What is Mindfulness?

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Mindfulness expert Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn defines "What is mindfulness?" and discusses the hard work and rewards of practicing mindfulness.
Visit PsychAlive.org for more from this exclusive interview with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn: http://www.psychalive.org/2013/01/exclusive-interview-series-with-mindfulness-expert-dr-jon-kabat-zinn/. Mindfulness for Life a full length interview with Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn is available for purchase: http://www.glendon.org/product-post/mindfulnesss-for-life-an-interview-with-jon-kabat-zinn/.

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Mindfulness is actually a way
of connecting with your life.

And it's something
that doesn't involve a lot of energy.

It involves a kind of

cultivating attention
in a particular way.

So what--the way I define it is

it's paying attention
on purpose

in the present moment
nonjudgmentally.

And then I like to add sometimes
as if your life depended on it.

Because it does.

Attention is the faculty
that allows us to navigate our lives

in one way or another
and to actually know what's happening

or know that we don't know
what's happening

and find ways
to be in a wiser relationship to things

that are going on in our lives

than being at the mercy, say,
of our own emotional reactions

and crazy thoughts and fears
and so forth.

So, it's paying attention
on purpose

in the present moment
nonjudgmentally

as if your life depended on it.

So, paying attention to what?..
you might ask.

Well, it doesn't actually matter.

It's the attending itself
that's important,

more important than what it is
that you're paying attention to.

But that said,
if you start to pay attention

to how much attention
we pay to anything,

you begin to notice
that the mind is all over the place.

It never sits still.

This idea and that opinion
and this reaction and...

We spend a huge amount of time

planning and worrying about the future

and a huge amount of time
reminiscing about the past

and who did what to whom,
or why it worked out this way,

or why it didn't work out this way.

In the present moment
which is the only time

that we're ever alive in,

the only time
we could learn anything

express any kind of love or emotion,

the only time we could be
in our own body,

the only time we can see,
or hear, or smell,

or taste, or touch, or...

communicate
is now.

And yet the present moment
gets completely squeezed out

by all of our preoccupation
with the future and the past.

When we start to pay attention
to our own mind

and our own body,

it's like reclaiming your life.

Mindfulness is not a technique,

although there are many, many
different ways

to cultivate mindfulness.

It's actually a way of being:
being embodied,

being in some sense in equilibrium

with the comings and goings
of the outer world

and even the comings and goings
and the ups and downs

of having a body
which of course has it's wonders

and is also at sometimes
seriously problematic

when we're dealing with health problems
of one kind or another

or things that can happen to the body.

And as long as we have this capacity
for awareness

why not develop it?

Much of the time,

if you think about our educational system
and how we grow up,

we are trained more and more and more
to get into thinking.

And thinking is wonderful stuff,
very powerful.

Some of the greatest achievements
of humanity

come out of thought

and out of imagination
and out of creativity.

But the other piece of it
that's equally as powerful

as the capacity for thought

is the capacity for awareness,

but we get no training
in awareness and attention,

huge amount of training in thought,

so a lot of time when we get into bed
at the end of a long day,

we can't deal with our thoughts,
and we can't sleep.

They just kind of perseverate
over and over and over again,

the same thoughts.

We want to shut them out.

The more we try to shut them out,
the more they come in.

And pretty soon you don't get to sleep,

or you wind up
with a, basically, chronic anxiety,

or some kind of condition or other.

Depressive rumination
can spiral you into depression.

A little bit of sadness
and then that triggers

this kind of perseverating constantly
"What's wrong with me?

"Why don't people like me?
Why didn't she look at me?"

Whatever it is.
These are all thoughts "I'm no good.

"I'm too old.
I--My life is all downhill from here."

All of those things,
they're only thoughts,

but most of the time
we think of them as the truth.

So what mindfulness does, in a way,

is it embraces the actuality of the mind,
the heart, the body,

and our relationality
with the outer world

and gives us new degrees of freedom

to navigate the ups and the downs
and the ins and outs

of our relationships with life

with other people, with...

our own aspirations, and our own fears,

and also, and most fundamentally,
with our own body.

Now most of us don't want to go
anywhere near own body

except under very specialized
circumstances at particular times.

Seems like, wow it's wonderful
to have these bodily experiences.

But a lot of the time,
we're just pretty much up here,

thinking, thinking, thinking, thinking.

And really believing
so many of these thoughts as the truth

that we wind up in a very narrow band

of what's actually possible for us

in terms of our human experience.

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