Practice Mindfulness: How To Live in the Moment Fully; To Be Mindful, Attentive, Aware; To Be Present; To Be Here Now

Thinking is a useful tool for us humans. We deal with the problems of life with the mental tools of recall, foresight, and logic, powered by our emotions.

Emotions are also useful tools. Determination will get one through the storm. An angry tone will make "Stop it!" more effective. Joyous affection will make affectionate words more pleasing and memorable than if said deadpan. "Help!" yelled with some fright and urgency in it, or with some irritation and insistence in it, will more likely get attention than if said without emotion.

But just as it makes no sense to leave on a car engine, a lamp light, or a stove when it is not being used, it makes no sense to be constantly thinking thoughts and re-churning emotions, needed or not.

Especially wasteful of one's time and mind power is to replay in one's mind patterns of thoughts and emotions pertaining to a past and done incident, or to incessantly worry and fret about a future decision or eventuality. Using one's mind power for thoughts and feelings of resentment, regret, longing, apprehension, or other mental tethers to the past or future is at best of limited and short-lived usefulness and, in excess, results in wasted time and being deprived of enjoying, or at least finding interesting, the present moment and of giving full attention to its opportunities for appreciation, productivity, and creativity.

Some of the techniques I describe for being in the moment are used also in certain techniques of meditation, such as in mindfulness meditation or in mantra meditation. I have heard that mindfulness meditation and mindful living is a Buddhist tradition and that mantra meditation is a Hindu tradition. I have not studied the matter. These days many people learn and practice this or that meditation technique without associating it much with the culture in which it developed.

Here I am describing a different use of these techniques for a different purpose. The techniques that I describe below are for use when not meditating, when going about one's activities of the day. Regular meditation will accustom one's mind to focus attention in the present moment and will gently and gradually dissolve vestiges of past stresses that cause negative thoughts and feelings that keep one's attention on the past or the future. Regular meditation will thus increase the efficiency of the techniques described here, and the techniques described here will help bring into one's daily life the gains of meditation.

These techniques differ from meditation techniques in these ways: 1) They are of comparatively brief duration, and 2) It's fine to switch from one to another,which can be done in an instant. For instance, one meditation technique is to mindfully observe one's breathing for 20 minutes, half an hour, or whatever the chosen time unit and to do only that, gently and persistently returning to mindfulness of breathing whenever one's mind wanders. For present purposes, just a few seconds of mindful breathing may be sufficient to bring one's mind from wanderings in the past or future back to the present, and, once back, one can just breathe without being mindful about it. And one can breath mindfully for a little time and then switch in an instant to any of the other techniques I describe below. Variety helps make these techniques fun.

And when it really is helpful to be mentally in the past or the future, that shift, too, can be done in an instant. Say you have been musing resentfully about some rancorous argument you had with someone years ago, and you bring your attention back to now by being mindful of your in and out breaths for a few times and you get back to drafting a hubpage or to putting on your shoes or to listening to and admiring your lover. But then it comes to you – it is your turn to fix supper, and you must decide what to fix. In an instant your mind is in the past, recalling the foods your lover loves and what foods are in the pantry and the fridge. In another instant you go mentally into the future and foresee yourself preparing, perhaps, roasted vegetables and a barley salad. That settled, in an instant you return to the present to continue listening to and admiring your lover as you wonder if you missed anything important. There is nothing wrong with mentally wandering back or forth in time, when that's of help. It's just that the present is when and where life is live.

In my own experience, my bringing my mind back to full awareness of the present, of the here and now, instantly and noticeably reduces any feelings I have of anxiety, depression ('the blues'), boredom, resentment, self-pity, dread, or worry. For years I was mired in such negativity. Then circa late 1973 and early 1974 i leaned Transcendental Meditation (TM), the mantra meditation technique taught to my teacher by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Practiced for 20 minutes twice daily, very gently, very gradually, very effectively over months and years that daily routine released a lot of my built-up negativity, allowing my usual state to instead be a mellow equanimity combined with curiosity, gratitude, and fellow-feeling for all things, and I became more productive and creative. I continue to meditate more or less regularly. Regularly practicing TM or whatever other technique of deep meditation is like regularly brushing and flossing one's teeth, while using the techniques described in this article is like giving one's mouth a quick water rinse, using a toothpick, or taking a breath mint.

Thinking thoughts takes one away from the here and now into remembering, anticipating, imagining, or ratiocinating, whereas paying attention returns one mentally to, or keeps one mentally at, the here and now. Used when and while helpful, thinking thoughts is fine. But I've concluded that one's best default state of mind is paying attention to what is. Based on my experiences (which in some cases have verified what I have read and in other cases were self-discovered), listed below are simple, easy ways to bring one's wandering mind instantly back to a here-now state of awareness.

