What Is Mindfulness?
United States Department of Homeland Security
Key Points
- Mindlessness includes reactivity, dissociation, automaticity, and multitasking.
- This part of the brain is indispensable for our survival.
- We need it to regulate vital functions and our responses to danger.
- Mindfulness is about paying attention, for a purpose, in the present moment, without judging.
- Mindfulness involves a combination of awareness and acceptance.
- Human observation changes everything in the universe, including the mind itself.
- An overfocus on the future leads to anxiety. An overfocus on the past leads to anger and depression.
- Once we learn to be present in the present, we can face the future or the past.
- Trauma processing only works when a client is grounded in the present.
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Transcript
Greetings and welcome to the first video in this module. In this video, we will contrast mindlessness vs mindfulness and explain why we need a balance of both. So, let’s get started.
Before we talk about what mindfulness is, let’s first talk about what mindfulness is not. In other words, what’s the opposite of mindfulness? Mindlessness. Examples of mindlessness include reactivity, automaticity, dissociation, and multitasking. Now, one of the things we need to understand about mindlessness is that mindlessness is not the enemy. On the contrary, we need mindlessness. Hear me out on this.
Muesse, M. W. (2011). Practicing mindfulness: An introduction to meditation. The Teaching Company.
Our survival as a species has depended on having part of the brain that can operate on autopilot. For example, digestion, respiration, circulation, these are all examples of things the brain can do on its own without any input from our conscious mind. In fact, our response to danger and crisis such as fight, flight, and freeze are also examples of things the brain can do both automatically and reactively without conscious awareness.
Muesse, M. W. (2011). Practicing mindfulness: An introduction to meditation. The Teaching Company.