The skills that emerge from mindfulness training are gradually beginning to be recognised as crucial life skills. Really, we should all have learned them at school and it is deeply heartening that programmes for schoolchildren and young adults, like .b and the programme developed by my colleagues at Bangor University, are beginning to find their way into schools. Most of us missed that chance, but thankfully it is never too late to learn.
I sometimes begin my programmes by asking how many people in the room think that regular physical training can be crucial for their health and well-being. Everyone puts up their hand. I then ask how many people think that regular mental training can be crucial for their health and well-being. Most people put up their hand, a little more tentatively perhaps. I then point out that, had I asked the physical-training question to a general audience at the end of the nineteenth century, very few would have raised their hand. And, indeed, even as late as 1970, when the New York City marathon was first run with 127 entrants, of whom fewer than half completed the course, it was thought that only a few thousand people in the United States had the capacity to run a marathon. In 2010, 44,829 people finished – a world record for a marathon race – and every year tens of thousands of potential entrants are unsuccessful in the lottery for starting places.
There has been a paradigm shift in our cultural attitude to physical fitness.
We are now on the brink of another paradigm shift. We are beginning to recognise the importance of what we might think of as mental and emotional fitness and to see how we can train to build this.
When you’re more skilled at working with your mind and mental states, things go better: for you and everyone around you.
Before Beginning the Course
You will read about a number of different mindfulness practices in each chapter of this book. If you’re using the book as a do-it-yourself manual for the eight-week course, it would be best to do the practices in the order in which they are described.
To that end, it would be good, if you can, to read the book at a time when and in a place where you’re less likely to be disturbed. It would also be good to be able to engage in some of the meditations in the order in which they are taught. Some of the time, where indicated, you might want to put the book aside and take the time to listen to the particular audio material for that part of the course. The track name and its timing are shown at the appropriate place in the text.
Since you’ll be doing different meditations from time to time, it will generally be good to have access to an upright chair, rather like a kitchen or dining chair, or a meditation bench or cushion if you want to meditate sitting on the floor. I’ll say more about the postures for sitting meditation when we come to that part of the course.
For Week One, beginning in the following chapter, there are two other items of equipment you’ll need.
There is the option for doing one of our meditations lying on the floor, so you might want to have a rug or mat handy for that.
And our first meditation is going to be an eating meditation. But we’re not going to eat very much – just one raisin in fact – and I’ll be providing fairly detailed guidance on how to do that as an eating meditation. So if you’re going to read on, now might be a good time to go and find yourself a raisin. If you don’t have one handy, a very small section of any fruit or vegetable that you can eat will do instead.
We’re going to begin this week with the eating meditation I talked about in the Introduction. By eating just one small raisin, mindfully, I hope you’ll get a deeper sense of some of what mindfulness is all about. So have your raisin or your small section of a fruit or vegetable handy and get ready to play ‘The Raisin Exercise’ (
If you don’t want to listen to the exercise right now, you could read about it instead in Box 1.
If you’re going to listen to the audio, get yourself into an upright and alert but relaxed posture, let the raisin or whatever you’re using instead rest on one of your open palms and play the audio now.
Get hold of a single raisin and find somewhere quiet where you can sit for 10 or 15 minutes and give your full attention to this exercise.
1. Holding
Let the raisin rest in your palm. Take a few moments to become aware of its weight.
Then become aware of its temperature – any warmth or coolness it may have.
2. Looking
Give the raisin your full attention, really looking.
Become aware of the pattern of colour and shape that the raisin makes as it rests on your palm – almost like an abstract painting.
3. Touching
As best you can, being aware of the sense of movement in your muscles as you do this, pick up the raisin between the thumb and forefinger of your other hand.
Explore the outside texture of the raisin as you roll it very gently between the thumb and forefinger.
Squeeze it ever so slightly and notice that this might give you a sense of its interior texture.
Notice perhaps that you can feel this difference just with your thumb and forefinger – the interior texture and the exterior texture.
4. Seeing
Lift the raisin to a place where you can really focus on it and begin to examine it in even greater detail.
Notice highlights and shadows. See how these change as it moves in the light.
Notice how facets of it appear and disappear – how it may seem to have ridges and valleys and how these may shift and change.
5. Smelling
Again aware of the sense of movement in your muscles, begin to move the raisin very slowly towards your mouth.
As it passes by your nose you may become aware of its fragrance. With each inhalation, really explore that fragrance.
Become aware of any changes that may be taking place now in your mouth or stomach – any salivation, perhaps.
6. Placing
Bring the raisin up to your lips. Explore the delicate sensation of touch here.
Now place it in your mouth but don’t chew.
Just let it rest on your tongue, noticing any very faint flavour that may be there –
or maybe not.
Feel the contact it makes with the roof of the mouth, perhaps.
Now move it to between your back teeth and just let it rest there – again without chewing.
Notice any urges or impulses in the body.
7. Tasting
Now take a single bite.