heard, read, or talked about it.

Now, you're interested in practicing mindfulness because you want to use it to improve your life in some way. Maybe you want to reduce your stress level, get rid of your anxiety altogether, or maybe you just want to learn how to make the most of your life as a whole.

But, where do you start? Basic how-to instruction is necessary, but that's not enough if you want to actually develop your mindfulness practice into a daily habit, or a way of life.

Being a dime-a-dozen nowadays and growing every minute, quality information can be difficult to identify when it comes to mindfulness. What should you listen to and what shouldn't you?

Many resources discuss mindfulness practice only as a form of sitting meditation. This greatly limits your practice.

In order to obtain a truly calm and clear mind and obtain the full benefits of mindfulness practice, you can’t just practice mindfulness as a form of sitting meditation.

You also need to be mindful while going about your everyday life. After all, what good is anything which isn’t actually useful to you in your everyday life?

One of the great things about mindfulness is that it's available to you in every moment. You can practice mindfulness right now this very second and touch seeds of peace and joy within yourself. You can directly and immediately create a positive impact on your daily life and in a number of ways.

In order to start you off on the right foot, I’ve organized a list of my best mindfulness tips for beginners just starting out on the path to living a more mindful life. These are all the things that I myself have found to be important, made the mistake of not doing, or both at the beginning of my own practice.

Following even one of these points can greatly improve your practice if you’re just starting out. I’d suggest following each mindfulness tip closely.

Keep in mind that the purpose of this post isn't to provide instruction on how to practice mindfulness itself, rather as I mentioned it's to give you a sort of jump start to make sure you start off in the right direction from the get-go. ________________________________________________

This post is adapted from my book, The Little Book of Mindfulness. It covers everything you need to know about mindfulness from A to Z. You can get it free by entering your name and email below:

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Here are 10 awesome mindfulness tips for beginners:

10 Awesome Mindfulness Tips for Beginners

1. Focus on developing concentration

Concentration is the anchor of mindfulness. If you imagine mindfulness as the ship, yourself as the ship captain who steers the ship and decides where to place the anchor, then concentration is the anchor and the object of your mindfulness, such as your breath or steps, is the anchor point.

Concentration is the constant partner to mindfulness. Think of it as the active force and mindfulness as the passive. When you consciously decide to focus on your breath and work to keep your focus on it, this is your concentration.

Think of mindfulness then as a field of vision that extends outward to cover everything in your perception. When your concentration wanders to a thought, sensation, or distraction and you're aware that you just became distracted this is your mindfulness. Mindfulness is the great observer.

In the beginning, you'll want to put all of your focus on developing your concentration. At the beginning of your practice, your mind will literally be all over the place. You’ll seem to have a new thought or some other distraction every few seconds.

This is perfectly normal. I went through the same thing at first. It took time to quiet my own mind as well as develop my concentration, but it was well worth it. Simply quieting the mind can bring you a great sense of peace and happiness.

Without developing your concentration, you won’t be able to practice very effectively. So it’s necessary, at first, to do so.

Once your concentration improves you’ll be able to put more focus into exercising mindfulness. You’ll start noticing why your mind strayed (was it a thought or feeling? What was the thought?), as opposed to simply noticing your mind stray and refocusing on your object of meditation.

2. Pick simple objects

At the beginning, you’re going to want to pick an easy object of meditation. Then once your skill improves you can pick more difficult objects. At first, I’d suggest practicing mindful breathing for a couple of weeks.

To practice mindful breathing, all you have to do is stop and be mindful of your breath. Whether you’re at your desk, at a stoplight, or in between places or sitting down for an extended meditation session. Just stop what you’re doing and follow your breath with mindfulness.

Focus your concentration on each exhale and inhale and let your mind quiet. If your mind seems a bit chaotic, don’t worry. This is perfectly normal and might last a few weeks before really beginning to calm down.

Mindful breathing is a major meditative practice of many spiritual traditions and has a number of benefits. In the beginning, sit for 10-15 minutes every morning and/or night and simply stop what you’re doing for 30-60 seconds every hour or two during your day to practice mindfulness of breath (you don’t have to sit to do this) and you’ll gradually begin to develop both your ability and establish mindfulness as a habit. Do this for at least 2-3 weeks before trying anything else.

After that, you can move on to mindful walking, eating, and many other nourishing practices. But continue to practice formal sitting meditation in the morning and/or night and mindful breathing throughout your day. These are great beginner practices and they’ll remain cornerstones of your mindfulness practice even as your skill improves.

The reason these are great beginner practices is because they don’t require a high level of skill. Walking meditation (or mindful walking) is an example of moving meditation, but it’s typically done in a slow manner to where it’s easy for a beginner to do. I’d still suggest sticking to mindful breathing for the first few weeks though before trying to practice walking meditation at all.

Don’t rush the process of developing mindfulness. You’ll gain nothing from doing so and only end up hurting your practice.

3. Sit often

Sitting meditation really is the cornerstone of all meditative practice. It was my first experience with mindfulness and I’d suggest it be your first experience with meditation as well. Adopting a daily practice of sitting meditation is very important.

There are various forms of meditation, and sitting meditation in particular, but because this post is centered on mindfulness practice what we’re talking about here is essentially mindful breathing while sitting in a quiet and distraction-free zone.

If you try to start practicing mindfulness without making sitting meditation a part of your daily practice then it will be much more difficult to get to a point where your mind becomes quiet. And later, sitting meditation will aid in your efforts to obtain a clear mind.

No matter how far a Zen monk, Yogi, or sage goes in their practice, they always sit and often twice a day (for 1-2 hours). Think of sitting meditation as your “practice” time to keep you sharp.

Every great athlete practices the fundamentals of their craft on a daily basis. No matter how good they become, they practice the fundamentals. For spiritual practice, this is sitting meditation.

4. Go easy on yourself

I've talked previously about the nonjudgmental aspect of mindfulness. Mindfulness is an open acceptance of everything, so those thoughts, feelings, and sensations that keep popping into your mind shouldn’t be labeled a bad thing. In fact, they aren’t a good thing or a bad thing.

Remember, mindfulness is just an observer. You shouldn’t be passing judgment, good or bad, on anything including disruptions to your concentration.

These distractions are normal. They’ll subside naturally, your mind will quiet over time, and it will bring you a great sense of peace. Don’t worry about that. You’ll know you’re practice is really successful not when these distractions subside but when you start becoming mindful of these distractions. No matter how many of them you have.

Don’t get frustrated if, at first, you can’t hold your concentration for more than a few seconds. This is perfectly normal. If you get frustrated just acknowledge the frustration in mindfulness and let it go. Know that these distractions will subside with practice and that your goal is primarily to develop your mindfulness.

When you develop the ability to shine the light of mindfulness on these distractions is when the real healing can begin. These disruptions are the things distorting your perception and keeping you from reality as it is, filled with peace, joy, and freedom. No matter what, just keep practicing. With time, you’ll see the fruits of your labor.

5. Prioritize mindfulness

You won’t get far in your practice of mindfulness if you don’t prioritize it. This goes for anything in life. This is because right from the beginning you’ll be clashing with old habits.

The more often we do something the more energy or “pull” it has. This is our habit energy. We all have this habit energy. What differs from one person to another is where we place this energy.

When you begin practicing mindfulness you’ll naturally be “pulled” in other directions constantly. This is your old habit energy attempting to pull you back to your old ways.

You can use the other mindfulness tips in this post, such as making sure to enjoy the process and to pick simple objects of mindfulness, but you’ll still need to prioritize your practice. This means, as with establishing any other new habit, you’ll have to fight with your old and likely less productive or positive ways.

But remember how energy works, the more time and effort you place into something the more pull it will have. Stick with it and gradually it will become easier until the point in which it takes almost no effort at all.

And the great thing about mindfulness is that you can do it while doing just about anything else. So it’s not so much choosing mindfulness over other things, it’s more of remembering to be mindful. At first, though, remember to keep it simple and choose simple objects of mindfulness.

6. Slow it down

We’re taught to move quickly, multitask, and ultimately be as productive as possible. This mentality is ingrained in us. It probably started during the industrial revolution, where we as a species became obsessed with speed and productivity. It was all about who could grow the fastest and claim the most land.

It was inevitable based on our development as a species, but this mindset has stayed with us to the present day and it’s completely against our true nature.

We’re so used to rushing around all day that a lot of times we never even realize there’s another way to live. We think that it’s “just how life is”. But it’s not. And of course, part of the point of mindfulness and meditation is to calm the mind.

But this job should be handled on both sides. While developing your practice of mindfulness you should also work to become aware of when you’re rushing around and when you’re not. And aside from helping to calm your mind, if you actively work on slowing down you’ll also find more opportunities to practice mindfulness. Due to this, it’s highly beneficial to analyze your daily schedule. You’ll find that opportunities to practice mindfulness are abundant in our daily lives.

Walking from point A to point B, sitting in a waiting room, driving to and from work, and just stopping for a moment to follow your breath anywhere and at any time. Slow it down and really start taking the time to enjoy the little moments with mindfulness.

7. Be patient

Mindfulness takes time and patience to develop. At first, it will be subtle. Unicorns won’t start flying through the air and celebration banners won’t drop from the sky. You’ll just feel….a little more alive. A little more present. That’s the best way I can describe it.

But with practice, you’ll notice your ability improve. You’ll feel more present and more alive. Of course, you’ll need to have some indicator that you’re practicing correctly.

The best advice I can give to make sure that you’re practicing correctly is to practice mindful breathing and sitting meditation often. These are the easiest ways to practice mindfulness and the method of mindful breathing, which you’ll do during both of those exercises, is the easiest way to tell when you lose your mindfulness.

