When I am asked what mindfulness is sometimes I feel there isn't enough time to truly explain how life changing it can be. I think a good way of explaining it is that you capture the ‘holiday feeling’ more often which has got to be a good thing! It’s that moment when you feel your shoulders drop and you let out an unexpected, contented sigh just enjoying life as it is in the present. In a nutshell, you fully LET GO.
When we practice mindfulness we’re not striving to be elsewhere or wanting more stuff or desperate to change our situation. We accept where we are right now. We do the same thing when we’re on holiday. We eat mindfully savouring the taste, we walk mindfully enjoying the walk, we swim mindfully loving the sense of freedom in the sea.
We also let go of time stress. We spend so much of our day limited by time without even realising it. When we’re on holiday we can forget what time it is just like when we’re practising mindfulness.
There are other types of stresses that would normally limit us that we let go of on holiday and in the mindfulness practice – people stress (relationships that cause friction), world stress (less focus on the news on holiday and in the practice of mindfulness), role stress (work is left behind) etc.
We let go of all of this on holiday and in the same token, during the brief stillness and peace of mindfulness we do the same thing. So the next time someone asks me ‘what all this mindfulness stuff is about’ I will use the analogy of achieving that holiday feeling every now and then to start to explain the life changing wonder that is mindfulness.