Introducing Mindfulness by Tessa Watt

Author:Tessa Watt
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: mindfulness, meditation, stress, anxiety, happiness
Publisher: Icon Books
Published: 2011-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

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Mindfulness of sounds is a simple practice which can be done anywhere. You can use this practice to bring your awareness into the present moment, and to help you to notice:

The difference between direct experience and concepts about that experience

Your constant reactions to your experience – liking, disliking and ignoring

The spaciousness of your awareness in which events like sounds come and go.

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13. Sensations

Now, if you like, stop reading for a few seconds. Come out of your head and right down into your body. Feel your feet on the floor, and your weight on the seat. You can do this at any moment, coming back to being in your body.

Western education trains us to put a lot of emphasis on thinking – in Descartes’ famous phrase, ‘I think therefore I am.’ Analysis, logical thinking and scientific reasoning are backbones of our belief system. Our pop songs express a different side of the story – ‘What a feeling!’, ‘Feeling groovy’, ‘Feelin’ it’, ‘You’ve lost that loving feeling’, ‘I feel good’. But what does it mean to feel?

The word ‘feeling’ can mean both a physical sensation, and an emotional state. In mindfulness training it can be helpful to make a distinction between ‘emotions’ and ‘body sensations’. Sometimes when you’re in the midst of a ‘feeling’ it can be hard to distinguish between what is physical and what is emotional – they are so closely linked. Your anger, fear or desire can be like a weather system moving in – a particular kind of energy which takes you over. But if you can really tune in to how this energy manifests in the body, and be curious about it, it will help you to simply be present with the sensations and not react blindly in your habitual way.

Our culture emphasizes the value of words and concepts, and we’re not always so good at experiencing our sensations. How can we become more sensitive to physical sensations, to the messages of our own body? It may help to explore which words might come closest to expressing your physical sensations.

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