Remember, mindfulness works like a muscle. The more you work it out, the stronger it gets. Make mindfulness a way of life so as to develop it into a powerful force for peace and happiness in your life.

8. Let go

When you begin your mindfulness practice (or if you have already) you’ll probably find it extraordinarily difficult not to become distracted. We covered this earlier, so it shouldn’t be of any surprise.

But something else will likely happen. You’ll have a hard time convincing yourself to let go of these distractions. Why is that? Well, we tend to blow everything in our mind out of proportion.

What that means is when we have a project due at school, a presentation at work, a big event with the family, or some personal business, we tend to mull over them in our heads repeatedly. “Did I remember to do that?” “Did I have them add that?” “What am I going to do about that?” “How is that going to work?” It’s an endless cycle of questions and answers.

When you begin your mindfulness practice you might have a very hard time convincing yourself to let go of these thoughts for even 10 minutes to sit down and meditate. But it’s so important.

You might think that you need to keep these things cycling through your brain constantly, otherwise, you’ll screw something up or just not do as good a job as you could or should, but that’s not the case. You only minimize your effectiveness in any given task by hounding over it and never giving your mind any rest.

You’d be surprised how refreshed and sharp your mind will be if you allow yourself to step away from something for even a single session of mindful breathing or walking meditation. So learn how to let go of these things and just follow your breath. Let go of everything. The more you practice the easier it will be to do this and the better you’ll feel.

9. Have fun

You’ve probably heard this one a million times before about a million other things, but that’s because it’s true. It’s not just true. It’s one of the most important points on this list. Why? Because when we enjoy something our drive to do that thing increases tenfold. Luckily, for the most part, this will come naturally when practicing mindfulness.

By the very act of practicing mindfulness, your monkey mind will begin to settle and you’ll feel an extraordinary sense of tranquility. When I first began my mindfulness practice I felt an amazing sense of peace that seemed to extend throughout the rest of my day. It was rough at first, I can’t say that it wasn’t difficult.

Your mind will likely be bouncing around uncontrollably for the first a couple of weeks, you’ll be pretty fidgety, and if you use a timer during sitting meditation you’ll find thoughts like “I wonder how much longer I have to go?” popping up regularly. But even so, you’ll find yourself feeling great after finishing a session. Even if it was just a few minutes long.

During this time, you really just have to push through the difficulty. But I don’t mean literally push or be forceful. I mean don't give up, keep chugging along. Just be mindful of whatever it is you’re being mindful of, in the beginning, this will be mostly your breath, and as thoughts arise gently acknowledge them and bring your concentration back to your breath.

This tough period won’t last long. Plus, you’ll still get a lot of joy from practicing during this time as well. Take the time to notice how mindfulness is affecting your mood and behavior. If you take the time to do this you’ll deepen your appreciation of your practice further and find even more drive to continue practicing.

But the real joy is in once your mind has begun to settle and you can just sit with little interruptions. When you can sit, stop, or walk and be mindful without feeling like you want to get up or like you have something you need to get to, you’ll know you’ve reached a real milestone.

I can’t describe this feeling to you. You just have to feel it for yourself. It’s one of the most beautiful and peaceful feelings you’ll ever feel in your life. In those moments everything is perfect just as it is and you feel like you could sit forever.

10. Don't accept the excuses you give yourself as to why mindfulness isn't for you. If you can't sit still, you need mindfulness the most.

Those who have the most difficulty sitting still are the ones who need mindfulness the most. If you’re constantly moving to the point where you can’t imagine yourself sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time then your mind is very, very busy. And the busier your mind, the more stressed and anxious it is as well.

Don't convince yourself that you can't practice mindfulness, especially mindful sitting/sitting meditation, because you have a hard time sitting. You need mindfulness the most.

If you do the work and just learn how to stop and follow your breath from time to time you’ll completely transform how you feel on a day to day basis. Those with the most difficulty sitting are typically the ones who end up appreciating the practice the most because they got the most meaning from it.

We often have to learn from experience in order to really appreciate something. If you experienced a chaotic mind then you’ll truly appreciate what your mind is like once you’ve found even a sliver of the peace you can feel from adopting the practice of mindfulness in your daily life.

Additional Resources

Interested in learning more about mindfulness or meditation in general? Here are a few posts to get you started:

1. What is Mindfulness? A Guide to Mindfulness Meditation
2. How to Practice Mindfulness: The Quick and Easy Guide to Learning Mindfulness Meditation
3. The Mindfulness Survival Guide: 10 Powerful Mindfulness Techniques for Overcoming Life’s Challenges and Living Mindfully
4. 6 Great Ways to Implement Mindfulness in the Workplace
5. 50 Awesome Meditation Tips for Beginners

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This post is adapted from my book, The Little Book of Mindfulness. It covers everything you need to know about mindfulness from A to Z. You can get it free by entering your name and email below:

How to Practice Mindfulness: The Quick and Easy Guide to Learning Mindfulness Meditation

What if you’re not interested in the “what” and the “why” and just want to know how to practice mindfulness meditation? The cool thing is, you don’t need to know anything else to practice mindfulness.

The what and the why are valuable and worth learning about, but mindfulness practice is a deeply personal experience and something you can only truly understand having practiced for yourself.

Well, I’ve got good news. If you want to know how to practice mindfulness in simple, clear, and straightforward language with no extra fluff- this is the only guide you need.

And if you want to learn more and really delve deeper into the practice? I’ll provide a whole suite of guides, resources, and guided meditations which you can utilize, all for free, at the end of this post as well.

How to Practice Mindfulness of Breath

Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something, so the instructions below will be on the most basic and fundamental of mindfulness practices: mindful breathing.

In the practice of mindfulness, you're very lightly and loosely concentrating on something while being mindful of everything which arises within your field of awareness (think: being clearly aware in an open and all-inclusive way).

Of course, that sounds nice, but the practice rarely looks so pretty in the beginning. It really looks like this:

Focused on the breath → 3 seconds later, lose concentration → "wake up" 2 minutes later ("what the heck happened?", return to the breath → 3 seconds later, lose concentration → wake up 1 minute later, return to the breath

Just know this is perfectly normal and that, with time, your mind will begin to quiet and become quite clear.

How to practice mindfulness: Mindful breathing

Mindful breathing can be done as a form of sitting meditation or just standing in your home, office, or outside in nature and for even a few seconds.

There are really no restrictions to the practice, but it's most often done as a form of sitting meditation for at least a few minutes at a time. That's how I suggest you do your first few mindfulness practice sessions.

Start by finding a quiet place, somewhere with the least possible distractions. Nowhere will be perfect, just find a decent spot.

Next, find a comfortable sitting position. To keep it simple, for now just sit on the floor in a cross-legged position or in a chair. Straighten your back and neck, place your hand in your lap, and look down 3-4 feet in front of you.

Now, either close your eyes or let your eyelids naturally fall so that they remain about 1/2 open. Keep in mind that eyes closed can make you more likely to fall asleep while meditating (a common problem), while eyes half-open may feel odd at first and distract you. For now, either is fine.

Then, follow these 4 simple steps to practice mindful breathing:

1. Become aware of your breath

Simply turn your attention to your breathing. Follow each in-breath and out-breath from beginning to end. Place a firm but soft focus on the breath.

Do not attempt to control your breath, simply observe it silently. Your silent observation will slowly begin to calm your breathing naturally. This may be easier said than done in the beginning but make your best effort.

2. Count each in-breath and out-breath

Inhale…one. Exhale….two. Count to 10 like this. If a thought distracts you, start the 10 count over from 1. When you get to 10, start over and attempt to count to 10 again. If you never do, don't worry,

Do this for as many weeks or months as it takes until you can count to 10 with little to no effort. Then count each inhale + exhale as one. Then, when that becomes easy, stop counting and simply follow your breath. Don’t rush this step, progress slowly.

3. Acknowledge thoughts, feelings, and sensations that arise

Understand in advance that various thoughts, feelings, and sensations will arise while being mindful and make you lose your concentration on the breath.

In the beginning, you'll likely be interrupted constantly and feel like you're doing something wrong. You're not and it really is that difficult for everyone, in the beginning, to stay concentrated on the breath.

4. Return to being mindful of the breath

This will be difficult at first, you’ll lose focus on your breath constantly. Stay focused, after a while your mind will begin to grow quieter.

That's it! That's all there is to it. The practice of mindfulness, in this case specifically mindful breathing, is simple and straightforward.

Just keep in mind that while the practice won't necessarily feel easy in the beginning, it will get better typically in a very short period of time (in a few weeks you should start noticing a calmer and quieter mind).

A Few Important Tips

Here are a few tips for getting off on the right foot:

• In the beginning, it's about making meditation a daily habit. That means don't worry about how long you're practicing for. Practice mindful breathing for 1-3 minutes for the first 1, 2, even 3 weeks. Really, in the beginning, nothing more is necessary and even with that you'll notice a big difference in how you feel. After a while, you'll feel gradually able to sit down for longer and longer periods.
• Practice x2 a day. To further develop your mindfulness meditation practice into a strong daily practice, sit twice a day (preferably morning + afternoon or night). Remember, you're meditating for just 1-3 minutes so there should be no reason you can't do it.
• Your mind will feel like a jungle. Don't sweat it. I said this earlier, but I feel it's important enough to mention again. People often feel like they're doing something wrong, or like something's wrong with them. Nothing is wrong at all. It's perfectly natural to feel like you're jumping out of your skin, unable to focus on one point for more than even 3 seconds. This will quickly begin to change if you stick to a consistent daily practice.
• Be gentle with yourself throughout the process. Don't go into mindfulness meditation thinking that it's easy. It often isn't. In the beginning, you're likely to not be able to notice clearly what is arising. You'll just know you've lost your mindfulness. At best, you'll know you were thinking about "something" but not know exactly what. But there is the possibility that some uncomfortable thoughts and feelings can arise while meditating. Be kind to yourself and know that whatever happens is totally natural and not a sign of any personal shortcoming.

