Mindfulness Skills

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:

• WHAT Skills
  • 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