The Step of Awareness
and Mindfulness
On your healing journey, you must always be aware of your
steps and mindful of your surrounding.
Awareness
Awareness is deep concentration of the mind to know what
is happening to the body. This is essential to healing of the body. Nobody—not even your doctor—knows
your body better than yourself, but you have to be aware of it.
Breathing is your awareness of what is happening to your body. It is critically
important to your overall health. Breathing gives life. Without
food and water, you may still survive for a while, but without your breath, you
die within minutes.
Breathing has to do with the lungs, which serve two main functions: to get
life-giving oxygen from the air into the body, and to remove toxic carbon dioxide
from the body. So, do not compromise your lung functions with nicotine or any
drug.
Breathing patterns are critical to health. That is, how you breathe
may positively or negatively affect your body organs and hormones. For example,
taking short, shallow breaths, you are in fact telling your brain that a threat
exists, which then stimulates a stress response, and thus creating destructive
thinking patterns in your brain. Conversely, taking long and deep breaths, you
are sending positive signals to your brain for positive thinking patterns. When
you own your breath, you have calm and peace. Breathing is just a simple
strategy for instant stress-relief.
Diaphragm breathing
Learn how to breathe right: diaphragm breathing is natural breathing; it is
the complete breath.
Consciously change your breathing patterns. Use your diaphragm to breathe
(the diaphragm muscle separating your chest from your abdomen). Place one hand
on your breastbone, feeling that it is raised, and put the other hand above
your waist, feeling the diaphragm muscle moving up and down. Deep breathing
with your diaphragm gives you complete breath. This is how you do diaphragm
breathing:
Sit
comfortably.
Begin
your slow exhalation through your nose.
Contract
your abdomen to empty your lungs.
Begin
your slow inhalation and simultaneously make your belly bulge out.
Continuing
your slow inhalation, now, slightly contract your abdomen and simultaneously
lift your chest and hold.
Continue
your slow inhalation, and slowly raise your shoulders. This allows the air to
enter fully into your lungs to attain the complete breath.
Retain
your breath and slightly raise your shoulders for a count of 5.
Very
slowly exhale the air. Your upper chest deflates first, and then your abdomen
relaxes in.
Repeat
the process.
Learn to slowly prolong your breath, especially your exhalation. Relax your
chest and diaphragm muscle, so that you can extend your exhalation, making your
breathing out longer and complete. To prolong your exhalation, count “one-and-two-and-three”
as you breathe in and breathe out. Make sure that they become balanced. Once
you have mastered that, then try to make your breathing out a little longer
than your breathing in.
Practice diaphragm breathing until it becomes second
nature to you. Diaphragm breathing is relaxing and stress-relieving.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness is acute mental awareness, which is deep concentration of the
body and the mind for their inter-connection: the body is created to support
the mind. To sharpen your mind power, you must enhance the awareness of your
body first. If you feel that your body, mind, and soul are not
connected, most probably there is lack of body awareness by the mind in the
first place. Therefore, mindfulness begins with awareness of the body first.
Most of us do not pay much attention to the body—except when we experience
physical pain—let alone paying attention to the mind. But mental attention is
important to the wisdom in stress-free living. The mind and the body are
inter-connected. Your mental attention is essentially your body consciousness,
or your attention to the physical conditions and the needs of your body in
relation to how your mind thinks. Understanding this intricate relationship may
help you relax both your body and your mind.
Are you always paying conscious attention to your body at all times?
The way you normally eat speaks volumes of the degree or intensity of your
body awareness. It is not the food you eat, but how you are eating your
food that shows your body awareness. While eating, if you are reading your
newspaper, watching your TV, working on your computer, or checking your cell
phone, you are not paying any
attention to your body, which at that very moment is supposed to be eating and not doing multitasking.
Train your mind to pay more attention to how your body reacts when you are eating, such as chewing your food
thoroughly, slowing down your eating process by tasting each morsel of the food
in your mouth. Always give the full presence of your mind to your meal. Again,
how often you look at something without seeing it at all because your mind is
not paying its full attention to what you are looking at. When your mind is not
paying its full attention, your body becomes incapacitated; only when your body
becomes fully conscious, then your mental capacity will then become enhanced
and sharpened. Body awareness is simply paying full attention to what your body
is doing at that present moment. In other words, be more conscious of what your
body is doing when you are eating, walking, or doing anything routine. In any
life situation, even while doing your dishes, you can use your total body
awareness to switch off your thinking mind, and give it a meaningful break for
your stress-relief.
The bottom line: with awareness and mindfulness, you may then
begin to see the ultimate truths in anything and everything—including who you really are, all those close and
related to you, as well as what is happening to and around you, including any illness or disease you may have.
The TAO Wisdom
According to the
TAO, awareness is knowing who you really are, instead of who you wish you were.
This is the only path to humility, which gives you an empty mindset with
reverse thinking to rethink what is
already in your pre-conditioned mind:
“Can we embrace both good fortunes and misfortunes in
life?
Can we breathe as easily as innocent babies?
Can we see the world created as it is without judgment?
Can we accept both the desirable and the undesirable?
Can we express compassion to all without being boastful?
Can we watch the comings and goings of things without
being perturbed?
Saying “yes” to all of the above is spiritual wisdom from
the Creator,
who watches the comings and goings in the world He
created.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 10)
According to the TAO, awareness is:
“watchful, like a man crossing a winter stream;
alert, like a man aware of danger;
courteous,
like a visiting guest;
yielding,
like ice about to melt;
simple,
like a piece of uncarved wood;
hollow,
like a cave;
opaque,
like muddy water.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 15)
Mindfulness is the deep understanding of your body: how and why you are sick. The reason why a sage is not ill is that he sees
illness as illness, and not as something else:
“Not knowing the Way,
but pretending we know,
we remain ignorant, and suffer.
Knowing that we do not know,
we pursue its wisdom:
knowing its origin,
knowing its ending,
and knowing our true nature.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 71)
Mindfulness
is watching and observing what is happening to your body, as well as anything
and everything around you. That is how
and why you may have become sick.
“The Creator seems
elusive amid the changes of life.
At times, He seems to
have forsaken His creations.
In reality, He is
simply observing the comings and goings of their follies.
Likewise, we watch the
comings and goings of our likes and dislikes, of our desires and fears.
But we do not identify
with them.
With no judgment and
no preference,
we see the mysteries
of creation.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 7)
With
awareness and mindfulness, you may attain the true wisdom of knowing yourself:
“Knowing others is
intelligence.
Knowing ourselves is
true wisdom.
Overcoming others is
strength.
Overcoming ourselves
is true power.
Understanding that we
have everything we need,
we count our
blessings.
Identifying with our
own true nature,
we hold fast to what
endures.”
(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 33)
Stephen Lau
Copyright© by Stephen Lau
