At a presentation last month titled "If Not Now, Zen?", Blaise Aguirre, M.D. (Medical Director, McLean Hospital, Harvard Medical School) offered a hierarchical list of "Mindfulness Skills". Slightly edited for parallelism and style:
Observe
Just notice your experience (thoughts, feelings, sensations) without labeling them.
* Just notice and attend with all of your senses.
* Describe
Put words to the experience (fact, not opinion).
* Act as if you are a researcher making observations for an experiment.
* Notice judgmental words and labels as these can cause distress.
* Participate
Participate without self-consciousness.
* Enter fully into the experience.
* Don't separate yourself from the activity.
* Participate in the moment you are in as if that moment is all that matters.
*
HOW Skills
With intention
* Without judgment
Judgments are short-hand assessments of an experience and inherently miss or leave out information.
* Common judgments are: good, bad, stupid, ugly, pretty or what "should" or "should not be."
* Judgments get in the way of evaluating and assessing.
* Judgments prevent further curiosity.
* Judgments are often habitual.
* Judgments enhance "negative" emotions (sadness, anger, guilt, shame).
* Focusing on one thing in the moment
One-mindfully is deceivingly simple.
* Do one and only one thing in the moment.
* Let go of attempts to multi-task.
* Non reactively
Simply observe: Don't suppress or enhance.
* Be open, curious, accepting.
* Patiently allow emotions and sensations to unfold in their own time. Breathe!
* Effectively
Do what the situation calls for.
* Let go of being right and turn to being effective.
* Build awareness so that you do not make the situation worse.
^z - 2014-06-24