Without controlling, changing, or influencing it, notice and observe your breathing. Hear and feel each breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils, as your body, naturally and automatically, in response to its need for more oxygen or for less carbon dioxide, moves the diaphragm down and up, breathes in and out. Once being mindful of your breathing has brought your attention away from daydreams, wishful thinking, nostalgic thinking, worries, plans, and other thoughts, and your awareness is of here now, then just go about your business in a state of full awareness, taking no special notice of your breathing. When you realize that your mind has wandered again, then use the mindful of breaths technique (or any of the other techniques listed) to come back to here-now awareness.

Observing one's breathing is the handiest mindfulness technique for returning one's awareness to the present and maintaining it there, because a living person does not ever not breathe for long, but any other regularly repeated action can be mindfully observed as a way to bring one's attention to the present. If you are walking when you realize your mind has wandered, take note of your steps. If you are eating, take note of your chewing and mindfully chew each bite as long as you can. If you are rowing a boat, row mindfully. If you are petting a cat, pet mindfully. If you are rocking a rocking chair, rock mindfully. If you are copulating, copulate mindfully. If you are dancing, dance mindfully. Remember that I am not in this article discussing mindfulness meditation. For this between meditations technique, be mindful of an activity just long enough to return your attention to the present, and then just enjoy being there doing whatever seems best at that moment.

Dancing is repetitive movements, stepping in a pattern to music. Many people enjoy dancing. While dancing, they have their minds mostly on the dancing -- the movements, the music, the setting, the interactions with a partner. On the other hand, many people regard other repetitive movement activities with resistance, wishing it were over and done with even as they do it. Why not enjoy the washing dishes dance, the making the bed dance, the peeling and chopping vegetables dance, the tidying rooms dance, the doing laundry dance, the vacuuming dance, the assembling parts at the factory dance, the opening mail at the office dance, and so on? If you can't play music on a radio or player, make up music in your head. If a repetitive task is done like dancing, mindfully, without resistance, with gratitude for the mind rest, just observing one's movements, keeping the rhythm of the task, it can be done joyfully, with one's attention in the here and now.

This is like using a meditation mantra. I've found that, as I go about the routines and activities of a day, I can reduce mind chatter and keep my awareness more in the present moment if I repeat a word or phrase in my mind. One of my favorites is "hallelujah", which I sing or chant in my head.

You can't help but be aware of your here and now if you intentionally and actively look, listen, smell, feel, or taste. To bring your awareness to the present in an instant, simply look at what is in your sight. Take note if whatever is moving; or of whatever is a particular color; or of whatever is a horizontal line, a vertical line, a curve, or a fractal pattern; or of what is in light and what is in shadow;;or of whatever seems out of place; or of animals; or of persons. Make up your own things to note.

Just so, just listen. Here now I hear a clock ticking and, from outside, the tires on pavement sound of passing cars. I can't be attentive of the clock ticking and of tires whirring and be daydreaming at the same time. Perhaps where you are you hear a refrigerator motor, a bird call or song, a frog, a katydid, traffic sounds, the wind, your footsteps. Whatever you hear, or even if you are surrounded by silence, listen attentively. Just by doing that, you will be in the moment.

Touch anything and note its feel. Just doing that will instantly bring your attention to the present. Touch several things -- a desk, a cell phone, a keyboard, a chair, a water bottle, whatever – and then, your awareness in the present, go about your business. Or take note of the feel of your weight, of gravity pulling you down, or of the feel of a breeze on you skin, or of any sensation of heat or cold.

Take note of the smells coming to you. I have a terrible sense of smell, so usually I can't smell anything, but just trying to smell whatever I can brings my attention to the present. Smell, when I do smell something, is the perception most likely to bring a nostalgic memory. A gasoline smell might bring a memory of my grandfather's Model A Ford; a grass smell might bring a memory of mowing the lawn when I was a child growing up in an Illinois village; a fish smell might bring fishing memories. I welcome such memories, say an affectionate good-bye, so to speak, and give attention to the smell in its present context.

Being mindful of the lick of ice cream in your mouth is a fuller and more intense and immediate taste pleasure than will be your memory of the experience. The remember when good old days time is happening now. Notice it and live life live.

I think that a major reason the playing of games is popular, whether sport games, parlor games, card games, or board games, is that games put one's attention in the present. A game is an "excuse" during game time to not be thinking about problems, plans, arguments, and worries and to instead let one's mind enjoy living in the moment, to take a little vacation. Paying attention is part of playing a game. If while waiting for a pitch in baseball you are having Walter Mitty daydreams, or are thinking about what you should have retorted to the other driver who last month cussed at you, you will probably strike out.

