Mindfulness. Everyone talks about it, every app promises it, and most of us have at least a rough idea what it means.
If you google it, you normally find something like:
Pay attention to the moment without judgement. Being fully aware of your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and surrounding environment, rather than rehashing the past or worrying about the future.
Sounds amazing - but easier said than done!
Let’s look at it from another angle.
Mind full ness
Let’s look at the word itself for a moment.
Mind. Full. Ness.
A mind that is full, in a state of being (“ness”). That is what the word literally says, right there on the surface. And somehow we mostly associate it with the opposite: empty your head, clear your thoughts, stop thinking.
Something you do for ten minutes with a timer running, hoping your thoughts will finally shut up, which is basically impossible and one of the main reasons many people give up on mindful practices like meditation before they have even started.
Where the word comes from
Nobody designed “mindfulness” to mean what we think it means.
In 1881, a British scholar named Thomas William Rhys Davids was translating Buddhist texts from Pali (an ancient Indian language) into English. He kept running into the word sati. It means memory, recollection, remembering. To keep something present. To not forget.
He needed an English word for it. He picked “mindfulness.”
Sati was about remembering to stay present. Not clearing anything out. That original meaning got lost somewhere between 1881 and the meditation app on your phone.
Full, not empty
Let’s have a look at the word “full” for a moment. It can mean “stuffed”. It can also mean “complete”.
Mindfulness is remembering, just for a moment. Remembering in the original sense of sati: bringing something back that was always there. Or simply remembering that full can mean complete.
You can try this anytime. For a moment, allow yourself to be complete, exactly as you are. Allow your mind to be full. Nothing to want, nothing to fix, nothing to learn first. No thing missing.
If you really let yourself sink into that for a few seconds, something happens: a small gap opens in the thought stream. It lasts a moment before the first random thoughts drift back in, each one pretending to be important.
Here is the fascinating part: the more often you do this, the more often these gaps show up. And the more aware of them you become.
Mindfulness is remembering to stop in that gap once in a while. That is the whole practice.
And for some reason this process triggers pleasant feelings in your brain and system. Brain scans of meditators show activity in the same pleasure regions that light up during physical pleasure, the so-called hedonic hotspots[1][2]. Why exactly, science still can’t fully explain. Doesn’t matter much. It works.
We made a whole documentary about how this works:
What meditation actually is
Meditation is probably the most famous practice of Mindfulness. The word “meditation” comes from the Latin meditari. It means to think deeply about something. To practice. To rehearse.
Meditation is not about trying to empty your mind or switching your thoughts off. It is watching them on purpose. The more you practice the more you become “aware” of the gaps in between.
Sitting down in a meditation pose and following your breath works for a lot of people. For others it gets easier with a different approach and focus. A walk in the forest, sport, or something as simple as knitting or painting. Consciously focusing on one activity automatically creates these gaps in your thought stream. And the more attention you give them, the better you feel.
Where Mindgasm comes in
Mindgasm was built for exactly this reason: to focus on what feels good in the gaps.
Sensations grab your brain’s attention better than thoughts do. Any sensation, really. Mindgasm works with the pleasant ones. And while you are busy feeling good, more gaps open up on their own.
The best part: this feeds itself. Attention makes the sensation stronger. The stronger sensation holds your attention. We call this the pleasure loop.
The only thing that can get in the way is wanting to achieve something. So don’t. No expectations, no goals. Just feel what is already there.
Mindfulness, meditation and Mindgasm practice have one thing in common:
Remember to enjoy being full and complete once in a while.