BY: LAURIE J. CAMERON
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4 THOUGHTS
1. What is Mindfulness and How is it Different from Meditation?
"Mindfulness is the awareness that arises when we deliberately direct our attention toward our inner experience, toward others, and toward the environment around us. But more than just focusing your mind, it’s about your mindset—how you view the world. Mindfulness reinforces a mindset of being open, receptive, accepting, and compassionate."
We hear the word mindfulness all the time. Here, we get an excellent definition of what it means. And I love that Cameron says it’s also about our mindset.
It’s not that we “practice mindfulness” and then we’re done for the day. It’s that, by practicing regularly, we change our outlook on life and become more “open, receptive, accepting, and compassionate.” Sounds pretty good to me.
And, of course, breathing is the number one way to practice mindfulness, which we’ll cover in the next thought.
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P.S. Before getting to breathing, Cameron also has a great passage on mindfulness vs. meditation, a sometimes-confusing topic. Here’s how she clarifies the two: “People often ask me about the difference between mindfulness and meditation. The two are distinct, yet tightly connected: You can be mindful without meditating, but the research shows that mindfulness meditation is the surefire way to becoming more mindful. Think of it like this: Meditation is to mindfulness as sports is to fitness.” An analogy for us would be that meditation is to mindfulness what Wim Hof’s Method is to breathwork.
2. Breathing is the #1 Path to Mindfulness
"Following your breath as you inhale and exhale is the basic mindfulness meditation practice that trains attention, cultivates awareness, settles the mind, and calms the body. The breath serves as an anchor for attention that you can use wherever you are. When your mind wanders, you return it to your anchor and strengthen your ability to direct, stabilize, and sustain your focus at will. You will learn about other anchors you can use later in the book—but remember that the breath is always available to you."
Here’s the easiest way to practice mindfulness: focus on your breath. “The breath serves as an anchor for your attention that you can use wherever you are.”
In fact, almost every mindfulness technique Cameron discusses in the book starts with a focus on the breath.
Although it sounds easy enough, let’s not forget what we learned from Larry Rosenberg in Breath by Breath: “It sounds simple, of course, but it’s actually—as anyone knows who has tried it—a profound and difficult practice. The fact is that when we focus on the breath, we are focusing on the life force. … To contemplate breathing is to contemplate life itself.”
So, it’s definitely not easy, but it can be profound. As Cameron said, it can change how we view the world and reinforce “a mindset of being open, receptive, accepting, and compassionate.”
Sounds worth the challenge to me 🙏
3. The ROI for Our Daily Morning Self-Care Practice
"Think of mindful meditation as a smart investment of your time, offering such returns as being less reactive, less stressed, and more alert, grateful, and content. All of these will help you optimize the rest of your morning and whatever else the day brings."
Those returns sound good (& really apply to any daily self-care practice you do).
And remember, by being less reactive, less stressed, more alert, and more grateful, everyone around you will also profit.
And although the morning is one of the best times to practice, just make sure you’re consistent and build it into your routine, regardless of what time you do it.
As Cameron says, “A routine is like scaffolding for your commitments, providing structure and reinforcing the underlying mechanisms that help you stick with what you want to do versus what your impulses push and pull you into.”
So, here’s to building mindful breathing practices into our routines to be less reactive, less stressed, more alert, and more grateful. Starting today.
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P.S. Cameron provides all sorts of ways to bring mindfulness into your daily activities, as the book title and subtitle suggest.See the book for more.But one thing she inspired me to do is take one conscious breath before getting out of bed. After turning off my alarm, I immediately do one centering breath (in 6, hold 2, out 7). Then, I get moving.Amazing stuff 👏
4. Breathing is the Definition of “Presencing”
"Otto Scharmer, the founder of the Presencing Institute and an MIT professor, suggests that identifying and letting go of our restricting inner voices can help us become more open and present, and thus more creative and collaborative. Scharmer uses the term "presencing"—combining "present" with "sensing"—to describe the process of coming into the moment and activating full, uninhibited awareness."
Presencing. I love that word. And what better way to be preset and sensing than with mindful breathing? It’s literally the definition of presencing.
As Rick Hanson tells us in Neurodharma, “Your experience of the present moment is based on the activity of your nervous system at that moment.” And the fastest way to tune into our nervous system? Our breath.
So, by tuning into our breath, we are actively presencing. This is good. As Cameron says, “When you are actively “presencing,” your interior state is open-minded and receptive to new ideas, aware and sensing what is happening in the moment without bias and judgment.” That sounds like a pretty ideal state to me.
And presencing has an even greater benefit, which we’ll cover in the Life-Changing Idea next.
1 LIFE-CHANGING IDEA
How to Live Longer (regardless of your age, lifespan, or healthspan)
"Harvard researchers found that 47 percent of the time, people are thinking about something other than what they're doing. That's nearly half of our day."
We’re not present about half the time. That’s nuts. It made me think, what’s the point of trying to live a long, healthy life if we’re not actually experiencing it?
Enter the power of the breath. As we learned above, by coming back to our breath, we learn presencing. And we instantly (and truly) live longer.
As Cameron says, “It amounts to having a longer, richer life, because you’re present for much more of it. And we can all do this.” <— Let’s do that 👏
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P.S. This idea made me think of a new word: Presence-span. We often focus on our lifespan and healthspan. But what we should focus on is our presence-span, which we can define as “The part of a person’s life during which they are actually present and aware they are living.”
1 STACK OF MEMORABLE QUOTES
“Mindfulness is life-changing. It is a superpower that allows you to deliberately direct the beam of your attention instead of being tossed around by racing thoughts and turbulent emotions; to choose your mindset; and to shift how you relate to your experience, so that you have less stress and more joy.”
“To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” - Henry David Thoreau, poet, author
“And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” - Rainer Maria Rilke, poet and author
“Nothing ever becomes real till it is experienced.” - John Keats, poet
“If I do not practice one day, I notice it. If I do not practice a second day, the orchestra notices it. If I do not practice a third day, the world notices it.” - Ignacy Jan Paderewski, pianist, composer
“Humans are unlike other animals—we are often thinking about anything but the present. We’re usually contemplating past events, worrying about what might happen in the future, or imagining things that may never happen at all.”
“By now you’re getting the hang of this: Begin almost any mindfulness practice by focusing on the breath, relaxing the body, and stepping into the present moment, to whatever is important right now.”
“According to research, these powerful effects of being outside are not unusual. Scientists around the world are demonstrating what philosophers, artists, and poets such as John Muir, Ansel Adams, Henry David Thoreau, and Mary Oliver have long known: Being in nature has a significant impact on your brain, physiology, and well-being.”
That quote reminded me of this excellent one from Michael J Stephen:
“Science is beginning to investigate in a serious manner something humanity has known for centuries—that the breath can be used to heal the body.”
“Mindfulness doesn’t mean stopping and sitting with your eyes closed in the middle of a challenging travel moment; it means having the ability to see clearly without judgment—it gives you the ability to take skillful action.”