How can one learn mindfulness?
The best way to learn the practice of mindfulness is in a group over an extended period of time (6-10 weeks). This is because learning mindfulness is really about developing a new faculty and learning to integrate it into our daily lives. It is much like learning a new physical skill. First we need to develop the flexibility and strengthen the “muscles” involved in the physical skill through exercises or formal practice.
Then, we learn to actually use the skill made possible by that new strength and flexibility. When we learn mindfulness, we usually first learn to strengthen our “mindfulness muscle” by engaging in formal meditation practice. We then work on applying this new skill in our daily lives. This is why a single-session workshop is not as effective as a multi-week course.
A group environment has been found to be particularly conducive to learning mindfulness because it provides more opportunities for learning and it offers additional support that is helpful in countering the frustrations involved with learning something totally new. To the first point, being in a class offers the advantage of allowing one to learn from the experience of one’s classmates. To the second point, learning meditation and mindfulness can initially be a frustrating experience. When we learn formal meditation we are teaching our mind (that part of us that we most identify with) to behave in a totally different fashion. We are teaching it to let go of all judgments and evaluations and simply observe the object of our awareness as it exists from moment to moment. When thoughts arise, we learn to release the thought and gently return to the chosen object of awareness. This may sound simple, but it is very different from our normal mental habit, and doing it can sometimes feel like a real challenge.
When we bring this practice into our daily lives, we are really learning a totally different way of being in relation to our experiences in the world. We are practicing being present with both the pleasant and difficult things that come up. While this is conceptually not complicated, it is completely at odds with our conditioning – the habits of mind that have been built up and socially reinforced since birth. So, both the formal meditation practice and the application of mindfulness in our daily lives can feel frustrating at first. When we learn this in a group, we see that we are not alone in our struggles with these practices and it is much easier not to become discouraged.
