When I tell people I\u2019m a mindfulness coach, the conversation generally goes something like this:<\/p>\n
Them: \u201cI could never do that; my mind wanders too much.\u201d<\/p>\n
Me: \u201cPerfect! You\u2019re mindful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Everyone\u2019s mind wanders.<\/p>\n
And mindfulness is paying acute attention to what\u2019s happening in the present moment.<\/p>\n
So if you\u2019re aware that your mind is wandering, you\u2019re halfway to a successful mindfulness practice.<\/p>\n
The other half involves gently returning your attention back to the here and now.<\/p>\n
This does not involve a beat-yourself-up kind of yanking the misbehaving mind back to reality, but rather a compassionate return to consciousness. Picture a feather on the ground, lifted up by a gust of wind and then floating back down to rest on the pavement.<\/p>\n
Wandering. Awareness. Return.<\/p>\n
And here\u2019s something cool:\u00a0 The handiest of tools for achieving that gentle return to the present moment is always available to you: focusing on one single physical sensation.<\/p>\n
It could be feeling your back against the chair, your hand holding the fork, your finger on the touch screen.<\/p>\n
The key is to aim all of your awareness directly at one physical sensation of your choice.<\/p>\n
Try it. Pick one part of your body that\u2019s in contact with an object. Let\u2019s say it\u2019s your feet on the floor. Pour all of your awareness right down into the soles of your feet. What\u2019s the sensation there? Are your feet resting on the floor lightly, or are they pressing against it? Now wiggle your toes a bit, and notice how the sensation changes. Are you wearing socks? If so, can you feel the fabric against your feet?<\/p>\n
If you had to assign a feeling to this sensation, would it be pleasant? Unpleasant? Neutral? No wrong answers here, because the other piece of mindfulness is non-judgment. This is all about noticing what is<\/em>, rather than making a relative comparison to anything that you are not experiencing right now.<\/p>\n All we\u2019re focusing on is the feeling.<\/p>\n See? That took all of a minute. And you weren\u2019t ruminating on the past or fretting about the future. It\u2019s impossible to be fully present in your body with a wandering mind. If you pick the presence, the mind can\u2019t meander.<\/p>\n Wandering. Awareness. Return.<\/p>\n So to recap:<\/p>\n Wandering. Awareness. Return.<\/p>\n I know this might all seem ridiculously simple. And it is. It\u2019s the mind that complicates things when it takes us out of the here and now. So making the choice to pay attention to how you\u2019re feeling in the moment is a crucial first step to actually being<\/em> in the moment, which will increase productivity and focus.<\/p>\n It will also make you happier. In a study<\/a> published in the journal Science<\/em>, Harvard researchers found that people spend nearly half their waking hours thinking about something other than what they are doing right now, and that this distraction from the task at hand \u201ctypically makes them unhappy.\u201d<\/p>\n When we\u2019re fully present, we\u2019re better communicators. We\u2019re less reactive and more responsive to the people around us, at home and at work.<\/p>\n We\u2019re also more fully here for ourselves, since we\u2019re in better touch with how we feel and what we need.<\/p>\n And by gently returning our awareness back to the present moment when we notice it has wandered off, we begin to feel a bit more in control, in a world where so much is out of our control.<\/p>\n Wandering. Awareness. Return.<\/p>\n Remember, the return is gentle. A soft landing back to the self.<\/p>\n It actually feels a bit like coming home.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n When I tell people I\u2019m a mindfulness coach, the conversation generally goes something like this: Them: \u201cI could never do that; my mind wanders too much.\u201d Me: \u201cPerfect! You\u2019re mindful.\u201d Everyone\u2019s mind wanders. And mindfulness is paying acute attention to what\u2019s happening in the present moment. So if you\u2019re aware that your mind is wandering, you\u2019re halfway to a successful…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":195,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,8],"tags":[19,25],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.elisaboxer.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
A version of this post originally appeared in Fast Company<\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"