Mindfulness: How It Works & Tips for Getting Started

A Definition of Mindfulness

Mindfulness is a way of being with yourself and the world. It’s paying attention, noticing, experiencing, doing, and being right here, right now.¹ Mindfulness is both a skill (techniques you can learn and develop) and a way of being (it can become an integral part of you, a character trait) that allows you to experience yourself, others, and situations at face value rather than anxiously worrying about how things should be or what might or might not happen.²

When you are mindful, you intentionally focus your attention on the present moment and involves the following techniques for stress-reduction:³

• Focusing purposefully on the present moment
• Open awareness, observing without judging
• Paying attention in a sustained way to increase keen awareness of what is
• Learning to let go of evaluations so you can love yourself, others, and your life with ease

Unfortunately, many of us don’t experience our own lives to their fullest because our minds are prone to wandering. According to data revealed in a 2010 Harvard study, the human mind wanders 46.9 percent of its waking hours.⁴ This means that almost half of our time, we’re not paying attention to our own lives. This can be a problem because, according to one of the study’s authors, “How often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go [worrying about the past or future] is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged.”⁴

People don’t mind-wander, allowing their thoughts to drift away from the present moment, because they’re unhappy; instead, they’re unhappy in part because their minds aren’t centered in the present movement. Too often, it can seem like we live stuck in our minds in near-constant worry, fear, rumination, depression, automatic negative thoughts, and problem-solving mode—mindfulness allows us a break from this.⁵

Mindfulness does not mean ignoring or avoiding problems; on the contrary, developing mindfulness skills like observation, awareness, acceptance, and openness to what is right now allows you to live your full life, riding the wild roller coaster of ups, downs, twists, and turns in a state of calm presence.⁶

Is There a Difference Between Mindfulness and Meditation?

Mindfulness and meditation are quite similar, but they aren’t identical practices. Both share the fundamental quality of calming and focusing the mind but in subtly different ways. Meditation refers to the formal practice of sitting for a period of time in quiet stillness, your attention turned inward and focused on something specific. That something depends on the type of mediation you’re engaged in.

During a lovingkindness meditation, for example, your mind is centered on sending positive thoughts to others and yourself, while in a transcendental meditation you repeat a word, sound, or phrase for the duration of your experience.⁷

There is a type of meditation called mindfulness meditation, in which you devote your formal meditation time to concentrating on the present moment, what you are experiencing during the meditation.

While a type of meditation, mindfulness also exists on its own, as an informal but intentional experience. Mindfulness is being aware of your moment, using all of your senses to pull your wandering mind into the present so you can fully experience it. Here, mindfulness isn’t done seated for a block of time but is an integral part of your life, wherever you are and whatever you’re doing.

Living mindfully, fully participating in each moment of your life, offers incredible benefits for your total health and quality of life.

The Benefits of Mindfulness

Mindfulness retrains the brain and changes how you approach problems and challenges so you respond thoughtfully rather than reacting with strong, negative thoughts and emotions.⁸ When your mind is full of the present moment and all its sensory experiences, there isn’t room left for racing thoughts, negative beliefs, regrets, worries, or anything else that keeps us wandering out of our real life.

Numerous studies have examined the effects of mindfulness on mental health, physical health, and overall well-being.^2,6,9,10
Research is revealing numerous benefits of mindfulness, including:

