All people who at some point have incorporated into their lives the practice of mindfulness know how to integrate it into our day to day brings multiple benefits that result in a significant improvement in the quality of life, including the ability to observe and concentrate.

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The art of observing through mindfulness

One of the values of mindfulness is to pay attention in a different way to the reality that surrounds us. And by "paying attention" we mean not only to observe and notice but to analyze the factors that act in our life in any aspect and the possibilities of development that may remain hidden or dormant. That is, what Kabat-Zinn, creator of mindfulness, calls " orthogonal rotation of consciousness”, with which we can turn our way of contemplating and accepting reality.

William James (1842-1910):
said in his book Principles of psychology (1890) that “the power to deliberately direct our wandering attention, over and over again, constitutes the very foundation of judgment, character, and will.” And his statement takes on even more value at a time when we are routinely connected to electronic devices with which we are in contact with our friends and with many more people whom we do not even know and of whom we practically ignore everything.

And yet we spend most of it disconnected, that is, disconnected from ourselves, from our feelings, our worries, and our emotions. And also, of course, of the appreciations and perceptions that others have about us.

Attention span

We are attentive to a like or a retweet on social networks, but we do not know the effect that we cause on our coworkers or on how our patient has received the diagnosis that we have just communicated to him. It is evident that some links in this chain are not in their proper place and that it becomes necessary to reorder them through internal Observation.

Paying attention to ourselves is a phase of mindfulness that consists of the application of three techniques:

  • Proprioception: location of our own body in space.
  • Interoception: an appreciation of our body as a whole.
  • Self-perception: observation of the effect that the body causes in space.
Of course, all this must be done objectively and without letting ourselves be carried away by what we believe we are or by what we imagine that others believe we are, but attending exclusively to what we are. And this cannot be done without a process of meditation and mindfulness with which we disconnect from judgments and prejudices to be able to reach our goal: what we are, where we are, what our purpose is, and who, how, and in what way receives it.

If we have answers to these questions, we will be more and better prepared to communicate fully with the people we serve in our work, because we will use the right words, tone of voice and appropriate gestures indicated and will reach a greater level of empathy with which we will be able to understand the patient and, therefore, also give answers to their doubts, their uncertainties and their fears.

Benefits of increasing concentration

Greater concentration means a higher level of attention. And a higher level of attention necessarily implies a higher degree of empathy. In the case of health personnel, it is demonstrated that those who regularly maintain the practice of mindfulness manage to reach a greater connection with patients and that they accept with greater receptivity the relevant diagnoses and treatments.

It should always be borne in mind that the benefits of any therapy are based largely on the relationship that is created between the patient and the therapist, so many studies point to the importance of mindfulness in any therapeutic process. Thus, it has been shown in recent years that the practice of mindfulness is the basic training for any therapist, the psychiatrist of the National Hospital of Lima, doctor Edgar Vasquez Dextre, adds, “when we are in mindfulness we are aware of consciousness, we realize that we are not the content of consciousness and are open to what that manifests itself in the conscience.”

To all the above, it must also be added that the feedback that patients transmit to the staff who attend them becomes a factor of increasing self-esteem or professional self-efficacy and, consequently, of the staff. With all this, the benefits of learning to be more present become evident.