Mindfulness

Mindfulness means deliberately paying attention to what is happening right now, in the body, the mind and the surroundings, without judging it as good or bad.

The word translates the Pali term sati, from early Buddhist teaching, where it has the sense of remembering to be aware. Its modern secular use owes a great deal to Jon Kabat-Zinn, who developed the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program in the late 1970s.

Mindfulness is both something you practice formally, by sitting and following the breath, and a quality you can bring to ordinary things such as walking, eating or listening.