Additional Resources

Whether you're interested in learning to develop a daily meditation practice or bringing the practice of mindfulness into your everyday life, I've got you covered:

Creating a home meditation practice:

1. How to Meditate for Beginners
2. ZfEL Ep. 8: How to Create a Home Meditation Practice
3. 5 Steps to Making Meditation a Daily Habit
4. 5 Tools to Help You Start Your Home Meditation Practice
5. How to Create a Zen Space: Finding Peace by Creating a Personal Space That Nourishes Your Mind and Bod

Bringing mindfulness into your everyday life:

1. ZfEL Ep. 6: How to Make Mindfulness a Way of Life: 7 Keys to Living a More Mindful Life
2. How to Create a Mindful Morning Routine
3. ZfEL Ep. 4: How to Design a Nightly Ritual that Nourishes and Brings Rest to the Mind and Body (Plus Mindfulness of Body Guided Meditation)
4. 7 Ways to Live More Mindfully in the Busy, Fast-Paced, and Plugged In Modern World
5. 5 Powerful Ways Mindful Eating Will Transform Your Relationship With Foo

Free guided meditations:

If you're really interested in learning how to practice mindfulness, text instruction isn't complete without an accompanying guided meditation. Luckily, I've got you covered there too:

Free Guided Meditations for Greater Peace and Clarity

Keep in mind that the above list is constantly growing. Each week I future a new guided meditation on the Zen for Everyday Life podcast. You can listen to the podcast on the blog here or on iTunes here.

No matter what brought you to the practice of mindfulness, I hope you discover the beauty of the practice and that it helps do for you what it did for me so many years ago.

The Mindfulness Survival Guide: 10 Powerful Mindfulness Techniques for Overcoming Life's Challenges and Living Mindfully

More than some specific meditation technique, mindfulness is a way of life. Mindful living encompasses every aspect of your life imaginable, it's been a major aspect of just about all Eastern spiritual traditions for thousands of years, and is now taking root in the West.

But mindful living is much more than just discovering and enjoying the present moment. Mindful living brings us crashing into ourselves, which can be both beautiful and frightening.

But the very reason this happens is because mindfulness is giving us the opportunity to realize peace and happiness, the opportunity to discover our true nature and live freely, by opening us up much like a flower opens itself up to the sun.

Living mindfully takes courage. But if you want to live your best life, if you want to discover peace and happiness right now in this very moment, then there's no other way.

Life can be crazy, but if we meet it head on and navigate those difficulties with mindfulness then we have the ability to both maintain peace while doing so and come out happier for it.

This is The Mindfulness Survival Guide, and these are mindfulness techniques to help you navigate the twists and turns of life with greater clarity, peace, joy, and to ultimately discover how awesome life can be.

The Mindfulness Survival Guide:

1. Physical Healing
2. Mental and Emotional Healing
3. Nourishing and Healing Relationships
4. Grounding
5. Dealing with Craving and Addiction
6. *Bonus: When Life Just Won't Give You a Break

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Want to take The Mindfulness Survival Guide with you (recommended, especially if traveling...)? Enter your name and email below to get the Mindfulness Survival Guide PDF free:

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Physical Healing

Mindfulness techniques aren't usually associated with physical healing, but they can be a great aid in the process of not only healing our bodies and minds when suffering from chronic conditions but from acute conditions as well. Mindfulness can also help us reconnect with our bodies and fall in love with ourselves as well, and this is also very healing.

Mindfulness can also help us reconnect with our bodies and fall in love with ourselves as well, and this is also very healing.

1. Mindfulness of body

To practice mindfulness of body, you should preferably be lying down where you can relax with your hands at your sides. I'd suggest doing this exercise just before bed, as it can be extremely relaxing and often result in sleep.

Mindfulness of body starts at the top of your body and works its way down:

1. From the top. Become mindful of your body. Feel your whole body and become fully aware of it.

Now focus your mindfulness on the top of your head, shortly after shifting to your brain. Feel that part of your body fully with your mindfulness. Does that area of your body feel tense? Loose? Do you notice an ache? Pain? Something you haven't noticed before? Be fully present as you scan your entire body with your mindfulness and direct love and attention to each area as you scan.

After scanning each part of your body, give it a moment to release all the tension held within it and relax fully before continuing to the next section. 2.

2. Full-body scan. Continue to move down your body, one body part at a time, like you were scanning your body with an X-ray machine. Don't just stay on the outside.

Once you get to the shoulders, upper arms, lower arms, hands, chest, back, and abdomen, shift to your intestines, stomach, lungs, and everywhere in between. 3.

3. To the bottom. Continue to scan until you get to the tip of your toes. Sometimes, you might need to wiggle a part of your body to become fully aware of it. This is perfectly fine.

Take your time during this meditation, devoting as much as 30 seconds to 1 minute of time to each individual body part. Mindfulness of body can bring relief to your body if you're feeling aches or pains, particularly as a result of stress.

But more importantly, like a tuning fork gathering a signal, the more you practice mindfulness, especially mindfulness of body, the more closely you'll be able to listen to your own body and detect the many signs and signals it gives off that you would otherwise not have noticed.

A special level of communication with our bodies is possible, and mindfulness allows us to cultivate that.

2. Compassion meditation

Typically, compassion meditation is generally done by focusing on entire people, but you can also do it by placing your focus on your body as well. One way of doing this is to start by think of someone you love: 1.

1. Feel the love. Think of someone you love: a son or daughter, husband or wife, mother or father, etc. Once you have that person in your mind, begin focusing on the feelings of love and appreciation you have for that person. Continue to do so for a few minutes until you reach a general high point. 2.

2. Give the love (power up). Next, imagine transferring those feelings into your body. Imagine a burst of positive energy hitting you like a wave. Remember everything you've been through with this body of yours, and imagine those feelings of love and appreciation pulsing within you, flowing through you. 3.

Remember everything you've been through with this body of yours, and imagine those feelings of love and appreciation pulsing within you, flowing through you.

3. Be mindful. Become mindful of your body. Feel your aches and pains, joints and muscles, tenseness and posture, and everything in between. The idea here isn't really to focus on each individual body part so much as it is to connect with the "history of your body" so to speak and to remember how much you've gone through with it, and to cultivate love and appreciation for it as a result of your mindfulness shedding light on this fact.

Continue to send your love and appreciation to your body. Sit like this for 5 or more minutes.

Mental and Emotional Healing

We need mental and emotional healing as much as we need physical healing, and mindfulness is a powerful medicine in the practice of mental and emotional healing.

Mental and emotional healing includes a number of mindfulness techniques. This is because mindfulness itself, practiced in any way, is mentally and emotionally healing. But there are some mindfulness techniques which are especially effective at healing mental and emotional wounds.

3. Forgiveness meditation

Hatred and anger are strong emotions which can take root in our minds and be difficult to overcome. Mindfulness gives us a way to be with those feelings, to feel them and see them with clarity, and smile at them with kindness and compassion.

Forgiveness meditation can be practiced in 3 ways, either focusing on how you've harmed others, how you've harmed yourself, or how others have harmed you (or 2/all 3). Whatever you focus on, the steps are essentially the same. For the example we'll use the second- how you've harmed yourself:

1. Reflect on the pain. Think of the ways you've harmed yourself. Let these feelings sit with you for at least a few minutes. Be mindful throughout the entire process.

2. Be mindful of symptoms. Feel the thoughts and emotions that arise out of this. Continue to sit through these thoughts and feelings.

3. Ask for forgiveness. In this case, you're asking yourself for forgiveness. Understanding that you hold the key to forgiveness, that whether this was something you did to others, others did to you, or you did to yourself, you know that it's up to you and you alone to allow yourself to forgive or be forgiven. You can repeat this, "Please, forgive me for _______." Or, "I forgive you for _______."

4. Release. Lastly, as you ask for forgiveness, be mindful of the various thoughts and feelings that arise within you. These could be feelings of anger, hatred, despair, hopelessness, a sudden urge for relief, or something else. Become aware of what thoughts and feelings you attach to your desire for forgiveness or to be forgiven.

This meditation is definitely not a one-hit. It can take a lot of time for us to be ready and willing to forgive ourselves or forgive others, but if you keep at it eventually you'll naturally open and begin to allow forgiveness in or allow yourself to be forgiven.

4. Going Home

Going home is a simple mindfulness of breathing exercise which I've spoken about before and has great application particularly with regards to mental and emotional healing.

Going home, a simple mindfulness technique which consists of stopping (whatever you're doing) to practice mindful breathing and reuniting body and mind as one. It can not only "cool" strong emotions so to speak, but more importantly it can help introduce us to the truth and power of the present moment more than any other mindfulness practice can.

Why is this important for mental and emotional healing? Because much of the reason why we suffer mentally and emotionally is because we don't know how to live fully in the present moment.

We carry baggage from the past, such as anger, regret, and sadness, and worry endlessly about the future. Both of these things weigh us down and we end up feeling like we're standing in between two stone walls constantly trying to close in around us.

The practice of Going home allows us to discover the peace of the present moment and gradually begin to let go of the baggage we're holding on to. And it's easy to do:

1. Stop. Breathe. Be present. No matter where you are, stop and begin to follow your breath with mindfulness. Become fully alive to this very instant and feel each complete in breath and out breath from start to finish.

2. Go to peace. Imagine for a moment that you're transported to your own place of peace. I like to imagine myself being transported to a monastery, seeing the monks and nuns do their daily activities together with one another in peace and mindfulness. Steep yourself in this feeling for a minute while you continue to breathe mindfully.

