What is Mindfulness?

If meditation is reaching a point when you have no thoughts, mindfulness is having one thought at a time. Furthermore, it is the ability to choose a thought wisely and move to the next with intention and fluidity. As a meditation and mindfulness instructor, I use a metaphor (stolen straight from the ancient Taoist text, “The Toa Te Ching”) to explain this to my students: the metaphor of the bowl. The usefulness of a bowl comes not from its material but rather, the empty space it creates.  From this space comes its ability to hold things. A bowl is not the things that it holds. Similarly, we are not our…