Mindfulness is not a panacea
Photo by Tim Goedhart on Unsplash
Ten years ago, I would have never have thought that I would be writing such a post. As a long-standing practitioner of mindfulness, I have seen my life transform with this practice. Thus, it seems counter intuitive that I would be writing an article about why it doesn’t always work.
At the outset, I want to clarify that what I am referring to as meditation and mindfulness here are not a faith based but the agnostic practices.
What I am writing here is about the practice that is being sold (in my honest opinion, oversold) as a panacea to all issues that plague humankind: stress, depression, anger, illness, performance at work, employee engagement, relationship issues, even financial problems.
People sign up for mindfulness programs believing that all of their problems will disappear once they learn how to ‘be mindful.’ The operative word here being will. Marketing messages are carefully crafted to give individuals the impression that all of their problems will be resolved, without explicitly saying so.
In fact, today, you can train to be a certified mindfulness teacher with less than 300 hours of training. Would we really offer up our mind to be trained by someone who has less than 300 hours of classroom training to do so?
My humble opinion is that this is extremely unfair to the practice, the practitioner, the history, the science and the spirit of it all. Most unfortunately, the practice that has been built and evolved over centuries by great teachers will soon be, if not already, tainted. And many people who could have benefited from it, will probably now, turn away from it.
Recently someone asked me,“Does meditation mean controlling my mind? I find it really hard to control my mind.”
In the moment I responded with an analogy: what do we do when we see water boiling on a stove or heater? Turn off the stove/heater and let the bubbles die down, until the water settles into a state of calm
Upon reflecting on this analogy further, I came up with a more detailed way of describing mindfulness using this analogy.
Warm: Most Mindfulness practices are indeed about turning off the sensory stove to let the hot mind cool and calm down.
Hot: When the mind is very hot, we need an active Mindfulness practice, for example a gratitude practice, to bring it back down to a normal state.
Boiling: Sometimes, even that is not enough. As the mind is boiling! Here we would need to use breath, movement, exercise, music or even the help of nature (i.e. forest bathing) to calm the mind.
Steaming: And then there are times when the water has already boiled over, steam is blowing out. This could have been caused by a traumatic event or an extended state of depression. In such times, we should reach out to our network of friends and family, or if required, even a therapist or a counsellor.
As you would have noticed, even in this fairly simple framework, mindfulness is not the be all, end all practice. It certainly is sure to improve the way we think and our ability to use our mind for focus, creativity, emotional balance and even understanding the emotions of others.
It is an incredible experience and a wonderful practice that can change the way we live and relate to ourselves, others and nature. But like all else, it requires patience, practice and application - all which takes time and sincere commitment. In his ancient text on how to manage the mind, Patanjali states that a practice should have three components: it should occur over an extended period of time; it must be uninterrupted, and it must be sincere.
Most importantly, it will not make all of our issues go away, and for that we should not beat ourselves (or the practice) up. Instead we should use the practice to raise our awareness on what further action we require to take in our lives.