The Power of Mindfulness

What would you think if you came across an advertisement for a product said to benefit your mental acuity, lower your stress level, improve your overall health, and more? I know my natural skepticism would probably cause me to roll my eyes and move on with the rest of my day. However, through my years of education and training, I’ve found something that checks all of those boxes. Even harder to believe is that it can be free, practiced in as little as two minutes, and tailored to fit any individual.

Hopefully, you’re still with me despite the seemingly “too good to be true” nature of what I’m talking about. The tool I’m talking about is mindfulness. This has become a pretty big buzzword in our society today, which doesn’t help with the idea that it’s all flash and no substance. However, one benefit of it being talked about is increased familiarity with the word. Hopefully, you have a vague idea of what mindfulness is, but because there are many applicable definitions, I want to get specific. According to Dialectical Behavior Therapy, mindfulness is a present awareness without judgment. Each component of that definition is vital, and I’ll break it all down later. First, however, I want to go over the benefits.

Obviously, practicing mindfulness, going to therapy, and working on our health all sound like good things. But unless you know how those things can benefit you, it doesn’t really make sense to invest in them. So, let’s go over some of the benefits that research has shown mindfulness practice can provide. Regular mindfulness practice has been shown to improve focus, awareness, and information retention. Besides mental sharpness, mindfulness offers us the ability to make decisions more effectively and to engage with the here and now. Mindfulness has been proven to improve one’s ability to fall asleep and stay asleep, as well as enhance the body’s ability to take care of itself. Mindfulness decreases anxiety and stress, helps with managing conflict, and offers a foundation for additional skills targeted toward tolerating distress and regulating emotions.

While that list was extensive, I want to make it clear—mindfulness is not a miracle pill. Mindfulness is not something you do once to see results, nor is it capable of fixing every problem you face in life. However, it is a framework that can be leveraged to navigate various challenges, promote overall wellness, and equip you to live a value-congruent lifestyle.

Another factor that makes mindfulness worth pursuing is its accessibility. Everyone is capable of practicing mindfulness in one form or another, and as I said before, it doesn’t have to take a long time or cost any money. There are a number of free resources online for learning about and practicing mindfulness. Quite honestly, once you have the initial framework down, you can create your own methods for practicing it. When meeting my clients for the first time, I often tell them that I don’t know anyone who couldn’t benefit from mindfulness. And it’s true—in a world that is so busy operating out of mindsets saturated in judgment, a little mindfulness goes a long way.

What Is Mindfulness?

Now that I’ve hopefully conveyed what a great tool mindfulness can be, it’s time to talk about what it is. Going back to the definition of “a present awareness without judgment,” we have to be present. Much of our time and energy can be spent reflecting on the past or worrying about the future. Don’t get me wrong; those are both time periods we should consider. If we don’t look back at the past, we can’t learn from it. Likewise, if we don’t think about the future, we can’t prepare for it. But at a certain point, we take ourselves away from the present by becoming so caught up in one or both of those time periods. In order to be mindful, we have to engage with the here and now.

The awareness piece is also significant. Mindfulness demands that we pay attention. It doesn’t require us to strain our brains through overthinking or to notice everything all at once. It simply requires us to take the time to focus on something.

The Three “What” Skills

Those first two aspects of mindfulness are achieved through the three “what” skills: observe, describe, and participate.

When we observe, we use our senses to become aware of what is around or within us. We have to engage with the present and consider it in some way.

Moving into the describing step requires us to put our observations into words. This is helpful not only for communicating with others but also for communicating with ourselves after we have taken in information.

Participating is the “what” skill that keeps us 100% involved in whatever we are doing while being mindful. Instead of multitasking, participating prompts us to “single-task”—not something we find ourselves doing very often these days!

The Three “How” Skills

There’s still a part of the definition we haven’t addressed—the nonjudgment piece. This is truly what sets DBT mindfulness apart from other forms of meditation or being present. It’s not that those kinds of mindfulness are inherently judgmental, but DBT is built on the recognition that we, as humans, generally tend to make judgments.

Our brains work this way for a reason. If you’re in an unsafe situation, need to assess whether something is worth your time, or are comparing the quality of your work to your standards, it’s okay to make a judgment in that moment. In fact, it’s probably advantageous to do so. However, we often find ourselves making judgments in moments when they don’t help us or, worse, unnecessarily produce further distress.

When we’re being mindful, we challenge ourselves to think differently. This is achieved through the three “how” skills: nonjudgmentally, one-mindfully, and effectively.

