ABSTRACT
The ultimate aim of learning to use mindfulness skills is not to turn us into effective meditators, but to help us to live each day more mindfully. This means being able to experience each moment through our senses, and being alive to the impact of whatever it is we are doing. Most people can remember the impact of ‘special moments’ like holding a newborn baby, or their first day in a new job, or buying those boots they saved up for. It can seem as though the rest of our time is the in-between bit; just ‘filler’ between key events. Some people talk about ‘me-time’, implying it is a limited commodity to be squeezed into an over-filled schedule, and as though the rest of the time is ‘not-me’. At one level, this concept makes sense – our minds have the ability to both create and inhabit a ‘virtual reality world’, almost like an outof-body experience. Your body can be in one place, but your mind has already leaped ahead to the next appointment in your diary. The function of mindfulness is to help us to have more in-body experiences. Marsha Linehan describes ‘participating’ as one of the three major skills in mindfulness. In this chapter, we are going to look at the factors that inhibit our ability to participate fully in the moment and explore how to be more open to our moment-by-moment experience.
