Today's episode is all about mindfulness and it will include several activities that you can start practicing right away in your life. These can be used to lower stress, develop greater clarity, increase productivity, (while decreasing errors) help you break a bad habit. And overall become more resilient plus lead a more well-rounded, happier life. Mindfulness can do those things with regular repetition. Mindfulness can simply be defined as “awareness of the present moment with acceptance”. That sounds simple, doesn't it? Let me read it again “awareness of the present moment with acceptance”. Yeah, that sounds simple, doesn't it? But it really isn't that easy. Because what we think is our personal perception and we are in an ever-changing environment. In many ways, mindfulness seems like a simple skill, because it basically requires noticing “what is happening exactly when it is happening.” So, it's very easy to do for about a minute or two. 

However, it becomes difficult to maintain that detached observation for extended lengths of time, mainly because we're human. According to neuroscientists, we have a default mode that takes us right to problem solving. Mindfulness, on the other hand, gives us mental space and time to identify our reality and our inner truth in the moment. The roots of mindfulness go back to the SAMU Zen Buddhism tradition, where the farmers set aside a block of time in the morning and a block of time in the late afternoon to complete chores. The difference is that they completed the chores in silence and total concentration. In this practice, there was no separation between meditation and doing the activity. The subject and the object became one. Whether they were cleaning the kitchen, cutting vegetables, stacking firewood, pulling weeds or scrubbing floors, they remained present and concentrated in the moment. 

For example, with scrubbing floors, the Samu practice would be seeing the water move across the floor. The little shimmering in it, the little droplets, how it creates shapes and arches and wave like kind of streaks and perhaps hearing, hearing the water come off the mop or hearing the mop splashing in the bucket before it comes out and onto the floor. Also, the rough touch perhaps of the ward handle, the worn wooden handle on the mop, a little bit rough in places smoother than other places. The scent or smell of the soap or the disinfectant being used. All of the senses being heightened and noted during the experience. That's the basic requirement of Samu mindfulness, as previously defined as “awareness of the present moment with acceptance”. We also said, “the subject and the object become one”. 

So how can we apply mindfulness in our modern lives? First of all, we need to recognize that it is a daily awareness practice, perhaps even a modern-day ritual. It requires us to be “all in”, all into the present moment with no judgments, no problem solving. For instance, as soon as your mind turns to problem solving our default mode according to neuroscientists, we need to jump back into exploring our sense of sight, taste, touch, smell, or whatever we are currently doing, being very mindful of that activity and it can be any every day activity. So, let's talk about a few concrete examples. We can start small with breath work. Something we all have to do, right? We all breathe, like to take a morning break and an afternoon break to be just committed to concentrating on breathing. I like to do one where I breathe in through my mouth,( because I usually don't mouth breathe unless I have a cold or something) so I purposely breathe in through my mouth and pretend to swallow the sweet breath of life, visualizing that it tastes like honey and becomes a nectar that washes around by mouth. It has a sweet, thick warmth to it and then I visualize that it slides down my throat. I can feel that going all the way down my throat through the chest area into my stomach. Breathing in the sweet nectar of life. Breathing in the sweet breath of life. 

Go ahead and try it. Breathe in through your mouth and swallow the nectar. Taste it, feel it. You feel the warmth going down, down until it's into your stomach. Then on the out breath, I like to breathe out negativity, debris, toxins. Anything that is not in my best interest to have in my body anything that doesn't help with a greater life. So, let's try that together in through your mouth let the sweet nectar of life wash around your mouth cavity, roll down your throat, sweet as honey. You can feel it head down by your collarbone, then in through the back of the chest and down into the stomach. Next breathe out through your nose. Nice big breath pushing out toxins, debris, anything that no longer serves you. So, we are really making an effort to be mindful of the task, which in this case is breathing, breath work. 

