Annoying mindfulness problems (how can just living be this darn effortful? :/ )

[molosku]

I have two annoying beginnerish mindfulness problems. Every time I try to practice mindfullness during everyday tasks two things happen:

1. My mind immediately goes "okay, lets do this, how do I do it, let figure out how to be really mindful, because if Im not constantly trying to edge myself this way I will fall to unconsciousness, which is not good". I can sort of drop this though when I recognize it, but it quickly comes back.

2. I somehow immediately start to breathe manually, and "unnaturally" and then Im stuck going back and forth with these two things. This unnatural controlled breathing is often present in my sitting meditation practice. It goes so bad that I feel that I cant breathe at all, and Im running out of breath and need to stop meditating. This thing has been bothering me for about a month now, i did not use to have this problem (been meditating close to daily for 1.5 years now).

 

It is a letting go problem, but then again, "OKAY LETS LET GO REALLY WELL NOW"-layer gets added on top of  "OKAY LETS BREATHE VERY NATURALLY"-thought. It almost feels like Im more mindful when I don't try to be mindful, but Im not sure if that's true either.

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One thing that seems to help a little is not trying to be "mindful", but instead subtly shift my mode of operating into doing everything very carefully, smoothly and gracefully as I can. This would be practicing zen, if Im not entirely incorrect? But even then, the breathing problem often comes up. 

Sometimes I really wish I were a dog. I bet they do not have to deal with this. They just bork away. I suspect I have a chronic case of overthinking these issues also.