What is mindfulness?

If you ask Bernice Parent, who's going to be leading an introductory class on the mental approach Tuesday at the Heartland Multiplex in MacGregor, it's a lot of things. First and foremost, it's about keeping yourself firmly in the present moment. And she says it's a technique that can have a wide range of health benefits.

"Mindfulness involves when we intentionally focus our attention on our emotions, our thoughts and our sensations in the here and now," Parent says. "And often times we're either stuck in our head in the past, or in the future, and we're oblivious or we don't pay attention to what's going on right now in our lives."

Parent says many people coast through their day-to-day lives on an auto-pilot of sorts, and often lose touch with their thoughts and feelings. Mindfulness is about trying to re-kindle the present self, and she says it can help anything from high stress levels, emotional reactivity problems or even chronic pain.

"There's a lot of research that's be done on the benefits it has in those areas," Parent says. "There are so many people today, if you were to ask them at the end of the week, they'd say 'I'm so stressed.'"

"There's a lot of that going on in our world today," continues Parent. "And it's about how we can alleviate or assist those individuals to have a more balanced life."

Parent adds learning to incorperate a mindful approach in your everyday life takes time and training. She says one introductory practice to get people in tune with the idea of mindfulness is to focus only on your breathing, and everything about that one action. While focused on something as simple as breathing, ask yourself: How it feels, what it sounds like and what are your thoughts and feelings?

"If you go to the gym once a week, you get the results you get," Parent says. "But if you go three or four times a week, you get different results."

"It's the same thing with mindfulness, if you practice, you'll improve," continues Parent. "And some of the practice is bringing awareness to certain moments, and challenges and seeing if you can respond instead of react."

The sessions Parent are leading are being run through the Regional Health Authority, and Dianna Meseyton-Neufeld of Southern Health Sante Sud says a lot of people don't understand the concept of mindfulness, and the hope is these classes can provide a basic understanding, as it's a concept they recognize as a useful tool for good mental health.

"We're just trying to promote mindfulness because we know it's a useful tool for mental health," Meseyton-Neufeld says. "We'd like to help people get a better understanding of what mindfulness is, and (then consider) if it's something they want to use in their daily life to help improve their mental health."

The introduction to mindfulness classes are free to attend, and registration is available through Heartland Rec.