What does mindfulness have to do with meditation or yoga?

Meditation and yoga are two ancient and powerful techniques that have been helping people for thousands of years to heal, center themselves through challenging life circumstances, and summon more fulfillment and peace into their lives.

So what about mindfulness, then? What does mindfulness have to do with meditation or yoga?

Let’s start by defining mindfulness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, American professor and creator of the Stress Reduction Clinic, calls mindfulness.

“Awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally.”

The Oxford dictionary defines mindfulness in the context of mental health as:

“A mental state achieved by concentrating on the present moment, while calmly accepting the feelings and thoughts that come to you, used as a technique to help you relax.”

To me, mindfulness is:

“The practice of fully accepting the present moment by fully accepting whoever and whatever you are in that moment, irrespective of your life situation.”

In any definition of mindfulness, the central theme is being present.

“Being” present requires “accepting” the present moment. “Accepting” the present moment means to be fully focused - to center your awareness and attention as Jon Kabat-Zinn says - on what is happening in the here and now. If you do not accept who you are in the here and now and what is happening to you, then necessarily it means that you are engaged in thinking from the lens of the ego.

Labeling what happens here and now as “good” or “bad,” is the root of ego, because it enables the ego to compare your current - present - self to your perception of self from the past or future, in either better or worse terms. Inherent in this train of thought is non-acceptance of yourself and resistance to your situation here and now. Our egos want to hoard the “good” things and run away the “bad” things, and thinking this is possible prevents us from accepting the present and therefore being present, which is how we lose our mindfulness.

If we label the here and now as bad - say when the stock market has a down day - we’ll busy ourselves resisting the fact that the stock market has already fallen and start thinking about how we can undo that fact by imagining some escape route. Either we may double down and buying more at the lower levels today to make up for the loss today with bigger gains tomorrow, or we may flat out deny that stocks often decline and create a storyline, such as “I’m a bad investor, this doesn’t happen to other people, only I lose money, I won’t be successful.” Denying or trying to undo the normal facts of life prevents us from being present, such as in this situation actually being able to not think about the day’s or make impulse decisions, but rather to just go about life, like fully enjoying a dinner date free of stress.

If we label the here and now as good - say when we’re on vacation - we’ll busy ourselves obsessing over that good thing and worrying about when it will disappear, rather than enjoying it here and now. We’ll start thinking about how fleeting the vacation is and how much we’re going to miss the beach or seeing the friends who joined us, or how life will be boring and stale again after vacation, or how much work we’ll have to do to catch up, or how long it will be before we can go on another vacation, or wishing we made more money so we could retire already and enjoy vacations all the time, and so on. Only our bodies will still be on vacation, while our minds will have already gone back to working on the myriad problems of life.

The upbeat news is that fully accepting yourself in the present is a process that occurs subconsciously and spontaneously for most people every day. For instance, if a favorite song of yours comes on and you start dancing in front of other people, then in that moment in which you started dancing, you accepted yourself and your life situation (clothing choice, body shape, dancing skills, personality, and everything else describing your life). You didn’t think “I accept myself fully;” you just started dancing. Only when your ego thinks “bad, embarrassing” thoughts and emotions do you stop dancing and stop being mindful by accepting yourself fully and being fully present. You lose presence when you consciously judge or reject parts of who and what you are.

So what does all that have to do with meditation?

There are many different kinds of meditation (for instance Zen, Vipassana, mantra, insight, visualization, sound, Chakra, etc.), but meditation serves as a tool or exercise that enables you to tap into and strengthen your mindfulness. Most meditations empower you to calm or focus your mind into a state that facilitates mindfulness (being present) and grow your ability to persist for longer and longer in this state of mindfulness. The goal of most types of meditation is to attain a state of deep mindfulness where you fully accept the present moment, wherein there is no past or future and no self or no ego, either. “Surrender to the present” is a phrase often used in guided meditations.

When thoughts or ego inevitably interrupt your mindfulness meditation and jerk you out of the present, the guidance for some styles of meditations such as Vipassana is to simply observe the thoughts, let them be for a beat, and then let them go while being open to insights that may come from observing the thoughts. In others, like contemporary Zazen, the goal is to wipe away thoughts fully and to achieve a continuous, perfectly blank mind that allows insight to suddenly strike; although this style has lost ground recently in favor of styles like Vipassana, with its more easygoing “touch and release” strategy for thoughts.