The first “how” skill is about letting go of our judgments or noticing when an interpretation on our end is not in line with the objective facts of a situation. This can look like changing your verbiage—for example, changing “That driver is an idiot” to “That car drove past very quickly.” It can also mean changing how you treat yourself, such as accepting that mindfulness is challenging and takes practice and that struggling with distraction does not have anything to do with your mental ability or character.

The second “how” skill, one-mindfully—weird word, I know—is meant to keep us fully focused. Just as the participate skill causes us to engage with only one task, one-mindfully challenges our minds to think about one thing at a time. Not if but when we find ourselves becoming distracted during mindfulness, that’s okay. We simply notice it and gently bring ourselves back to the task at hand.

Lastly, we have effectively. This is my personal favorite of the six skills. Like I said before, it sounds great to say, “I’m learning about mindfulness.” But if it’s not giving you any benefit, what’s the point? Effectively is all about leveraging mindfulness as a tool to benefit you. Remember, once you build your mindfulness toolbox, those skills work for you—not the other way around.

Wise Mind

I want to highlight three more points about how we can view mindfulness before sharing some exercises. To start, we have the seventh skill. This skill is neither a “what” nor a “how” skill; it stands on its own. That’s because, while it is a skill, it centers on our ability to check in with ourselves and make decisions effectively. It’s called wise mind.

Wise mind is the integration of our two minds: emotion mind and reason mind. We can typically process through only one of these options at a time. Just as I said with judgments before, our brains work this way for a reason. If you’re in a dangerous situation, fear can motivate you to run to safety. If you’re taking a math test, logic will get you to the answer, regardless of how you feel about the problem in front of you.

However, life is not made up of math tests and emergencies alone. Most of the things we have to consider in life are more complicated, especially when it comes to our long-term goals and interactions with other people. When we are able to enter our wise mind, we can effectively notice and validate our feelings and the feelings of others while also thinking clearly enough to make a logical decision. When we are able to account for both the facts of a situation and the emotions involved, we can respond thoughtfully rather than overthinking or reacting out of emotion.

Mindfulness Is Like Going to the Gym

The second and third points are analogies. I know it can be a little hard to grasp the idea of mindfulness, especially through a written medium. Hopefully, these examples clarify what mindfulness can look like.

The first analogy is about the gym, but you can substitute any other activity that involves practice. Like working out, we don’t start out as masters of mindfulness. It takes time, consistency, and commitment to see ourselves make progress in this area.

If you were going to the gym for the first time, you wouldn’t expect yourself to lift the same weight as someone who has worked out there for over ten years. In the same way, don’t compare yourself to anyone else or to where you think you should be when starting mindfulness. Instead, if you show up and practice, the results will follow.

Like working out, there are probably parts of mindfulness that you are naturally better at. Like the individual who runs at a faster pace than they thought they would be able to or the person who discovers they have a powerful upper body, you may find that being present or putting your observations into words comes more easily than expected. Celebrate those strengths! When you find areas that are harder for you, be patient and compassionate with yourself.

Mindfulness Is Like a Rest in Music

The final analogy has to do with music. You don’t have to be a sheet-music-reading aficionado to know that a “rest” in music is the moment when a note is not being played. Whatever genre of music you like, your favorite song has a rest in it.

The reasons for these rests in music are multifaceted. First, the singer or musician has to take a break in order to breathe, reset their fingers, and so on. Second, rests create more distinction between the sounds you were hearing and the ones you are about to hear. Third, they allow for greater contrast or impact during a rise or fall.

All of these also represent what mindfulness can offer us. When we are constantly going, we need to be able to take a break and reset. When we don’t do that, things tend to jumble together, making it harder to organize our thoughts and feelings. In order to be present and appreciate certain moments, it certainly helps if we can enter a mindset conducive to doing so.

The biggest thing about this analogy, though, is that no song is entirely made up of rests. If it were, it wouldn’t be music! Likewise, mindfulness is not meant to be practiced 24/7. Instead, it is something we intentionally choose to do when we want to practice, need a reset, or have another reason for doing so.

Mindfulness Exercises

With the why, what, and how all laid out, let’s spend some time highlighting a few different mindfulness exercises.

Mindful Breathing

By slowing down and taking deep breaths, we shift our attention to the here and now. When we breathe in this manner, it calms our nervous system to the point that our body can send a message of safety and security to the brain.

