Struggling to be mindful? Try 5 minutes of music instead
I’ve never been good at being ‘mindful’.
It’s something I am drawn to, that sits as a natural accompaniment to my work and my approach to life. As a psychologist, I have read the research and I know that there is an ever-growing evidence base for mindfulness in promoting psychological well-being as well as happiness and productivity. And yet it still eludes me.
Ok, confession time… I’ve never managed to sustain a consistent practice or really expanded the boundaries of my knowledge about my own experience of mindful moments by taking up a course… but there’s something in the stillness that doesn’t quite work for me. Coupled with the image that the ‘full’ in mindful conjures for me — an abundance of thoughts — there’s a piece of the puzzle that remains just out of reach.
I’m sure there will be many who can assuredly tell me that what I lack is persistence, that with more practice I will ‘get it’, that the penny will drop and the restlessness I feel will dissipate. Of course, all of this might be true, and I have a whole variety of friends and colleagues who hail the benefits on a consistent basis — most of whom I fully trust and share commonalities of approach with. Yet still… I can’t quite buy that this practice of mindfulness as quiet will work for me. As someone with good self-awareness and limited time, I need something that’s going to work in the short term until I can see if this promised phase of being and awareness comes to fruition.
I wrote last week about the power of pausing and how this theme of pause has become ever-present in my life and professional development. At this point in time, these pauses are still taking the guise of a formal invitation — a diarised comma, complete with pinging reminder from my phone, in my daily routine.
I’m hopeful that with practice, these small moments of stillness will form a more natural part of my everyday. For now, I have chosen to fill these pauses with sound — a playlist of instrumental songs from the likes of Nils Frahm, Philip Glass and Hania Rani, each piece around 5 minutes in length. There is comfort in music that I do not find when trying to simply ‘be’ with myself. The music signals to you when it is mid-flow and when it is ending. The notes and phrases give you something to focus on that escorts your whirling thoughts back to the present moment. Noticing where in the body the music inspires movement or stillness. The emotions that rise and fall in the chest, the stomach, the eyes.
Music is my salvation when it comes to switching off my busy mind — and nobody ever started their day after a Kelly Lee Owens song without a smile on their face.
