Understanding the Art of Mindfulness

If you think about it, human beings are natural time travellers. No, we don’t mean physically travelling back to the future. Instead, we all have the ability to jump unconsciously into a future that has yet to happen or quickly slip into the past.

For example, do you ever find yourself thinking back to a traumatic breakup that you wish you could erase from your memory? Or perhaps you have a presentation coming up and play out a number of scenarios in your head beforehand so you can anticipate if you’ll mess it up? Sure you have.

However, the problem with contemplating and focusing on stressful past and future events means that you’re missing out on precious opportunities to engage fully in life and to just be. Ruminating on past or future events that haven’t even happened yet means you’re not properly focused on the present.

That’s when mindfulness comes in.

By adopting the principles of the ancient Buddhist practice, you can learn to better-savor the here and now. Becoming more mindful also comes with a host of benefits that includes a reduction in anxiety, depression, stress, eating disorders and sleeping disorders, PTSD – to name but a few.  

So, how do you become more mindful?

To answer this, you need to first understand the foundations that form part of the mindfulness approach. These are awareness and acceptance.

To foster the former, you would need to embrace tools that teach you to expand your focus and pay attention to your inner processes and experiences, especially those you are currently experiencing here and now.  Secondly, mindfulness teaches individuals how to observe and accept their streams of thought that run through their mind yet not become overwhelmed and run away with them.

Mindfulness is therefore very much about inner awareness and self-acceptance. And while this seems relatively simple, there is an art to being able to accept things we don’t want to think about or attend to.

The art of mindfulness teaches you how to identify and explore human consciousness as well as overcome any barriers. Most of us naturally dissociate and avoid when we go through a negative experience – i.e. we pretend it never happened. This is, in some part, a self-defense mechanism.

However, Buddhists believe that suffering is inescapable. If you are alive, you will sometimes suffer. They also realized that attempts to escape suffering (put it out of our minds) always backfires in the long run. In fact, trying to banish the negative parts of our lives creates mental disharmony and sets us up for chronic fear from our own memories, feelings and experiences.

Mindfulness attempts to foster greater emotional and mental harmony by seeing oneself as merely a human being who’s doing the best they can be doing. It’s an essential development in mental health and can greatly be enhanced when it’s accompanied by a deeper understanding of human consciousness and the human condition.

There are a host of physical practices like meditation that can help teach you how to become more mindful. Each time you embark in mindful meditation it teaches your psyche to wake up and helps you experience the fullness of your life while transforming your relationship with your problems.

The tool to help you become more mindful

The Hydrean is a tool specially designed to help you adopt the principles of mindful meditation. Shown to reduce stress, relieve anxiety, and practice being present in the moment, the tactile token helps you take control of the present, reflect and connect to what matters most.