Maybe you have noticed, or is it me, that mindfulness is everywhere these days. Like many currents that flow through the media streams and the popular awareness, it is often used imprecisely and poorly understood. As a result, mindfulness can be dismissed as a fad or even misunderstood as a practice quite opposite from its actual intent. So with the help of mindfulness trainer Jonas Batt LMHC, whom I very liberally quote below, let’s consider mindfulness: what it is, how it is practiced, and what it offers.

Mindfulness is a practice of awareness. At its essence, it involves bringing the body and mind into the same place at the same time in a purposeful, open-hearted, and non-judging way. Mindfulness is not a philosophy or a theory that can be learned from a book; it is the practice of bringing compassionate awareness to the immediate circumstances of our lives, moment-by-moment.

Instead of turning away from our experience and letting our minds wander into the past and future and everywhere in-between, we turn our attention to the present moment’s experience with curiosity, acceptance, and kindness. When we are aware of our experience in the present moment – thoughts, sensations, emotions – we have the opportunity to make choices. We can be increasingly responsive and skillful in our thoughts, words and actions and less unskillfully reactive due to old, unconscious, habitual patterns.

Mindfulness practice can cultivate our own natural capacity for presence and ease. The practice is fostered by simple, repeated disciplines—a variety of gentle and meditative activities, some achieved while sitting or lying and others that engage the body in movement. All of them draw us into an awareness of what is actually happening right now, allowing us to relax the body, find the breath and rest into the present moment. We discover how to turn on our bodies’ natural calming system. We increasingly feel a sense of agency and empowerment in working with our lives.

So the “point” of mindfulness is to get calm, relaxed, peaceful and at ease, right? Actually no, that is not the aim of practice. While very pleasant states of happiness and “ok-ness” are fruits of the practice, mindfulness supports us to meet whatever comes, whether pleasant and joyful or difficult and sorrowful, with resiliency and balance. Since we are human beings with human experience, we will experience ups and downs, joys and sorrows. When we are present and aware in the face of what life offers us, we experience greater wellbeing, no matter the situation.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer whose work has helped bring mindfulness into the mainstream, calls mindfulness simply “the art of being fully human.” It does not promise to eliminate life’s difficulties, but works to change our relationship with those difficulties, to give us the gift of our best, most resourceful and empowered selves. It helps us transform habitual patterns of reactivity, resistance and judgment into compassionate self-awareness in the face of all life’s joys and challenges. It is an art well worth the path to mastery.