When people hear the word "mindfulness," they often think of sitting cross-legged on a cushion, eyes closed, trying desperately to "clear the mind" or "be present." And when their minds inevitably wander within seconds, they conclude they're terrible at meditation and give up entirely.

‍

‍

This misses the point. Mindfulness isn't about achieving some perfectly peaceful state. It's not about stopping your thoughts or transcending your humanity. It's much simpler—and more practical—than that.

In DBT, mindfulness is broken down into six core skills: three "What" skills that describe what you do with your attention, and three "How" skills that describe the manner in which you practice. Together, they form a complete framework for engaging with present-moment reality in a way that reduces suffering and increases wisdom.

The three What skills are: Observe, Describe, and Participate. They answer the question: "What do I do when practicing mindfulness?"

These aren't separate practices—they're three complementary ways of engaging with your experience. Sometimes you observe without words. Sometimes you describe what you're observing. Sometimes you throw yourself fully into activity. All three together create a complete mindfulness practice that allows you to engage with life skillfully, whether you're sitting in formal meditation or navigating the chaos of an ordinary day.

‍

‍

The Three What Skills: An Overview

‍

Observe: Sensing Without Words

Observe means bringing awareness to your present-moment experience through your senses and inner awareness, without putting words on it. You're noticing what you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste—as well as internal experiences like thoughts, emotions, and body sensations—before your mind labels, judges, or creates stories.

It's experiencing directly, before language intervenes.

‍

Describe: Putting Words to Experience

Describe means putting words to what you've observed, sticking only to the facts, without adding interpretations, judgments, or assumptions. You're labeling your experience accurately—"My heart is racing, I notice thoughts about tomorrow's meeting, tension in my shoulders"—not "I'm having a panic attack and everything is terrible."

‍

Participate: Throwing Yourself Fully Into Experience

Participate means fully engaging in the present moment—becoming one with your activity, losing self-consciousness, entering "flow." You're not watching yourself do something; you're just doing it. Not observing from the outside, but fully immersed in the experience.

These three skills—Observe, Describe, and Participate—are called the "What" skills because they answer the question: "What do I do when practicing mindfulness?" They tell you what to do with your attention.

‍

‍

Why Three Different Skills?

You might wonder: why isn't mindfulness just one thing? Why divide it into Observe, Describe, and Participate?

Because different situations call for different ways of engaging with experience. Sometimes you need to step back and observe. Sometimes you need to put words to what's happening. Sometimes you need to dive fully into activity without any distance at all.

Each skill serves different purposes and develops different capacities:

Observe develops your ability to notice experience through your senses without immediately labeling or judging it. It's pure, direct contact with reality.

Describe builds your capacity to put accurate words on experience without adding interpretation, helping you see clearly and communicate effectively.

Participate cultivates full engagement and flow, losing self-consciousness in the activity itself.

Together, these three skills give you a complete toolkit for relating to present-moment experience. You can step back and observe, you can articulate what you notice, or you can throw yourself fully into action. You can move fluidly between these modes depending on what the situation requires.

‍

‍

Understanding the Three What Skills

The "What" skills describe what you do with your attention during mindfulness practice. They answer the question: "What am I paying attention to, and how am I engaging with it?"

While the "How" skills (Non-judgmentally, One-mindfully, Effectively) describe the quality or manner of your attention, the What skills describe the content or focus of your attention.

The three What skills are:

Observe - Noticing what's present through your senses and awareness, without putting words on it

Describe - Putting words on your observations, sticking to facts without interpretation or judgment

Participate - Throwing yourself fully into an activity, becoming one with what you're doing

Together, these three skills create a complete picture of mindful engagement with life: noticing what's here (Observe), putting language to it accurately (Describe), and engaging fully with experience (Participate).

‍

‍

Understanding the Three What Skills

The What skills answer the question: "What do I do when practicing mindfulness?" They tell you where to direct your attention and how to engage with experience.

Think of them as three different modes of relating to the present moment, each valuable in different contexts, each offering different benefits. You might use them sequentially—observe, then describe, then participate—or you might emphasize one depending on what the situation calls for.

Together, they create a complete practice of mindful awareness and engagement with life as it unfolds.

‍

‍

Observe: Noticing With Your Senses

‍

What Observing Means

Observe means bringing your full attention to your present-moment experience through your five senses and your awareness of internal states—without putting words on the experience, without judging it, without trying to change it.

