Practicing mindfulness looks passive, but it involves actively doing something imperceptible to anyone but you.
What other trainable skill can be acquired without seeing what an experienced practitioner does while engaging in it?
To describe what's going on under the hood, we’re forced to rely on metaphors and similes that are easy to misinterpret or take too literally. I used one in the previous sentence to compare human awareness with a car engine, which is one of many imperfect ways to describe subjective awareness.
Most of my teaching and coaching efforts involve trying to steer people's curiosity toward something they've lived inside their whole lives but evades clear description.
It's much easier to describe the content of our subjective experience than to identify the elements our brains use to construct that content.1
The content conveys meaning through narrative and interpretation. We primarily understand ourselves and the world around us through storytelling and making sense of ourselves and the world around us.
The construction of content requires all the raw materials our brains and bodies use that make narrating and interpreting possible, including sights, sounds, mental images, verbal thoughts, tastes, scents, physical sensations, and emotional feelings.
We often focus on understanding things without paying attention to the specific feelings and perceptions that help us make that understanding possible.
Practicing mindfulness shifts our focus to sensing materials directly, rather than emphasizing the content they create. While we're still aware of the content, we approach it from a different perspective, the way an artist might adopt the viewpoint of a child or outsider to encounter something familiar as if for the first time.
To explore this distinction, consider the difference between accepting situations versus sensations.
Accepting situations
Our daily lives are filled with various situations, many of which we encounter secondhand through technology, news platforms, and the internet. It’s wise, of course, to try to accept conditions that are beyond our control as best as we can.
However, doing so implies accepting the content—the story or interpretation—of the situation. When people use phrases like "just let it go," "it is what it is," or "let them," they are encouraging the acceptance of the underlying content of whatever is troubling you at that moment.
While this can be empowering, it’s not the shift I mean when I encourage people to develop phenomenal awareness.
Accepting sensations
Exercising your attention involves accepting sensations rather than situations. By breaking situations down into their sensory details, we can untangle the narrative and live more effectively with the elements that make up every possible story.
When I catch a cold, for example, I try to accept it as an inconvenient situation. This approach may work for a few days, but eventually, I become frustrated by how long it lasts. The more I resist or ignore my symptoms, the more miserable the experience becomes.
Focusing on sensations, however, changes the experience entirely.
This could include:
observing the palpable indications of my energy level
detecting clues about my mood
feeling the specific itches, aches, and the effects of medications
recognizing a lack of appetite and its influence on how food smells or tastes
reflecting on the images my mind creates related to being unwell, including memories of past illnesses and fears about future ones.
staying curious about the subtle resistance I feel towards unpleasant sensations, thoughts, and feelings associated with being sick.
These shifts don't cure what's happening in my body; rather, they change how I relate to it as it unfolds at a pace beyond my control.
Cultivating sensory acceptance
To make our mindfulness practice truly liberating, we must become connoisseurs of the ordinary phenomena that make up every situation. No duration of mindful awareness is too brief. Each one contributes to the accrual of an imaginable capacity for inhabiting life more fully.
It's essential to practice breaking down a broad variety of circumstances into their sensory components—not just the unpleasant ones, but more of them in general, regardless of whether they're pleasant or unpleasant.
This approach paradoxically makes enjoyable moments feel more vibrant while diminishing the impact of unpleasant ones, even though these life-changing contrasts will remain invisible to others.
Exercise
This attention exercise investigates the contrast between stable and dynamic sensations.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
cooling down after a workout
navigating unwanted alertness in the middle of the night
savoring part of a quiet weekend morning by yourself
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