“Mindfulness” is becoming a fashionable buzzword. However, there’s nothing new about it. It is part of human nature itself.  Mindfulness means paying attention, with intention, to the world as it is with an attitude of equanimity. This means that one focuses one’s attention upon some of the huge array of sensations arising from within ourselves internally and as a result of our sensing the outside world. Equanimity means the attitude of neither craving pleasant sensations nor having aversion to unpleasant sensations.

To extent we have to be non-mindful in order to survive. At any time there is a vast amount of information available to us and there’s no way which we could possibly attend to it all. However, in Western civilisation we have a tendency to bias our attention towards a mind, ego, thoughts and external objects. We therefore don’t make the most of the rest of our body, our heart, gut, intuition, sensing, energetic awareness and so on. In addition, we tend to intentionally anaesthetise ourselves with television, junk food, addictions, the Internet, travel, workaholism and so on.

We are all mindful from time to time. Sometimes we are awakened by threats such as illness, accident is, threats to our physical security. We have peak experiences such as great sex, fantastic food and celebrations. Nature often brings us to be more mindful whether it be a sunset, sitting round the campfire, walking along the beach watching the  waves or playing whether child. We engineer mindful experiences on purpose such as weddings, funerals and Christmas.

There is now a lot of evidence now that mindfulness brings great benefits. For anyone who practices mindfulness, this evidence comes from the direct experience of the benefits in real life. Other evidence comes from the wisdom passed down through tradition built up over centuries or millennia such as the meditation practice in Buddhism, tai chi, Tantra and martial arts. In the last 30 years of so there’s been raft of scientific evidence of the effectiveness of mindfulness practice including mindfulness-based stress reduction which is an 8 week introductory course taught in small groups for one half day a week. This course has been shown to have profound benefits in increasing health, happiness, leadership skills, resilience, freedom, self-discipline, presence, improved eating habits, better self-mastery, reduced relapse of depression and even increased fighting ability of US Marines.

Mindfulness comes in a vast number of forms including meditations such as meditations upon the breath, body scan, heart, anger, gut, eating, sounds and visualisations. Movements can be mindful such as walking meditation, 5 rhythms dancing, martial arts and movement medicine. One can meditate upon compassion, prayer or particular intention. Energetics is mindfulness of energy and higher consciousness.  Tantra is mindfulness in the sexual and interpersonal realm. Many people use mindfulness with nature including animals such as equine facilitated learning.

Mindfulness has many clinical applications. For example, to the way in which we respond pain, anxiety, mood changes, external events and cravings have a massive impact on our clinical state. It can make all the difference between being disabled and not disabled and determine one’s quality of life.

The attached podcast is a recording of a lecture which I gave entitled “Mindfulness for Leaders and Clinicians.” in include some practical examples including breathing meditation, heart meditation, eating meditation and awareness of one’s interpersonal presence. The purpose of the lecture was to give an introduction to mindfulness to whet the appetite and to encourage people to explore for themselves.

The many links below include a huge range of different types of mindfulness practices which you can explore. Towards the bottom is a list of some of the academic research on the efficacy of mindfulness.