Guide
Mindfulness means paying attention, on purpose, to what is happening in the present moment, with curiosity and without judging. It is a skill that can be trained, like a muscle.
What it isn’t
- It isn’t “emptying your mind”: your mind will wander, and that is normal.
- It isn’t a relaxation technique: you may feel restless during the exercise and that isn’t a failure.
- It isn’t a religion: the programmes used in psychology are secular and have been scientifically evaluated.
A little theory · Researchers describe mindfulness as two things: deliberately directing attention to present experience, and receiving it with curiosity, openness and acceptance (Bishop et al., 2004).
A little theory · A smartphone study with more than 2,000 people showed that the mind wanders almost half the time, and that people feel worse on average when their mind is somewhere other than on what they are doing (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010).
The central move: noticing and coming back
You place your attention on something (your breathing, your feet, sounds). Your mind wanders off into thoughts. At some point you notice. And you come back, gently. That return, repeated dozens of times, is the exercise. It trains you to step out of autopilot and rumination.
Each return counts as a repetition, like lifting a weight. A practice in which you drifted off fifty times hasn’t failed: it was fifty repetitions.
How to start
- Start short: 3 to 5 minutes a day are worth more than a long session now and then.
- Link the practice to a habit (after your coffee, before going to sleep).
- You can also practise during an everyday activity: walking, eating, showering.
A little theory · Mindfulness programmes (MBSR, MBCT) have been studied extensively. In people who have already had several depressive episodes, MBCT reduces the risk of relapse over a follow-up of just over a year (Kuyken et al., 2016); for anxiety and depression, its effects are similar to those of other validated treatments (Goldberg et al., 2018).
A word of caution
If paying attention to your body or breathing makes your anxiety rise a lot, or brings back difficult memories, keep your eyes open, choose an external anchor (sounds, your feet on the floor) and talk about it with a professional.
Worksheets to practise
- 16 · The three-minute breathing space · A brief mindfulness exercise to step out of autopilot
- 38 · The raisin · Discovering mindfulness by eating a food very slowly
- 39 · Mindful walking · Paying attention to the walking body
- 42 · Breath meditation · Coming back to the breath, again and again (mindfulness)
- 17 · The short body scan · Living in your body rather than your head (mindfulness)
- 41 · Listening to sounds, then thoughts · Observing what comes and goes (mindfulness)
Sources
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. Delacorte.
Segal, Z. V., Williams, J. M. G. & Teasdale, J. D. (2013). Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression (2nd ed.). Guilford.
Bishop, S. R., Lau, M., Shapiro, S., Carlson, L., Anderson, N. D., Carmody, J. et al. (2004). Mindfulness: A proposed operational definition. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 11(3), 230-241.
Killingsworth, M. A. & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science, 330(6006), 932.
Kuyken, W., Warren, F. C., Taylor, R. S., Whalley, B., Crane, C., Bondolfi, G. et al. (2016). Efficacy of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy in prevention of depressive relapse: An individual patient data meta-analysis from randomized trials. JAMA Psychiatry, 73(6), 565-574.
Goldberg, S. B., Tucker, R. P., Greene, P. A., Davidson, R. J., Wampold, B. E., Kearney, D. J. & Simpson, T. L. (2018). Mindfulness-based interventions for psychiatric disorders: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Clinical Psychology Review, 59, 52-60.
These worksheets do not replace therapy. If you are in distress or having suicidal thoughts, call your local emergency number (112 in Europe; 3114 in France, free, 24/7).
