Present-Moment Awareness

How the term is used

The present moment can include pleasant, unpleasant, neutral, calm, or activated experience.

Why it matters

It corrects the misconception that presence requires peace or positivity.

Where this comes up

• Guide Meditation for Beginners: How to Start Without Trying to Empty Your Mind
• Blog post What Does Being Present Actually Mean?

Related terms

• Mindfulness

  Awareness of present experience, including thoughts, emotions, body sensations, and surroundings, with less automatic judgment or reaction.

• Nonjudgmental Awareness

  Noticing an experience without immediately sorting it into good, bad, success, failure, should, or should not.

• Grounding

  A broad, non-diagnostic term used in wellness and mental-health settings for practices that help orient attention to the body, senses, en…

• Attention

  The selective direction of mental focus toward particular information, sensations, tasks, or experiences.

• Sensory Awareness

  Deliberate attention to sensory information such as sound, sight, touch, smell, taste, temperature, pressure, or movement.

• Mindful Walking

  Walking while intentionally noticing movement, contact with the ground, pace, sensation, or surroundings.

• Mindful Movement

  Physical movement practiced with deliberate attention to sensation, breath, effort, balance, coordination, and experience.

• Mindful Eating

  Bringing deliberate awareness to the experience of eating, including hunger, taste, texture, pace, fullness, satisfaction, and distraction.