Mindful awareness is simply the natural ability to notice that you’re alive by tuning into your everyday senses.
It’s so easy that children can do it, but adults get out of practice.
We can choose what we want to pay attention to, get better at noticing subtle sensory details, and learn to interfere with the noticing process less. Working on these attentional skills makes us feel more present and alive, but I try not to make a big deal about it. Just because it’s not a popular thing to do doesn’t mean you can’t do it, but getting in a hurry will slow you down.
I've been playing the piano since second grade, with a thirty-year break in between. After all those years of practice as a kid, my brain got pretty good at reading sheet music. I can figure out any piece you put in front of me, but that doesn’t mean I'll be able to play it right away. The trickier the song, the longer it’ll take me to learn it.
Reading music is one thing, but making music requires something more.
Pianists often say they don’t really know a piece of music until it gets into their fingers. This means they’ve broken it down and worked on it in different ways over time until they’ve internalized it. They know it so intimately that it seems to flow out naturally from their hands. This still doesn’t mean they’re finished. The polishing phase may continue indefinitely.
The whole process takes significantly more time than I usually predict. Luckily, I've been blessed with an innate naivete and a form of learning-process amnesia. I need to love a song, or sense that falling in love with it could be possible, before taking on a new piece by Bach, Chopin, or Debussy, because it could take weeks or even months before it gets into my fingers.1
As with any empowering skill or satisfying relationship, I often feel discouraged to the point of abandoning it, and I have frequently given up. But looking back, I've never regretted the times I've decided to push through that impulse without giving in to it.
There's a moment when a passage that has tripped me up repeatedly really does seem to start flowing effortlessly from my hands. The next challenge lies in allowing things to flow rather than bracing myself for a section that I am still learning to navigate. As in other areas of life, overthinking and anticipating the future can hinder my ability to focus on what I already know how to do.
Johann Sebastian Bach: Invention No. 13 in A Minor, BWV 784 (May 2020)
Not everyone has learned to play the piano, but we’ve all had those moments where we go from having no clue how to do something to being able to nail it without even thinking. Whether it's reading, driving, cooking, or making friends, we often downplay the skills we've picked up along the way, but the analogy still applies. We don’t really grasp how to do something until it starts to look, sound, and feel easier than it did when we first tried.
It's the same with developing mindful awareness skills. There's the same monotony you run into when you practice scales, sort out the fingering, or are forced to come back to the basics of a skill you thought you'd mastered. It's tempting to cut corners or skip the parts that seem just out of reach. It's even more seductive to pretend you have a skill rather than putting in the work to improve it.2
To get awareness into your eyes, look closer. To get it into your ears, listen more carefully. Invite mindful awareness into your nose and mouth when you eat sometimes, and deeper into your body when you're laughing or crying. If you practice earnestly and consistently, driven more by curiosity than perfectionism, and giving it more time than you expected, you'll be amazed by the vitality that comes from getting a little more awareness into your mind, heart, and body.
Start small. Begin again. Start even smaller. Ease up. Slow down. Keep going.
If you ever want to compare notes, I'd love to hear about it.
Exercise
This exercise enhances your awareness of the sensations in your hands and fingers.
Circumstances for learning this attention exercise
taking a break during the workday
waiting by yourself
