Mindfulness

twobitbob

Hi, hope everone's well,



When i meditate i try to concentrate only on my breathing and ignore external stimuli. I have recently tried to extend the mindfulness of meditation into my normal life. The thing is i find there are so many things that i could concentrate on. If i concentrate on my breathing, say, i will not be aware of the feel of the ground beneath my feet. If i try to be mindful of both my attention is split and i end up being aware of neither particularly well.

How can one be mindful of all the internal and external stimuli that our mind receives and generates?

Do i need to first develop my meditation practice before trying to extend mindfulness my life? Or have i just totally misunderstood what is meant by mindfulness?

federica

I think there is a danger of overly complicating something that really, may be quite simple...

To me, Mindfulness just means 'being in the Moment'...
Sogyal Rinpoche describes meditation as, 'Bringing the Mind Home', that is, simply calm abiding, where you are right now.

As I have said on many occasions now,'Simple' doesn't mean 'easy' - it just means in this case, making Right Effort...like the guitar string, not too tight, or too loose, but just right.... Too much Effort is a strain, and we get hung up about stuff....
Too little Effort is a cop-out, and the practise cannot be productive.

Just relax, and be.

not1not2

I would say that you don't need to have an established sitting meditation practice in order to bring mindfulness into your daily activities. However, I would say not to practice mindfulness of the breath too much unless you can maintain awareness of what you are doing. Generally, this can't be done without having already established a certain degree of mindfulness of the breath in sitting practice. What I would suggest, if this is difficult for you, is to make the activity at hand your focus of concentration. In other words, don't multitask (one thing at a time whenever possible). If you're working, work. If you're playing play. Do your best to bring your mind back to what you're doing, whenever you realize your attention has wandered. For me, it helps to pay attention to one full in-breath & outbreath when I notice that my attention is scattered. From that point, it is easy to re-focus on what I'm doing.

Anyway, this is what I poorly attempt to do during my daily activities. Hope it helps.

_/\_
metta

YogaMama

twobitbob, I love federica's advice to you. I think that if we try and focus on all the different things that are happening around us at the same time, we would lose our minds! Like fede said, just keep it simple. I am reading a book right now by Thich Naht Hahn, and I will look at it to see his recommendations for being mindful. He gives different techniques that you can use throughout your day and they are great. I'll look at it and post what he said.

Kim

not1not2

Also, this practice can be potentially disorienting & have some adverse side-effects, especially in conversational situations. Ironically, if done improperly, this practice can actually distract you from what you are doing because you are interjecting a practice into what is normally a natural activity. As Fede pointed out, your strings can be too loose or too taught, so adjust accordingly.

take care

_/\_
metta

Palzang

I would follow Dogen's (I think) advice:

When you sit, sit. When you eat, eat.

Palzang

twobitbob

So like i noticed that when i listen to music, even favourite music, my mind just wanders off untill right at the end of the piece and i think 'i've just missed that whole song'.

So now i endeavour to listen to the music fully; is this being mindful?

Brigid

That's how I understand it. I think you gave the perfect example, Twobit.