If your mind is woolgathering while you are playing poker, chess, or Wheel of Fortune, you'll decrease your odds of winning. Not paying attention while active in some sports -- car racing, downhill skiing, mountain bicycling, mountain climbing, canoeing or kayaking river rapids, tightrope walking -- can lead to serious or fatal injury.

Hunting requires paying attention. If you are not alert in the moment at the crucial moment, you won't be able to act in time when the 10-point buck stands like a statue staring at you before bounding away, or when the mallard flies right over your head.

(As an aside, the best way to hunt animals is with a camera. Camera hunting season is always open; there is no limit on the number of shots, and by shooting with a camera instead of a gun, you don't deprive fellow creatures of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.)

Many sports and tasks keep one of necessity in the present. If your mind gets to thinking about the past or the future while, for instance, you are playing ping-pong, pounding a nail, riding a bicycle, playing a musical instrument, or sewing a hem -- beyond mentally imaging the future an instant ahead, your racket meeting the ball, your hammer striking the nail, your bicycle going around a pothole, your instrument sounding the correct note, your stitch continuing straight -- then you are liable to miss the ball, hammer your thumb, ride into the pothole , play a wrong note, or sew a crooked hem stitch.

If much of the time your mind must be thinking about problem solutions -- how to best manage an employee's time and abilities; what to do about your child's talking back; how to get out of debt; what to fix for supper -- then budgeting time for a sport or game you enjoy that keeps your attention here and now is a beneficial respite for your mind.

So to live a balanced life, include in it some play time. Games, sports, and other pastimes, as fits your circumstance and interest, are a fun, sometimes exhilarating, way to be in the moment.

I have never been able to play ball games like baseball or football, because my eyes can't keep a ball in focus as it speeds towards me. These days, at least in the warm months, I do enjoy scootering on my kick scooter. I mosey along taking my time, but even so I must stay alert, to avoid coming unawares to a big crack in the sidewalk.

This is one of my favorite techniques for living in the moment. Form a mental image in your mind of what you intend to do in the near future. Perhaps you intend to take a plane trip next week or intend to do grocery shopping tomorrow. Whatever is coming up for you pretty soon, picture that. Now picture what you will be doing in the even nearer future. Perhaps you intend to get the mail, get a drink of water, and see what's on TV. Keep shortening how far in the future you intend to do what you visualize now, until you visualize what you are going to do in an instant -- like in a hundredth of a second or less, or however long a brief, hardly discernible instant is. For instance, mentally see yourself sitting down on a chair an instant before you sit down on a chair, bending over an instant before you bend over, reaching with both hands for your loose shoelaces an instant before you reach with both hands for your loose shoelaces, grabbing the left and right ends of your shoelaces with your left and right hands respectively an instant before you do so, pulling your laces tight and instant before you do that, and so on.

Once you have grasped the concept of visualizing what you will do a blink of the eye in the future, don't bother with the earlier exercise of seeing your near future a week, day, hour, or minute ahead. Just see yourself a nanosecond, a blink, an instant ahead in the future, and keep doing that, instant after instant. Because an instant does not give you time to think about what you are about to do and because visualizing what you are about to do keeps your mind from thinking about the past or the farther ahead future and because perception is slow enough that in an instant and right ow are hardly discernible, the effect of mentally visualizing your actions an instant before you do them, instant after instant, is to observe yourself living in and being focused on the present, guided by intuition.

My very favorite be here now technique is similar to the last one, but it adds a fun element of pretense. My brother John Leekley writes movies. One time back in the 90s a TV movie starring Helen Hunt that John wrote, In The Company of Darkness, was being made, and some scenes were being filmed in a Chicago suburb less than an hour's drive from where I then lived. I got to visit the set one day and watch the filming, which I did with much appreciation and wide-eyed interest.

At one point the director asked me to play an in the background character, which I gladly did for the fun of it. What I've always remembered ever since about the experience is how alert and aware I was while on camera. I wanted to do my little part just right, so I would please the director and the actors and not ruin the shot with a flub. I had to be realistically in character and react appropriately without calling the audience's attention to me. When the cameras were on, I was very much aware of my every movement, my stance, my expression. The director said I did fine. My brother was glad for me that I had lucked into the opportunity to have that experience. If my memory is right, they shot the scene a few times from different angles, plus some closeups of the main characters. I was in some of the shots but not most of them; I ended up in just one brief, edited shot in the movie. I'm a background blur that you'll miss if you blink and won't notice if you don't blink, because you'll be watching the main characters.

