Return attention to the present

I wake up from the sound of the alarm clock, but instead of jumping up and running to the bathroom, I slowly pass my inner eye through my entire body – from the top of my fingers to my toes. As attention fills every cell, there is a clear feeling that only now my body is really awake and ready for a new day. I analyze, consider my feelings – where does today begin? Is it the joy that the morning sun is shining outside the window, or the tension over the mass of upcoming things? And where in the body is this joy and tension found? I don’t do anything with them, I just witness and let go. I accept both joy and stress. It’s just the way it is. Good morning, “here and now”!

I am familiar with the practice of mindfulness. The practice of mindfulness is the practice of bringing our attention back to the present moment and staying in it—relaxedly and without judgment. Initially, it is associated with Buddhist traditions, but in fact it is non-religious. Attention is the main currency of our brain. We are our attention. Where we send it, so we become. And the problem with most of us is that we have not been taught to control them at will. Try to distract yourself from pain or unpleasant thoughts. It turns out? This is how untamed attention works. The practice of mindfulness teaches us to be masters of our attention and to choose where to direct it.

I have been doing different types of meditation since I was 17 years old. And at the age of 31, I realized that, despite all the trips to ashrams and retreats, I still do not feel whole, my “I” is split into many unconscious parts, my life is tense, and my relationships with people leave much to be desired. And a few months later I met a Zen master. He taught the simplest, it would seem, things – to control attention. “The only meditation is to be mindful 24 hours a day,” the master said. There is nothing esoteric or secret about this. This is a very humble practice. But only she will change you. Everything else is a toy for the ego.”

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I remember the day when for the first time I was able to be continuously aware of my every action for 4 hours in a row. When all attention was focused on what was happening to me “here and now” – while I was brushing my teeth, washing dishes, preparing breakfast, picking currants in the garden (it was summer). I suddenly felt overwhelmed with energy. There was so much of it that I wanted to immediately call someone and spend part of it. I suddenly, for the first time in my life, felt whole – light, as if a couple of bags of cement that I had been carrying all my life had been removed from me. I suddenly noticed that I literally “see” people – not because my superpowers were discovered, but simply because I began to notice everything that had previously eluded my attention. There was a lot of joy, clarity, love in the world. And I felt them “here and now.”

I teach others to be considerate. A few years later, the Zen master asked me to start teaching his method in Moscow. Coincidentally, at the same time, I began to study in the USA and discovered that mindfulness programs for employees there exist in many large corporations (Google, Apple, Facebook, General Mills), that they teach it in schools, government agencies, in the army and 130 health centers. It turned out that American neuroscientists and psychologists became interested in the possibilities of this practice 30 years ago and found out that it changes the way the brain works: it activates the right hemisphere and reduces activity in brain areas associated with anxiety and stress. This is how the Mindful Business project was born. This is a company that offers corporate mindfulness programs for employees and managers, as well as a separate program for psychologists. In the classroom, we learn to be attentive to ourselves and to the world, to be aware of our actions, feelings and thoughts in the present moment, to carefully send emails, negotiate, communicate with customers, drive, eat and walk. For example, I ask course participants every time they see a new letter in their office mail, before opening it, take a deep breath and pay attention to what they are now feeling and where it is in their body. Because there is a difference between the reaction “I am horrified that the boss is calling” and the reaction “I am terrified that the boss is calling. I feel it as a contraction in the solar plexus.” In the second case, we have a distance between us and this bodily manifestation of horror, and we do not lose ourselves entirely. We can simply note this horror and think about how to deal with it.

The practice of mindfulness significantly changes the quality of life. It turns out to get up without an alarm clock, lose less strength at difficult meetings, get sick less, accept yourself and loved ones more, more clearly understand the reasons for your actions. And teach mindfulness to your own children.