"Everywhere we turn, we are told to be more mindful. Apps promise to get us there. Corporations offer trainings. Therapists prescribe mindfulness to treat anxiety, depression, and stress. The word itself has become a kind of secular prayer. Yet when I really think about it, I wonder if the word might be steering us in the wrong direction. The term suggests that we should be full of mind. But the mind is already full."
"The English word mindfulness was originally translated from the Pali word sati, which refers to awareness or recollection. But the word that often gets confused with "mind" in Buddhist and yogic traditions is citta, a Sanskrit term that actually means something closer to "heart-mind." It refers to the seat of emotion, perception, memory, and consciousness all at once. So when early translators rendered citta "mind," something got lost."
The English term mindfulness overemphasizes thinking and can steer attention toward a busy, strategy-filled intellect rather than bodily experience. Ancient terms such as citta and shin denote a heart-mind that unites emotion, perception, memory, and consciousness, implying intelligent embodiment rather than isolated cognition. Translating citta as "mind" obscured teachings that encourage presence in the body. Bodyfulness is proposed as a practice of bringing full awareness into bodily sensation, using interoception and proprioception to reconnect thinking and feeling and to cultivate presence that integrates mind and flesh.
Read at Psychology Today
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