Year: 2017

12 Point Mindfulness Cheat Sheet

This month my blog takes the shape of a 12-point cheat sheet, addressing some of our pre-conceived ideas about formal mindfulness practice that are floating around. You can download the free PDF via the form below the article.

  1. Mindfulness practice = sitting silently, watching feelings, body-sensations and thoughts come and go, not hooking into any of them
  2. If your thinking or any other natural phenomena of the body/mind are too overwhelming, put your attention on your natural breathing rhythm
  3. You cannot do this wrong, despite what your opinion about the quality or outcomes of your practice want to tell you or despite what anyone else says
  4. It’s impossible to stop thinking. The mind is designed to think, just as the stomach wants to eat. But you can decide what focus to give your mind and be its master
  5. To practise between 12-20 minutes a day is sufficient for maximum benefit. Perhaps start with less to build up “sitting stamina”. Extend for your own good reasons
  6. Mindfulness practice delivers benefits automatically! Practice to take a closer look at the life you live and are, to develop a greater intimacy with life itself
  7. Mindfulness knowledge is experiential. It increases through continuing practice. Not by courses or reading about it (although of course there’s nothing wrong with that!)
  8. Nothing needs further addressing or fixing or solving, the practice itself is sufficient. You will know to seek help or share or write or explore when you need to
  9. Practising can result in feeling uncomfortable, but it’s not a sign something is wrong, and you will still reap the (scientifically proven) benefits
  10. Mindfulness is a perpetually growing process in which we begin to appreciate our unique inner and outer surroundings in life, whatever they may be
  11. The changes you may wish to make on the basis of your mindful connection with yourself will come from your insight; not reaction, effort or force or outer authority
  12. Mindfulness is common-sense mind/body hygiene like brushing your teeth, but it will not “get you anywhere”. There is nowhere to get. You’re already “it”
  13. Sitara Morgenster
  14. p.s. Download the free PDF of the 12-point Mindfulness Cheat Sheet by filling out your details below. The link will be emailed to you instantly!

    Mindfulness Cheat Sheet free PDF Download

Mindfulness: fad or fabulous?

Mindfulness practice is thousands of years old. Some even argue it is a natural skill much like walking. It’s just that society hasn’t valued it so we weren’t taught as kids. This has caused our mindfulness-muscle to go flabby and be forgotten.

Both those premises are currently changing.

You can’t turn around or there’s another article about mindfulness, a course or a retreat, and many schools are introducing forms of mindfulness into their curriculum.

If you wonder why it has suddenly become insanely popular (to the point of risking a place in the top-10 of irritating fads) here are seven reasons for its revival and prevalence:

  1. Once you master the basics, you never need another course again – just keep practicing on a not too irregular basis;
  2. It’s a cheap and simple modality that everyone can master and no one can do wrong;
  3. We finally have the science to prove the benefits of daily meditation practice;
  4. Over the past  decades, it has been freed from religious and airy-fairy connotations by people like Jon Kabat-Zinn, Eric Harrison and lately in New Zealand, Karl Baker, and returned to the realms of effective body/mind human hygiene. Think of it like this: what brushing does for your teeth, mindfulness does for your mind;
  5. It has been cleverly re-branded from not so catchy (attention training) to pretty juicy (mindfulness/meditation);
  6. It doesn’t require you to change anything and you don’t need to buy anything (although you may want to spend some money on initial training and guidance to get you going);
  7. We live increasingly hectic lives in an overwhelming, fast changing world, so we can all do with something that brings us back to our natural state we all, to one degree or another, have a hunch about and a hunger for.

You probably know about the main benefits. Regular mindfulness practice improves sleep, is an antidote against anxiety and depression, lowers your heart-rate and blood pressure and improves the immune system.

But you don’t have to be stressed, desperate or on anti-depressants to reach for this fascinating, mind-altering modality.

Even in a life that feels quite balanced, the advantages of using mindfulness meditations are bountiful: improved focus and clarity, increased creativity and more easy going in relationships with your self and therefore others, to name a few.

And maybe the best thing of all: it is devoid of the subtle pressures of self-improvement, behaviour changes and self-help techniques. Because it is about being aware, not about fixing anything about yourself or a situation.