3. Realize that peace is now. Bring that sense of peace and calm back with you and imagine it hitting you like a wave of energy shooting down to your head, through your body, and down to your feet.

That sense of peace was always with you, because you never went anywhere. You were always in the present moment. Just you and your breath, experiencing the beauty of the present moment with mindfulness.

Go home every day, multiple times a day, with diligence and see as your deep-seated emotions and mental barriers reveal themselves and begin to unfold, one after another.

Nourishing and Healing Relationships

Relationships of all kinds can be tricky territory, and there's few better ways of nourishing and healing relationships than mindfulness techniques.

One powerful way this can be done is through tackling communication. Whether it's a friend, loved one, or colleague, mindful communication can transform a relationship.

Mindful speech and mindful listening are both ends of the communication spectrum. By practicing both mindfulness techniques you can transform your relationships from the ground up. There's perhaps nothing more powerful for maintaining and developing relationships than simply being fully present for the person.

5. Mindful speech

Mindful speech takes practice, and shouldn't be attempted until you've developed other basic mindfulness techniques first. But it's a worthy inclusion in the mindfulness survival guide nonetheless.

To practice mindful speech really means two things:

1. That you're aware of the effect the words you speak in any given moment could have on the person or people you're talking to, and, as a result, choose your words wisely. 2. That you're mindful while actually speaking, and fully aware of what you're saying to the other person and how you're saying it.

To practice mindful speech means to be aware of the power of the words you speak. Words are infinitely powerful, and with them you have the ability to both cut people down as well as raise them up.

To practice mindful speech ultimately means to be fully aware of the message you're communicating to one or more persons. You know you're right here, right now in this moment communicating to a certain person a certain message in a certain way.

You're also aware of their situation and are aware that you need to choose your words and how you convey your message skillfully.

6. Mindful listening

While mindful speech is a little abstract, mindful listening is straightforward and easy to outline:

1. Create an environment of undivided attention. Be fully aware of the conversation at hand, listening to the other person with all of your being. That means remove ALL possible distractions: put your phone and anything else you have in your hand that could potentially distract you down, turn away from all T.V.'s and any other distracting devices, and most importantly give them full and complete eye contact.

2. Follow your breath, follow the conversation. To help stay attentive during the conversation, follow your breath. Feel your breath in rhythm with their speech, and know that if you lose awareness of your breath you've lost awareness of the conversation.

3. Listen mindfully. Don't be quick to draw judgment on their words. Allow their words to come into you and smile at them nonjudgmentally just as you would a thought, feeling, or sensation during sitting meditation.

Mindful speech and mindful listening aren't basic mindfulness activities, as speaking and listening to another person can be much more complicated activities than something simple like walking, breathing, or cleaning. But it's more than worth putting in the effort to develop your mindfulness to the point where you can both comfortably follow a conversation and speak to another in mindfulness.

Both practices will give you the ability to further nourish positive relationships as well as heal broken ones.

Grounding

Mindfulness techniques in this section cover two areas: both practices which help ground us and make us feel stable and practices which help us care for strong emotions.

Using mindfulness to help care for strong emotions and feelings is extremely effective- whether it's anger, fear, panic, sadness, or some sort of stress. Mental and Emotional Healing covers handling deep emotional issues and psychological hurdles which won't go away overnight, while the process of grounding is a more moment-to-moment practice when sudden occurrences cause us to feel a strong emotion like anger.

When situations like this occur, the emotion can be very dangerous. In the case of anger, it can make us do things in the moment that we'll regret in the future. For this, we need practices which can help bring us back down to Earth and ground us in the present moment through the calming energy of mindfulness.

By doing this, we can regain control and avert disaster.

7. The Walk of Life

The walk of life is essentially walking meditation with a slight twist to help further cultivate the feeling of being grounded:

1. Discover the path. To practice the Walk of Life walking meditation, find a nice quiet place to walk, preferably in nature. If you know of a local park or somewhere else you can walk that would be ideal.

2. Connect with the Earth. It's also preferable that you take your shoes off and walk barefoot so that you can feel the Earth beneath your feet. Both above-mentioned points will enhance the meditation but are not required.

3. Walk the path. Simply begin breathing mindfully. Once you've taken a few breaths, begin walking. Walk very slowly and with shorter strides so that your back heel doesn't start arching up before your raised foot can be placed down.

4. Walk mindfully. Continue to walk and breathe naturally, don't force a certain pace. Your focus during this meditation is the raising, swinging, and placing down of each individual foot. Be mindful as your left foot raises, swings, and lowers. Then, once your left foot has been placed down on the ground, be mindful of your right foot being lifted, swung, and lowered as well.

5. Breathe the walking. Walk the breathing. Try to match your steps with your breath to create a sense of unity within your entire being. If you can do 2 slow steps for each in breath and another 2 steps for each out breath, then say to yourself silently, "step, step" on each in breath, and, "step, step" to yourself on each out breath.

6. Become the tree. Take a moment from time to time to stop and imagine your feet extending down into the Earth, like the roots of a great and immovable tree (you could continue walking and do this as well, but that sense of stability is easier to get while standing with both feet on the ground).

Continue to imagine yourself expanding out indefinitely, your legs as roots, your arms as branches, and many leaves blooming all around you. Focus on your abdomen for a moment, keep your feet planted firmly on the ground, and feel your sense of stability and groundedness.

Doing this meditation especially after experiencing a strong emotion can help you bring the emotion under control and regain a sense of stability and peace.

8. Mindfulness of strong emotions

Mindfulness of strong emotions is an easy practice you can do anytime you're feeling overwhelmed by fear, anger, sadness, or general feelings of stress. The idea behind the meditation is simple:

1. Sit. Take a seat, preferably, and place your focus on the emotion. The idea is to sit with the emotion in the very moment when the emotion is most intense to discover the root of said emotion or stress.

2. Sit with the storm. Let's say it's a general feeling of stress. When that feeling of stress arises, stop to follow your breath and notice what thoughts and feelings arise along with it. You then sit with that feeling of stress for as long as it takes until it calms. You won't necessarily discover the root or source of the stress right away, but you might, and at the very least you should discover some valuable insights as to what the root might be.

3. Discover a cure. Each time the emotion arises, do the same. With time, you'll discover its source and be able to cure yourself of it completely.

This meditation may become a regular practice for you as it can take time to unearth the root of strong emotions such as anger and fear. Stick with it, it's effective in helping find the root of the wound.

Dealing with Craving and Addiction

Craving and addiction can be very controlling forces in our lives, and mindfulness techniques can help us not only manage and overcome those cravings and addictions but discover the source so that they're gone for good.

9. Mindful indulging

Mindful indulging is a meditation which cuts right to the root of the particular craving or addiction. It's only to be used in particular circumstances, and never when the exercise could potentially harm you or another person.

The instructions for mindful indulging are simple:

1. Crave. Let's say your craving is sugar. This is a relatively harmless craving, but one which can still turn into a dangerous and harmful one nonetheless. The idea here is to essentially partake in the craving or addiction itself while being totally and completely present for the entire experience. So get your things together, whatever that entails.

2. Be with the craving. The next step is simple: do it, and do it while being fully present for the experience of doing it. So in our sugar example, you'd go out and buy a bunch of your favorite sugary treats and begin eating them. As you begin to do so, being fully present for the experience with mindfulness, pay attention to any and all thoughts, feelings, and emotions that arise during the experience.

3. Be mindful and discover insights. Follow the experience through with mindfulness from start to finish, and review what you discovered. Did you notice a strong sense of relief while eating the treats? You know that feeling you get when you come home after a long day of work and want to relax? Maybe you notice that feeling. Not a thought or image to connect it to, but simply the exact same feeling. What arises isn't always clear, sometimes all you'll get is clues at first.

4. Find a cure. From there, you might discover that you've mentally connected sugar with a sense of peace and relief from the damage your daily schedule is causing you. Now that you've discovered that, you can not only look for a healthier alternative to your method of relief, but you can begin to evaluate if your daily activities need an overhaul to keep from causing the damage in the first place.

Again, this isn't an exercise that everyone can use. Be careful when utilizing it, but know that it is powerful and a unique addition to the mindfulness survival guide.

10. The Tree of Life

While mindful indulging is a practice which cuts to the heart of the craving or addiction itself, the Tree of Life meditation is a practice which can allow you to momentarily regain control when your particular craving or addiction begins to intensify.

Both practices are valuable in their own right and can be used together. The Tree of Life is a sitting meditation practice with a slight variance, similar to the Walk of Life exercise. To do the Tree of Life meditation is simple:

1. Sit & breathe mindfully. Sit down in a quiet setting and begin following your breath with mindfulness, exactly as you would during your usual sitting meditation practice. Preferably, sit in the full lotus position. If not, a chair is fine too, as long as your feet are planted on the ground. The idea is that you want to feel firmly rooted to the ground one way or another.

2. Grow the tree. After practicing mindful breathing for a minute or two, shift your attention to your abdomen. Feel the strength in your abdomen and imagine it was the trunk of a great tree, firmly rooted to the ground. Begin breathing deeply from your abdomen itself so that your entire focus is placed on the trunk of your body.

3. Breathe. Continue to breathe in this way for another minute or two.

4. Weather the storm, be the tree. Similar to the Walk of Life meditation, imagine yourself as a great tree. Firmly rooted to the ground, you have the ability to weather the pressing storm of craving and addiction.

Take this moment to remind yourself that craving and addiction is a lot like a wave. If you hold strong long enough the intensity will decrease and you'll have a moment of rest. Remind yourself that you stand tall just like the great Tree of Life and that nothing, not even your craving or addiction, can knock you down.