This technique is to pretend to be on camera in the filming of the movie A Day in the Life of Brian Leekley, starring Brian Leekley. (Substitute your name.) Being "on camera" makes one very aware of being here now. The cameras are rolling. You improvise, guided by the Director's suggestions, which come to you in a pretend high tech way as words in your head or as mental image cues.

The Director is Mr. Intuition, and he is very supportive and encouraging. He suggests not only what to do but with what attitude to do it. Director's Voice: With confidence and joyous enthusiasm, Brian goes into the kitchen to fix his supper. Mental image cue of Brian reaching up to open a cupboard. Brian reaches up to open a cupboard. Mental image cue of Brian opening the cupboard doors with just the right speed and force. Brian opens the cupboard doors with just the right speed and force. Brian sees rotini, brown rice, and barley. Director's Voice: With self-assurance that he can cook it though he has never cooked it before, Brian reaches up and takes down the ....

When I am "on camera" in that pretend way, not only is my attention in the present, but, encouraged by the Director and a host of affirming imaginary spirit beings, this technique also helps me to be more confident, more courageous, more decisive, and less awkward than usual.

Doctor Who is a TV science fiction fantasy series in which a Time Lord known as The Doctor, starting from the far away planet of the Time Lords, travels through space and time, having adventures on different planets, including earth, using his powers of reason, improvisation, and ingenuity to save societies from calamities and villains. The navigation controls of his spacetime ship have been damaged, so when he travels in it, he doesn't know where or when it will land. Each time it lands, Doctor Who must learn fast how to survive and cope in whatever conditions and situation he finds himself.

To me the Doctor Who stories symbolize reincarnation. This is the concept that when a human dies, that entity's soul spends some amount of time, varying from very short to very long, in another dimension and then chooses to be reborn, generally in a very different place on earth in a very different time than previously experienced. Delivered by its mother like Doctor Who is delivered wherever whenever by his TARDIS, a newborn begins learning at birth about its new here now.

Pretend that you have been traveling with Doctor Who, that the TARDIS has just landed, and that Doctor Who has hidden it and gone off adventuring, leaving you on your own. Things may not be as they seem. Expect the unexpected. Stay alert.

Or pretend that you have just gone through Lewis Carroll's Alice's looking glass, or have just stepped into C. S. Lewis's Professor Kirke's wardrobe, or like Woody Allen's characters in his movie The Purple Rose of Cairo, you have just leapt into a different, wondrous reality. You stay alert so as not to miss a moment of the experience.And, really, every new moment of everyone's life is a wondrous new here and now containing infinite possibilities.

Taking vacation trips is popular in part because during a vacation one's mind is attracted more than usually to the here and now. The sights, sounds, and smells are unfamiliar. Around every bend of the road an adventure might await. A stranger might be friendly or unfriendly. A momentary lapse of attention might mean missing an interesting landmark, an awesome view, or a fascinating happening.

This technique is either to go on vacation, even if only a day trip, or to pretend you are on vacation. See, hear, and smell your surroundings through the senses of someone on vacation, with an attitude of curiosity and wonder.

In the course of a routine day, going to the same job, doing the same work tasks and home tasks as usual, doing your usual free time pastimes, imagine that you are on vacation, traveling and visiting where you have never been. See your familiar surroundings as though for the first time. However familiar your surroundings appear, your attitude is one of curiosity, wonder, and readiness for many possibilities, expected and unexpected.

This is the simplest and most effective technique for living in the moment, for being here now -- to choose to want most of all to be here now. When others speak of the good old days, of after the revolution, of the way it was, of the coming utopia and ask you about the times and places you wish you could experience again or wish to experience in the future, say, believe, and feel that your heart's desire, your greatest wish is to be here now. For instance, as I type this, I want most of all to be seated in my pajamas and robe late of a morning in mid December at my apartment desk drafting a hubpage while through the window I watch squirrels feed at the bird feeders. This moment is what one can, fleetingly, possess. Want it. Possess it. Be aware of it

Those are a few of the ways to be here now. No implication is intended that being fully present is better than having one's attention on a memory, an anticipation, a hope, a worry, or a conundrum. Use the mind's tools, such as thinking and memory, when and as needed, and then bring your attention to your here and now, using such techniques as described above. It takes but an instant to switch from one of the techniques to another or to switch from mindfulness of the here and now to thinking about the past, the future, or hypotheticals and then back to the present moment. The instant you enter a moment, you are leaving it. Give it your attention and enjoy it while you can.

Mystics have used techniques for being in the present as part of their religious, spiritual practices. That is too big of a topic to get into in this hubpage. I'll just mention as an example the book The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, in which a medieval monk tells his techniques of always being aware of the presence of God.

Numerous whole books have been written about the benefits of being "here now" "in the moment." Here are three that come to mind: