Mindfulness

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Mindfulness is made up of awareness of the present moment and acceptance.

Acceptance means many things but we can see it as

• not struggling against experiences that you can’t win against
• or that are not worth the effort.

Something that is over and done with it is an example of an experience you can’t win against. We fail to accept such experiences by going over and over them in our minds.  This can bring us a great deal of emotional pain sometimes for many years.  When you accept the experience it doesn’t mean you approve of  it. It means you let it be, that you are no longer fighting a battle that is over and done with.

Something that is not worth the effort might be red traffic lights on the way to work, a late delivery of an item that isn’t really all that important or your teenager’s untidy bedroom.

Acceptance not only saves us a lot of emotional energy but is sometimes necessary for the sake of our relationships. People in long-term relationships have various differences that are not going to change and the capacity to accept these differences could spell the difference between a long and satisfying relationship or a short one. (Some differences, of course, are ‘deal breakers’ and long term relationships cannot survive them in any satisfactory way-  for example domestic violence.)

If we accept that we have an addiction then we are more likely to do something about it. Very often the road to recovery begins with acceptance.

Acceptance is not about surrendering to what you should not surrender to and it is also not about putting up “walk all over me sign”. It is about a more skilful way of living your life, of saving your energy for what you can actually influence and of letting those things be that it is better to let be.

My online course Easy Mindfulness will teach you more about acceptance and about all aspects of mindfulness.

Image by Ankush Minda

8 Comments

 Michael Grehan 29/8/2016 09:27:19 pm

What a brilliant 3 minutes on ACCEPTANCE. As it happens, I’m struggling with accepting an inevitable episode in my life as a senior citizen.
Many thanks Padraig.

PS I’ll be keeping an eye out for any more videos on acceptance.

ReplyMary Maume 17/10/2016 10:48:54 am

I must say Padraig that the few minutes helped me to put aside worries that I cannot do anything about and allowed me to be still and be present to all the wonderful things that I can enjoy in my surroundings.
Accepting things that we cannot change gives us serenity of being able to tolerate the pain or misfortune without the added bitterness or blame that is destructive.
So thank you for those words that help us to live life as it is, not as we often wish it should be. When we cultivate this,we can enjoy the beauty around us and the people who make our lives worthwhile.

ReplyCheryl moreno 22/2/2017 11:32:03 am

Thank you so much for the free instruction i have a disease which doesnt allow me to access your courses but your free online daily posts are allowing me to work on a debilitating childhood love and kisses cheryl

ReplyMike Mcgee 20/11/2016 02:29:49 pm

Wonderful. Wonderful. A good pocket tool to carry around. Will use in my daily activities. Thanks.

Replymary murphy 30/1/2017 12:42:42 am

a great video and found it beneficial

ReplyTeresa flavin 20/5/2017 09:37:50 am

Wonderful piece of advice.I felt an instant calm listening to this video and how much sense it all made.Will definitely use it a my daily mantra.Many thanks for all your helpful advise and knowledge

ReplyTherese 26/5/2017 01:35:28 pm

Just sitting in the sun  listening to you speak about acceptance…. it made such sense to me, as in the past when I did nt accept something it felt like going against the grain. Thank you for your calming way.
Hopefully my practice of mindfullness will grow stronger.
Therese Mulreany

Pauline 23/9/2017 12:12:11 pm

Acceptance other half of Mindfulness Difficult for me to let go as u say doesn’t mean u approve or surrender to it makes sense Thank u for video help

Catharine Hannay’s book, Being You – Mindfulness for Girls, is reviewed by Lily Bennett (13)

‘Being You’ is a girl’s guide to mindfulness. Written by Catharine Hannay, this book is targeted at young/teenage girls. 

It has a clear understanding of its target audience, with the writing a perfect mix of education and entertainment. 

Home and outdoor activities

The activities are a combination of things you can do at home and outdoor activities, and a few encourage healthy eating and exercising. Each chapter focuses on different topics, such as ‘empathy and compassion’, ‘savouring pleasant moments’ amongst many others.

It’s laid out in a very easy to read manner, with large headings and not so much information that it gets cluttered. The book itself is easy to read as well, because of the balance of information and personal stories.

The book includes  input and quotes from girls in the targeted age range, and I thought it was helpful to see what other girls my age were going through and how I related.

“I thought it was helpful to see what other girls my age were going through and how I related.”

Rainbow walk

One of my favourite activities was the ‘Rainbow Walk.’

• In this, you go on a walk and try to see one object for every colour of the rainbow.

It was interesting looking at my surroundings more closely than I did before on walks, and it helped keep my mind off other things, such as people looking at me when I walk with my headphones and the noises of the construction that goes on beside my usual walk.

Even though finding something for every colour of the rainbow sounds easy, it can get harder when you get to more vibrant colours, which makes for an entertaining walk. 

Another thing it did was make me walk for longer as I was preoccupied with looking for the rainbow objects and not so focused on how far I was walking. 

What kind of conversation?

Another of my favourite activities was called ‘what kind of conversation do I want?’. This focuses on planning out difficult conversations before they take place, in the form of a script. This simple exercise helped immensely with knowing what to say during the conversation, even if the other person didn’t ‘follow the script’. During difficult conversations, people tend to freeze up and blank on what to say, but with planning your conversations out beforehand, you at least have a basic grasp on what you need to get across. See below for how to do this activity.