I’m sure you’ve found yourself at a point when you’re angry, anxious, or overwhelmed, and hearing someone say, “Calm down,” doesn’t help at all. That’s because when we are in a dysregulated state, we aren’t always able to calm ourselves from the “top down”—brain to body—and have to try from the “bottom up”—body to brain.

Mindful breathing can look a number of different ways, but I recommend 4-7-8 breathing. Breathe in through your nose for four seconds, hold it for seven seconds, and breathe out through your mouth for eight seconds. Doing this for even a few minutes offers plenty of benefits!

Daily Mindfulness

A concern many people have with mindfulness is not being able to schedule it into their day or knowing where to start. This exercise solves both of those problems. It is completely possible for us to practice mindfulness while doing things that are already part of our schedules.

For example, consider brushing your teeth in the morning. Doing this mindfully means taking the time to pay attention to how the toothpaste smells, how the bristles feel, which area of your mouth you start with, and how you feel when it’s over.

That’s an easy way to start the day mindfully, but feel free to get creative! You can be mindful while washing dishes, eating lunch, taking a walk, and doing almost anything else.

Open Monitoring

This is an exercise that centers on the observation part of mindfulness. To engage with it, simply find a comfortable posture and notice your surroundings. Don’t make judgments or change anything; just pay attention to the space you’re in.

Maybe you’ll notice something you’ve never seen before or hear a sound that had faded into the background before the activity. You can use all five senses for this. The objective is to become more in tune with your environment rather than rushing past it.

Body Scan

This exercise is meant to shift that same awareness into our physical experience. Like I said with breathing, our bodies communicate with our brains and vice versa. Sometimes, we have needs, emotions, or other signals that go unnoticed because we are ignoring what our bodies have to say.

To practice mindfulness in this way, find a comfortable position, close your eyes, and move your attention from the top of your head down to your toes, paying attention to anything that stands out. Maybe it’s tension in your jaw, tightness in your shoulders, a settled feeling in your stomach, or warmth in your hands.

Whatever it is, we aren’t trying to change it. We want to notice it, name it, and see whether it is helpful for us to recognize it. For example, you may recognize that you’re hungry or tired and need food or sleep. You may also find that paying attention to tension helps relieve it, such as noticing soreness in your shoulders and feeling them loosen as you sit with the sensation.

Mindfulness of Emotion

Similar to the last exercise, this is about turning our focus inward. We often overestimate how aware we are of our emotions. When we slow down and notice our physical sensations, thoughts, and other factors, we can see our emotions more clearly.

Not only that, but when we challenge ourselves to find the words to describe those emotions, we increase our awareness. This is helpful for all the typical mindfulness-related reasons, but it offers unique benefits as well.

We use the phrase “name it to tame it” to describe how putting our emotions into words can reduce the intensity of some uncomfortable emotions. Likewise, being able to communicate our emotions allows us to communicate and meet our needs more effectively.

Thought Defusion

We don’t always control our emotions, nor do we always pick the first thought that pops into our heads. If you feel like your thoughts are racing or you can’t shake a negative thought, imagine yourself in a peaceful landscape.

You could imagine yourself lying on a hill with clouds rolling by, sitting next to a river with leaves floating on it, or standing at the beach with waves washing over your feet. Then, imagine that whatever is moving—the clouds, leaves, waves, or something else—represents your thoughts.

Watch your thoughts as they come into focus and move past you. Your thoughts will come and go, and if we choose not to hold on to them, they will naturally subside. Doing this activity promotes a sense of peace and allows us to open our hands rather than holding our thoughts so tightly in an effort to change them.

And Many, Many More

I know that was a lot, so I truly appreciate you taking the time to read and, hopefully, think about it. As I’m sure this is an introduction for many of you or an early step for others, I encourage you to continue researching mindfulness and how it can benefit you.

Think about how you’ve seen mindfulness in your life and how you can integrate it effectively. A big part of that is taking time to practice, even if it’s just one of these exercises for a few minutes each day.

While I love sharing this information for everyone to practice on their own, I’m also very passionate about helping people build this skill in counseling. I’ve spent a lot of time learning about, discussing, and practicing mindfulness, and I appreciate any time I’m able to offer that knowledge to other people.

Focusing on mindfulness in counseling also opens doors to other DBT modules, such as distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness. Just like mindfulness, I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t benefit from learning at least one of those types of skills. While they take time to implement, they all work together to help us live healthier, more effective lives.

If you think mindfulness could benefit you in managing your emotions, coping with stress, navigating relationships with others, or in any other way, reach out to me to get started today! There’s truly no time like the present, so let’s work on engaging with it together.

-Therapist Jackson