Print As humans, we tend to hold on to pleasant experiences and push away unpleasant ones. This happens in various situations, including during meditation or mindfulness practice. However, when you’re preoccupied with the reaction to push something away, you’re no longer fully present in the here and now. Instead of resisting such an experience, there are other options: namely, investigating it. This helps you distinguish between the experience itself and your reaction to it. With this awareness, you can respond more consciously to an experience.
Freedom through Mindfulness
Imagine you’re meditating and you feel an itch. You can react to this in different ways. You can focus on the itch and scratch it, or you can delay this impulse. You can explore what happens then and return to focusing on your breath. Do you notice that the itch disappears? Itchiness comes and goes, just like everything in life. Curiously observing the itch is also an option; scratching is no longer the only possibility. Your belief that “I can only scratch” turns out to be incorrect, and you have learned something, gaining freedom. Mindfulness helps you explore new possibilities—not because they are better, but because you have more options. And more options mean more freedom.
Obstacles
Practicing being present in the here and now without judgment is not an easy task. Often, things get in the way of focusing well on the present moment. In mindfulness, these are called obstacles. Traditionally, five obstacles are described:
- Desire: During meditation, a desire may arise, for example, for something to drink or eat, for beautiful music, or the desire to stop.
- Aversion: You may become irritated by a disruption during meditation, the voice, wording, or pace of the guided meditation.
- Sleepiness: You notice that you’re feeling drowsy and keep nodding off during meditation, making it difficult to focus your attention.
- Restlessness: You notice that you can hardly keep your body or mind still, thoughts fly all over the place, and limbs want to move. Your attention is hard to maintain due to constant thoughts interrupting.
- Doubt: You may doubt whether mindfulness is right for you, or you wonder if you’re doing it correctly and if the exercise is worthwhile.
You have probably encountered one or more of these obstacles before. They can hinder you when your automatic pilot responds to them. It’s important to realize that you don’t choose the obstacles. You don’t choose desire, but you observe that you have this desire. These obstacles not only occur in mindfulness but also in your daily life. They are feelings or thoughts that can be present, and we’ve developed the habit of automatically reacting to them.
What can you do?
Obstacles are inevitable, and automatically reacting to them limits your freedom to deal with them differently. By learning to recognize them, you create space to respond to them in other ways. For example, you can let an obstacle be part of the experience without immediately reacting or needing to do something about it. With this conscious choice, you gain a bit of freedom. The mindfulness exercises help you practice with the obstacles you encounter, so that over time, you’ll become better at recognizing them in your daily life and learn to respond to them differently.
Sources:
- https://centrumvoormindfulness.nl
- https://www.happywithyoga.com/mindfulness/mindfulness-uitleg/
- https://www.radboudcentrumvoormindfulness.nl/media/1366/
- https://www.happywithyoga.com/mindfulness/wetenschappelijk-bewezen-voordelen-van-mindfulness/