• Decreased anxiety: Catching yourself stuck in regrets about the past or worries about the future and then redirecting yourself to your present moment teaches your brain what to pay attention to. When you’re not paying attention to your anxieties, they shrink in importance.
• Reduced depression: Depression (and other mental health disorders, including anxiety) involves automatic negative thoughts that become all-consuming. These thoughts are distorted, but when you replace rumination over them with non-judgemental observations about the present moment, depression symptoms begin to ease.
• Self-acceptance: Mindfulness involves observing yourself neutrally and letting yourself be in each moment as it unfolds. As you drop harsh labels and negative judgements, your self-confidence gets a natural boost.
• Emotional and behavioral regulation: Mindfulness grounds you in the present moment and helps you see things neutrally. It helps you pause and choose your responses to negative people and situations thoughtfully rather than reacting strongly or irrationally.
• Increased attention span: As you train your mind to concentrate on sensations or experiences in the present moment, you boost its ability to focus and sustain attention.
• Better sleep: Mindfulness increases the length and quality of sleep, something that in and of itself improves mental and physical health.
• Reduction in pain: Chronic pain can demand your full attention, which fuels the sensation of pain. Mindfulness helps turn your attention elsewhere to help you experience sensations other than pain, and it helps you engage in activities you might otherwise avoid.
• Improved immune system function: While researchers still aren’t quite sure how it works, practicing mindfulness has been shown to boost the immune system to keep you healthy.

Learning and practicing mindfulness allows you to take your life back from anxiety, stress, depression, and other mental health challenges. A mind living in the present is a mind that lives with purpose, doing things intentionally, moment by moment, to create a life in alignment with its own values.⁶

Types of Mindfulness Practices

Because the human mind is prone to wandering and judging, mindfulness doesn’t often happen naturally. It is a skill that is in reach of everyone, however, and can be developed with purpose, patience, and practice. There are different types of mindfulness practices to help you do just that, including meditation, breathing, and visualization.

Mindfulness practices can be formal or informal. Formal practices involve devoting time every day to practicing mindfulness. You can also practice mindfulness informally, integrating the experience into your daily activities by catching yourself when you get caught up in your wandering mind and then returning your attention to your present moment.

The following types of mindfulness practices all involve focusing on the here-and-now with your senses, observing your experiences without judging them, and being open to yourself, others, and your situation:⁸

Mindfulness Meditation

A type of formal meditation, mindfulness meditation involves focusing on the experience of meditation as it’s happening now. This increases awareness of the present moment and allows you to practice simply observing sensations, thoughts, or emotions without judging them or sticking with them. You observe, simply name what you notice, then return your attention so something neutral like your breath.²

Mindful Breathing

With mindful breathing, you turn your complete attention to the act and experience of breathing. Close your eyes if you’re comfortable doing so, and Inhale and exhale slowly and deeply. Feel the air entering and leaving your body, listen to its sounds, notice how your body expands and contracts. When you catch your mind wandering, gently return your attention to your breath.

Visualization

Visualization allows you to practice mindfulness to turn your attention away from distressing situations such as panic attacks, PTSD flashbacks, or an unpleasant situation like a dental visit or air travel. Here, you use mindfulness to either focus on a single object in your immediate surroundings and hold onto it in your mind, studying every detail, or you call to mind a pleasing scene and imagine it vividly, experiencing the sights, sounds, smells, and textures. When your attention wanders, just return to the visualization over and over again.

Journaling

When you journal mindfully, you get your thoughts out of your head as they occur, jotting them down in a special journal or notebook devoted to the practice. You can then attend to your thoughts to shift your perspective. Alternately, you can pick a topic to journal about, such as a favorite experience from your day, and describe the details and your own thoughts, emotions, and actions. The act of journaling is done mindfully, too, with your focus on the experience and all of the sensations accompanying it.

Mindful Movement

Here, you practice mindfulness in both mind and body, noticing sensations in your body as well as around you. This involves tuning into yourself while you move in a way that feels good to you. Taking a mindful walk is a great way to nurture your mind and body to boost mental and physical health.

Mindfulness Exercises to Try at Home

This list of sample exercises can get you started on your own mindful path of life. The idea behind all of them is the same: To use all of your senses (sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste if taste applies and is appropriate) to tune in to what you are doing in the moment. Whether you dedicate time every day for a formal practice or do these exercises throughout your day (or both), you’ll gradually become more focused and less wandering, more able to accept each moment without judging it, and calmer and better able to choose your responses to life rather than operating in reaction to things that happen.

