Guest Writer - What I’ve learnt about Mindfulness

 By Elicia Bethell @lifeonthepen

Mindfulness and meditation are two words that we often hear floating around the mental health world due to the multitude of benefits that come with them. Unfortunately my first encounter with meditation was enough to make me want to put it in the ‘too hard basket’ and walk away. I was sitting in a lecture theatre at University where a guest speaker was presenting on the topic. At the time it was a small miracle that I had got myself to Uni as I was in the depths of my anxiety and depression, however learning about that particular topic was enough to motivate me out of bed. I had heard that meditation was good for you and could even help to lower symptoms of mood disorders. In the lecture the speaker used the analogy that your mind is a room and your thoughts are the furniture. A busy mind is like a cluttered room and meditation empties the room. While this analogy may work for some, personally I struggled with it. My perfectionist mindset told me that if I couldn’t clear my mind of thoughts entirely then I wasn’t doing it right. If I wasn’t doing it right then what was the point?

Thankfully I didn’t give up on mindfulness or meditation. Quite the opposite. Do I sit and meditate every day? No. Do I think people who can do that are amazing? Yep! It’s just not for me and that’s OK. Instead, I have found ways to integrate mindfulness in to my everyday life and have found a style of meditation that suits me better. To clarify, mindfulness is the act of being present and mediation is a tool to help you do that. I have taken up the moving meditation of yoga and I find that my mind is solely focused on my breath and my body while I do it. This means that I’m not hung up on that embarrassing thing I said yesterday or planning what I have to do tomorrow. During  Savasana (the relaxation time at the end of class) I don’t feel any pressure to stop thinking, I just try my best to focus on my breath. I find it helpful to view my mind as the sky and the thoughts as the clouds. The idea is not to necessarily clear the sky, but to notice the clouds when they appear and let them float away. Some days I can focus on my breath easily and others my mind goes crazy and I have to continually bring it back. It doesn’t matter so long as I’m noticing and am being compassionate to myself.

I am lucky that I no longer suffer from mental illness but I still use these skills in my everyday life to maintain my mental health. I put my phone down when I’m talking to my husband to make sure I’m really listening, I enjoy the tastes and textures of my food instead of wolfing it down and I notice when I’m thinking unhelpful thoughts and choose to focus on what I can see, hear, feel, taste or touch instead.

I’m also lucky enough to teach people to do the same as part of my job as a psychologist. I love hearing clients’ excuses for not trying mindfulness because they are often the same ones I had. Many of them are already being mindful when they play sport or listen to music and they don’t even realise. I just wish someone had told me sooner that there isn’t one “right” way to do it and that it isn't about stopping your thoughts, it’s simply about noticing them and choosing not to play in to the story they tell you.