How to Introduce Mindfulness to Beginners
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So, you know, over time, I started learning how to introduce mindfulness to different types of people. And, you know, at first, I would try to like talk about the theory and what mindfulness isn't talking about the neuroscience or how great it was. And I found that over time that

The experience of mindfulness can be the best way of introducing it. So now what I do is, you know, when I'm in front of some new people, I might say, you know, thank you for being here. I understand your struggles. You know, I'm here to help you. And now I just, you know, invite you to notice what the bottoms of your feet feel like flat on the floor. What does the weight of your body feel like on the chair, on the ground?

This episode is brought to you by the Mindfulness Teacher Certification Program. To become a certified mindfulness teacher, visit mindfulnessexercises.com slash certify. Can you notice the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe? You know, what are the sensations around your chest and your heart right now? Can you open up to the sensations around your shoulders and notice if they're crunched or not?

Maybe sensing into the muscles of your face or around your eyes. Not judging these sensations to be good or bad, but just noticing what they're like. Maybe staying with the rise and fall of your belly as you breathe for a little while. Just noticing what those sensations feel like. And then over time, I might say, congratulations, you just did maybe a five-minute mindfulness practice.

you know, that's mindfulness. That's just noticing your experience without judging it moment to moment. And people say, oh, wow, I didn't know that was mindfulness or mindfulness is different than what I thought it was. Or, you know, it just seems so simple. I feel so relaxed. And so from there, you can talk about what mindfulness is and isn't, but you're relating it back to the experience that they've already had.

You can say as you can see, mindfulness is not religious, it's not woo-woo, it's very simple and something you can apply to just about any aspect of your experience. You can relate all the theory and the concepts and the techniques and the neuroscience back to what they already experienced. I found that to be a really helpful way to introduce mindfulness.

So, you know, really just making it clear. It's not woo-woo. It's not religious. It's not belief-based. You're not trying to convince them of anything. You're just inviting them to notice their experience without judgment. Jon Kabat-Zinn offers a wonderful definition of mindfulness. He's the founder of mindfulness-based stress reduction. But he says mindfulness is just paying attention on purpose in the present moment without judgment. Just knowing what you're doing while you're doing it.

I always emphasize the non-judgmental piece, not judging it to be good or bad, right or wrong, because it's often the judgment piece that trips people up. A lot of people, even a lot of mindfulness teachers will emphasize the awareness piece, but they won't emphasize the judgmental piece.

And so you can be aware of your experience all day long until the cows come home. But if it's infused with a sense of judgment around your experience, then that's not mindfulness. That's not what we're teaching. We're teaching how to open your experience with curiosity, allowing your experience to be there regardless of whether it's pleasant or not.

and just allowing it to be there, staying with it, being present for it without trying to fix it, without trying to disengage from it, without trying to cope with it by reacting towards measures of drinking or eating or binge watching Netflix 24-7. And so it's just being with our experience moment to moment without judgment.

I simplify the definition to just this non-judgmental moment-to-moment awareness. We can cultivate the non-judgmental piece with heart cultivation practices like loving kindness, compassion, self-compassion, joy, equanimity, gratitude, generosity, and forgiveness. There's all sorts of mini heart cultivation meditations that I teach to help cultivate the non-judgmental aspect.

Then concentration can help us with the moment-to-moment awareness to help us sustain our awareness throughout many moments at a time without getting distracted. Concentration is really the fuel for mindfulness. It helps us to stay present moment-to-moment. There's all sorts of concentration practices out there like

counting breaths, counting steps, repeating mantras, repeating loving-kindness phrases, having visual concentration objects, and even auditory concentration objects. All sorts of ways to boost our focus and our concentration.

When I lead meditations, I often will start by just doing a few grounding practices by asking people to sense the bottoms of their feet on the ground, weight of their body on the chair, relaxing their belly and just sensing into their center of their stomach, relaxing their shoulders.

