When I told my mom that I was starting a podcast on Mindfulness, she, being the research librarian she is, started avidly researching the topic – online and at bookstores. She came back and told me that mindfulness is “a big trend right now”.
I agreed with her, but I reflected that there are a lot of common notions of mindfulness that I disagreed with. Here are my beliefs about mindfulness:
My mindfulness journey actually started not with my mind, which was usually running 100 miles a minute with thoughts, judgments, schedules, to do list items, self critiques, and also anxiety. The first experiences of mindfulness I felt were when I followed my senses.
These were things I experienced without planning or forethought. What I started to realize is that those sensory moments stopped me from focusing on the many other things around me – I was in the moment. And then I started to actively pursue experiences where I would use my senses for slightly more extended periods of time.
The reason that I have not included “sights” in my examples, is that the sense of sight is frequently multi-tasking, and seems to me to be intricately connected to the part of our minds that is reacting, planning, and therefore can be an obstacle to experiencing mindfulness. I do believe that it is important to cultivate mindfulness sight, but it is a difficult one to start with on one’s mindfulness journey.
Through these practices, I coined a term called Sense-fullness, a state of being when one is receptive to external stimulus through the senses.
Sense-based activities can be an effective way to enter on a mindfulness journey. I am not sure why that is – maybe the senses aren’t as judgmental as the mind/brain, and so we’re able to stay connected to the moment. Maybe our senses are eager to do their thing and have us notice!
So, if you have had the thought, “I’m not doing it right”, try starting with sense-fullness activities. And remember that being connected to the sense for even one moment, is one moment more than if you didn’t start the practice. Do not critique yourself for the judgment that it’s not long enough.
Pick one of the senses: hearing, tasting, feeling, smelling. Think of an experience that will allow you to use that sense prominently, and if possible, close your eyes while you do it as it may heighten the other sense. Some examples:
As you are experiencing, passively notice the sensations. There is no way to experience it wrong, so remember there is no judgment your brain needs to pass. This is just the way your sense experiences its stimulus. If you try this practice, I would love to hear what you experienced. Or if there are other sense-full experiences that you have had, please share those too!
And if you are interested in a mindfulness podcast, try A Mindful Moment. I share short and accessible mindfulness practices for those of us who are busy and can’t travel daily to an ashram to meditate. Some of the practices are as short as 3 minutes! Search for A Mindful Moment wherever you listen to podcasts, or click on the links to connect to it on your podcast platform:
And if you’re read this far, thank you!! I know it’s quite different than my typical post on this blog. At some point I may spin it off to a new location, but for now, here it is, on Accidental Perfectionist!
1 Comment
Thank you for this Monica, so many things I can relate to in this post. I love how you talk about sense-fullness, and how experiencing things through our senses can bring us to the present moment and bring us mindfulness.