Good going guys!

Withit - that sounds like a great idea with the kitchen timer. I'm going to try and figure out my cellphone. It can be really hard to estimate the time when you don't have a timer (and estimating the time can become another distraction). It is surprising how slow 30 seconds can go. Most people find that they are unable to focus all their attention without distraction for more than around 2 seconds. It does get better with practice (but then the whole idea is in the process or practice of it rather than in a end goal). That is kind of counter-intuitive because most of the time we are caught up in trying to achieve goals rather than taking time to attend to the journey...

With respect to the icon on the computer... That could be a fairly hard exercise to do! With respect to awareness of the object all you have is visual awareness (unless you actually tried to taste the icon or touch the computer screen etc). You said you 'imagined' what it would feel like and taste like etc. That is different from actually feeling or tasting the object, however. (That is okay, you can do mindfulness exercises on whatever object you choose to attend to. It might be more grounding to take an actual object that you can experience cross-modality (with different senses) though).

Pinksoil - Yeah, the notion of this exercise is to be mindfully aware of the object of your experience rather than mindfully aware of your experience of the object. (That can be a tricky distinction to grasp). One could indeed do a mindfulness exercise where the object one was focusing on was ones experiences, but that would be an internal rather than external mindfulness exercise.

As for the goal... One notion (that is somewhat paradoxical) is that mindfulness is something that doesn't have a goal. It is about being more aware of the journey for the sake of being more aware of the journey. That being said people often report other benefits from mindfulness though it is typically thought that if you only do mindfulness for the benefits then you are not likely to receive the full benefits. Somewhat paradoxical, huh.

People often report decrease in anxiety and increase in happiness. Increased ability to focus (on study or trying to figure something out). Decrease in pain (for people with chronic pain conditions). A more relaxed and optimistic view of present circumstances basically. And an increased awareness of (and acceptance of) thoughts, feelings, bodily states and confidence in their ability to manage them (by attending to other things).

But if you do it with those goals in mind you are likely to become disgruntled along the way and give up practicing. They are kind of long term benefits that regular practicers report...

I think it is more about taking the time to enjoy the journey. So much of life is focused on achieving end goals that we often don't take the time to look around and see that hey, things are basically okay right now in the present moment.

There are three different mindfulness exercises:
Mindfully observing (the exercise we are doing now). You can be mindfully aware of external objects. You can be mindfully aware of your surroundings (a sunset or a forest or a river etc). You can be mindfully aware of internal states (how your breathing feels, your thoughts, your emotions, how your body feels). I think that people benefit from all of those kinds of mindful observation. The ability to mindfully observe ones internal states is hard for most people (which is why it is nice to start with external exercises). People tend to panic or become judgemental about their internal states. If you practice with external objects then as your control over your attention becomes greater (and you have increased faith in your ability to attend without anything bad happening) and you learn to attend to the object without becoming lost in the object then attending to inner states can be useful.

Mindfully describing. Mindfully describing is describing in a way that is non-judgemental. This is quite hard to grasp... It is basically about learning to lift the judgement. One day my therapist brought in some crystalised ginger (which I don't like) and so I tried to mindfully attend to the ginger (and then non-judgementally describe my experience of ginger). Instead of judgemental descriptions like 'nasty' and 'yukky' I had descriptions like 'sharp' and 'strong'. By lifting the judgemental description... I realised that the ginger didn't taste all that bad... I prefer other things to be sure but lifting the judgement actually altered the nature of my experience. (Now that is a handy trick when it comes to describing ones internal states).

Mindfully participating. Is when you are in tune with an activity. Like a dancer or a golf player or a tennis player when they are emersed in the activity in a way that is in harmony. This is harder... But you can experience mindful participation of a walk by the river or exercise. And this is even harder... Conversations with others.

I think that after a while it becomes about simply being more aware that your attention is diverted and appreciating that you have the choice to let your attention be diverted or to take control of your attention by attending to one thing. It takes experience with attending to one thing to start to appreciate that often attending to one thing results in one feeling kind of good. Nobody has perfect control over their attention (like how no weight lifter has perfect control over the weights he can lift) but there is progress with practice... Doing the practice is what makes it the case that you become more aware of times when you aren't mindfully attending at all. In making the committment to practice daily that is something that you will simply notice... And in practicing daily you get the experience with mindful attending being a fairly pleasant thing to do (that is sometimes / most times a more pleasant thing to do than to have divided attention. You can also notice when you are feeling flustered and tense, for example (I noticed that a lot when I was doing the exercise focusing on how my breathing felt) and I was able to kind of take a deeper breath... And then focus my attention on just one thing for a bit to help ground me. So yeah, you can do it whenever it occurs to you really. But that being said it is important to practice daily so that you have the moments of awareness during the day. The more you make use of those moments of awareness (and make a conscious decision to focus) the more you are running different neural pathways...

(There have been studies on how teaching mindful attending to compulsive thoughts has resulted in people having increased ability to attend without impulsively acting and that that has resulted in the OCD circuit (neural pathway in the brain) being 'broken' - so that 'healthier' pathways are activated instead)

And increased ability to focus with ADD / ADHD...

And increased ability to relax and breathe in a calming way for panic...

And increased ability to not attend to pain (by attending to other things) for chronic pain disorders...

And increased ability to not ruminate in those negative spiraling headcircles (by attending to other things) for depression and PTSD...

Can't say enough good things about it really...

;-)

Winterrose - Yeah. When I focus on an object I usually notice out of the corner of my eye (so to speak) a bubble of thoughts and feelings. Kind of just bubbling through the threshold into my conscious experience but kind of out there on the periphery too. Sometimes I'll have moments where my attention is completely captured by the object... But I'll also have a lot of moments where I'm also vaguely aware of the bubbling as well as the object. And it is hard not to be diverted by the bubbling... And it is hard not to get pissed off at the bubbling in a '%#@&#! off i want you to go away so i can do this properly!' But in a way... Mindfulness is also about tolerance. Seems to be (fairly paradoxically) that when I tolerate / accept the bubbling... Is when I'm no longer aware of the bubbling... But of course it is a repeated process... Of aware then not aware then aware then not aware. But that is okay... That is the point really ;-)