Then I'll often go into the substance of the meditation. Let's say it's mindfulness of breathing. I'll ask them to just notice the sensations around their belly as they breathe. I'm just staying curious about the changing nature of the sensations, noticing the difference between the exhale and the inhale, maybe the pause in between the exhale and the inhale. Then I'll do whatever the substance of the meditation is. Maybe it's a body scan, maybe it's loving kindness.

whatever it is, I'll do the main thrust of the meditation. But then I'll follow it by doing some sort of like self-compassion practice where I ask them to invite a sense of ease into their body, maybe inviting a simple sense of care for themselves. And then wishing other people a simple sense of ease or the sense of care, wishing them well.

And then going back to some grounding techniques, maybe re-relaxing their shoulders, you know, loosening their jaw, softening their hands, wiggling their fingers or toes, and then asking them just to open their eyes whenever they're ready. So that's a typical arc of a meditation that I often lead. There is a danger, however, that if we focus on the outcomes, then we'll bypass the process. And so what I mean by that is,

there's a lot of different outcomes out there. People want to feel calm, they want to be relaxed, they want to get in the flow. Whatever the outcome is, it's important not to focus on the outcome too much because remember that mindfulness is just noticing what is actually happening right now. It's not focused on fixing whatever's in the way of me and the outcome. It's not about achieving anything.

When we focus on the process, we usually get to the outcome faster. It's sort of a paradox. But if we're able to focus on the process of just noticing what's happening, then this non-judgmental awareness will help us to find our creativity, to find this relaxation, this ease, this sense of well-being, this performance.

But if we focus on the outcome, we bypass the process. And ironically, we won't get to the outcome as much as we would have if we focused on the process. So again, it's not about fixing our experience or achieving anything. It's really about noticing what's actually happening. So really want to make that distinction here.

And so, you know, can we be with our anxiety? Can we be with our sadness? Can we be with shame or depression or fear or anger? Can we notice what that feels like in the body? Can we open up to the physical sensations of heaviness, lightness, contraction, expansion, heat, coolness, and

Whatever the physical sensations are, can we just open to those without fueling the story behind it, without getting caught up into the he said, she said, or how dare they, or I'm not good enough, or whatever it is. Can we just simply sense into what's actually happening in the body?

Can we soften around our contraction? Can we just notice what's happening without judging it to be good or bad, right or wrong? A lot of what's unpleasant, we might judge to be bad or wrong. But sometimes when we're angry, we feel righteous and that sometimes that feels right. So it's not about judging anything to be good or bad, right or wrong. It's just noticing what's happening.

And, you know, this isn't headfulness. We're not relating to our bodies from our head. You know, this isn't brainfulness. We're not relating to our bodies from our brain. This is mindfulness. And so mindfulness, you know, what is the mind? The mind encapsulates our whole sensory apparatus. It includes our bodies and our hearts.

and our heads. If I could offer an exact definition of the mind, I would probably be up for the Nobel Prize soon. But most people agree that the mind is not just the head, it's not just the brain, it's the whole sensory apparatus. And so can we relate to the body from the body?

Can we relate to the belly from the belly? Can we relate to the bottoms of our feet from the bottoms of our feet rather than from the head? And so for many of you, this will be a big paradigm shift. Some of you won't quite get it quite yet. But this is the invitation to notice, you know, can I sense into the body from the body and not from the head?

And so, you know, there's all sorts of practices, but it's important to, you know, take baby steps when you teach mindfulness so that you're not, you know, leading people into the deep end too quickly by sensing into trauma without having the training wheels on yet. So here's a simple example of how to sequence mindfulness practices. Inviting skepticism is really important too. You know, we don't want to

ask people to necessarily believe everything we're saying. We're not trying to convince anyone, but we are asking people to try it. We are asking people to see for themselves whether mindfulness works for them or not. Perfectly acceptable to be skeptical. I think it's important to have caution and not believe what everyone says. I think it's very helpful for inviting the skepticism, inviting a little bit of doubt.

but also inviting this open attitude where, yeah, we'll see if we could try it, see if this actually works for us or not. Above all, it's important to be the example, to have this embodied way of being, of not judging others or yourself, staying open to other people's experiences, not trying to force anything, not trying to fix anyone,

but being the example of living with non-judgmental moment-to-moment awareness.