I am firmly of the opinion that mindfulness is not something you acquire during an 8 week course. Rather, it is a skill we all have, and formal courses help us develop that skill. Like many skills, you can acquire it in many ways, and to maintain it you need to practice.
My first experience of a formal training in mindfulness was as an amateur actor, long before I started a meditation practice or had heard of mindfulness. I started acting in the old school “stand there, say it like this” mode of acting. However, I joined some classes which introduced improvisation and method acting. In method acting the invitation is to embody the role, to feel the emotions of the character, to listen and interact with other actors. I read Constantin Stanislavski’s books on acting, and they are, on reflection, treatises on embodiment.
I have often said that theatre was one of the best trainings I have had as a manager, and arguably for life itself. Looking back, it was in many ways a great preparation for becoming a mindfulness teacher. Good theatre is as much about listening as speaking, about working closely with others, about motivation, about sticking to deadlines, about solving problems in real time, about knowing the difference between good enough and perfection, about responding to what is here and now, and about knowing yourself. Learning and acting a role is very much a form of self-exploration. Producing a play is one of the most complex and most rewarding human endeavours, working with practicalities, emotions, people and yourself.
Reflecting recently with two mindfulness colleagues, we were musing that mindfulness can be learnt in many different ways – for example dance is very much about body awareness, expressivity, emotion, and if it is dancing with others it involves relationality and responding to the moment. Opening that line of enquiry up, any activity can be a mindfulness practice. Recently I suggested to someone that weight training can be a mindfulness practice. If you practice weights to get a better body, and with your mind on other things as you lift the weights, then arguably it is not mindful. If you practice with full awareness of the body sensations of lifting, of the muscles moving together, keeping the focus on the moment, it arguably is mindful.
When I started a yoga practice, as part of my training as a mindfulness teacher, my habit of learning anything new was to strive to get the best posture, to get my body more supple. It was some time before I realised that I could approach yoga quite differently. I am quite happy now when downward dog is too much of a strain to drop down into child’s pose and tune into my body. I don’t strive for perfection. I try to focus on the movement into and out of postures, to feel the movement, and not to compare myself with others in the class or how well or badly I have done a posture before.
Jon Kabat-Zinn often says that life itself is mindfulness practice. Our formal mindfulness practices are preparations for life. We have a choice in all situations about whether we do it mindfully or not – and of course no-one can be mindful all the time. One of the most inspiring reports I had in a mindfulness class was a clinician who described how she intentionally made cleaning an elderly patient’s hands, as part of physiotherapy, into a mindfulness practice, sensing the water, the soap, the patient’s hands, the patient’s response.
Formal practice such as meditation is very valuable, and to be encouraged. However, that is not what mindfulness is all about. It is about life itself, It is about learning to live as much as we can in the moment, in our hobbies and interests, in our work. Our exercise, our social interactions, can all in themselves be opportunities to practice. Of course, we shouldn’t go into every activity trying to make it a mindful activity – that is a form of striving. However, from time to time we may choose to be a bit more mindful, and consciously bring our awareness fully into what we are doing.
So, acting mindfully is not just something for stage actors, we can all try it.
