Skip to main content

Mindfulness.

Annapoorni Balan Principal IUEF SECRETARY GENERAL for Pooma Educational Trust.
WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?
Mindfulness is the opposite of mindlessness.
It means waking up out of autopilot and ‘taking the steering wheel’ of our attention again.
We practice mindfulness by maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the surrounding environment.
Mindfulness also involves non-judgment, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings with the attitude of an impartial witness — without believing them or taking them personally.
Mindfulness is defined as:
“Paying attention;
On purpose,
in the present moment, and
non-judgmentally.”
I like this definition because it allows us to see exactly what the components of mindfulness are. Through this definition Jon shows us that there are three specific ways in which our attention ‘shifts gears’ when we practice mindfulness.
Firstly our attention is held…
1. ON PURPOSE
Mindfulness involves the conscious and deliberate direction of our attention.
When we’re on autopilot our attention is being swept up by a never ending (and not always positive) current of thought processes but when we’re mindful we ‘wake up’ and step out of that current, placing attention where we choose.
Another way of saying ‘on purpose’ is consciously. We are living more consciously, more awake, more fully ourselves when we pay attention in this way.
Secondly our attention is immersed…
2. IN THE PRESENT MOMENT
If we leave it to it’s own devices our mind habitually wanders away from the present moment. It constantly gets caught up in the replaying the past and the projecting into the future. In other words, we’re very rarely fully present in the moment.
Mindful attention, however, is completely engaged in the present moment experience – the here and now. We let go of the tension caused by wanting things to be different, the tension of constantly wanting more, and instead we accept the present moment as it is.
And third, our attention is held…
3. NON JUDGMENTALLY
When practicing mindfulness we’re not aiming to control or suppress or stop our thoughts.
We simply aim to pay attention to our experiences as they arise without judging or labelling them in any way.
Mindfulness then allows us to become the watcher of sense perceptions, thoughts and emotions as they arise without getting caught up in them and being swept away in their current.
Becoming the watcher in this way, we’re less likely to mechanically play out old habitual ways of thinking and living. It opens up a new freedom and choice in our lives.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why Schools should create social responsibility to drive change?

Why Schools should create social responsibility to drive change? A school plays a vital role in the child’s development. Children get their formal education in a school. Schools need to promote the education which is meaningful and has to be fit into the framework of the society. Today’s children will grow up and become future adults of our society. Hence if today’s children are not made aware of their social responsibility towards the community then the social issues or problem will grow more and more. There is an urgent need to foster strong mental and social health amongst today’s children so that they can connect with their peers, their elders, the community, the environment, etc. School education must empower children to be active citizens, caring, responsible and compassionate human beings. As the children spend most of the time in school, hence schools must promote the activities to sensitize children towards social responsibility to bring positive change in the soci...
12 comments
Read more

mlearning: An Innovative Pedagogical Tool

Blog write up by Mrs Suman Purohit Das mlearning: An Innovative Pedagogical Tool With the advancement of educational technology, our teaching-learning process has faced the utmost changing trends. The classroom technology trends are changing so swiftly and speedily that the teachers and educators have to keep themselves equipped to meet the expectations of a diverse classroom for optimum learning. 21st century Gen Z is born with technology in hand, that’s why these children are known as “Digital Natives”. If we do not bring innovative technology to the classrooms then our classrooms will be dull, boring and it will be difficult to engage and excite children for learning in future. Teachers have to embed technology into their innovative instructional planning. Around 5 years back on the name of educational technology, most of the schools had started changing their chalk & black boards into digital/interactive boards so called “Smart Boards”. But that also got out dat...
7 comments
Read more

Preparedness: Development of Disaster Management Skills in students 

Preparedness: Development of Disaster Management Skills in students  Education is not only assimilation of information and imparting bookish knowledge to students but that information and knowledge must be applied either for earning livelihood or saving life from any unforeseen disaster. Our curriculum covers all areas of learning through skilful education. With this purpose a textbook on disaster management, “Together towards safer India Part-III” is applied in class X course. We teach all kinds of drills such as fire evacuation, earthquake evacuation, flood evacuation etc. We explain and demonstrate all survival skills, safe construction practices, communication during disasters and sharing responsibilities. Schools are giving emphasis on practical drills while teaching such content. In past we have witnessed many unforeseen fire tragedies where the children were being involved, like the fire tragedy of Kumbakonam in which 93 children charred to death, Dabwali fire acc...
10 comments
Read more