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Mindfulness Isn’t Just About the Mind
The whole body is impacted by active conscious awareness practice.
Given that it’s right there in the name — mindfulness — it’s easy to presume this is all about the mind. While that’s mostly true, it’s only a portion of the truth.
Everything begins with thought. Thought happens on three levels — unconscious, subconscious, and conscious. The unconscious is how you breathe automatically, digest, blink, and fire the neurons that move the muscles to lift your arm into the air to flip someone the bird, and the like. The subconscious mind is where beliefs, values, habits, and memories live. You can access them, but doing so requires a conscious act. The conscious mind is how you engage with the world within and the world without, here and now.
Another way to think of it all is as a computer, tablet, or smartphone. The unconscious mind is the operating system. Like the Mac, Windows, or Linux environments, the OS is what all else is built upon and dictates the overall function. The subconscious mind is your hard drive, the HDD or SDD that stores everything. That gets accessed by programs, apps, and the like. In mind terms, it’s the conscious mind.
Without all three elements, you have a dead tablet, smartphone, or computer. Likewise, without the unconscious…
