The Portable Mindfulness Practice
Practicing mindfulness can be seen as a path whose destination is a strengthened mindfulness — a quality of mind characterized by reduced susceptibility to distraction, greater focus, heightened situational and self-awareness, and improved regulation of emotional agitation.
This month we will explore four key elements of a popular mindfulness practice known as Focused Attention and consider how it might be adapted to the practice of law in ways that feel more accessible for busy professionals, for whom sitting and focusing on the breath may seem trivial or unrealistic. Previously, we have examined this practice and its benefits.
Parsing the practice into its key elements will open up a variety of ways to practice mindfulness beyond the traditional method of “sitting with the breath” so that you may adapt the practice creatively, in ways that make sense to you and fit naturally into your daily routine.
Focused Attention Practice
Key elements of this practice include:
- Focusing attention on an object, like the breath,
- With the intention of remaining attentive to the object.
- When you notice the mind wandering away from the object,
- Redirecting attention to the object.
While these elements are commonly taught as a traditional breath-focused meditation, they can be applied in many other ways. For example, the object of attention might be a sound, a candle flame, a spot on the ground, or a bodily sensation such as the feeling of the hands. Practice can be done standing, sitting, reclining, or even in motion. It may unfold in relative silence, with background music or ambient sounds, and guidance may come from a soothing or steady voice — or the practice may be entirely self-guided. Regardless of these variations, whenever the four key elements are present, a practice is established. As we’ll see, it is a versatile template that allows you to weave practice in everyday moments.
Beyond the Cushion
Understanding these elements opens the door to countless possibilities. Sitting and focusing on the breath is a classic application. But the object of attention can also be the person you’re talking with, the legal opinion you’re reading, the road before you while driving, the golf ball you’re preparing to strike, or the taste of a bite of food.
You may not think of these as mindfulness practice opportunities, but if you approach them with the intention to treat the person, opinion, highway, ball or bite as the object of attention and to follow the 4-part instruction, it becomes a bespoke mindfulness practice. Why? There is an object of attention, an intention to stay attentive to the object, inevitable mind wandering, and moments of noticing as opportunities to bring attention back.
A Portable Practice
Many people practice mindfulness so that everyday moments — at work and beyond—are met with a more reliable attention, leading to enhanced productivity, greater job satisfaction, and a more abiding sense of wellbeing.
A common misunderstanding is that the purpose of practice is to stop the mind from wandering or to somehow clear the mind of thoughts when in fact it is more about noticing when the mind does wander. Without that awareness, redirection is less likely, the duration of mind wandering grows and with it a host of adverse consequences like increased errors, greater impulsivity, mental depletion, overwhelm, worry, and diminished working memory capacity.
The more we practice, the more skilled we become at detecting mind wandering. Viewing the practice from this neuroscience vantage point helps explain why the applications described above can be so effective.
Whether sitting on a cushion or sitting in a client meeting, when the four key elements are being intentionally applied to guide our experience, we train our capacity to more quickly return to the task at hand when the mind drifts. Over time, the benefits show up more naturally — without “practicing on purpose” — when we are in a deposition or negotiation, reviewing a contract or legal opinion, preparing for oral argument, or listening carefully to a client’s concerns.
You can try this later today when beginning a task. Set a timer for 6 or 12 minutes (both common practice durations) and work with the intention of returning your attention to the task whenever you notice it drifting. The more tedious the task, the more often the mind will wander—and the more opportunities you’ll have to practice. Joseph Goldstein, a renowned mindfulness teacher, calls this tracking NPMs — Noticings Per Minute. Over time, even in applied settings, your NPMs will rise, and with them your mindfulness will strengthen.
A Practical Reminder
This column is not suggesting you forgo traditional sitting practice. Many find sitting in a relatively quiet place and focusing on the breath brings about noticeable benefits, including, at times, feeling a greater sense of calm. Practicing while working on a task is, in some ways, a more advanced practice as it is a more dynamic environment. For those who find traditional practice elusive, this approach may open the door to practice opportunities you hadn’t realized were available.
None of this is a stretch. In serious mindfulness communities, the idea of engaged practice outside formal sessions has long been recognized as vital and immensely useful. Classic examples include mindful walking (in which the movement of the feet becomes the object of attention) and mindful eating (in which the sensory aspects of the meal become the object of attention). When one notices that their mind has wandered, they bring it back to what we might call “the task at hand.”
In the end, mindfulness is less about finding extra time and more about remembering that every moment offers an opportunity to practice. And every moment of practice advances you down the path to greater mindfulness — a destination worth the journey.
Scott Rogers
Scott Rogers, M.S., J.D., is a nationally recognized leader in the area of mindfulness in law and founded and directs the University of Miami School of Law’s Mindfulness in Law Program where he teaches mindful ethics, mindful leadership, mindfulness and negotiation, and mindfulness in law. He is the creator of Jurisight, one of the first CLE programs in the country to integrate mindfulness and neuroscience and conducts workshops and presentations on the role of mindfulness in legal education and across the legal profession. He is author of the recently released, The Mindful Law Student: A Mindfulness in Law Practice Guide, written for all audiences.