Begin each of these with a slow, deep breath. Continue to breathe slowly and deeply as you engage in these exercises, as this type of breathing calms your sympathetic nervous system (the one responsible for your fight-or-flight stress response) and activates your parasympathetic nervous system (the calming one dubbed “rest-and-digest”).¹¹

Five Senses Practice (Simply Notice)

This exercise can help you center yourself and reset when you’re feeling particularly stressed or anxious. However, it’s not just for stressful times. Begin to get in the habit of pausing now and then to concentrate on the tangible things around you.

To practice noticing your five senses:

• Identify 5 (more or less as you desire) things you can see with your eyes.
• Note 5 sounds you can hear with your ears.
• Discover 5 scents you can smell with your nose.
• Experience 5 textures you can feel with your fingertips.
• Savor 5 unique tastes (this works at home or during a meal but isn’t a great idea on the bus)

Mindful Eating

Too often, we eat on the run, shoveling in food as we rush from one activity to the next. Or, if we do sit down, we grab our phones or turn on the TV. Mindful eating allows us to slow down and savor the food and the experience of eating it. Eating this way not only is calming, but it offers health benefits such as weight loss, blood sugar control, and improved cardiovascular health.(F12) When you eat with intention, you’re more likely to choose healthy foods, savor them, and stop eating when you’re full because you actually notice when you’re full.

Try challenging yourself to eating a mindful snack or meal at least once every day, in the following way:

• Eliminate distractions such as electronics, books, etc.
• Sit comfortably at your table.
• Choose your food wisely, selecting something that nourishes you.
• Notice and appreciate the appearance of your food, the colors and the arrangement on your plate.
• Breathe in the smells.
• Eat slowly, savoring one bite at a time and noticing the taste and feel of your food.
• Allow yourself to feel grateful for the food, your setting, and the experience.

Yoga or Tai Chi

In Sanskrit, yoga means union, the connection of mind and body. In practices like yoga or tai chi, you move your body in precise ways as you concentrate on the sensations in your body. Concentration focuses and quiets the mind to allow balance and flow. These practices help build both physical and psychological flexibility both on and off the mat. You don’t have to be able to twist yourself into a pretzel or stand on your head in order to do these mindful movement practices. Find classes for all levels in your community or online.

Body Scan

With this practice, you tune in mindfully to your body, one area at a time. This is helpful when you’re stressed and tense or if you live with chronic health conditions. You can sit in a chair or lie on a couch, bed, or floor; alternately, you can do this anytime you want to release tension and stress and be present with yourself (you can use the time spent standing in line to improve your mental and physical health).

Here is how to practice a body scan:

• Turn your attention to your feet, one at a time. Curl your toes and hold them that way for a few seconds before releasing. Notice how it feels to let go of the tension.
• Move to your calves, again one at a time. Flex them, hold, and release, again noticing how it feels.
• Progress this way gradually until you reach your head. Clench and release your jaw, your forehead muscles.
• End by squeezing your eyes shut and then slowly opening them, choosing one point on which to focus mindfully and recenter yourself.

Grateful Appreciation

In this exercise, you appreciate yourself, someone else, or an aspect of your life. This isn’t about forcing false feelings or thinking that everything is absolutely wonderful. Instead, it’s choosing to find one person or experience for which to be grateful and focusing on that instead of on problems and grumbles.

To practice grateful appreciation:

• Call to mind a recent experience, someone you care about, or something about yourself (this isn’t egotistical or narcissistic, but is part of developing a healthy sense of yourself rather than constantly finding fault with things you do).
• Spend a few moments recalling related sights, sounds, smells, actions, and emotions and allowing yourself to feel grateful for this person or experience.
• Record your thoughts in a gratitude journal.
• When you’re pausing in grateful appreciation of someone in your life, past or present, you might consider writing them a letter expressing your thoughts and feelings.

