Mindfulness is very much a mental health buzzword. That’s not to dismiss it mind, it’s just one of those phrases that is open to interpretation, and those interpretations differ wildly. Some of them are helpful, and meaningful, and allow people to make use of this valuable technique. Some are built around shamelessly profiteering from other people’s misery.

I’m not going to give you mine. The world doesn’t need another definition…

![XKCD - ‘Standards’] (https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png “XKCD - ‘Standards’”)

When I first sought out help for my mental health problems, I was referred to a group Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) session. The counsellor who ran the session was very good, but I struggled with group therapy. It just didn’t really work for me. Regardless though, he was a big advocate for the practice of ‘mindfulness’, which was a new word to me. I struggled a lot with what he meant. He talked in fairly abstract terms about ‘being present’, and that sort of thing.

What he really advocated though, and facilitated very well was guided meditation sessions. I’ve since found guided meditation a hugely useful technique, and am a subscriber to Headspace which I couldn’t recommend any higher.

I’ll leave you to your own research and conclusions on both guided meditation and mindfulness, but for me, I found, and continue to find both these things very challenging on a number of levels.

Firstly, and most fundamentally, I’ve found it difficult to find time to meditate and to ‘do mindfulness’.

I know what you’re thinking: “‘do mindfulness’ what a strange thing to say.” And You’re quite right, but when I first started on this journey, I didn’t really understand what I was doing, what the concepts were. I have an engineer’s mind at its core, and that tends to lead me down the path of firm definitions and ways of objectively measuring things, of root cause analysis, and ‘fixing’ stuff. One of the lessons I uncovered early on, is that some of these things just simply aren’t possible when it comes to emotions. It’s a lesson I’ve not finished, and probably never will.

So in my head, ‘mindfulness’ was a task to complete. Perhaps to sit around and think about nothing for a bit and just ‘be’. You might say I’d conflated the concept with meditation, and there is certainly a Venn Diagram there that has a meditation subset sitting within a mindfulness set.

What I realised though is that actually, mindfulness is just a practice one can apply to almost anything. I realised I was ‘doing mindfulness’ for example, when cooking. I’d slap on some tunes, and lose myself in the chopping, stirring, tasting. What I was doing, was surrendering the large part of my conscious mind to physical sensations. I’m lucky enough that I don’t find cooking particularly challenging per se. Obviously throwing a dinner party for dozens, with several courses and a complex set-piece is a different category, but in general, I’m competent enough that I can coast, without having to consciously consider most of the steps. I can simply just feel, see, smell, taste, touch. Consequently, I find cooking to be relaxing. It’s usually a really important part of my wind-down after work.

After having this epiphany, I started to realise that there are other things I do, where mindfulness is effortless. These activities tend to correspond to things which reduce my anxiety levels and make me feel content. In my case, cycling, swimming, running. All of these things are quite monotonous, and repetitive tasks that take little thought. This gives me the space to just feel what’s happening, rhythm of my breathing, the footfalls, the wind in my face, the cool water between my fingers.

This however, brings me onto the second most fundamental problem I have. That is actually creating the environment to be able to switch off the yammering brain and keeping it quiet enough to give me the space. I don’t know if I do actually suffer from ADHD/ADD, but I certainly suffer many of the symptoms, most prevalent of which is my inability to shut off my inner monologue. In fact, it’s never really quiet in there. If it’s not a conversation, it’s playing a scenario back over and over again, or even repeating a particularly interesting word ad infinitum, or at the very least, some earworm or other. This makes the acts of both mindfulness and meditation very challenging.

That coupled with my struggle to concentrate on one thing at once, prioritise, organise, and actually get started on tasks, and you can see why I find all of this very difficult. However, I can attest very strongly to the fact that when I achieve it, it’s so valuable. It allows me to let the old brain muscles rest and recuperate in a conscious way that sleep perhaps doesn’t.

What also helps is activities that take just enough brain power to keep me engaged enough that my mind can’t wander.

Yesterday a friend and I went to a life drawing class near London Bridge. It’s something I’ve never considered doing before, and I imagine something I never would have done, had Abi not suggested it. I used to very much enjoy arty pursuits. I enjoyed (mostly) my art GCSE, but was hamstrung by my art teacher despising me (along with many other members of the faculty), and eventually sabotaging my coursework, which put me off for a long time. I went through a period a few years ago where I got back into painting and illustrating stuff, mainly cartoons and comicbook styles. This was definitely the first time since school I’d tried to do anything realistic though.

It was difficult. I’d forgotten which end of a pencil to blow into long ago. The people around us were obviously amazingly talented and the stuff they were producing was, frankly incredible. And yet, surprisingly, I didn’t feel intimidated, or out of place. In fact, after a few warm-up sketches, I totally lost chunks of time, where all I had was shape, form, shadow, and the page in front of me.

What I drew was neither here nor there, but the simple act of having that creative outlet, of losing myself in something utterly inconsequential was so (incoming cliche) liberating.

It also reminded me that I rarely do anything creative any more. For someone who has spent vast swathes of his life drawing, painting, writing and playing music etc., this is quite a conundrum. I don’t really know when it stopped. I don’t really know why it stopped. I can’t tell you if it had a direct effect on my mental health, stopping. What I can tell you though, is that for the first time in a long time, I felt the creative equivalent of endorphins last night as I sauntered back to Waterloo along South Bank.

Something has definitely been missing somewhere, and I think this fits the hole conspicuously neatly. A creative outlet, but also another opportunity to get away from the clamour and noise of my own wonky brain. I’ve got a lot of thinking to do, but I learnt something very valuable about myself last night.

Here are some of my sketches (don’t laugh)

Sketch Sketch Sketch Sketch