Attempting to cut to the root of our addiction or craving doesn't always work right away. Forces like this can take a persistent effort to overcome. For this, the Tree of Life meditation is an ideal companion.

Bonus: When Life Just Won't Give You a Break

Sometimes, we just need a little something to remind us of all the things we have to be grateful for when life just doesn't seem to want to give us a break. That's where this simple tea meditation comes in.

11. Steep in Gratitude

This is simply drinking a cup of tea in mindfulness, with a bit of a twist:

1. Prepare. Prepare your tea in mindfulness from start to finish. From getting your cup ready, to preparing the teapot, to boiling the water, to preparing the tea, to serving the tea. During the process, be grateful that you have a moment to enjoy this amazing cup of tea. There are few things more peaceful than this.

2. Give thanks. Find a quiet place to sit down with your tea. Before drinking your tea, set your tea down beside you and place your hands together by their palms. Take a moment to give thanks for the tea in front of you and to think of all those people who have never been able to enjoy a cup of tea in this way. Be mindful of these feelings of gratitude swelling in you. Remembering all those things you have to be grateful for is an easy way to level the mental and emotional playing field when daily challenges are really putting on the pressure.

3. Enjoy mindfully. Begin drinking your tea. Take each drink slowly, and don't drink too much tea at once. Take your time, enjoy yourself, and stay mindful every step of the way. Do this for as long as you'd like (preferably, the entire cup of tea).

4. Be mindful. Acknowledge any thoughts or feelings which arise from this. During the process of drinking your tea with mindfulness these feelings of an imminent Armageddon will gradually begin to dissipate, and all that will be left in its place will be peace.

5. Finish (give thanks). Finish your cup of tea and give thanks once more for the tea, the utensils used in making the tea, the time to enjoy it, and the senses which you used to see, taste, and touch the tea.

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The Buddha's Guide to Mindfulness Practice

Mindfulness, at its roots an originally Buddhist meditation technique, has exploded in popularity over the past decade. What was once exclusively a practice for Buddhists has now become a phenomenon in the West.

And while this is truly amazing, unfortunately, it’s been spread mostly disconnected from it’s original roots, so the accompanying wisdom that should guide the practice is unknown to many actively practicing it today.

This was necessary for it to spread to a larger audience, but unfortunate because without its supporting wisdom, while still beautiful and powerful, the practice is only a shadow of its true self.

There are so many beautiful and truly profound ways to expand your mindfulness practice. I’m talking about simple things we can all pay attention to at really every moment of our daily lives, so they have the potential to serve as sources of even greater insight into ourselves, which can bring about greater peace and happiness.

The following 4 points are what’s called the Buddha's "4 Foundations of Mindfulness”. Our modern-day knowledge of this originates from the Satipatthana sutta or "The Discourse on the Establishing of Mindfulness" (a sutta, or sutra, being a kind of Buddhist scripture).

The 4 Foundations of Mindfulness were said to have been laid down by the Buddha more than 2,500 years ago and serves as the quintessential guide to moment-to-moment mindfulness practice. These 4 establishments are the heart of most Buddhist meditation techniques.

Traditionally, the 4 Foundations of Mindfulness were each described as “mindfulness of [the thing] in [the thing]”, referring to the fact that we’re mindful of something while in the experience of the thing itself, but I’ve simplified the titles for ease of understanding.

Each of these points provides multiple unique opportunities for developing a deep and rich daily mindfulness practice which leads you towards greater peace, freedom, and happiness.

*A heads up:the 4 Establishments of Mindfulness are a deep and vast teaching. This post isn't intended to delve deeply into each point but rather give you a simple and straightforward explanation of each along with practical advice for practicing them in your day-to-day life.

1. Mindfulness of body, anatomy, and elements

Each of the 4 Foundations of Mindfulness flow in a very much step-by-step nature, and the Buddha’s “Mindfulness of the body in the body” is always the first stage.

Those of you familiar with mindfulness and Buddhist meditation techniques know the foundational practice is always mindfulness of breath. There’s also mindfulness of our steps in walking meditation, mindfulness of chewing in mindful eating, and so on.

Those are well-known examples of this first opportunity for mindfulness practice, which is really mindfulness of positions and movements, but it goes deeper than that.

More than just mindfulness of physical positions and movements, mindfulness of the body in the body is also mindfulness of our anatomy and the elements we're made up of.

Mindfulness of our anatomy includes mindfulness of the many intricacies of our body, including our internal organs and all the stuff we usually don’t like to talk about like saliva, skin, and urine.

It’s not a pretty topic, but the Buddha suggested we take the time to contemplate deeply on and be mindful of the body in its completeness to become more aware of its selfless, impermanent, and conditioned nature and begin the process of truly being able to let go.

Meditation: A simple meditation you can do for this is to go through each area of your body with mindfulness including your hair, skin, wrinkles even, heart, lungs, etc. and imagine yourself smiling at each area as you go.

The last area for practice is mindfulness of the “4 elements” in Indian spirituality: earth, fire, water, and air.

That might sound a bit cryptic, but there’s actually very concrete ways to practice here which are very nourishing:

• Earth. This refers to mindfulness of the physical form of our body, which we largely already covered. Here, you could be mindful more so of the existence of your physical form standing or sitting rather than of a particular movement, though. Mindfulness of our internal organs or outer physical aspects of our body are examples of practice here.
• Fire. This has to do with becoming mindful of heat in the body (or lack of). Being mindful of the general temperature of the body is a very simple practice which you can easily do anywhere.
• Water. We’ve all heard the statistic: our bodies are made up of more than 57% water. That’s essentially what this element is about: mindfulness of body fluid. It might sound like an odd one, but there’s a number of occasions where this practice presents itself in a simple way.
• Air. For each element, it’s important to be aware of how they play a part in making up the complete system that is our bodies, and that’s no different here. Air refers to the respiratory system and how air plays a direct part in our biology. This area is practiced simply through the foundational Buddhist meditation technique of mindful breathing.

Overall, it’s important to remember that we’re not mindful of these elements just because we can be. The purpose of being mindful of these elements is to notice the conditioned nature of the body.

That is, our body isn’t one single thing but made up of different elements which then give the appearance of one singular thing.

As usual with the Buddha’s teachings, he’s trying to get you to realize the selfless, conditioned, and impermanent nature of things so that you can let go and realize the "highest truth”. And this is one effective way to begin you on the path to doing just that.

2. Mindfulness of feelings

This is what the Buddha traditionally called “Mindfulness of feelings in feelings” and it’s perhaps easiest to understand as mindfulness of painful, pleasurable, and neutral feelings.

These painful, pleasurable, and neutral feelings are felt through the six sense organs of the eyes, ears, tongue, body, nose, and mind (in Buddhism the mind is considered the 6th sense).

This stage in mindfulness practice is very important because it directly deals with the "3 Unwholesome States of Mind" (or 3 poisons, as I talked about in 12 Pieces of Buddhist Wisdom That Will Transform Your Life) of greed, hatred, and delusion.

How does it involve them? Here's a simple breakdown:

1. Pleasurable feelings lead to attachments such as greed and lust.
2. Painful feelings lead to aversions such as hatred and fear.
3. And neutral feelings lead to delusion because they often seem unimportant to us and are therefore ignored.

This is the biggest reason you refrain from acknowledging things in any way when practicing mindfulness.

To acknowledge in any way is to acknowledge something as painful, pleasurable, or neutral (in the case of our day-to-day lives, usually pleasurable or painful). And to do this is to potentially further confuse ourselves and perpetuate the chain of suffering we experience.

But don't misunderstand. It doesn't mean you can't experience joy while doing something, but it does mean that you need to be skillful to not attach yourself to any pleasurable feeling, otherwise that pleasure will then transform into suffering.

For a very concrete example, think of what it's like to fall in love.

What begins as pure joy without attachment quickly becomes something we feel we need, and when that person either leaves us or does something that doesn't align with the idea we have in our minds of who the person is we experience suffering.

But how do we actually deal with a situation like this? With mindfulness.

Mindfulness is the watchful eye which allows us to identify when we attach ourselves to pleasurable feelings, grow aversion to painful feelings, and which allows us to stop ignoring neutral feelings and truly begin observing everything with clarity to see reveal its true nature.

With mindfulness, it's possible to live in a way that you experience great peace and joy without attaching to or averting things. In fact, the greatest peace is experienced when we can be with a pleasurable feeling without attaching and openly accept painful feelings without growing aversion to them.

Of course, this is all easier said than done. But the effort is worth it. After all, isn't true peace and happiness for ourselves and our loved ones what life is all about?

3. Mindfulness of consciousness

Mindfulness of consciousness is traditionally called “Mindfulness of the mind in the mind”.

In Buddhism, it’s noted that there are 52 “mental formations”, mental formations being partly what we refer to as emotions and states of mind such as joy, fear, anger, frustration, excitement, and the like but it includes much more than just that.

It’s important to note that feelings are 1 of the 52 mental formations, but it’s separated and isolated as the second stage of mindfulness practice likely due to its unique practice method mentioned in the last point. This third stage of mindfulness practice includes all other 51 mental formations.

The mental formations have their own categories and a pretty vast teaching behind them, so they’re beyond the full scope of this article. But, for a list of all 52 mental formations (for use in day-to-day mindfulness practice) see here and a modified version by Thich Nhat Hanh here.

As I mentioned in the beginning of the post, going into detail on the 4 Establishments of Mindfulness could fill a book, so this post is simply intended to help you begin deepening your mindfulness practice in a few practical and "productive" ways, at which point you can delve further if you so choose.

A great place to start practicing mindfulness of consciousness is in noticing the coming and going of various emotions and states of mind such as joy, fear, anger, and even mindfulness itself.

