Mindfulness is both the easiest and the hardest practice of the meditation practices that I ever tried. It is so easy to start doing, but it is so difficult keeping up with. But, as described in a previous post, it has nothing but advantages and is therefore well worth pursuing.

The practice.

To state is plain and simple: keep some part of your attention on your mind and body at ALL times.

That’s it. No more, no less

How?

The easiest thing is to notice your breathing. Notice it going in. Notice it going out. Do not think about it. Just observe. Do not not mentally say: ‘in’ and ‘out’. No just watch it. If you have trouble with this concept, read this post first.
Now, this is simple enough. Just try it. You will see that it is rather simple. Now continue observing you breathing and read on. Or look around the room. Take a few steps. And continue observing your breath.
Did you notice a difference from how you normally observe the room or read texts? Chances are you did. If you did not, that is fine also. You just successfully completed your first mindfulness exercise! Now continue doing this the whole day long.

The problems.

First, you might object that it is not possible doing this all day long. And still doing all regular stuff you do in your day like talking and thinking. This is not true. Many Buddhist monks do this practice all day long. They talk and think at the same time. And in the back of their head, they might even recite a mantra. Really, they can do this. And so can you, but it will take some practice.

The real problem is that you will tend to forget to do the exercise. If you can keep up with the exercise for more than one minute (that’s right, ONE minute) you are already quite advance. Check whether you are still observing your breath going in and out (just prior to reading this sentence ). It is not very likely unless you already had some mindfulness training. But this is normal. Everybody faces this kind of problems.

The solution.

One thing that can easily be done is to start implementing mindfulness in a few actions you need to perform every day. For instance tying your shoes or getting dressed. Or even better, while eating.
Try to remember that when you perform those actions, you should be aware of your breathing. And then try to extend the practice. Again, I’d like to stress that this will take a lot of persistence.

Another solution that helped m a lot was taking mindfulness classes. I took them in the from of Tai Chi and Chi Qong. To me this has the advantage that the exercises get more and more complicated and thus require more and more of your attention. All this in a gradual way. So in the beginning of the session it is easy to keep the attention on the breathing, but it becomes harder towards the ending of the session.

The ‘day review’ as described in this post, is also a helpful tool. It will help you identify the taks that you perform routinely during the day without being mindful.

And this brings me to my last tip: try to incorporate anchors in you day. Once you have identified something you do every day without being mindful you an use it the next time it occurs as a trigger.
I, for instance, noticed in my retrospection that in the morning, I alway descended the stairs in my house while thinking about a million things. At the moment of actually doing it, I did not notice a thing, but in the evening, I could see the pattern. So I decided to be mindful when walking the stairs. The next evening in the retrospection exercise, I noticed that I had forgotten all about the practice :-). But still, I was more determined to do it right the next morning. I failed again, but the third morning, I remembered!

So little by little I try to incorporate more actions that I need to perform into my practice.

Be well. Be rich. Be great.

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