Mindfulness for Mental Training

1. Depending on your level of motivation, carve out 5, 10, 15 or 20 minutes twice a day to practice mindfulness meditation. Call these full stops punctuating your day.

2. As often as you remember, between the completion of one activity and the commencement of another, have mini-meditations of 5, 10, 20, 30 or 60 seconds. Call these commas punctuating your day.

3. Practice being present as you go about your daily life taking it one step, one moment at a time. Listen, feel, see, taste and smell.

Mindfulness can help in dealing with life challenges in a number of ways. First, it assists in cultivating acceptance of one’s situation. Second, it helps us to be more in touch with our intrinsic or deeper goals. Third, it helps us to be able to ride the waves of uncomfortable emotions that may well arise at such times. Fourth, it helps us not to get caught in mental loops like rumination or worry, and to refocus our attention on the moment by moment needs in order to deal with the challenge, one step, one moment at a time.

The generic principles of mindfulness include things like paying attention, being present, non-attachment, non-reactivity, acceptance, gentleness and compassion. These generic principles can be applied to all manner of situations and needs. Just like aerobic fitness is a universal capacity that can be used for all manner of particular activities, so too can the principles of mindfulness be applied to all manner of needs. The principles are universal but the contextualisation and applications of them are particular.

How much mindfulness meditation you practice will depend on your needs and level of motivation. The more you practice then the greater the rate of progress. But, unlike hermits living in caves, not everyone will be ready or able to practice many hours of meditation per day, but you don’t necessarily need to. For example, you might be ready to regularly practise 20 minutes of meditation twice a day (i.e., the formal practice of mindfulness), but you can supplement that by practising being present and mindful in any moment as you go about your daily life (i.e., the informal practice of mindfulness). When we are not mindful it is sometimes called being on automatic pilot because we are just going through the motions while the mind is mostly off thinking about the past or future without really connecting with who or what is in front of us now. If you start practising being mindful in daily life you will likely become aware of how much of the time the mind is wandering (sometimes called being in ‘default mode’) and you are operating on automatic pilot. That is about 50% of the time on average. You don’t need to criticise what you are noticing but be comforted by the fact that when you notice it you have the opportunity to choose to be mindful once again. The senses (seeing, feeling, hearing, smelling, tasting) are always a good gateway back to the present moment.

Mindfulness seems to help people be more mentally flexible by being less attached to ideas like fixed assumptions, negative attitudes, rumination and habitual mental patterns. It also helps a person to have more top-down control over the potential for distraction and choosing better which creative thoughts are worth following. Although it is early days in terms of mindfulness and creativity research, some studies have suggested that different kinds of mindfulness meditation practices may support different aspects of creativity. Open monitoring practices (i.e., meditation with no particular focus for the attention) seem to foster better divergent thinking (e.g., brainstorming or generating new and creative ideas) whereas focused attention practices (i.e., focusing on the sensation of the breath) seem to foster better convergent thinking (e.g., planning, focused work, and bringing that creative idea to fruition).

It is generally best to learn from a skilled and experienced mindfulness teacher and face-to-face if that is possible. This provides a better opportunity for questions, discussion and support with challenges. Groups can also be excellent because participants will tend to learn from each other and you will soon discover that you are far from alone in experiencing your symptoms. When learning mindfulness, being very much related to awareness, it is likely to make you more aware of physical, emotional and mental experiences including triggers, anxiety, self-consciousness, rumination and worry. This will initially feel uncomfortable so it is vital that you understand that this is a sign of the process working, not you getting it wrong. We need to understand that awareness is the first step but cultivating a gentler, less reactive, more accepting and compassionate attitude towards ourselves and others, even the things that we find uncomfortable, is the very necessary next step. This will take a little time, so you need to be patient with yourself.

Although the principles and practices of mindfulness can benefit virtually anyone, not everyone will be in a situation to avail themselves of those benefits. There are a few provisos. First, not everyone will be interested or motivated to learn and practice mindfulness and it is a practice that should not be forced on anyone. Second, some people might be taught mindfulness by an inexperienced and unskilful mindfulness teacher and therefore not practice it appropriately or derive benefits. This is particularly problematic for a third group. Teaching mindfulness can be relatively contraindicated for some people with complex needs, like acutely depressed youth, those with severe anxiety, people with a past history of psychosis, trauma, or neuro-diverse conditions like autism. In such situations, the potential participant may prefer to pursue therapeutic avenues other than mindfulness or, if they are well informed and do decide to pursue mindfulness, then they need to be taken gently and skilfully through the process by a very well trained mindfulness teacher with the appropriate healthcare qualifications who can recognise the presence of adverse events and adjust the instruction accordingly. The skilful teacher will always adapt instructions and practices to suit the needs, motivation and challenges of the individual student.

The most well known mindfulness intervention for parliamentarians is the Mindfulness Initiative set up by the Mindfulness All-Party Parliamentary Group in the UK. https://www.themindfulnessinitiative.org/mindfulness-all-party-parliamentary-group Similar affiliated groups are being set up in other countries around the world. There is not a lot of research on the impact of mindfulness on political thinking, but current evidence suggests that mindfulness reduces intergroup bias and ‘affective polarisation’ in that it helps people to shift from very polarised political views to a more bipartisan position. This is thought to be mostly due to mindfulness fostering mental flexibility, more positive feelings for others outside of their political ‘in-group’, and being more able to listen and be tolerant of others with different views.

It’s a bit like exercise in that in order to derive ongoing benefits from mindfulness-based practices you need to keep doing it regularly otherwise the benefits start to fade over time. However, if you have practised it consistently at some stage in your life then you will have strengthened brain circuits associated with regulating attention and managing stress among other things. Those benefits will never be totally lost and the pathways will be easier to reactivate later on even if you had stopped practising for some time.