The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

The Four Foundations of Mindfulness

Four foundational layers of mindfulness that each build upon our experience of the previous foundation.

1. Mindfulness of the Body - observing our physical or energy body in space. Noticing tension, sensation, temperature, becoming aware of it without judgement. Inwardly and outwardly.
2. Mindfulness of “feelings” - feeling tones. The valence of every experience. Either positive, negative or neutral. We place every phenomenological experience into these buckets.
3. Mindfulness of mind - emotions/ states of mind. From our simple feeling tone mindfulness these create larger more complex emotional states categorized by extrapolating feeling tones into the future or remembering past states, or combining them with other states.
4. Mindfulness of the dhamma - hindrances, aggregates, base sense, factors of enlightenment, four noble truths, etc.