5 Myths About Mindfulness That You Have To Know

The need to focus on the present moment has made various techniques increasingly popular, including mindfulness . However, myths about mindfulness have led to erroneous beliefs about this practice.

The Mindfulness is considered by some people as a philosophy of life. A way in which you allow yourself to observe your thoughts without judgment, while attending to the present.

The past and the future are no longer so important. But, let’s see what myths about mindfulness are still being believed to be true.

1. It is a technique based on breathing

The mindfulness is not a technique which is based only on breathing. This would be too simple and impractical for the benefits we hope to achieve.

Actually, this practice combines relaxation techniques where breath control is important. This is taken as the focus of attention to focus on the present moment.

However, there are also other focuses of attention, such as looking between the eyebrows, observing thoughts without judging them, listening to music without trying to understand its lyrics …

Ultimately, mindfulness is much more than breath control.

2. It consists of leaving the mind blank

This is one of the most ingrained myths about mindfulness and that, really, they have no foundation.

To begin with, leaving your mind blank is impossible. We cannot stop thinking, and even when we think we are not, there are thoughts present.

If we tried to blank our minds we would get frustrated because we would not succeed. Therefore, performing this practice would be very stressful.

What mindfulness tries is that we learn to observe our thoughts, without retaining them. Watch them go by, as if it were a movie.

Sometimes we will focus on the breath, for example, and when a thought comes to us, we will observe it and return to our focus on the breath.

What do you intend with this? Do not cling to those thoughts that we may be spinning unnecessarily and without any useful purpose. Thoughts must flow.

3. It is a type of meditation

The truth is that mindfulness has nothing to do with meditation, because what you are looking for is a full awareness of the moment you are living.

When we meditate, we do it at a specific time, but we cannot meditate all day long unless we don’t have things to do.

Instead, the mindfulness we can practice anytime. How?

• For example, when we walk we can pay full attention to our steps.
• Also, we can focus on tasting all the food we eat.

Somehow, we pay attention to our senses, we open ourselves to experiencing what we overlook on a daily basis.

Practicing mindfulness allows us to enjoy life more, especially the little things that it gives us.

4. You have to become a vegetarian

This is another of the great myths about mindfulness . This technique does not force us to change our eating style, everyone is free to eat whatever they want.

• This myth has arisen because most of the people who practice this technique are vegetarians.
• However, this is not based on any foundation and to affirm it implies falling into a serious error.
• If there is something that mindfulness teaches, it is respect for others and acceptance of what we do not understand.

5. It is useful only when we feel bad

The last of the myths about mindfulness urges us to think that this technique is a kind of therapy for people who are going through a bad time.

However, it is not an essential condition to be having a bad time to start in this practice, since its objective goes much further than alleviating a problem.

The mindfulness allows us to be more aware of everything that happens around us and everything that happens to us.

It also teaches us to notice and appreciate the little things in everyday life. Those that we overlook because they have become part of our routine.

As we have seen, mindfulness is much more than what these myths have wanted us to see.

It is a lifestyle that we can adopt and that will allow us to enjoy life much more.