Mindfulness Warrington

Teaching Mindfulness in the Warrington area

Understanding Mindfulness.
When we carry out tasks daily we are able to do them without thinking. Our brains are made up of neurons and they produce pathways that over time become part of our habitual, automatic lives. Things such as cleaning your teeth or putting one foot in front of another when you walk takes no effort but to learn something new, like a foreign language, at first it is difficult until the neurons have developed a strong pathway.
Mindfulness isn’t something that you do automatically, its something that you consciously have to think about, you have to choose to be mindful but once you get in to the flow of mindful awareness you may not have to think to deeply about it.
We are constantly paying attention to something at all times, we may be watching television but thinking about what happened yesterday or we may be reading a book but find we are thinking about a future appointment. This is passive attention and passive attention is involuntary, it’s the chatter that we hear all the time and mindfulness is an active rather than passive attention. An active attention requires effort and choice.
When we say we are paying attention we are using our senses; sight, sound, smells, taste and touch. We can pay attention to the noise of the fire alarm sounding or the smell of freshly baked bread as we pass the bakers and when we do this with purpose then we are being mindful but mindfulness is not just limited to our outer-senses. When we consciously look at our internal experiences such as thoughts and emotions with out letting them take over then we are being mindful, having a sense of separation from our thoughts and emotions is key.

Mindfulness is about paying attention, on purpose in a particular way without judgment.