Mindfulness in   Christian Life 

Why Mindfulness? And Why Now?

 

These days mindfulness seems to be everywhere. It is often mentioned in TV chat shows and in programmes about about health and wellbeing. The bookshops are full of it. So are the magazine racks in our supermarkets. Even as I write this, the TV channel BBC 4 is running a week of mindfulness-related stuff. 

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Mindfulness is being offered in all kinds of settings, to all sorts of people: in schools, colleges, and universities, in may businesses and even in prisons. There's a cross-party mindfulness group in Parliament. It's big in the business world, 'to help with stress' — both Apple and Google were pioneers here. And it's offered to help with a whole range of health issues: in the management of stress, recurrent depression, anxiety, pain, eating disorders, and so on. It's used in addiction recovery. In America, recent reports suggest a mindfulness-based approach to giving up smoking is four times more effective than any other'.

(On this website there is [or soon will be] a separate page for evidence about the value of mindfulness.)  

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But what's behind all this? Perhaps it's simply that today we live in such a vastly complex and frantic world, that we're all getting overloaded and buckling under the strain. There is so much 'stuff' —and so many demands being made that we're overwhelmed.  

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Last week I heard someone recommended a new iPad app that gathers together in one place, week by week, the content of 300 newspapers and magazines. The advert said, 'Get this and you'll never miss out on anything'. We simply aren't designed for all this stuff. ​Using an image from computing, Comedian Ruby Wax (who is a trained mindfulness teacher, with an Oxford MA in mindfulness), says 'We just don't have the bandwidth to manage everything that's now flooding in.' ​

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As a comparison, only a generation ago no one thought of taking exercise. Only body-builders and super-keen athletes who went to the gym. Few were much concerned about a healthy diet. Now we're all aware of the value and benefits of exercise—whether the gym, jogging or a Zumba class, and we're all aware of the idea of including 'five-a-day' fruit and veg in our diets—even if we don't often manage it. 

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Only a few years ago things like meditation were the preserve of 'excentrics', and in Church circles, contemplative prayer and quiet times were only for the especially devout. Today we're beginning to realize that they are good for everyone.

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'One day people will think it every bit as natural and ordinary to spend
a few minutes each day in meditation as it is to clean their teeth.'  

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What is mindfulness?

 

​Mindfulness has been defined in many ways. Perhaps the best way to answer is to ask the slightly different question, Not, 'What is mindfulness? but 'What is it to be mindful?' The answer is along the lines:

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We are being mindful when we are fully engaged with life, and fully aware of what is going on, both in us and around us. We are being mindful when we are fully present to the people we are with and to the world we live in.

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How does mindfulness work? What is involved?

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Through guided mindfulness practices we can learn to be more aware of what's happening within us: with our breathing, in our bodies, in our minds, and with our emotions. In all of this, the aim is not (as is often imagined) to control or to fix, or even to change anything or to achieve some special state. Rather, once we are aware of what's going on in us and how we react to things (to least our own thoughts and feelings) so we have the opportunity to learn to let go of the things that are not helpful to us. 

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So, in short we're learning:

 

First, to notice what's going on.

 

Secondly, to let go of anything that's unhelpful, or even damaging — anything that prevents us from being open to God and open to that fulness of life which he promises, offers, and is ever at work to enable.  

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Notice that this involves learning. It doesn't all happen in an instant. We are learning to norice, learning to let go. That's why God gives us the time necessary to grow and change, or rather to be changed. And that's why, beyond learning to notice and learning to let go of what's unhelpful, we are also learning to trust in God and his endless goodwill towards us. 

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​​Here it's worth mentioning that all of us are mindful some of the time. We're mindful when we're fully engrossed in something we are doing—that might be when we're captures by a piece of music, when we're absorbed in watching children play, when we're pottering in the garden. In fact, it could be said, that being mindful is natural to us—but somehow that natural mindfulness has become overlaid with all sorts of unhelpful stuff. We've become distanced from our own selves and our own 'natural state.' 

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