You're sensing directly, registering what's here before your mind categorizes, labels, or creates stories. Pure perception. Raw experience. Just noticing.

Think of it as becoming a camera that records without interpreting, or a microphone that captures sound without analyzing meaning. You're experiencing reality directly, before your conceptual mind processes it into thoughts and judgments.

‍

Why Observe Matters

When you're caught in thoughts about experience rather than actually experiencing, you miss your life. You're mentally rehearsing tomorrow's conversation instead of tasting your food. You're worrying about the future instead of noticing the sunset. You're analyzing your anxiety instead of feeling where it lives in your body.

Observe brings you back to direct sensory experience—the only place where life is actually happening.

‍

How to Practice Observe

With external experience:

• Look at objects without labeling them—notice colors, shapes, movement
• Listen to sounds without identifying their source—just notice pitch, volume, rhythm
• Feel physical contact—your body on the chair, your clothes on your skin, air on your face
• Notice smells and tastes without immediately judging them as pleasant or unpleasant

With internal experience:

• Watch your breath without controlling it
• Notice body sensations without trying to change them
• Observe thoughts arising and passing like clouds
• Feel emotions without getting absorbed into them
• Notice urges and impulses without automatically following them

The practice: When your mind wanders (which it will, constantly), simply notice and gently return your attention to observing. The wandering isn't failure—the returning is the practice.

‍

Describe: Putting Words to Experience

‍

Describe is the bridge between raw observation and conceptual understanding. After observing with your senses, you put words to what you've noticed—but only words that describe facts, not interpretations or judgments.

The skill: Put words on your experience, labeling what you observe without adding evaluations, interpretations, or judgments.

The practice: "I notice tension in my shoulders. My breathing is shallow. Thoughts about tomorrow's meeting are appearing. There's a tight feeling in my stomach."

Not: "I'm stressed out and this is terrible and I can't handle it."

The first version describes observable facts. The second adds interpretation and catastrophizing. Describe keeps you anchored in what's actually happening rather than what your mind is saying about what's happening.

When you describe emotions: "I'm experiencing anxiety. My heart is beating quickly. I'm having worried thoughts." This creates healthy distance from the emotion while still acknowledging it fully.

When you describe sensations: "There's a tight feeling in my chest, warmth in my face, tension in my shoulders." Not "I feel awful" or "This is unbearable"—just the facts of your sensory experience.

Describe is the skill of putting words to your observations accurately, without interpretation or judgment. It bridges the gap between pure sensing (Observe) and full engagement (Participate).

‍

Why Describe Matters

Language shapes experience. When you can describe what's happening accurately, you create healthy distance and activate your thinking brain. The act of putting words to experience helps regulate the emotional brain.

Research shows that labeling emotions—even with simple words like "anxiety" or "anger"—reduces activity in the amygdala (your brain's alarm system) and increases activity in the prefrontal cortex (your reasoning and regulation center). This is sometimes called "name it to tame it."

Describing also clarifies your experience. Vague distress becomes specific sensations and thoughts you can work with. "I feel terrible" becomes "I notice tightness in my chest, thoughts racing about tomorrow's presentation, and an urge to cancel my plans." The second is much more workable.

‍

Practice: Describing Your Present Experience

Right now, describe what you're experiencing:

"I notice I'm sitting [or standing]. I feel the surface beneath me. I hear [ambient sounds]. My breathing is [quality]. I'm having thoughts about [topic]. My body feels [sensations]."

Just facts. Just description. No evaluation, no story, no judgment—just what is.

This simple practice of describing trains your mind to see reality clearly, which is the foundation for everything else.

‍

‍

Participate: Throwing Yourself Fully Into Experience

‍

What Participate Means

Participate is about complete engagement—throwing yourself fully into an activity without self-consciousness, without the observer mind running commentary, without holding anything back.

It's the experience of flow, of being so absorbed in what you're doing that the boundary between self and activity dissolves. You're not watching yourself dance—you're dancing. You're not thinking about the conversation—you're having it.

Children naturally participate. Watch a child fully engaged in play—there's no split attention, no internal critic saying "Am I doing this right?" There's just total immersion in the activity.

Most adults have lost this capacity. We're constantly observing ourselves, evaluating our performance, worrying about how we appear, or thinking about what we need to do next. We're rarely fully here, fully engaged, fully participating.

The Participate skill invites you to reclaim that capacity for total engagement.

‍

The Difference Between Observe and Participate

This can be confusing at first. Isn't mindfulness about observing? How can you observe and participate simultaneously?

Think of it this way:

Observe is stepping back, creating distance, watching experience unfold. You're the witness, noticing what's happening without being consumed by it. "I notice thoughts arising. I observe emotions passing. I watch my breath."

Participate is stepping in, becoming one with the activity, losing the separation between observer and observed. You're not watching yourself live—you're living.

Both are valuable. Both are mindfulness. The skill is knowing when each is appropriate and being able to move between them fluidly.

When emotions are overwhelming, Observe creates helpful distance. When life is calling you to engage fully, Participate prevents you from missing it.

‍

Why Participation Matters

Self-consciousness creates suffering. When you're constantly watching and evaluating yourself, you're split—part of you experiencing, part of you judging the experience. This fragmentation is exhausting and prevents genuine satisfaction.

Life happens in participation. Joy, connection, meaning, flow—these arise when you're fully engaged, not when you're standing outside your experience analyzing it.

Participation builds competence. You learn skills by doing them, not by watching yourself attempt them. The athlete who's thinking about technique during competition performs worse than the one who's fully in the flow.

Spontaneity and creativity require participation. You can't plan spontaneity or think your way into creativity. These emerge when you let go of self-monitoring and allow yourself to respond naturally to what's arising.

Connection happens through participation. In conversation, if you're observing yourself talk rather than genuinely engaging, people feel the distance. Authentic connection requires presence, which requires participation.

‍

Practicing Participate

Choose an activity. Start with something you enjoy or something physical where participation feels natural: dancing, cooking, playing with a pet, drawing, playing music, exercising, gardening.

Set the intention to participate fully. Tell yourself: "For the next [time period], I'm going to be completely in this activity. No observer mind, no self-consciousness, no evaluation. Just doing."

Notice when you split into observer mode. You'll catch yourself thinking: "How am I doing? Do I look silly? Am I doing this right?" When this happens, gently return to just doing. Let go of the watcher and become the doer.

Use the phrase "just this." When you notice yourself mentally commenting or evaluating, think "just this" and return attention to the direct experience of the activity. Just dancing. Just cooking. Just talking.

Let yourself be spontaneous. Participation often involves responding naturally rather than controlling carefully. Let yourself laugh, make unexpected choices, follow impulses that feel right.

Practice without external validation. Don't perform for an imagined audience. Don't do the activity to prove something. Just do it for its own sake, for the experience of doing it.

Notice what total engagement feels like. When you successfully participate, there's a quality of ease, of being carried by the activity, of time passing differently. Pay attention to this so you can recognize and return to it.

‍

Activities Perfect for Participation Practice

Physical activities: Sports, dancing, yoga, running, swimming, hiking, martial arts. The body naturally knows how to participate—let it lead.

Creative activities: Painting, drawing, writing, music, cooking, crafting. Creativity flows when you stop judging and just create.

Play: Games, playing with children or animals, playful physical activity. Play is inherently participatory—it doesn't work if you're watching yourself do it.

Conversation: Deep, engaged dialogue where you're truly listening and responding, not planning your next comment while the other person talks.

Nature immersion: Walking in nature, gardening, watching sunrise or sunset. Let yourself be present with the natural world without narrating the experience.

Routine activities done with full attention: Washing dishes, folding laundry, cleaning. These can become meditative when you participate fully rather than doing them on autopilot while thinking about other things.

‍

When Participation Is Difficult

If you're too self-conscious: Start with activities you do alone, where there's no audience. Build the capacity for participation in private before attempting it in social situations.

If you keep drifting into observer mode: That's normal, especially at first. Just keep returning to participation. Each return strengthens the skill.

If you can't stop evaluating: Try activities that are genuinely new, where you have no established standards. It's easier to participate when you're not comparing yourself to past performance.

If participation feels unsafe: For trauma survivors, letting go of vigilant observation can feel dangerous. Start very small. Practice participation in genuinely safe environments with non-threatening activities.

If you feel guilty for "wasting time": Participation isn't wasted time—it's fully lived time. This is life. This is the point. Reframe participation as essential self-care and skill-building.

‍

‍

Integrating the Three What Skills

The three What skills work together to create a complete mindfulness practice:

‍

Observe gives you perspective

When you're overwhelmed by emotion, Observe creates space. When you need to understand a situation clearly, Observe helps you see it without distortion.

‍

Describe brings clarity

When your mind is spinning stories, Describe cuts through to facts. When you need to communicate clearly, Describe helps you convey what's actually happening.

