Mindfulness is Simple and Complicated

As the title of this post says, mindfulness is simultaneously simple and complicated. When I say that mindfulness is complicated, what I mean is that there is a lot to the subject in terms of practice, theory, and philosophy. Whole books can be written about the practice of mindfulness, and whole books can be written about the theoretical and philosophical aspects of mindfulness too. When I say that books can be written about these various aspects of mindfulness, I don't mean short pamphlet-sized books. I still remember when I first downloaded the eBook version of Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living, which is a very famous book on mindfulness. I was amazed by how many pages it had. I've never owned a physical copy of that book so I don't know how many pages the physical version has, but the eBook version I bought had over 4,000 pages. Wow! Most eBooks I read have between 1,000 and 2,000 pages. But even a 4,000 page eBook isn't enough to teach everything there is to know about mindfulness. These days, you can go further than just learning through books and get actual university degrees in mindfulness. Lesley University offers a master's degree program in mindfulness studies. A few other universities do too. Even if you don't want to spend years getting a degree in mindfulness, there are still shorter courses you can take that only last several weeks rather than two or three years. From all this, I'm sure you can see why I say that mindfulness is complicated. I consider myself semi-obsessed with the subject of mindfulness, but I haven't come close to reading every book on mindfulness out there or taking every course on mindfulness out there. There are just too many. I think it's important to remember that mindfulness is complicated, because that way we'll never think we know everything about it. We'll realize that there is always more to learn, more to explore, and more to understand. One reason I started this blog was to explore the subject of mindfulness. Since the subject is complicated, I will never run out of mindfulness-related things to write about. It's just a matter of making time to write (and yes I know I'm bad at that).

While mindfulness is complicated, it is simultaneously simple. I think that's also important to remember. If you just think of mindfulness as being complicated, you may end up never practicing mindfulness. You may think "It's too complicated for me to understand, and how can I practice it if I don't understand it? I first need to take a bunch of courses and read a bunch of books before I can practice mindfulness." But that's not the right way to think, because the basic practice of mindfulness is really simple. All you do is remain mindful of something. Mindful of what? Most people default to being mindful of their breathing. As you inhale, be aware of your breath as it enters you. As you exhale, be aware of your breath as it leaves you. Don't make the mistake of trying to control your breathing. If your inhale is short, just be aware that it is short. If your exhale is long, just be aware that it is long. If you notice your breathing is tense in any way, you can try to relax it. That's fine. But don't try to breathe according to a certain rhythm or anything like that. This isn't pranayama. We let our breath do its thing, and we simply remain mindful/aware of it as it does its thing. This is a very simple, straightforward, and easy practice. I do it at work. Regardless of whether I am creating pivot tables in Microsoft Excel, sitting in a meeting, or writing a Python script, I remain mindful of my breathing as I do it. Whenever I get confused while reading some of the denser mindfulness-related texts out there that cover more advanced mindfulness-related concepts and teachings, this is the basic practice I return to. If I've taken a break from studying mindfulness and don't remember much, all is good as long as I remember this basic practice of being mindful of my breathing. As long as I can do that, I gain the benefits that come with being mindful and thus make progress. As for the stuff I've forgotten, I can relearn that later.