Mindfulness meditation

One of the main issues I often discuss with my colleagues, which happen to be the most prominent experts in the field of mindfulness meditation that I have met, is the fact that mindfulness has gained incredible popularity, which unfortunately often leads to its wrong interpretations.

Paradoxically, although the term ‘mindfulness’ is objectively very popular in the 21st century, its true meaning and intended purpose are highly unpopular.

Mindfulness is often presented in the media as a treatment for restoring ‘positivity’, a cure for ‘fixing’ our broken thoughts, a way to master our mind to transform into a completely rational being who is a true master of discipline that is the ‘key to everything’, i.e. to completely control your emotions, a fast and effective method to cleanse your mind from any thoughts and transcend into ‘normal and healthy’ comfort. However– mindfulness – is in its essence exactly the opposite, which is not easy to attain. To understand it, It’s important to understand its content and process.

CONTENT

Mindfulness in substance entails practising focused attention and thereby actively facing and existing with everything that is, whether pleasant or unpleasant or both at the same time. This means that mindfulness meditation is not in itself a relaxation technique (although practice often leads to relaxation and long‑term practice may truly increase our relaxation), so some practices may evoke various and intense or even exclusively unpleasant emotions.

We use mindfulness meditation to train valuable and quite strong facets of a mature human personality, such as: acceptance; embracing; letting go of control; empathy; making conscious rather than reactive choices, etc. Mindfulness meditation is properly used only when based on exercises that have underwent strict scientific verification and study, just like the ones in cognitive-behavioural therapy. Moreover, even though they are rooted in Eastern philosophies (e.g. Zen Buddhism), they are completely stripped of all religious components making them compatible with any religion or faith, without question, which you are of course also free to practice. It is your values that are in fact your key strengths and pillars in life!

PROCESS (attitude)

Our attitude towards the exercise which we bring into its performance is as important as the substantial feature that we are training by practising mindfulness. These attitudes are self‑compassion, kindness, gentleness, thoughtfulness, nurturing one’s own freedom and responsibility, and non‑judgement. At the same time, mindfulness does not mean that you should love the cards you were dealt or passively resign yourself to how things are or, for that matter, romanticise such a state. Mindfulness does initially help with accepting the very fact that whatever it is, however difficult it may be, might already be happening anyway. However, mindfulness also strengthens the ability to make an active and conscious choice to decide by ourselves, once we face it, what to do about it. In doing so, we do not need to ‘love’ what is there to accept it. Mindfulness only teaches us that whatever it is that is happening/we are feeling is already there anyway and thus gives us, as human beings, the permission to bravely face it.

CONCLUSION

In the end, contrary to what modern society teaches us are proper and healthy feelings, I’d like to emphasise, as I do in my song Emocije svijeta (Emotions of the World), that:

Courage is to live life to the fullest, courage is to be able to feel everything and Let no shame be felt by those who live their truth. And might I add my lyrics did get some input from Mr. or Mrs. Mindfulness, the scientific technique of focused awareness.

Mindfulness can help us live our lives to their fullest extent, accepting all their pleasant and unpleasant parts and feelings as equally important and immeasurably valuable components of life. Contrary to popular beliefs, happiness after all is not a normal state of being that one “should” achieve and, striving for it, makes us often even more dissatisfied. In fact, if we accept who we are and what is difficult, it will be easier for us to understand, learn to respect and love our values and live by them, which paradoxically is precisely what makes us happier.

James Baldwin perfectly summed up the potential benefits of practising mindfulness in the following quote:

‘Not everything that’s faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed that is not faced.’

So find your strength in true mindfulness and bravely dive into the very core of human vulnerability! And never forget that in it lies your brilliance. ;)

BENEFITS OF MINDFULNESS

Mindfulness, or mindful awareness promotes different aspects of our wellbeing and helps improve many facets of our lives:

M – Making a friend of discomfort (paradoxically, accepting discomfort teaches us to be less distressed and anxious)

I – Intentional choices (we strengthen responsibility for making conscious choices as opposed to acting on our instincts)

N – saying NO to resistance, control and judgement! Instead saying YES to being gentle towards yourself and others :)

D – Due respect for others (by strengthening healthy empathy, i.e. being compassionate towards yourself and others, through practising a non-judgemental and friendly attitude towards what is there)

F – Focus (we strengthen our focus on a purposefully selected object of attention and reverting to it when the mind naturally wanders off somewhere else)

U – Unburdening (because by accepting what is there we can allow the unpleasant sensations and emotions to become less intense)

L – Living (regular practice strengthens us to function each day in a more healthy way)

N – Nurturing wisdom (because heightened awareness of our internal and external states is a necessary, even if not sufficient, prerequisite for wisdom)

E – Emotional health (which we strengthen in multiple ways, especially by creating even a millisecond of space between stimuli and our reactions, which is the foundation of emotion regulation)

S – Stress management! (since practice often leads to increased relaxation; plus it’s always more difficult to upset people who are physically relaxed and do not resist what there already is ;)  )

S - Staying happy (as previously emphasised, we increase our sense of happiness by being aware of and existing in the here and now and by reinforcing our choice to live and repeatedly choose lives that are compatible with our sense of self and our values; finally, numerous studies have reported increased activation in the left cerebral hemisphere, which processes pleasant emotions, after only eight weeks of everyday mindfulness practice).

MY EDUCATION AND RELATIONSHIP WITH MINDFULNESS

My mindfulness journey started in 2017, when I attended my first group course in mindfulness meditation at the KBT opcija private psychological practice-and was blown away! Dragica Barbarić, psychologist, cognitive-behavioural therapist and one of the foremost, or in my opinion the foremost, expert in mindfulness meditation in Croatia, guided me in a truly exceptional and expert way through my introduction to the benefits of mindfulness meditation. I cannot thank her enough for this! Since then, I have been actively practising mindfulness meditation in my private life. I can sincerely say that mindfulness meditation has helped me immensely in the most challenging moments of my life and every time I start practising it more intensely I quickly feel that I am becoming more relaxed, that I can face difficult matters with more ease and how much calmer I approach every challenging situation, choose my behaviour more consciously and notice when my mind wanders off, all of which helps me revert to the object of its attention more easily and successfully.

Recently, in 2022, I attended another group course at KBT opcija. One of the instructors was the wonderful Laura Mirić, a psychologist that also impressed me with her warmth and amazing expert and people skills! I loved revisiting mindfulness in a group setting and revising everything I need to practice it properly and to be able to explain it even better to my clients.

All of these are the reasons why I make a genuine effort to offer my clients tools from this area. I truly believe mindfulness is a very useful, yet perfectly clear and easily accessible exercise whose goal is to increase awareness and presence in the modern 21st century, which is not always easy but is invaluable. I encourage you to try it yourself and will gladly help you on your journey!