I was obliged to attend a ‘taster’ session on mindfulness.
They told me the Americans had invented it, so, as the Americans have invented
everything that is good, I thought I’d roll along. It was held in the Royal Scots Club, in
Abercromby Place. I almost headed for
the bar, but I forced myself to go into the lecture room.
A woman called Corinna McCorkindale ran the session. She was older than I’d imagined. She looked a
bit like Woody Allen, but had none of his sharp New Yorkerish wit. She did,
however, have an MA in Mindfulness from a top university, perhaps the
University of Lilliput.
There were twelve of us in all. We sat opposite each other in two rows. Ms McCorkindale said that was necessary. We needed to observe one another’s reactions. She said that the technique includes
meditation and is an ‘experiential process’ that can be practised in the workplace. She opined that the benefits included
increased productivity and a reduction in stress levels. She pointed out that
mindfulness is very much a de rigueur
science, embraced by many top companies and organisations as a tool for
employee development and well-being. I
would have preferred it if she had spoken in English rather than using clichéd business
jargon.
Ms M said that the
goal is to create a ‘mindful nation’, as, presumably, opposed to a ‘mindless
nation’ like the Dominican Republic or Venezuela. She told us that mindfulness is based on an
ancient eastern philosophy, duly secularised to fit with organisational goals
and objectives, a sort of Buddhism that might be practised on ‘Dragon’s Den.’ The key watchwords are ‘calmness’ and
‘objectivity’. It is a holistic model,
proactive rather than reactive. More
simply put, it is a ‘look at life.’ It
is heralded as a mechanism to ‘transform the art of living.’
Ms M said that there is evidence to suggest that your mental
state can be altered by adopting the technique, and you can deliberately reduce
stress levels as a consequence. She said
that mindfulness creates a feeling of ‘being present in the moment without
preference or judgment,’ rather than being present in the past and leaning
towards schizophrenia. She said that the
normal mind is chaotic, containing a jumble of conflicting thoughts,
distractions and irrelevancies crowding into what Sherlock Homes described as ‘the
lumber-room of the brain.’ She told us earnestly that mindfulness allows you to
clear out all the detritus of thought and to concentrate on a single thought
process, doing away with distractions and letting ‘things that just pop into
our head’ just pass harmlessly by. You are completely aware but not distracted,
and in a work situation, that must lead to fewer mistakes and greater
productivity.
As a demonstration, Ms M handed round a variety of fruit and
sweets for the group to select. She
asked us to concentrate purely on the objects in our hand, to use our five
senses to discover new things about such everyday objects. On close inspection,
I was struck by the almost perfect pyramidal shape of a strawberry, and the
equidistance of its seeds from each other.
Likewise, I found that a grape has a tougher skin than I had first
imagined, and is coloured in various hues of red and purple where one would assume
a more uniform colour. Ms M said that this
exercise demonstrated just how much we miss things because we take things for
granted and our brains are constantly on auto-pilot. To me, it demonstrated that it is a spectacular
waste of time to examine strawberries and grapes.
Ms M went on to state that mindfulness has other benefits,
too. ‘Mindful eating is the new diet,’
in which you consider very carefully what you’re cramming into your capacious
mouth. ‘Mindful driving’ is being aware
of everything that is going on on the road without distractions, which is
obviously safer, and also, may I say it, pretty obvious.
The technique ensures that you concentrate purely on one
thing at a time. You have to ‘train the brain’ to react in this way, and
mindfulness is supposed to alter the neural pathways in that organ to enable a
change in thinking, so you end up like Mr Data in ‘Star Trek: The Next Generation.’
Ms M used an analogy to demonstrate the methodology. You have to ‘train yourself to sit on the
riverbank and not in the river.’ I
wouldn’t have thought you needed much training to do that. She said that you have to ‘step back and
observe life in a detached manner, as if you are on the outside looking in’, like
Jimmy Stewart in ‘It’s A Wonderful Life.’ You also have to ‘respond, rather than let
life happen, and always be ‘alert and awake,’ rather than be fast asleep all
the time, which presumably leads to more mistakes and lower productivity at
work.
There followed a meditation exercise in which we concentrated
on our breathing, becoming aware of the mechanics of deep breathing and the
relaxation that this engenders. This was
helped by the sonorous tones of Ms M, who chanted her way through the twelve
minutes of meditation. I was waiting for her to break into a chorus of ‘Hare
Krishna, Hare, Hare Krishna,’ but she didn’t oblige. A couple of the members of
the group actually fell asleep, but this is a common phenomenon with beginners,
and tends to cease after a few sessions.
Meditation apparently ‘gives the brain a break,’ and settles the
mind. She told us that the brain cortex
actually thickens during the process, and leads to you paying attention better, so, the next time somebody calls me thick, I'll tell
them it’s my brain cortex expanding. The
idea is that there is then more space in the brain’s lumber-room to make more
meaningful and useful decisions.
She ended up by stating that that you can meditate whilst
walking, travelling on a bus or train, gardening or even dining. You can carry out this meditation exercise
anywhere, at any time, so long as you prefix each activity with the adjective ‘mindful’.
At the end of the session, eleven of the group agreed to
commit to ‘a week of mindfulness.’ I, on
the other hand, took all of the strawberries, grapes and sweets, on my way out.
