Breathing Pause – Meditation and Mindfulness

I once wrote: “if you are attentive, you have a lot of time. If you are not attentive, you don’t even know how you waste time”. If you’ve ever tried to meditate for 20 minutes or more, you may have noticed that sometimes time just seems to stand still. 20 minutes seems like an eternity. On the other hand, in everyday life, without paying attention, one day flies by. We don’t even see it and we can think before going to sleep: “what did I do today?”

There are 2000 types of meditation. Some of them are called Mindfulness, Full Attention to the present moment. In these, the goal is to maintain the intention to stay in the here and now. If the mind gets distracted (as it does everyone else), we bring our attention back again and again to the present, always being kind to ourselves, with peace of mind that it’s okay if distractions happen in the process.

One of the best known ways is to use the breath as an anchor that brings us back to this second we are living. The breath, each inhalation and each exhalation, takes place in the present. The body is always in the present.

So we can use the body and the breath to help us have and keep our attention here and not the future and not the past.

Try this exercise from the book Awareness Games

“For a few minutes…

– try not to want anything

– Try not to get anything

– Try not to hit anything

– Try not to plan anything

– Try not to do anything”

Just try to take a break from wanting, getting, achieving, planning, doing…

Breathe, inhale, exhale…

You will soon be able to go back to wanting, obtaining, achieving, planning, doing…

A break to breathe

Over the course of a day, you can take this break several times. At work, eating, walking, checking the cell phone. Give yourself a breather. Leave aside, even for a single breath, wishing for something, wanting, planning… after all, we can use these qualities of our mind and we can also learn that it is not necessary to spend 24 hours a day wanting, wishing, planning, etc.

Think of anything but the past or the future

Another practice from the Awareness Games book is this:

Notice whether the thoughts that arise in the mind are about the past or the future. If they are, return to the present. As many times as necessary, come back, with kindness, without self-criticism. So what is there to think about the gift? If there’s nothing to think about in the here and now, why not stop thinking a little bit, even if it’s just a few seconds?

This practice helps with what we call Cognitive Defusion: the ability to see thought as thought, in addition to allowing us the sense of presence.

“This is my gift”…

Conclusion

When we pause for breath, when we start to think more about the present than the past or the future, we begin to notice that we have a lot of time. We also begin to notice that in the present moment, most of the time, there is not a problem. A problem, in the vast majority of cases, is located in another time: in what happened now or in what may happen later.

Do you agree?

Doubts, suggestions, criticisms, write a comment!

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