Mindful Awareness

In a previous post I spoke about the emergent approach to change. In that post I mentioned that the neuroscience that informs this approach is ‘bottom up’ processing, whereby insight and meaning emerges of its own accord when one focuses on sensations and present moment experiencing. That’s as good a starting point as any to kick off a brief discussion about mindfulness.

Defined simply, mindfulness is the capacity to observe oneself moment by moment without judgment. Practising mindful awareness involves noticing without judgment when your mind begins to wander down the path of meaning-making, and bringing your attention back to your sensations. Such a practice develops and refines our capacity for self-awareness and enhances our sense of intimacy with ourselves as our awareness becomes ever more subtle and sophisticated.

Repeating this act builds up neuron pathways and strengthens connections to the sensory brain areas rather than connections to areas of the brain associated with self-referential storytelling. The stronger these connections to our brain’s sensory areas, the more we can experience sensations directly without the automatic association of preconceived meaning formed in past and connected to sensation. This aspect of mindfulness highlights one of the most transformative and liberating features of mindfulness, namely that it changes our relationship to experience (Fulton, 2009).

This change in relationship often manifests in terms of relief from the stress or anxiety associated with the stories attached to previous experiences (this is on top of the tranche of other positive impacts detailed in countless studies, including catalysing positive mood, positive outlook, and regulating our autonomic nervous system).

The interruption of our automated, preconceived meaning making process is also fundamental to relaxing old constructions of self with our embedded notions of limitations and incapacity that lead us to believe we are unable to aspire and achieve new things. These automatic meaning making processes that incorporate past meanings, narratives and belief structures are representative of ‘top down’ processing. By interrupting these processes, we create the opportunity to experience ourselves in the present moment from the ‘bottom up’.

This brief exploration of mindfulness barely scratches the surface, however the implication of what has been said is significant. By artfully incorporating practices designed to develop and harness a client’s mindful awareness into coaching, a client’s capacity to aspire, innovate, set goals and achieve is substantially enhanced. Engaging in the coaching process with mindful awareness also harnesses the positive affect of mindfulness while developing understanding of how to integrate this more broadly into the coachee’s life.