Mindfulness is HOTT.

Mindfulness is HOTT right now.  A few months ago, the cover of Time Magazine read, "The Mindfulness Revolution."  It's being talked about as training now offered to stakeholders as varied as google employees, military personell, and inmates.  So, what the heck is this mindfulness business anyway?  And maybe more importantly, what isn't it?

I started my Curriculum Training with Mindful Schools this past week, and have been steeped in thinking about how I will explain mindfulness to interested parties (Or uninterested parties, as the case may be with my students. At first.  Until they realize how rad it is, of course.)  Furthermore, I have been tasked with explaining it to someone as one of my exercises.  And while I must do it verbally, I also want to practice a long-hand version on the interweb.

Jon Kabat Zinn, father of the secular mindfulness movement, defined it as, "...paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the moment, non-judgementally."  That's a pretty good, if wordy, place to start from.

I think of mindfulness simply as noticing....noticing your experiences, your senses, your thoughts, your feelings.  Noticing your bodily responses to your experiences, senses, and thoughts.  Noticing.  So simple in statement, but yet so difficult to do.  Our thoughts often dominate our experiences so the world is filtered through our ever-present narrative about what we're experiencing.  So omnipresent is it that we don't even realize it's there.

Many people think mindfulness is about the cessation of thoughts.  About being completely clear of mind.  They think it's about calmness.  About absence of anger.  These are not goals of mindfulness, but often byproducts.  Thinking is not bad.  Anger is not bad.  They are part of the human experience.  Otherwise we'd all be squirrels.  Or cockroaches.  Or something.

As stated by Megan Cowan, Mindfulness Ninja of Mindful Schools: "The ultimate goal of mindfulness is introducing us to our entire spectrum of experience, and learning how to recognize that, and be with it."

And if you like the prettied-up version, as I do, check out this Mindfulness Ninja, Rumi:
The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
As an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.