Mindful Chores

Daily tasks are rich with mindfulness opportunities. It’s easy to get lost and thought as we complete mundane chores, and unfortunately, many of those thoughts are negative or stressful. Whatever you are doing in any given moment, use it as an opportunity to be mindful. Concentrate fully on what you are doing—what do you see, hear, feel, smell, or taste? Develop the habit of noticing and fully engaging in whatever you’re doing in any moment of your life.

The Waiting Game

We spend a great deal of time waiting. We wait in long lines. We wait at red lights or in slowly moving traffic. We wait on hold when trying to make an appointment or obtain information. When we wait, it’s common for our minds to wander into worries and negative thoughts. Additionally, we may get stressed, or even angry, and our whole mind and body become agitated. The next time you find yourself waiting, engage in one of these mindfulness exercises. Challenge yourself to stay calm, focused, and present no matter how long the wait. When you catch yourself becoming impatient or your mind wandering, just return to your mindfulness exercise.

Types of Therapies that Use Mindfulness

While mindfulness can be practiced by anyone and doesn’t require a therapist or other mental health professional for guidance, it’s an integral part of several formal mental health therapies because of its many benefits. Some types of therapies that use mindfulness include mindfulness-based stress reduction, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavior therapy, and mindfulness-based pain management.

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

Founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn in the 1970s, MBSR is a formal, research-supported program offered in group settings such as hospitals, schools, and clinics. It’s typically an eight-week course that uses mindfulness meditation, yoga, and education to reduce stress, anxiety, depression, and/or pain.¹³

Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT)

This therapy is a combination of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) and mindfulness practices. In addition to learning CBT techniques to challenge and change negative thoughts, participants in MBCT learn mindfulness exercises such as meditation and breath control to shift attention and calm thoughts and emotions. It’s often conducted as a group therapy program. Research has shown it to be helpful for depression, anxiety disorders, and addictions.¹⁴

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)

Mindfulness is one of the major components of acceptance and commitment therapy. In ACT, people work with a therapist to learn and apply the principles of acceptance, defusion (separating themselves from their thoughts and emotions), mindfulness, and self-observation to define their important values and create action plans to live their lives accordingly.⁶ In ACT, mindfulness assists people in learning and applying the other aspects of this therapeutic approach.

Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)

DBT is a therapeutic approach that helps people gain skills to deal with emotional problems and unhelpful behaviors that are interring in their lives.¹⁵ Mindfulness helps people shift their focus when needed and to break out of negative thoughts and feelings that are keeping them stuck.

Mindfulness-Based Pain Management

While not a formal treatment program or therapy, mindfulness-based pain management has been shown to help people with chronic pain improve the quality of their lives. Mindfulness doesn’t directly treat underlying causes of pain, but it does reduce subjective experiences of pain to help people maintain active lives. A 2015 study used brain imaging to show that mindfulness practices do impact the brain; indeed, practicing mindfulness reduces activity in the parts of the brain that manage pain messaging.¹⁶

The History of Mindfulness

As a species, we’ve been practicing mindfulness for ages. Mindfulness may be the world’s oldest and most well-established approach to well-being.² It was first practiced over 4,000 years ago in the area currently known as the Middle East, has been part of Hinduism since its beginning over 2,500 years ago, has been used in Buddhism since it started around 500 BCE, and has been an integral part of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.¹⁷

Mindfulness is indeed an important aspect of numerous religious and spiritual traditions; however, it also exists independently. Mindfulness can be completely secular, practiced outside of any other belief system or ritual. It has persisted throughout time, spread throughout the globe, and is embraced by countless cultures and individuals because it works. It helps people decide what’s important to them and choose where they want to place their energy and attention so they can show up for each moment of their lives.

Mindfulness has the potential to help you step out of your mind and into your life. You can learn the skills, practice them, and live calmly, responding to challenges and problems rather than reacting to them or being led by them. Mindfulness puts you in control of yourself and your life.