By acknowledging "I am being mindful" when you're being mindful or "I am being mindless" when you catch yourself in a distracted or forgetful state of mind you're practicing mindfulness of consciousness.

4. Mindfulness of mental objects

This is traditionally called "Mindfulness of objects of mind in objects of mind". That might sound confusing, but objects of mind are really about our thoughts, ideas, and conceptions.

Here, it's important to understand what role perception plays in our life.

Think of your perception as a T.V. screen. There's something real and true being transmitted onto the screen, but it's not the image on the T.V. The image on the T.V. is an object of mind. It's simply an idea in our mind, or a thought, as opposed to the real thing.

Imagine a flower. When we perceive something like a flower it’s the image of that flower in our mind which is the object of mind.

That's not to say that the flower itself doesn't exist. It does, but we also create an image in our mind of that which we're experiencing.

That image, our perception (various thoughts, ideas, and concepts attached to that real thing), then has a way of "layering" itself over reality. And that almost always distorts- either positively or negatively, or both- our direct experience with the true flower.

That's the idea here. That is, to move beyond our perception to a place where we can see the true flower- beyond our distorting perception as well as identifying the actual thoughts, ideas, and concepts which distort our perception in the first place.

When we fall in love and become attached, we can clearly observe certain states such as greed, craving, or lust having arisen alongside that attachment. They're, in a way, the "quality" of our attachment. The way in which we're attaching.

In this example, it's the resulting effect of our attachment to this idea of the person. This is an example of the practice of mindfulness of the "5 Hindrances".

Noticing the 5 Hindrances, along with the 7 Factors of Awakening, are the core mindfulness practices within mindfulness of mental objects.

The 5 Hindrances are:

1. Sensual desire (I feel this is better understood in English as lust)
2. Ill will
3. Dullness or drowsiness
4. Restlessness and worry
5. Doubt

The 5 Hindrances are things which can hold us back from realizing freedom and true happiness (to put it simply). These are things we want to do away with.

The 7 Factors of Awakening are:

1. Mindfulness
2. Investigation (of mental objects)
3. Energy
4. Joy
5. Tranquility
6. Concentration
7. Equanimity

The 7 Factors of Awakening are the main qualities which the Buddha says should be cultivated to attain awakening and true happiness. The first factor, mindfulness, is supposed to begin a sort of chain effect where each factor leads to the cultivation of the next factor.

I don't want to say too much about this stage as it's a rather deep area of mindfulness practice which you may or may not be ready for, but it's important to keep it in mind because it completes the full scope of mindfulness practice.

For now, it's best to understand that the way to practice with mindfulness of mental objects is to acknowledge when they arise, investigate how they arose, how the 5 Hindrances can be removed and prevented, and for the 7 Factors of Awakening how they can be grown and cultivated.

If this last point sounded a little difficult to follow, don't worry. If you dedicate yourself to the first 3 stages of mindfulness practice you'll gradually cultivate your mindfulness to the point of being able to notice things in a more subtle way, at which point mindfulness of mental objects will be easier to practice.

The Buddha's mindfulness practice

These are the 4 major areas of mindfulness practice originally established by the Buddha more than 2,500 years ago.

When taken together, they include the totality of mindfulness practice and show how you can begin with something as simple as mindfulness of breath and expand to ever-deeper levels of oneself to cultivate greater peace, freedom, and happiness in everyday life.

Keep in mind that you don't ditch one point of mindfulness practice for another. There's a clear path from one establishment of mindfulness to the next, but each is practiced together, and often all at once. As you may have been able to tell, they have a good deal of overlap.

Take these 4 opportunities to be mindful in your everyday life and use them as a way to investigate yourself and discover important insights that can help you relieve suffering and realize true peace and happiness.

Further reading

For those looking to learn more, here are a few resources (the first being off-site):

1. The Satipatthana sutta - Access to Insight
2. How to Walk the Buddha's 8-Fold Path to True Peace and Happiness
3. What is Mindfulness? A Guide to the Practice of Mindfulness

What is Mindfulness? A Guide to Mindfulness Meditation

What is mindfulness?

So, what is mindfulness? In a nutshell, mindfulness is a complete and nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment.

But perhaps my favorite mindfulness definition is this:

“Moment to moment awareness of present events”.

Keep in mind, there’s no one agreed upon way of defining mindfulness. This is because it's is a state of being beyond words or concepts. One must practice mindfulness in order to truly understand what mindfulness is.

The origin of the word mindfulness is in the Pali word “sati”, and its Sanskrit counterpart “smrti”, which both literally mean “memory”. But perhaps more precisely they represent “presence of mind” or “attentiveness to the present”.

This is what the Buddha was referring to when he said, "When we sit, we know we are sitting. When we walk, we know we are walking. When we eat, we know we are eating." He meant that when he and his disciples sat, walked, or ate they were fully present for the act of sitting, walking, or eating.

Even when becoming lost in thought, while practicing mindfulness the practitioner is fully aware that they just became lost in a particular thought and are mindful of the thought itself. This is because mindfulness isn’t just mindfulness of an object in the present moment such as one’s breath, steps, or food. It’s also mindfulness of anything which might arise in the present moment while concentrating on an object.

In a way, mindfulness is the observer of change. While concentrating on the object of meditation, such as one’s breath or steps, we become distracted by thoughts, feelings, and other sensations. These are “changes” in the field of mindfulness, the area which mindfulness observes.

In this way think of mindfulness as a motion detector. If nothing moves, if nothing changes, then nothing is detected. You're still there observing, just as the motion detector which detects no motion is still there observing its area of detection, but until a thought, feeling, or some other sensation arises the practitioner just continues to concentrate on the object of meditation. When this happens is when the real work begins.

Mindfulness is a complete and nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment.

Think of mindfulness as a “field of attention” with a point of concentration in the center acting as an anchor to the present, rather than just a pointed concentration on something while pushing away everything else around you.

Imagine a dream catcher. The idea behind a dream catcher is it’s supposed to “catch” your bad dreams as you’re sleeping. Just as a dream catcher catches your bad dreams, imagine each thought, feeling, and sensation being caught by your “field of mindfulness”. Except in this case, you don’t label any thought, feeling, or sensation either good or bad.

While in mindfulness, each thought, feeling, and sensation that arises automatically enters into this field and, this is the important part, is gently acknowledged and accepted “as it is”. By “as it is” I mean without judging it in any way.

If this is hard to imagine, don’t worry. For the most part this nonjudgmental awareness happens naturally when you practice correctly. The important thing to remember for now is that mindfulness is not a rejection of anything.

Mindfulness is an open acceptance of everything that comes into your awareness. If you’re practicing mindful breathing, don’t reject thoughts that come into your mind just because they interrupt your mindful breathing. Observing these thoughts, which are typically unnoticed but always dispersing our awareness and coloring our perception, is a major part of practicing mindfulness. So this is perfectly fine.

Simply acknowledge the thought in mindfulness, just as you were doing with your breath, and then let the thought pass. Then bring your focus back to your breath. As time goes on your ability to concentrate on one point for a period of time as well as your ability to detect things with your mindfulness will improve. And with it, the quality of your mindfulness practice will improve as well.

Mindfulness has a number of different “qualities”. It's for this reason that a simple mindfulness definition doesn't really suffice. But, If you break mindfulness down based on these qualities it becomes much easier to understand it as a whole.

We’ve covered the basic workings of mindfulness so far, but in order to gain a deeper understanding of mindfulness let’s break it down and look at each quality individually. There’s 6 key aspects of mindfulness which I’ll cover below.

But first, before I continue, this post is an excerpt from my eBook, The Little Book of Mindfulness. You can get The Little Book of Mindfulness free by entering your name and email below:

Let's continue...

Mindfulness is…

1. ...mindfulness of something

Mindfulness is always mindfulness of something. It’s not just a conscious directing of your awareness to the present moment, it’s a conscious directing of your awareness to something which is occurring or existing in the present moment.

Common centers of focus are your breath, steps, or some other area or areas of the body. Concentration, or samadhi in Sanskrit, is a force which works in tandem with mindfulness. Concentration is “single-pointedness of mind” and it’s just that- the act of focusing on a single point.

While practicing mindfulness, you will be developing your power of concentration as well as your mindfulness. There is no separating mindfulness and concentration. They’re partners on the path to attaining a tranquil and clear mind.

Think of concentration as the “hard” force and mindfulness as the “soft”. Concentration is exactly what it sounds like, it’s the forceful act of focusing on a single point.

Imagine your field of mindfulness enveloping everything within your perception in a soft glow. Next, imagine a thin line piercing out from your mindfulness directly to an object. This is your concentration. Mindfulness, on the other hand, is a sort of soft awareness.

Remember the dream catcher? Mindfulness is the field of awareness which then “sees” everything that arises while concentrating on an object. Mindfulness is what notices when your concentration lapses and your thoughts stray.

Think of mindfulness as the ultimate, voiceless, and nonjudgmental observer. It judges nothing. It makes no distinctions. It simply observes everything that comes into its field of awareness. Your concentration, the force anchoring your mindfulness to some object in the present moment (the object of meditation), is the instrument of mindfulness.

Mindfulness decides where the point of concentration will be. It observes the anchor point (the point of your concentration), notices when concentration strays, and where it strays to. This might be difficult to imagine at first, but for now just know that the act of practicing mindfulness will feel much like concentrating on an object, such as your breathing, and then doing your best to notice or acknowledge when your thoughts stray.

Just being able to acknowledge when your thoughts stray will take some time. In the beginning, your practice will look and feel like this:

1. Concentrate on your breath.
2. Lose concentration within a few seconds, sometimes aware of the thought or feeling you strayed to, most of the time not.
3. Back to concentrating on your breath.