For sure, things may improve for you and you may find the space to make different choices in your work, relationships and so on. But that is not the primary aim. The primary aim is to observe, notice and allow things to be as they currently are. All the benefits and outcomes will naturally follow.

In the first instance, it is about being relaxed in the present moment. Because the minute we start looking for results, our nervous system tenses up and all benefits fly out the window.

taking a closer look

The effects of this “Sitting Still and Shutting up for 12 minutes a day Practice” will surprise you. Give it the benefit of the doubt and find out how to do this. Try you must, because it is an experiential practice, like cycling, swimming, sexing, eating: you can read about it until you’re blue in the face, but you will still not know if it’s fad or fab. You need to do it. Give it at least 6 days a week for 12 minutes a day during a month. Then, if you it doesn’t suit you, you can always abandon it. At least you will have given it a try.

If you’ve tried it already, leave a comment on this blog below and share your experience. It would be great to hear from you!

Sitara Morgenster

Hanging out with your precious attention

Did you hang out with your precious attention today? Were you mostly mindful or absent-minded?

The answer is probably: “both!”

Harvard Research shows that our mind wanders, on average, 47% of the time: nearly half our lives! We spend that time thinking of what isn’t going on or propel ourselves into the future or ruminate on past events, feelings and relationships, or are busy wishing things were different right now.

This website is about mindfulness, a simple, free tool available to everyone (all you need is yourself, your attention and your breath), to profoundly enjoy each moment we’re alive.

I say free because you can teach yourself using a book or one of the many internet, app and cloud resources available for mindfulness/mediation. But you may want to spend some money on getting your practice off the ground and doing it with others in a class or retreat can have a strengthening effect on making it your habit.

What exactly is mindfulness? Mindfulness Works, who I work for as a mindfulness trainer, defines it as “being present and aware at the same time”. Check out a few more other definitions, and you’ll get a feel for what mindfulness is, before you start practising it. Or, if you’re already involved in a  mindfulness practice, see if you can recognise some of these descriptions, or in other words, mindfulness in theory:

From Stephen Archer, director of Mindfulness Training:

“Mindfulness is the awareness that emerges through paying attention on purpose, in the present moment, with curiosity and compassion. It leads to a deeper understanding of life and how to respond wisely.”

From Jon Kabat-Zinn, founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness:

“Paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.”

From Shauna Shapiro, of shaunashapiro.com:

“Intentionally paying attention with kindness.”

Once you enter into a regular mindfulness practice with yourself (on your own or with others), you may want to give it your own definition. Let me know what you come up with! I currently call it something like “the art of sitting still” and “the daily practice of shutting up – with intention and awareness and without ambition or trying for perfection”.

Karl Baker, director and founder of Mindfulness Works, the largest mindfulness training organisation in New Zealand and currently also operating in Australia, defines it as both being aware and being present, as well as uses the definition by Jon Kabat-Zinn in his Guidebook. However, also recently emphasised this on his Mindfulness Works Facebook Page:

“There are mindfulness trainers and training organisations who try to possess mindfulness and make it their own. They claim there is is ‘right’ mindfulness (always their way) and ‘wrong’ mindfulness (other people’s ways).

They ignore their own self-protective agenda, under the guise of ‘spiritual’ or ‘scientific’ self-righteousness.

In truth – mindfulness is freely available to us all and an innate natural capacity. We could even say mindfulness is Life itself.

Mindfulness Works is committed to making mindfulness – as available to as many people as possible. We are committed to people realising that they are inherently OK just as they are, that mindfulness is not complicated and freely available. Rightly or wrongly.”

I love that about Mindfulness Works: the busting of all these myths, the removal of “right or wrong” and offering this simple practice for people to (re-) learn and use if they want to, to reclaim their own authority, to be their own best friend again, to become very close to themselves and know how to be comfortable with the uncomfortable.

Where was your precious attention hanging out most of today? Were you mostly mindful, or absent-minded? Did you put your mindfulness meditation practices to good use? Reply by clicking the comments link above this article. I’d love to hear from you!

Sitara Morgenster

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