One of the great by-products of geocaching is the physical and mental exercise required to be successful. Much has been said regarding the physical benefits of geocaching.Mindfulness has everything to do with being awake and living in harmony with oneself and the world. Mindfulness allows your mind to stop its overworked race... To increase your stamina while out on cache hunts, one should take up an exercise program to build leg muscles, increase cardiovascular capabilities and provide overall strength to your body. We should also be looking at another part of our anatomy that benefits greatly from exercise and conditioning – the mind.
The act of mindfulness is not a new practice. It has been around for thousands of years and has served countless people. Its beginnings can be traced back to the ancient Buddhist culture and the ritual has flourished into present day. Although perfected in Buddhism, mindfulness, or meditation, has nothing to do with ‘being’ a Buddhist or even religion in general. Mindfulness has everything to do with being awake and living in harmony with oneself and the world. Mindfulness allows your mind to stop its overworked race to touch everything connected to your ‘being’ and let it focus on the here and now – the moment. This practice will allow your mind to focus on just the moment, which ultimately strengthens the ability of the mind to deal with everyday life more efficiently.
In his book, Wherever You Go, There You Are, Jon Kabat-Zinn writes, “Fundamentally, mindfulness is a simple concept. Its power lies in its practice and its application. Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgementally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth and transformation.”
There are several good ways to begin a mindfulness exercise. At its most basic description, meditation is about focusing on nothing except the moment. Sound easy? It is. Appreciation for the “present moment” can be seen throughout history. It is the direct opposite of taking life for granted. Historically, people like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman and in Native American wisdom, the practice of tuning in to the present has lead to a greater understanding of our world. Jon Kabat-Zinn also states, “ … mindfulness will not conflict with any beliefs or traditions – religious, or for that matter scientific, – nor is it trying to sell you anything, especially not a new belief system or ideology. It is simply a practical way to be more in touch with the fullness of your being …” From the book, Why Meditate?, Duane Elgin writes, “We tend to “run on automatic” – act in habitual and preprogrammed ways – to a much greater extent than we commonly recognize.”
There are several good ways to begin a mindfulness exercise. At its most basic description, meditation is about focusing on nothing except the moment. Sound easy? It is. However, there are heightened levels of euphoria that are extremely difficult to reach without a lot of practice. From the book, Meditation Made Easy, Lorin Roche, Ph.D., describes what happens to people when they meditate:
- Relaxation and relief.
- Sorting through thoughts about your daily life.
- Reviewing the emotions you felt during the day and giving them a chance to resolve.
- Brief moments of deep quiet and inner peace.
- Near-sleep and dreamlike images.
- Healing: reexperiencing and then letting go of old hurts.
- Tuning up: your nervous system fine-tuning itself to the optimal level of alertness.
There are two forms of meditation that I have tried, and each works very well. First, simply find a nice quiet place (good luck if you have children in your home) and sit, relax and focus on nothing but your breathing.
Imagine your breath moving in through your nose and filling your lungs. Then, notice your breathing as it leaves your lungs and enters the space around you. Try doing this for 10 min. every day for several weeks. In a very short time, you will begin to experience brief moments of inner peace and almost dreamlike peace. During this exercise, it is important to focus on the breathing. When your mind starts to wander off, then gently bring your attention back to your breathing.
Don’t get discouraged when your mind wanders off. This is normal for most people. You simply need to redirect your thoughts back to the moment, the breath. This is a great getting started exercise that will serve you well in more advanced methods of meditation.
The next method is called the body scan technique and is outlined in much more detail in Kabat-Zinn’s book, Full Catastrophe Living. Body scan is best done while lying on your back. Close your eyes and imagine your breath moving through each and every part of your body. It might be a good idea to start at your feet and imagine your breath traveling through your body and down to your feet. From there, you work your way up to each area of your body. At each point in your body, imagine your breath entering and exiting at that point. This can be a relaxing exercise that is also good at relieving various type of body pain.
It is important to realize that people meditate for many different reasons. Roche explains,
- People meditate out of curiosity, wonder and a desire to explore.
- People meditate because they are worried, tired, bored, lonely, horny or tense.
- People meditate because they are happy, grateful, in love, streaming with delight and glad to be alive.
- People meditate because they are grieving, sad, despairing, resigned, or frustrated.
- People meditate because they have lost someone or some part of themselves or lost the joy of life.
- People meditate because they feel out of place in a world created by human beings and prefer to live in the world of nature.
- People meditate as an attempt to escape from life and from nature.
- People meditate because they are sick in body or soul and need healing.
- People meditate because they feel perfectly at home and want to savor the feeling.
- People meditate to touch the essence of life and bring its magic into everyday living.
- People meditate because they have not touched the essence of life and feel that it is there for the touching.
- People meditate because it is an urge in them that they have long felt, and it gradually condensed into a movement they realize is meditation.
- People meditate as a response to the calling of their own souls.,
- People meditate because they are so excited by life they figure they could use a little calmness.
- People meditate to keep their senses sharp.
From Natalie Goldberg’s memoirs, Long Quiet Highways, she relates a story told to her by a Zen teacher. “ … there are three different kinds of horses: With one, just a tug at the reins made them start moving; the second, a kick in the flanks and they were off; and then there were those that had to be beaten to the bone with a whip before they started to move. “Unfortunately,” he said, “most human beings are the third kind.” He told us we act as though we were going to live forever. “Wake up,” he said. “With mindfulness, you wake up to the moment and realize that life is a string of moments. The key is to be awake and savor the moments that matter most.”