Mindfulness versus Relaxation
“The mind is just like a muscle - the more you exercise it, the stronger it gets and the more it can expand.”
We all come to meditation hoping it will benefit us in some ways. Perhaps we hope it will help us truly relax, or sleep better.
Almost by definition, we have our own personal motivations to get something out of our practice. Otherwise, why practice at all?
So it can feel counter-intuitive to hear that it’s important to meditate without goals or expectation; instead, we are nurturing our capacity to pay attention to the moment as it is, rather than how we would like it - or ourselves - to be. This is the intention behind being ‘mindful’ - to establish a bright, open, gentle presence.
Relaxation is so important, and may well happen as a result of mindfulness practice but mindfulness and relaxation are two are very different things.
When we meditate for fixed outcome - such as to feel relaxed - we can bring the same striving mentality (so hardwired into our culture) into our practice that has perhaps led us to feel so tired or stressed in the first place. We tense into the moment rather than rest in it.
When we come to mindfulness training we often hear about the ‘seven attitudes’ that underpin our practice. These are:
non-judging, patience, beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance and letting go.
It is these foundational qualities, rather than any particular technique, that we learn in this training. Because fundamentally, mindfulness is a way of being with experience rather than an adherence to technique or outcome.
There are many pitfalls along the way - and almost no-one finds mindfulness easy. Take a fairly common example of practising the Body Scan. We might so want to feel more relaxed or calmer by the end of it, but instead, we find ourselves encountering unpleasant experience such as restlessness, agitation, boredom.
Here’s the thing. Rather than pushing this experience away, the invitation is to bring curiosity and non-judgement to whatever you are feeling, allowing it to be there and perhaps noticing: how does it (restlessness, agitation, boredom - as examples) feel in the body as sensation?
All of which is easier said than done, of course - this is where it gets so interesting, and why the practice is referred to as a form of mind training. Like all good things, it takes regular - ideally daily - repetition and gentle perseverance.
A three-minute RAIN practice to help nurture acceptance
Stop what you are doing to take three minutes out of your day.
Recognise your experience as it is. How does your body feel? What thoughts and emotions are present?
Accept your experience as it is. As far as possible, offer yourself unconditional kindness and acceptance in this moment.
Investigate sensations held in the body - gently, with curiosity, without goals, ‘rights’ or ‘wrongs’.
Nurture. As far as feels possible, treat yourself as you would a dear friend: with kindness, without judgement. Recognise that building self-compassion is also a training and takes gentle effort.
Pause to notice, again without goal or expectation, how you are.
Next time you set aside time to practice a Body Scan, or to sit feeling the natural breath, can you set aside a desire to achieve a state of relaxation, or any other outcome, and meet your experience just as it is? This is where transformation can lie.
By Lucia Cockcroft, ex-journalist, yoga and meditation teacher & and co-founder of Yoga at the Mill.
Next live streamed Mindfulness Mini Retreat: Sunday February 21,2021. All welcome. Click here.
Lucia is leading the gold standard eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course from March 6, 2021. Click here.
Weekly live streamed Mindfulness and Meditation classes on Monday and Tuesday evenings. Click here.