Another great option is to get outside for a walk. Start to really see the trees and plants perhaps hear the wind and birds notice the sun on your skin, perhaps the wind if it's quite windy feel that on your body, hear the gravel crunching under your feet, hear the birds or the rustling of the leaves. And anytime your mind goes to problem solving mode, turn it back to the four senses. Start to ask yourself, what do I see? What do I feel? What do I hear? What can I touch? So, breath work, getting outside. And another one is simply listening to someone speak. Listening to someone speak and being like we said,” all In” listening to someone speak and intently hearing, not only what they have to say, but noting facial expressions, hand gestures, body posture, how your body might be reacting to them, or reacting to emotions of what they're saying. Recognizing the emotion in your body without judgment, just acknowledging it, and then releasing it because it was coming on by something they said, not by anything happening to you. 

One of my favorite daily activities is to recognize when I am multitasking and to finish whatever it is, and then to slow down, take a break and complete one of the techniques I just mentioned. Usually it's breath work, but sometimes it's getting outside, sometimes it's listening to someone speak. a five-step framework can be applied to just about any activity in your day to day routine to incorporate mindfulness. So, it's really easy to adapt into your life and to be able to reap the benefits. So, I'll be right back in a couple seconds and I'll explain a little further about that. (pause) So the five steps in the mindfulness framework I use are the four senses and gratitude. Pretty simple, right? So, as I mentioned, you can use it with any activity. 

Here's an example using food, the tangerine, or I have a little Halo in front of me. So often we mindlessly eat, we taste it and then keep on eating as we think of other things going on in our life. But with the mindfulness technique, we take an item of food, or a cup of a beverage, and we begin to process it with our senses. So, with the beverage you could look at it going into the cop. Coffee or tea and how it's warming your hand if your hands are on the cup and smelling the beverage and looking at it, taking some time to sip it and let it simmer in your senses. But let's take the tangerine, with looking at the outside peeling, it has some little dips and imperfections as well as varying shades of the color orange... that's basically the sense of sight. Keeping my thoughts on the visual and looking closer at the fruit I see little warped darker spots. I see how it has divots. It's not like perfectly round if I were going to draw it wouldn't be a perfect oval. It has some little curves and then as I break into the rind or the peeling or whatever you call it, my sense of smell then picks up and there's that citrusy, sweet, fresh scent of oranges. This happens to be a tangerine and it continues to scent my hands as I feel the denseness of the peeling. And as I'm getting the peeling off and the stickiness of the fruit within starts to hit my fingers perhaps, I can't wait to taste a piece and I lick some of the juice off from my fingers. Popping a little section into my mouth is what would normally happen but with mindfulness I began to break it into the small sections, the smallest sections! Normally I probably would just break it in half and then start to consume it. But in mindfulness, each little section is portioned off and I'm carefully pulling off the pulp, those tiny yellow veins that are on there, carefully putting the peeling and the pulp to the side. So, all I have is the beautiful fruit and it's kind of translucent skin... I can see the juiciness behind. Once it is in my mouth, I not only taste it but it almost explodes in a single section and the juice flows with one bite. I can feel the juice and taste the juice as it moves around my mouth. Then I feel a small smooth seed that I need to remove with my tongue and politely put it out into a napkin. And then I listen to the sound of my own chewing every tiny piece chewing slower than usual and savoring each bite. I repeat the process of examining each section, and thoroughly tasting and experiencing the fruit inside my mouth. Then, in Step five, I conclude with gratitude. And I replay the entire experience of being fully present, of being all in with all four senses, experiencing the moment in its entirety in mindfulness! As you can probably tell, you can do this with any activity in your life and any type of food. 

As some of you probably know, it takes 30 days to form a habit. So, when you select an activity that's already part of your daily life, and you slow it down and you make sure that you're doing mindfulness twice a day you become totally immersed in all of your senses. You become totally immersed in your senses for the duration of the activity. Another example is, when I'm done with this recording, I'm going outside to water the plants, as I'm watering, I'll watch the colors of the petals and the leaves change as the water hits them, so I'll apply the sense of sight. I'll hear the wind and the birds and the droplets of water as they hit the plants and the ground and apply the sense of hearing. I'll continue to apply the other senses so I'm sure you get the picture. So, four senses and gratitude, make up five steps. I mentioned in the beginning, it's simple. It's simply defined as mindfulness being “the awareness of the present moment with acceptance”, but it isn't always easy. for any length of time, I will be really excited to hear how you're able to call it in. Call in mindfulness into your daily life. Let me know!