Participating mindfully

Heya, and happy new year ^-^

Have you  tried doing something while worrying about it might seem out to others?

Quite some time ago, when I was a young adult, I was faced with the horror of the dance floor. The thought of dancing in public got my gut all twisted up and occasionally made me skip social events. If I did get to the dance floor, I would be awkwardly moving my legs from left to right and back while feeling very much out of place. Then once, after a firm refusal to join the others, I was watching the dancing crowd. I was particularly fixated on people who seemed to be one with the music. That was so mesmerizing and I was curious, so I tried to analyze their strategy of dancing. There were no patterns to be seen. Some seemed to have obtained the ability to move completely chaotically, yet so perfectly. The only common denominator seemed to be their enjoyment of the motion and the music. I decided to give this a chance, to just focus on enjoying the motion and the music. In the end it was like magic. 

How about, have you ever been so focused on doing something, that you forgot the rest of the world? Hold onto that feeling. That feeling is how  it feels like to participate mindfully. When you fully focus on doing something, while being fully aware of everything relevant, yet not getting distracted by judging yourself. I was enthusiastic to learn that entering into this feeling is a skill one can learn by practicing. Possible ways to practice this are to get immersed into tasks such as making coffee or dancing alone to music. For me it was running. Initially it was very hard and my mind was drifting. The success came when I focused onto how I was pushing the ground with the ball of my foot and on tiny jumps over the cracks in the pavement. To be honest, it felt like being a kid again.

Let me tell you another story. I sometimes feel like I'm on autopilot when it comes to social interactions. Have you felt like this? Catching yourself absorbed in your own thoughts while nodding to the other person? Or not really trying to actively be part of the interaction? Sometimes I feel like I can't help it even if I want to. I felt relieved when I read that by participating mindfully "we are present to our own lives and lives of loved ones". However, I have no clue how to actually be fully focused on a person. 

One hint came in disguise. Recently, I have been reading about micro expressions, less than a second raw reactions. So I ran with an idea of searching for these to understand better how to other participant was feeling about the conversation. Then, I started exploring different topics to see what the other persons would express on their face. I would note and continue on topics they would talk about with happiness flashing all over their face. This gave me a whole new dimension to face-to-face interactions and allowed me to learn completely new sides of people I cared about. I'm still kind of getting there and occasionally getting distracted though. Now I'm curious if there is anything special other people are focusing on in another person to keep the connection on without turning to autopiloting.

Comments

  1. aboomination9 January 2022 at 12:56

    I can relate to many of these things, but I was too busy to really think about it. But yeah, like many people I was super shy on the dance floor until like 18, when I became a party animal KEKW Also, I tend to enter standby mode when someone is talking to me. I even happens when I read a book and my thoughts ridtf off and I have to re-read an entire page ^^ Aaaanyway for now, good night!

    ReplyDelete
  2. 12ofnu30 January 2022 at 14:30

    Really!? Awyea, that is great, I was stressing so much about having such unrelatable experiences :D. And yes, I am very familiar too with this book drifting! Sometimes very infuriating, sometimes the thoughts are so good that they are worth it. For me it happens also during youtube and lectures, one of which you can just pause and rewind...

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mindfully

 Hello ^-^ The first thing I immersed myself with was mindfulness. Mindfulness helped me to get rid of my stress and calm myself. Mindfulness is a bit tricky to explain, but I will do my best to convey my understanding of it. In short, mindfulness could be described as the mastery or control over your own mind. However, in my experience, mindfulness was not quite as unallowing and as disciplinary as this description might sound. One helpful way to see the mindfulness, is to think of your mind as a young puppy being enthusiastically all over the place. This would be your mind being 'mindless' and to become mindful would mean to learn the skill of patiently guiding, steering and motivating your mind in a kind manner, as you would do with a puppy. Mindfulness can also be seen as a practical skill, with the notion that it is not enough to know the components, but it is important to bring them together by practice. I think a good parallel can be drawn to drawing. Similar to the skil...
Read more

Describing mindfully

Eyo ^-^ Mindfulness contains tools to take control of your mind. Describing allows you to become separate   from your thoughts and feelings. Describing also allows one to deal with the feelings of others as well as external pressure. You can't control what happens externally, but you can take control of what will follow internally. ~ Mindfulness is a set of tools to claim the control of your mind. These tools are  1) Wise mind skills, the  2) how  and the  3) what  skills. Wise mind is your guide and connection to your values, while how-skills deal with how to practice mindfulness and what-skills are what to actually practice. Sometimes it can be easier to understand the whole instead of trying to understand each of these two (how/what) aspects separately. What-skills,  observing ,  describing  and  participating,  build onto each other, like steps on stairs. To climb to the next one, you need to stand on the previous one.  ~ T...
Read more

Mindfulness, observing eyes wide open

Heyy ^-^ I wanted to continue some on the mindfulness by describing the other two aspects of it. Mindfulness can be seen to consist of three sets of skills. 1) Wise mind , described in the previous post , and the 2) how and 3) what skills. How-skills are about how to practice mindfulness and what-skills are what to actually practice. The how and what skills are quite intertwined. For me it was easier to understand the whole instead of trying to understand each of these two aspects separately. What-skills are observing , describing and participating . The what skills build onto each other, like steps on stairs. To climb to the next one, you need to stand on the previous one. To be able to describe, you need to be able to observe, and to be able to participate, you need to be able to describe.  ~ I will start with with the base of the stairs: observing , and doing it along the how, which is non-judgmentally, one-mindfully and effectively.  Observing non-judgmentally , is...
Read more