‘This simple exercise helped immensely with knowing what to say’

Breathing

The exercises in Chapter Five focused on breathing. It was interesting to go through all of them and see which one worked best for me. None of them needed any preparation beforehand, they were all easy to remember and the instructions were clear and easy to comprehend. Examples are ‘One Minute Mindful Breathing’, ‘Counting the Breath, and ‘Flower and Bubble Breathing’. I would definitely use them in the future if needed. See below for instructions.

Summary

Overall, this book was very good, especially for teenage girls going through stressful situations. It includes plenty of activities for anyone to do. I found it very helpful and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone looking for a mindfulness book of this type.

Some exercises

Flower and bubble breathing

• Breathe in, imagining you are smelling a flower. Count to three while breathing in.
• Hold your breath for a count of four.
• Breathe out through your mouth, imagining you are blowing bubbles.
• Count to five while breathing out.

(originally from Letting go, a girl’s guide to breaking free of stress and anxiety by C. Fonseca)

Another way to count the breath

• Breathe in slowly, saying ‘Breathing in, one” Then breathe out slowly saying ‘Breathing out one.” Repeat this, changing the number to two and continue to seven. 

What kind of conversation do I want?

• Think about an important or difficult conversation that you need to have with someone, perhaps a teacher or one of your parents. Write answers to the questions in your journal […]
• How do you feel about having this conversation?
• What would you like to say to this person?
• What would you like this person to say or not say to you during this conversation?
• What would you like this person to do or not to do during or after this conversation?

One minute of mindful breathing

• Set a timer for 60 seconds.
• Sit in an upright but comfortable posture.
• Close your eyes if that seems comfortable to you. (If you prefer you can look at a spot on the wall or the floor).
• Focus on your ordinary, normal breathing.
• When your mind wanders gently bring your attention back to your breath. (It’s completely normal for your mind to wander even within 60 seconds).

See also: Mindfulness for Students

Page image by Image by Daria Nepriakhina

In 2014, Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield interviewed me on Good Morning Britain on ITV about mindfulness following the publication of Mindfulness on the Go. At the time, interest in mindfulness was taking off in Britain. The video is about 10 minutes long which, in 2020 internet terms, is like a century. If you stay in the ‘now’ while you’re watching, the time will fly!

My 15-lesson online course Easy Mindfulness can give you a comprehensive introduction to mindfulness and complements the book though you don’t need the one to enjoy the other.

For the past few weeks I’ve been presenting corporate mindfulness events on Zoom or similar platforms. These have included a mindfulness presentation for a state agency, a workshop for students on a post-graduate university business course and a shorter presentation, recorded and to be provided as a resource, to clients of a HR agency. One public body is making my 15-lesson online course Working Well Mindfully available to staff.

The questions people ask and the reasons they give for doing these courses are the same as for non-corporate courses, in other words courses for the general public.They want to reduce stress and anxiety, enjoy greater calm and positivity and free themselves from repetitive painful thinking (going over old resentments and regrets and exaggerated pessimistic thoughts of the future). They also want to be less distracted in their work, to maintain a good balance between work and home and to drop excessive thinking about work.

What this brings home to me is that people in ‘work mode’ are the same human beings inside work and at home. Workplace programmes that enhance wellbeing are valuable in a holistic way – they improve quality of life in general and not only from nine to five.

Workplace mindfulness programmes have been shown to reduce stress and burnout. These two afflictions, (stress is an affliction when you have too much of it too much of the time) get in the way of efficient working – try making a calm choice when you’re stressed out – and also take much of the good out of life after hours.

Workplace mindfulness can address these issue for those who take part. And I would argue that even those who don’t take part benefit from the greater calm of their colleagues.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Read more on my workplace mindfulness courses here

Image by Andrej Lišakov

During the present upsurge of interest in mindfulness, I am often asked what course one needs to do to become a mindfulness teacher. My reply is that currently there is no generally recognised or required route into the general teaching of mindfulness in Ireland or the UK – no clear path in other words. The situation is probably the same in most other countries.

In my view, people who teach mindfulness should have practised it for some time, meaning years rather than months, should have attended courses and workshops in mindfulness and should have read widely in it –  but none of these is a requirement laid down by anybody.

My Professional Certificate in the Therapeutic Use of Mindfulness is aimed at people who want to incorporate mindfulness into the work they are already qualified do with individuals or groups e.g. counselling, nursing, psychology, coaching, hypnotherapy, HR etc. While it is not specifically a teaching course I know that people who teach mindfulness have found it helpful. It is a short course, three days spread over two weeks, and I present it for the Institute of Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy.

If you are in search of a specific teaching course you could look at courses run by The Sanctuary (www.sanctuary.ie) or by Bangor University in Wales (http://www.bangor.ac.uk/mindfulness). University College Dublin has, or has had, a Masters in Mindfulness Based Interventions. If you are in the UK (where there is also no requirement for specific training) you could check out courses run by Oxford, Bangor, Exeter and Aberdeen universities. The Oxford University training page is at this link. You’ll also find various shorter workshops on offer at Oxford.

Naturally, to teach specific applications such as  Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, you would need to have done the training for that specific application so my remarks above refer to the general teaching of mindfulness to groups or individuals.

Coventry University has an MSc in Mindfulness and Compassion which it says will equip students to pursue careers allied to mindfulness. More at this link.

(Page updated April 2020)

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