Every time you let thoughts come and then float away during meditation, you are practicing mindfulness. When you feel anxious to check your timer during meditation to know how long it has been and think that you should be doing something more productive in the real world (ego: I am frustrated with being still and not achieving), if instead you relax and let that urge go on the next exhale, this is mindfulness. When your lungs are burning during a pranayama breathwork exercise and you want to immediately suck in air through an open mouth because you are sure you’re going to die (ego: I fear death), if instead you relax and let the urge go for a few more seconds, this is mindfulness.

Meditation is a practice of strengthening your mindfulness muscle. So what does mindfulness have to do with yoga?

While yoga may seem to us modern-day practitioners as an entirely physical practice useful for getting tone, sculpted, and flexible bodies, yoga is a very ancient art invented far before the common era, whose actual purpose was deeply mental and spiritual.

The Katha Upanishad is a popular Hindu scripture which is estimated to have been written in the 5th century BCE, and says of yoga:

“When the five senses, along with the mind, remain still and the intellect is not active, that is known as the highest state. They consider yoga to be firm restraint of the senses. Then one becomes un-distracted for yoga is the arising and the passing away.”

The word “yoga” is Sanskrit for “to attach, join, harness, or yoke.” From the ancient Hindu scriptures such as the Katha Upanishad, yoga is referenced in various ways as the pursuit of yoking the body to the eternal, divine, or god self that resides within each of us. The term Ātman refers to the eternal, divine, or god self that exists within us, and the term Brahman refers to the presence or self that exists without us, permeating the entire universe. Both are the same “stuff” or essence, which means both Ātman and Brahman are one. In other words, the practice of yoga may be thought of metaphysically as empowering the yogi to realize the body and mind as one, so that the yogi may subsequently realize that their one mind and body is also one with the universe. This realization eliminates the illusion of separation of ego and enables us to enjoy the state of “Nirvana,” or the fruits of constantly remaining present and mindful.

One interesting side note is that, while Hindu and Buddhism both use yoga as a physical practice meant to elevate a spiritual practice, Buddhism holds in the principle of ​​Anattā that there is no self - or Ātman - to yoke to god - or Brahman. Buddhism nonetheless urges the practice of yoga to empower meditation in pursuit of Nirvana via the realization of the principle of ​​Anattā. In other words, similar to Hinduism, the goal of yoga in Buddhism is to empower the yogi to realize that there is no “self” which is separate from the eternal, divine, or god essence, which eliminates the illusion of separation of ego and and enables us to enjoy the state of “Nirvana.”

In any case, yoga is also revealed as a practice meant to strengthen your mindfulness muscle.

As with meditation, yoga enables your mindfulness to strengthen as you gradually learn to relax and focus on your breath and the pose, without allowing thoughts to disrupt your presence of mind.

For example, if you are holding a tough yoga pose and your limbs begin to shake or ache, the more you prevent thoughts - such as the following - from taking you out of the experience of shaking and aching, the more that the yoga builds your mindfulness muscle:

• This is way too tough

• Why am I doing this?

• I can’t do this

• I’m a failure if I fall

• I’m so strong

• I could do even harder poses

• Can anyone else see how strong I look?

In a mindful yoga practice, the reality is that it actually doesn’t matter whether you actually collapse or stay in the pose, just as it doesn’t actually matter whether or not thoughts enter your meditation space. If you do collapse, being mindful means that you simply accept that you fell and either take a rest pose, set your knees down and continue, or get back up to return to the full pose. Practicing mindfulness means doing any one of those three options without labeling the situation and yourself as “good” or “bad” and getting carried away into thoughts and past or future. 

So go try meditation or yoga! They can work wonders in helping you to learn to be fully present and build your mindfulness muscle.

However, don’t feel as if they are the only way to train in the art of being fully present. Mindfulness can serve as the underlying structure of anything that acts as a gateway to the present, and just about anything can act as a gateway into being fully present. This means mindfulness can be strengthened during Tai Chi, driving down the highway, listening to music, chopping vegetables, enjoying a good meal, and pretty much anything else you might find yourself doing in life. So long as you can relax into any present moment and fully accept yourself, you are practicing mindfulness. When you manage to let go of thoughts about your self image and not follow the ego into the past or present, you are practicing mindfulness. Put on that favorite song and enjoy practicing mindfulness.

Stay tuned for more musings on how to reduce stress or anxiety and how to live mindfully in modern society, and in doing so discover and resonate more happiness, love, peace, energy, and meaning.