How to Be More Mindful (Without Meditating)

Instagram version: You’re sitting comfortably with a straight back, eyes closed, peacefully laser-focused on your breath and nothing else. Reality: You’re fidgeting every which way trying to get the sudden ache out of your back, and all you can focus on is how you must have the creakiest floor on the planet. Does the latter sound familiar? That’s meditation. More difficult — and for many, definitely less relaxing — than it looks.

Mindfulness has legit physical health benefits too, says Dan Siegel, MD, a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, in Los Angeles. With consistent practice, it can lower the stress hormone cortisol, along with high blood pressure and cholesterol. That sets your body up to better control inflammation, which can improve your immune system and recovery, says Siegel. “Mindfulness can even help repair and maintain the ends of your chromosomes. It can literally slow the aging process.”

Here are a few ways you can develop this mental muscle without meditating.

1. Wake up, breathe.
   Your alarm goes off, you open your eyes. Now, notice your breath. “Don’t think about how you're breathing, just be aware of the sensation,” says Wignall. Doing this first thing ensures you won’t forget, plus it sets the tone for the rest of your day.
   
   Inevitably, you will get distracted. You’ll think about breakfast or your to-do list. And that’s OK, he says. “The goal is, can you catch your mind wandering, and can you bring your attention back to your breath?” Your breath is your body’s built-in rhythm that’s always there for you. Every time you return to it, you coach yourself to choose your internal music over the world’s outside noise.
   
2. Dial in during mundane moments.
   Instead of going on autopilot, start paying attention to what’s around you. For example, Wignall says, if you’re driving, “Feel the vibrations of the road, acknowledge the color of the sky — try to notice things without thinking more about them,” he says. You can do that while you’re washing the dishes (note the warmth of the water and the weight of the dish), brushing your teeth (be aware of the sensation of the bristles on your teeth and gums), or looking out a window (notice a neighbor walking their dog). Training yourself to be more observant even in unexciting scenarios can make you more mindful over time.
   
3. Try a body scan.
   Begin at one end of your body — say, your feet — and focus on what your toes feel like, then your heels, ankles, shins, knees, etc., until you reach the top of your head. There’s nothing intrinsically special about how your knee or hip or shoulder feels, says Wignall. The idea is that physical sensations are visceral, and tuning in to them can help you turn off your brain. That laser-sharp focus is key to ignoring noise, be it your thoughts or the creakiness of your floor, on an everyday basis.

Here’s the thing: The examples above are akin to doing push-ups during a commercial break or taking the stairs instead of the elevator. Just as true fitness requires real workouts, you need a regular daily, or near-daily, practice to experience the full mental and physical benefits of mindfulness, say our expert.

As with exercise, you can pick multiple forms and “cross-train.” Maybe you do breathwork before breakfast and a body scan one day, then an actual guided meditation the next. Start with an easy duration of five minutes, and gradually build the length of your sessions (Wignall says a good goal is 20 minutes).

Seem tough? Like any kind of effective training, it’s supposed to be hard, says Wignall. “What throws most people off is that mindfulness is almost always framed as a tool for relaxation or peace of mind,” he says. But those benefits don’t actually happen in the moment, they happen afterward. “Mindfulness shouldn’t be calming any more than bench-pressing 150 pounds should be. It only works because it's hard, just as your muscles only get bigger because you challenge them,” he says. “Each time you get distracted, notice it and bring your attention back to the present. That's a mindfulness rep. And if you're not doing reps, you're not building muscle.”

Whenever you get frustrated, remember this: Struggling with meditation — or pistol squats, pull-ups or whatever active skill you aren’t great at it — is a good sign, says Wignall, because it means that you're working on a weakness. “I’ve found that if people really see it like that, it clicks for them fairly quickly.”