A lot of people talk about mindfulness, and you might be wondering, “Well what is it?” I like to define mindfulness as the practice of being fully present with yourself as you are with a sense of openness, curiosity, and nonjudgmental attention. This means that when you are acting mindfully, you are centered in the present moment and evoking the core attitudes of mindfulness as defined by Jon Kabat-Zinn, a leader in mindfulness research. In his 1990 book, Full Catastrophe Living, Kabat-Zinn outlined the 7 core attitudes of mindfulness as: non-judging, patience, beginner’s mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go. These concepts are connected and when you learn to practice one attitude, you also learn to practice the others. Whether you are practicing sitting mindful meditations or simply using mindfulness in daily activities, you will use these core attitudes of mindfulness.

Let’s talk more about these core attitudes for a bit. Non-judging means as you might expect, not being judgmental, however, toward yourself and your experiences. When invoking the non-judging attitude, you are practicing being aware of your present moment with an openness to whatever arises. Patience means that we have faith in our ability to withstand difficulty and to allow the experience to simply unfold. When invoking the beginner’s mind, we use curiosity and wonder to observe our experiences in the moment. I like to think of this as having the mindset of a baby who is seeing things for the first time and appears delights with wonder in each moment. That is exactly beginner’s mind. Trust sounds simple enough, and at the surface level it is! It’s about trusting yourself and your experiences. However, this can be difficult for many. It’s about learning to tune into your emotions and physical sensations and self-validating your experiences. Some may say you are learning to “trust your gut” which in a way, that’s true! Non-striving means not trying to do. It’s about learning to just be and allowing each moment to unfold without interference. I like to think that non-striving also invokes a sense of gratitude or appreciation for what is. Acceptance is seeing things for how they are and not trying to change them (see what I mean when I said these attitudes are interconnected!?). With acceptance, we often begin to learn to ride the waves and go with, rather than fight against, our emotions and experiences. And lastly, letting go, sometimes referred to as non-attachment (similar to Buddhist beliefs), means we do not cling to our experiences. We often get trapped in cycles of suffering because we mentally cling to experiences such as joy and excitement and then we suffer because all our experiences are impermanent. Everything is fleeting. Letting go in mindfulness means we are practicing tracking of our experiences, simply noticing a thought, emotion, or physical sensations and then letting it go. An exercise I use with clients that really gets at this attitude of letting go is “Leaves on A Stream” where you envision setting all your thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations being placed on a leaf which floats on the surface of a stream and then letting it float away with the current.