Mindfulness: Healthy Mind for Healthy Life

Ms. V. A. Patil, Assistant Professor, Department of E& TC Engineering, SVERI’s college of Engineering, Pandharpur, Mail: vapatil@coe.sveri.ac.in

What is Mindfulness?

Mindfulness is a pretty straightforward word. Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive by what’s going on around us.

While mindfulness is inborn, it can be cultivated through proven techniquesparticularly seated, walking, standing, and moving meditation (it’s also possible lying down but often leads to sleep); short pauses we insert into everyday life; and merging meditation practice with other activities, such as yoga or sports.

When we’re mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and aware ness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’ well-being.

Mindfulness meditation gives us a time in our lives when we can suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness—to ourselves and others.

8 Things to Know About Mindfulness:

1. Mindfulness is not obscure or exotic. It’s familiar to us because it’s what we already do, how we already are. It takes many shapes and goes by many names.
2. Mindfulness is not a special added thing we do. We already have the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are. But we can cultivate these inborn qualities with simple practices that are scientifically demonstrated to benefit ourselves, our loved ones, our friends and neighbors, the people we work with, and the institutions and organizations we take part in
3. You don’t need to change. Solutions that ask us to change who we are or become something we’re not have failed us over and over again. Mindfulness recognizes and cultivates the best of who we are as human beings.
4. Mindfulness has the potential to become a transformative social phenomenon. 
5. Anyone can do it. Mindfulness practice cultivates universal human qualities and does not require anyone to change their beliefs. Everyone can benefit and it’s easy to learn.
6. It’s a way of living.  Mindfulness is more than just a practice. It brings awareness and caring into everything we do—and it cuts down needless stress. Even a little makes our lives better.
7. It’s evidence-based. We don’t have to take mindfulness on faith. Both science and experience demonstrate its positive benefits for our health, happiness, work, and relationships.
8. It sparks innovation. As we deal with our world’s increasing complexity and uncertainty, mindfulness can lead us to effective, resilient, low-cost responses to seemingly intransigent problems.

8 meditation techniques that cultivate mindfulness

1. Focused Attention: Likely the most common form of meditation, this technique uses the breath to anchor the mind and maintain awareness. Focus your attention on the breath — specifically the rise and fall of the chest — and return to the breath whenever you get distracted or notice your mind starting to wander.
2. Body Scan: This technique, which uses meditation to connect with the body, involves scanning your body from head to toe and being aware of any discomfort, sensations, or aches that exist (which could be indicators of stress and anxiety).
3. Noting: This is a mindfulness technique in which you “note” a particular thought or feeling when you become distracted during meditation. The practice of noting helps to create space and learn more about our habits, tendencies, and conditioning.
4. Loving Kindness: Instead of focusing on the breath, this technique involves focusing on the image of different people: people we know, people we don’t; people we like, people we don’t. We direct well-wishes and goodwill first to ourselves, and then, as a ripple effect, to others, which helps us let go of unhappy feelings we may be experiencing.
5. Skillful Compassion: Similar to the loving kindness meditation technique, this one involves focusing on a person you know or love and paying attention to the sensations arising from the heart. It is so named because it’s thought to be helpful in opening our hearts and minds for the benefit of other people, which in turn fosters a feeling of happiness in our own mind.
6. Visualization: This technique uses visualization, to focus on a person or something more abstract, to hold attention. The idea here is that the familiar image will help create and maintain a relaxed focus.
7. Resting Awareness: Rather than focusing on the breath or visualization, this technique involves letting the mind rest; thoughts may enter, but instead of distracting you and pulling you away from the present moment, they simply leave.
8. Reflection: For this technique, ask yourself a question, for example, “What are you most grateful for?” (Note that asking yourself a question using the second person — you — will discourage the intellectual mind from trying to answer it rationally.) Be aware of the feelings, not the thoughts that arise when you focus on the question.

How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems

Engineering work demands creativity and innovation in order to solve complex, interdisciplinary problems. But creativity and innovation skills are not emphasized in many traditional engineering courses. So, engineers enter the workforce with important analysis skills, but may struggle to “think outside the box” when it comes to creative problem-solving.

Mindfulness can help engineers strengthen their ability to generate new ideas, leading to new ways of thinking and better solutions.

In the typical technical workplace, engineers are asked to design devices, systems, or processes, which can have conflicting goals and multiple potential solutions. In general, the process for approaching these tasks is called the engineering design process. The engineering team is given or identifies a problem, defines the scope of the problem, generates many ideas for solutions, evaluates the ideas, and proposes a solution. Throughout this process, engineers engage in convergent and divergent thinking.

Convergent thinking is linear, involving going through a list of steps to get to a single correct answer.  Divergent thinking is exploring different directions from an initial problem statement to generate many possible ideas. In the design process, engineers use divergent thinking when generating ideas, so they can identify a wide range of potential solutions. They use convergent thinking when evaluating ideas to determine the optimal solution. Both types of thinking are important to finding the best final solution, but divergent thinking is particularly important for developing innovative solutions.

Engineers struggle with divergent thinking when they enter the workforce. Mindfulness facilitates divergent thinking. Mindfulness exercises such as focusing on your breath help you train your mind to be still and improve on the task at hand. The open and relaxed nature of the mindful brain allows to lean into curiosity without judgment. By learning to befriend mind, and not judge it for wandering, brainstorming is welcome, productive, and often yields more creative results. 

Mindfulness Tips for Engineers

1. Pay attention to your breath. Even, and especially, in times of stress, bring attention to your breath this will help you to mentally refocus. One deep inhale and one slow, complete exhale can go a long way.
2. Set one mindful goal. Having a specific goal in mind can be a great anchor for staying present.
3. Notice mental habits. Do you focus a lot on mistakes of the past, or worries of the future? Maybe you are simply looking forward to the weekend. Whatever the case may be, focusing back to the present will help you get more joy, and productivity, out of your current circumstances.
4. Do a body scan. Take a one-minute break from your projects to make sure your muscles, hands, feet, and jaw are not tense. Straighten your spine and lower your shoulders. Focus on maintaining this relaxed physical state and try to retain it as you return to work.

References:

1. www.mindful.org
2. How Mindfulness Can Help Engineers Solve Problems by Beth Rieken , Shauna Shapiro , Shannon Gilmartin and Sheri D. Sheppard
3. How To Practice Mindfulness: Learn to practice mindfulness meditation step-by-step by Sandip Roy