Living in the Here and Now - Mindfulness or Mind Fullness?
Updated: May 18
Anyone else find it hard to live in the here and now?
I am forever making plans, always curious, never still … I know that it is good to learn to live mindfully and much of my time in Supervision is still spent discussing what this means and how to go about it.
Supervision
Supervision is a space therapists must attend each month to make sure we are fit to practise, a kind of insurance measure for safe working. It’s a way of quality assuring the work we do. My supervisor is a kind, supportive, compassionate person and he challenges like I’ve never been challenged before. It can be so uncomfortable, but always an enlightening and hopeful process. He makes me look at who I am, how I am and how this plays out when I am working with other people, in all the personal and professional roles I carry out. Life is all about human interactions. Until we can see our own part in them it’s difficult to see how to make interactions the best they can be, and even more difficult to help people see how they interact with others, as part of therapy.
Mindfulness or Mind Fullness
‘Mindfulness is about doing one thing at a time, about noticing your thoughts and emotions and not getting caught up with them – not judging’, says my supervisor, regularly.
This was such an alien concept for me at first. I work in a busy team, with a busy life, complete with a familyn and lots of commitments. I do also like to have time for me! I was forever multi-tasking to get things done, my mind always full of plans, deadlines, tasks and things to fit in.
Mindfulness and Me
These days I try to live my life mindfully as I move through the day. It's true that on the whole I feel calmer, more peaceful or present as a result.
From time to time I catch myself thinking that doing things one at a time still does feel like a wate of time when it’s possible to do so many more things, to a good enough standard, and therefore squeeze so much more into a day.
In this world we live in where we are told we can have it all, there’s also still a bit of me that feels I should be able to do it all and be it all too. And I find I can do it all, until I can’t and once again, I have this same conversation with my long-suffering supervisor. “Mindfulness is about living with intent”, he advises giving me a poem called Lost by D Wagoner.
I still find it hard to live in the moment, always catching myself in the future or back in the past…. but I am told it’s the trying that’s important. I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning behind 'Lost'. It helps.
Lost
You are here:
Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows.
Where you are. You must let it find you.
By,
DavidWagoner
