Written by Lizabeth Roemer and Josh Bartok.
Descriptions of mindfulness practice (meeting our minds with compassionate, present-moment awareness) often focus on formal practice, which is basically setting time aside to focus solely on the practice, as with meditation. Setting aside time to build the skill of paying attention to our thoughts, sensations, and emotions can help us to be more able to bring this kind of awareness to our lives.
However, informal practice, or bringing mindful awareness directly into the middle of our daily activities, is also an important part of building this skill and of enriching our lives. In fact, Lucas Morgan and other collaborators working with Sue Orsillo and me found that reports of ongoing informal practice were significantly associated with maintenance of gains (both anxiety reduction and increased quality of life) from our treatment for generalized anxiety disorder (Morgan and colleagues, 2014). In other words, folks who continued to intentionally practice compassionate, spacious awareness during daily activities had the most long-lasting positive effects from their previous therapy experiences.
Building these skills of compassionate awareness throughout our day can interrupt cycles of anxiety, enhance the quality of our daily life, and prepare us to more effectively engage in values-based actions even when we are feeling emotionally overwhelmed.
So what might it look like to bring mindfulness directly into our lives? According to Jon Kabat-Zinn (1994), mindfulness involves paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally. While situations, thoughts, reactions, and emotions can naturally grab our attention, we can also gently direct our attention to what we choose, unhooking from what hooks us and returning to our intentional awareness again and again. It can be helpful to start with neutral contexts and then build up to practicing in more stressful situations.
In my own life, and in my work with folks struggling with anxiety, practicing mindfulness during regular daily tasks has been of great benefit. We can bring our awareness to the sheer physicality of brushing our teeth, washing our body in the shower, folding clothes, taking out the trash, or making breakfast for our families. Early in my own learning about mindfulness, I read The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh and was struck by the possibility of washing dishes by bringing my attention directly to the visual and tactile sensations of the warm soapy water on the dishes and the sound of scrubbing—rather than being lost in my thoughts of what I wanted or needed to do next, or how much of my valuable time the dish washing was “taking up.” But through my repeated and intentional practicing with my mind, unhooking and returning awareness to the task, washing dishes became an opportunity to actually be present in this moment, rather than get lost in ruminations about past moments or plans and worries about future moments.
Each time my mind wandered, I could notice the wandering and then gently bring my mind back to the experience of washing this cup or that dish, again and again. When we tie these practices to regular tasks, we can more easily notice our wandering minds and strengthen our abilities to shift our attention. Although formal practice can also help to develop this skill, people often have such busy lives that it is hard to set up consistent practices separate from our responsibilities. Informal practice during daily tasks allows us to do this kind of practice while also keeping up with the responsibilities and necessities of our lives.
We can also bring our awareness to our bodies, our physical embodiments, throughout our day. We can walk while bringing our attention to the movement of our limbs and the sensations throughout our feet, or stand at the bus stop noticing what the ground or the sensation of the air on our skin feel like. Or, we can notice where we feel our breath in our body (the nostrils? the chest? the belly?), or how our bodily position feels in a given moment. This awareness may also include noticing when we have sensations of hunger or tiredness, allowing us to respond to the messages our body sends us and contribute to our health and wellness. We may notice that criticisms or judgments arise…for instance, I often have critical thoughts when I notice joint pain as I climb the stairs. This brings me an opportunity to practice compassion in response to these experiences, including compassion for the humanness of my own critical judging and wanting things to be other than they are. Each moment of practice strengthens these habits, making it easier to use them during times of more intense stress and emotional overwhelm.
Our daily awareness practices can also include paying attention to what is happening around us. Anxiety and distress can (and so frequently do) narrow our attention, which often leads us to miss other important information in our environment. For example, sometimes when I’m teaching I focus on someone who looks bored or displeased and miss all the students who seem engaged. In addition, our thoughts naturally grab our attention… and many of us (certainly I) have developed strong habits of looking at our phones rather than looking around us.
I gave an example of bringing awareness to my environment during my commute in a previous post. We can develop habits of looking around as we transition from one place to another, including rooms in our house, or as we move from our home to any form of transportation, or from one task to another. Since the beginning of the pandemic, I, along with many others, took up an informal practice of trying to attend to and notice birds around me, both through my window and when I’m outside. This practice has also helped me to pay more attention to other aspects of the outdoors, like the changing sky, or weekly and seasonal changes embodied by trees and other plants. Shifting my attention from my internal ruminative world, or from the messages and images I’m inundated with on my phone, helps me to experience my connection to the outside world more directly. And internally, it helps me to cultivate flexibility and intentionality in my attention, so that I can use this skill when my reactivity or preconceived notions are narrowing my view of and ability to skillfully respond to any given situation.
As we build our skills of spacious, flexible, and compassionate awareness, we can also bring mindfulness to our interactions with other people. When we are having difficult conversations with a coworker, a neighbor, a friend, or a family member, we often tend to narrow in on our experience or our own thoughts and feelings and fail to take in what is happening for the other person. This can make it harder to communicate clearly, harder to be supportive and validating to the other person, and harder to take in all of the relevant information.
As we strengthen the muscle of informal mindfulness, we start to see how we can practice expanding our awareness so that we continue to be aware of what we are experiencing and also notice the tone of the other person’s voice or the look on their faces. This practice may help us to feel compassion for the other person, which may help to more effectively address the source of tension between us. Practicing spacious awareness in which our own experience and the experience of the other are both acknowledged and attended to may enhance a sense of connection that is beneficial and rewarding. When we bring this kind of caring attention to our everyday interaction with others, such as the checker at the grocery store or the waitstaff at a restaurant, we can enhance our sense of interconnection—and others’ as well!
Josh Bartok is a contemplative photographer and life coach. He is the author of two children's books and several collections of inspiring quotes.
References
Morgan, L. P., Graham, J. R., Hayes-Skelton, S. A., Orsillo, S. M., & Roemer, L. (2014). Relationships Between Amount of Post-Intervention of Mindfulness Practice and Follow-up Outcome Variables in an Acceptance-Based Behavior Therapy for Generalized Anxiety Disorder: The Importance of Informal Practice. Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science, 3(3), 173–176
Nhat Hanh, Thich (1996). The miracle of mindfulness. New York: Beacon Press.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are. New York: Hyperion
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