Black Womans’ Guide to Self-care using Mindfulness

I just completed an 8-week mindfulness course. I think that both mindfulness and meditation offer untold riches as part of a well-rounded self-care approach. To get something out of mindfulness and meditation, you must be willing to relinquish the stressful momentum that your always-thinking brain generates. And I don’t mean always thinking in the sense that it’s some amazing machine delivering wonderful solutions to your life. I mean that a large part of the content of our thinking is rehearsing things that make us anxious and forgetting that these are thoughts and not necessarily things that will genuinely come to life.

What is Mindfulness Meditation?

Kabat-Zinn defined mindfulness meditation as “the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”. By focusing on the breath, the idea is to cultivate attention on the body and mind as it is the moment to moment, and so help with pain, both physical and emotional.” Mindfulness goes back thousands of years in time with the foundation in Buddhism and it continues to work today.

That’s the Buddhist definition of meditation as well. However, let me be clear. There is no spiritual component in the Buddhist presentation. Mindfulness helps you to cultivate your attention and focus or put it another way, to cultivate a single-pointedness.  So basically, Mindfulness allows you to become more aware, being in the here and now, in the present. Mindfulness is about being fully engaged in what you are presently doing.

The key to remember is that Mindfulness does not train you to become a hard-nosed automaton off whom all life’s vicissitudes just bounce. Instead, Mindfulness is about becoming the kind of person, the type of Black Woman, who can reflect on her problems without getting caught up in them, and remembering to act to fix them wherever she can.

For me, it’s inarguable that if a bad thing is coming your way anyway, it’s better to be a mindful’ person who is responsive to the crisis, rather than an unconscious, reactive person who gets mired in the crisis and multiplies her suffering tenfold. Mindfulness is not about being an unfeeling stiff upper lip person who just gets on with it. While practicing Mindfulness you can show compassion to people (and to yourself) without getting caught up in their games (and your own).
As the wonderful Phillip Moffit said in The Responsive Mind) pain is inevitable but suffering is optional.

How to Practice Mindfulness

Sit. Select somewhere where you are free from distraction and can be calm. This could be a chair, bed, floor etc.

Set Alarm. If you are new to practicing mindfulness, set a time limit for anyway between 5-10 mins.

Pay Attention to your body. Ensure you are comfortable and can be in the same position for the time you set.

Breath. Focus on feeling your breath as it goes in and out. Breathe deeply and slowly, and feel that breath coming into and leaving your body. That is the main focus of mindfulness.

Pay attention to your mind.  It is ok if your mind wanders, don’t beat yourself up. Just refocus on breathing. Pay attention to your breath.