That’s it. But after a while, you’ll begin to notice these thoughts and feelings more often, more clearly, and that will allow you to acknowledge them with your mindfulness.

2. ...mindfulness of something in the present moment

Moving on from the last point, mindfulness is always mindfulness of something in the present moment. If you think hard on this, you'll realize that this goes without saying, because there is nothing but this moment. Any recollection of the past or imagination about the future occurs in the mind, within the present moment.

As we spoke about earlier, that can be mindfulness of a thought that arises in the present moment while concentrating on your breath, body or some other object. What mindfulness isn’t is consciouslyreflecting on the past or thinking about the future.

When reflecting on the past or thinking about the future, you’re consciously directing your attention to the past, future, or some altogether imagined place. But, you can always be mindful of what arises after contemplating the past or future. In any case, mindfulness is always the observing of what is occurring in the present moment.

As we go about our daily lives, we often don’t notice how our perception or mental filters, such as bias, affect how we see the world around us. And we think that what we’re thinking and seeing with our eyes are two different things. But they aren’t. What we see with our eyes passes through our perception before we even realize we see the object.

It’s like we have an internal checkpoint which we’ve built up from our life experiences. And this checkpoint has, over the years, gotten filled with both good and bad things which “color” our perception and affect our experiences.

In this way, you and your mindfulness are like the house cleaners come to clean up this internal checkpoint and empty it of all those things keeping you from experiencing reality in its true form.

Imagine someone offers you a piece of food which you’ve never tried before. This food somewhat resembles, say, Brussels sprouts (bleh!). As soon as you lay eyes on it you have a negative sensation. Maybe you get a bad taste in your mouth, your body cringes a little, and a bad memory of eating Brussels sprouts flashes into your mind.

This new food item could be amazing. You have no idea if it is or isn’t. You’ve never actually tried it. But your perception has already completely colored your experience to the point where it can even affect how it will taste.

This is an example of how our perception colors everything around us. Everything you perceive is your mind. You might think you’re observing your breath, a Brussels sprout, or a flower. But what you’re really observing is your perception of those things.

Mindfulness is about observing what is occurring in the present moment so that you can pierce through perception itself to witness reality as it is without any mental filters getting in the way.

This is why mindfulness is mindfulness of something in the present moment. The point of mindfulness is to experience reality as it is, allowing you to touch the true nature of a thing in that moment.

3. ...a conscious decision

Mindfulness is a purposeful directing of your consciousness to the present, it doesn’t happen on accident. To be fully awake to the present moment you have to decide “I am fully awake to this moment” by directing your consciousness to an object in the present moment. You decide to be mindful in any given moment. It doesn’t happen by accident.

I mentioned earlier how the point of your concentration, or object of meditation, works as your anchor point to the present moment. The starting point for the anchor and the eventual anchor point is this conscious decision.

Think of mindfulness as a ship and you’re the captain. You make the conscious decision to place the anchor down and where to place it. You then throw the anchor, your concentration, off the ship. The anchor then hits the intended anchor point, or object of meditation, where it will rest.

Of course, at first, this anchor won’t be very strong. It will be made of, say, plastic. Not a very good anchor. But with time, it will develop into a heavy and resilient anchor.

4. ...a nonjudgmental awareness

All spiritual practice in an overall sense is about realizing our connection with the ultimate and finding true peace and happiness through accomplishing total liberation (or freedom) from the various factors that hold us back from it. And so we become liberated by discovering the truth. That is, by uncovering all those things which cloud our vision.

This is the ultimate purpose of mindfulness. It’s this nonjudgmental awareness that makes mindfulness so important in finding true peace and happiness.

Mindfulness accepts everything as it is. As I mentioned earlier it makes no distinctions, holds no bias, and is completely separated from all mental filters which distort your perception of reality.

Mindfulness allows you to experience true reality. This is liberation. And as I also mentioned earlier, if you’re not sure how to do this at first then don’t worry.

Mindfulness is itself nonjudgmental. It’s helpful to keep this point in mind at times, but you’ll find this will happen somewhat naturally. If you sense bias or get the feeling that you’re somehow coloring your perception of something while practicing then this is a good thing. Simply noticing this is to become mindful of your various mental filters.

If this happens, know that you’re on the right path. As always, simply acknowledge it and bring yourself back to your object of meditation. It’s not wrong that you lose your concentration. What’s wrong is not observing the distraction with mindfulness.

5. ...developed like a muscle

Mindfulness works like a muscle. At the beginning, your energy of mindfulness will be very weak. But over time, your mindfulness will strengthen and you’ll notice a significant difference both in your ability to concentrate and in your ability to see with mindfulness.

This is important to know at the beginning because it’s at the very beginning stages where things are most difficult. While trying to establish the practice of mindfulness as a part of your life, you’ll be constantly fighting old habits.

In Buddhism, this is sometimes called “habit energy”. Imagine everything you do carries with it a certain energy. The more you do something the more energy it develops, and with it, the more “pull” it has.

You can develop energy anywhere in your life, in both positive and negative places. So when starting out don’t become discouraged when you’re having a hard time sticking to your mindfulness practice, such as when you forget to practice for an entire day altogether.

I went through this constantly at first and it’s just part of the challenge. But I promise you that if you just make your best effort, you'll make your way and establish a strong daily practice over time.

6. ...like turning on the “HD” switch to your life

Most of the time, without us even knowing it, our consciousness is split in many directions. It’s split between various sensations in the present moment and various thoughts in our mind.

When sitting at your computer at work, for instance, you could be typing up an email, but really, you’re typing up the email while semi-listening to two people talk a few feet away from you, noticing how cold you are, thinking about that episode of Lost you watched last night, and thinking about the fact that you feel like you’re gaining some weight.

That’s really what the “present moment” looks and feels like for most of us: our consciousness, bouncing constantly from one place to another. As you begin practicing mindfulness, you’ll start to observe this very behavior for yourself. This bouncing around makes us live in a way to where we’re only half-awake to anything that occurs around us.

Let’s call this life in “standard-definition”. More on this in a bit.

The last point I’d like to cover in this chapter is that it’s important for you to know what mindfulness feels like. I can put as many words as I’d like on a page describing how it works, how to do it, the benefits of doing it, and you could read it all, but if I don’t clearly explain how you’ll feel while truly being mindful then you won’t have much more than a guess at whether or not you’re really practicing mindfulness properly or not.

So what does mindfulness feel like? In a few words…it feels like turning on the “HD” (High-Definition) switch to your life.

By that I mean that the moment you make the conscious decision “I’m now fully aware of what I’m doing and what’s happening to me in the present moment” you should feel as though you’ve come alive. As though, before you made that conscious decision and “activated” your mindfulness, you were half-asleep. With time, you’ll notice things you never noticed before and everything around you will be magnified.

Don’t expect the feeling to be that intense at first, though. When you first start practicing the feeling will be subtle, which is all the more reason why one of the first mindfulness practices you adopt should be mindful sitting (traditionally just called sitting meditation, which we’ll cover in Part 2).

While sitting quietly in meditation, you’ll make the greatest progress towards improving your concentration and developing your mindfulness, as opposed to doing a more difficult activity before you’ve really developed your skill level.

This is because you’ll have fewer distractions and will be able to “hone in” on the feeling I described in the last chapter better. Once you’ve developed your mindfulness though it will be highly beneficial to practice mindfulness of more difficult tasks in order to develop your skill.

One last note: Even if you’re just beginning with mindfulness, while you might not be able to tell exactly what thoughts arise in your mind, you should still begin noticing these distractions as they arise. Simply noticing that some sort of distraction just arose in your mind is the second feeling you should look out for, even if at first you don’t know what the thoughts or feelings are exactly.

Take these two feelings described together and you’ll have a much clearer picture of what mindfulness should feel like. Use the information I described in this point to guide your practice in the beginning.

Breaking down mindfulness into parts helps us understand how it works. But we need to make sure not to make the mistake of actually thinking of mindfulness as a bunch of separate things.

Mindfulness is one thing: it’s the conscious act of bringing one’s complete awareness into the present reality, which allows us to see the world in a way we’ve never seen it before- beyond our wrong perceptions (and perception itself), preconceived notions, deep-seated emotions, and beyond the ego. Seeing reality in its purest state, filled with a limitless peace, joy, and freedom.

The moment you make the conscious decision “I am going to be fully aware of what I’m doing here and what’s happening to me in the present moment” you should feel as though you’ve come alive. As though, before you made that conscious decision and “activated” your mindfulness, you were half-asleep.

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FAQ : What’s the difference between mindfulness and meditation?

At this point you might be wondering: what exactly is the difference between mindfulness and meditation? Mindfulness is itself a form of meditation. One of various forms of meditation. Which is why, as you might have noticed, the word meditation has been used in place of, or alongside, mindfulness at various points in the book thus far. There’s just certain more traditional ways of referring to different types of mindfulness practices which can often make things confusing for a beginner.

Mindful sitting is traditionally called sitting meditation, simply meditation, or more recently mindfulness meditation. Mindful walking is traditionally called walking meditation, not mindful walking. Things like this can make it confusing for someone just starting out, especially someone who’s learning on their own without the guidance of a formal teacher, which is common in the age of the internet.

So, if mindfulness is a form of meditation, what is meditation? Meditation covers a pretty broad spectrum of techniques. But there is a central theme. All meditation has to do with developing the mind through becoming absorbed with something. In a nutshell, meditation is:

A mental technique characterized by absorption of the mind on an object (either mental or physical) and used to develop or maintain the mind. 

Like mindfulness, meditation can be defined in a number of ways. What’s important is just that you get the general idea. Your true understanding of meditation will come when you actually begin to meditate.

Why Practice Mindfulness?

