Mindful awareness can enable our inner sense of knowing and subjective experience of being alive to attain a new sense of vitality, detail, and clarity.

One form of awareness is the recently researched but ancient practice called “mindfulness” or “mindful awareness.” Though the specific scientific definitions of mindfulness vary, we can state here the general perspective that being mindful involves a way of paying attention, on purpose, to present experience as it emerges moment by moment without being swept up by judgments. This is the opposite of being on “automatic pilot” or being “mindless” in our actions. When we speak of “awakening the mind,” this often refers to the way in which we can become alive and attend to the details of ordinary experience as if it were extraordinary. 

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Mindful awareness can enable our inner sense of knowing and subjective experience of being alive to attain a new sense of vitality, detail, and clarity. Being present in this way has been scientifically demonstrated to support mental, physical, and social well-being. The study of mindfulness explores both inherent traits and intentionally created states. 

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Mindful traits include being aware of what is happening as it is happening, being nonjudgmental (not being taken over by prior expectations) and nonreactive (coming back to emotional baseline readily), being able to label and describe the internal world, and having self-observation. 

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Mindful awareness practices may have origins in ancient or modern times, and may come from the East or West. They include mindfulness meditation, yoga, tai’chi, qigong, and centering prayer.

The beauty of mindful awareness is that it can be applied to everyday life in a secular fashion.

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The overall idea is that the intentional creation of a mindful state is healthy for the body in that moment. With repeated practice, it can become a mindful trait—a way of being that shapes the ongoing health of the individual’s life. 

- Daniel Spiegel

The Developing Brain