"Mindlessness is the primary cause of our unhappiness. Mindfulness is the cure. "

The Buddha considered mindfulness a matter of life and death. Not a matter of whether we'll stay breathing or keel over and die from one day to the next, rather this means that whether you're truly alive and in control of your destiny or not is a matter of mindfulness. Mindfulness gives you back control of your life.

When mindless, you're not in complete control of yourself. Your deep-seeded limiting beliefs take control and direct you in a way that attempts to protect the ego. The ego has no concern for our happiness and well-being nor any care for reconciliation with our deep-seeded anger, sadness or any other limiting belief we may have.

On top of that, the outside world constantly pulls and pushes you wherever it likes. Life happens, and naturally, your mind reacts to it. That is unless you practice mindfulness.

When mindful, you awaken and see through all illusions. You see your limiting beliefs rise to the surface. This allows your body and mind's natural healing process to take effect.

Think of mindfulness as your anchor point. The way most of us live our lives, we're physically in one place but mentally in another. We're dispersed between what's actually going on in the present moment, what already happened (past) and what is yet to happen (future).

Without even knowing it, we're causing ourselves a lot of pain. We live unreasonably expecting or wanting something other than what's in front of us, we regret what happened in the past even though we have no control over it and then disconnect from what is because the pain of both of those things makes it more enjoyable to live in our imaginations. This is a major cause of unhappiness.

This mind dispersion, or mindlessness, heightens stress and anxiety, decreases our productivity, restrains our creativity, disconnects us from the world around us including our loved ones and overall makes us less happy. Instead of being at peace, when we're mindless instead of mindful, our minds are often in chaos.

In Buddhism this mind dispersion is referred to as "monkey mind" and is something we've all experienced at one point or another. Some more than others. This is the mind that bounces around from one thought to another uncontrollably. Mindfulness calms our monkey mind by creating an anchor point in the present moment.

At first, the monkey mind will resist, but with time you will tame it and gain back full control over your mind. This is the path to true happiness.

This is also the major reason mindfulness and mindfulness meditation is so powerful and attractive to us in our modern plugged-in 24/7 world. More than ever it's so easy to live in a mindless, disconnected, state of being. Mindfulness brings us back to ourselves. And it turns out, that's all that we ever needed in order to be happy.

Mindfulness is the practice for everyone. Children, adults, men, women, soldiers, athletes, scientists, teachers and everyone in between.  It's the most basic practice of peace, happiness and self-healing. And as I'm about to show you, there's a lot of science to back up this point.

The Science of Mindfulness

As if that wasn't enough reason to practice mindfulness, there just so happens to be A LOT of science to back its effectiveness. Below is a list benefits, many stretching beyond what I mentioned above. All of this comes back to the same thing-when we're fully awake to the present moment we become our best selves. Our true selves.

I mentioned earlier that mindfulness has become the focus of hundreds of scientific studies. I also mentioned that the results have been so positive that even Wall Street, Silicon Valley as well as medical centers, hospitals and even parts of our education system all across the U.S. have adopted the practice of mindfulness.

With that impressive list, it's needless to say that the scientific findings on mindfulness have been pretty stellar. Here are some of the scientifically validated benefits of mindfulness:

The Scientifically Validated Benefits of Mindfulness:

• Mindful eating helps you lose weight and encourages healthier eating habits.
• Mindfulness boosts our immune system's ability to fight off illness.
• Mindfulness increases positive emotions and decreases negative emotions (including stress).
• Mindfulness fights depression.
• Mindfulness reduces the effects of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
• Mindfulness increases the density of grey matter in our brains (which is linked to empathy, emotion regulation, learning and memory).
• Mindfulness improves our focus.
• Mindfulness makes us more compassionate.(and here).
• Mindfulness improves our relationships by making us more satisfied, optimistic, relaxed, and accepting of one another.
• Mindfulness is great for parents and children- it improves our relationships with children, makes us happier with our parenting skills and improves the social skills of those children who practice it with their parents.
• Mindfulness helps both teachers and students(and here)- Mindfulness reduces student's behavioral problems and aggression and improves happiness levels and their ability to focus. Also, for teachers, mindfulness has shown to lower negative emotions, fight depression, foster compassion and empathy and lower blood pressure.

How to Practice Mindfulness + Getting Started

This is the fun part. Now it's time to begin learning how to practice, and feeling the effects of, mindfulness. Before you read through this section and dive into the material though, remember the working mindfulness definition we covered earlier. It will help you initially get into the right mindset for practice.

As you go about your day you should begin to closely examine everything you do. Create the habit of "checking" yourself throughout your day. Ask yourself at random points in the day: "Am I here, or somewhere else?". Many times we don't even realize we're not being fully awake to the present moment. Let me give an example.

In The Miracle of Mindfulness: An Introduction to the Practice of Meditation, ThichNhatHanh tells a story of how one day he and his friend Jim shared a tangerine under the shade of a tree. Jim began talking about what they would be doing in the future, attractive future projects and the like.

Jim became so immersed in this thought that soon he forgot altogether what he was doing there in the present moment. He'd put a section of tangerine in his mouth and, before finishing the piece he was chewing, would have ready another piece to put into this mouth. NhatHanh said:

You ought to eat the tangerine section you've already taken.

Jim was surprised. He hadn't realized it, but he wasn't really eating the tangerine at all. As ThichNhatHanh puts it:

If he had been eating anything, he was "eating" his future plans.

Why do I tell this story? Because in order to know how we can cultivate mindfulness it helps for us to be able to identifywhen we're not being mindful.

This story aptly sums up the way most of us live our lives. Everyone can relate to doing this at some point. We do this on a daily basis and many of us constantly throughout the day. This story does a great job of helping us identify what a lack of mindfulness looks like in our everyday lives.

This is a process, it will take time to notice when you're not being mindful and to build the habit of practicing mindfulness throughout your day. But, it's worth it, as you saw from the previous section. This isn't a race, so don't try to do everything at once. Take it one step at a time and you'll begin feeling the effects of mindfulness on your mind and body.

Let's go over some basic ways to add mindfulness into your everyday life:

Sitting

Sitting meditation is how most people are introduced to mindfulness. Many think mindfulness is just a form of sitting meditation, but to think so is to greatly misunderstand the purpose and downplay the importance of mindfulness.

In order to create new mental habits and condition your mind you need to be mindful throughout your day, not just during meditation. It can be beneficial to think of mindfulness as an extension of your meditation practice and sitting meditation as the foundation.

Walking

Walking meditation is great because you can do it anywhere and at any time. It's absolutely one of my favorite mindfulness practices and pairs well with being in nature. But, as long as you're walking you can practice walking meditation anywhere.

Resource:The Ultimate Guide to Walking Meditation

Following the Breath

This can be done anywhere and at any time and is really an extension of your meditation practice, yet still it's own distinct technique and worth mentioning here. All you have to do here is pay attention to your in-breath and out-breath. Make sure your breaths are easy, light and even. As you breathe be aware of where you are and what you're doing.

Feel the breath coming in and out. Don't attempt to control your breath, just pay attention to it (although your attention on it will calm your breathing somewhat naturally). During this moment, whatever you do, don't lose attention on your breath. Your breath is the most effective tool we have for practicing mindfulness. It's always there with us so it works as the perfect anchor to the present moment.

This exercise is great used as an occasional pause button in your day. When you first begin practicing mindfulness you'll have to remind yourself to practice, so pausing a few times throughout the day to do this is perfect as it begins to establish the habit.

Other basic activities

Other basic activities such as sweeping, doing the dishes, brushing your hair and teeth, gardening, drawing or painting and others can be very nourishing mindfulness activities. These types of activities are much easier to do in mindfulness than, say, having a conversation with someone, which won't be possible until you've built up a certain level of concentration.

You can pick to do any of the above activities in mindfulness once you've practiced mindfulness of breath for a bit. Just make sure you do these activities slowly so that you stay in mindfulness from start to finish. Be 100% fully committed to the task at hand.

If you're sweeping the floor, sweeping the floor becomes the most important thing in the world. Don't sweep the floor so that you can be prepared with a clean floor for when company comes over later. That isn't sweeping the floor in mindfulness. Sweep the floor to sweep the floor. That is mindfulness.

Get a free download of my book, The Little Book of Mindfulness

My first book is a complete 130-page A-Z guide on mindfulness that expands on this guide and gives you practical tips and strategies for effectively bringing mindfulness into your everyday life.

To get The Little Book of Mindfulness, just enter your name and email below, click the yellow button, and you're good to go:

 

Additional Mindfulness Resources:

Here's a list of additional resources, all to help you deepen your understanding of mindfulness, develop your practice, and make it a daily habit:

1. How to Practice Mindfulness: The Quick and Easy Guide to Learning Mindfulness Meditation
2. 6 Great Ways to Implement Mindfulness in the Workplace
3. The Mindfulness Survival Guid
4. How to Meditate for Beginner
5. ZfEL Ep. 8: How to Create a Home Meditation Practic
6. 5 Steps to Making Meditation a Daily Habi
7. 5 Tools to Help You Start Your Home Meditation Practice
8. ZfEL Ep. 6: How to Make Mindfulness a Way of Life: 7 Keys to Living a More Mindful Life
9. 7 Ways to Live More Mindfully in the Busy, Fast-Paced, and Plugged In Modern Worl
10. Free Guided Meditations for Greater Peace and Clarity

I hope this guide was able to give you a clear definition of mindfulness and answer the question "what is mindfulness?" fully and completely.

If you have any questions about the practice or about mindfulness itself, feel free to contact me here and I'll be more than willing to help.

Peace,

Matt

Notes:

1. Thanks to Greatergood.berkley.edu for putting together great high-quality articles on the various scientific studies on mindfulness.