‍

Participate allows full engagement

When it's time to live rather than analyze, Participate lets you be fully present. When connection and spontaneity matter, Participate makes them possible.

‍

‍

Moving fluidly between skills

The art is knowing which skill the moment calls for and being able to shift:

• Observe when emotions are intense: create distance, notice without getting swept away
• Describe when you need clarity: separate facts from interpretation
• Participate when it's time to engage: let go of self-consciousness and be fully present
• Cycle through them: Observe what you're feeling, Describe it accurately, then Participate in the next moment without getting stuck in either observation or description

‍

Example: Using all three skills in a difficult conversation

Observe: Notice you're feeling anxious—heart racing, thoughts speeding up. Notice the urge to defend yourself.

Describe: Recognize: "They just said they're disappointed. I'm having thoughts that I've failed. My chest is tight."

Participate: Let go of self-monitoring and be fully present to the conversation. Listen genuinely. Respond authentically without the internal critic running commentary.

This fluid movement between skills—observing when you need perspective, describing when you need clarity, participating when you need engagement—is the mark of mindful living.

‍

‍

Common Challenges With the What Skills

‍

"I can only Observe—I can't Participate"

Some people get stuck in perpetual observation, constantly watching themselves and never fully engaging. If this is you:

• Practice Participate explicitly and frequently
• Notice the cost of constant self-monitoring
• Choose activities where observation is impossible (fast-paced physical activities)
• Set specific times to let go of the observer and just do
• Work with a therapist if this connects to trauma or anxiety

‍

"I can only Participate—I can't Observe"

Other people are always in action, never stepping back to notice what they're experiencing. If this is you:

• Schedule brief observation practices throughout the day
• Use emotion check-ins to build awareness
• Notice when you're avoiding observation (what feelings might you be escaping?)
• Practice mindful breathing to build observation skills
• Remember: observation gives you choice; without it, you're on autopilot

‍

"I don't know which skill to use when"

This develops with practice. Some guidelines:

• Use Observe when you need distance from intense experience
• Use Describe when you need clarity or communication accuracy
• Use Participate when the moment calls for full engagement
• When in doubt, start with Observe (it creates space for everything else)

‍

"I feel like I'm doing the skills 'wrong'"

There's no perfect way to practice these skills. Any attempt to Observe, Describe, or Participate—however imperfect—is practice. The skills develop through repeated trying, not through getting it right.

Be patient. Be persistent. Trust that each attempt is building capacity, even when it feels clumsy.

‍

‍

The What Skills in Daily Life

‍

Morning: Starting the day mindfully

Observe: Notice how you feel upon waking. Observe thoughts about the day ahead.

Describe: Name the quality of your energy, your mood, your physical state.

Participate: Engage fully in your morning routine—feeling the water in the shower, tasting your breakfast, moving your body.

‍

At work: Bringing mindfulness to productivity

Observe: Notice when stress arises, when focus wavers, when you need a break.

Describe: Clearly communicate what you need, what's happening in projects, what challenges you're facing.

Participate: Throw yourself fully into work tasks during focus time, without splitting attention across multiple things.

‍

In relationships: Deepening connection

Observe: Notice your reactions, your emotions, your impulses without immediately acting on them.

Describe: Share facts about your experience rather than accusations or interpretations.

Participate: Be fully present in conversations and activities with loved ones—not mentally elsewhere.

‍

Evening: Transitioning to rest

Observe: Notice the day's residue—lingering tension, unprocessed emotions, mental activity.

Describe: Name what happened, what you're feeling, what you need.

Participate: Fully engage in restful activities—reading, conversation, creative hobbies—without bringing work stress with you.

‍

Throughout: Building continuous practice

Set reminders to check: "Which What skill does this moment need?"

The goal isn't constant formal practice but a developing capacity to bring mindful awareness—through Observing, Describing, or Participating—to more and more of your life.

‍

‍

The Transformation

When you develop facility with the What skills, your relationship with life fundamentally changes:

You have more choice. Observation creates space. Description creates clarity. Participation creates engagement. Together, they give you the capacity to respond to life skillfully rather than reactively.

You're more effective. You see situations clearly (Observe), communicate accurately (Describe), and act fully committed (Participate). This combination is powerful.

You suffer less. Much suffering comes from being lost in thoughts, confused about reality, or split between observation and action. The What skills address all of this.

You're more authentic. When you can observe yourself without harsh judgment, describe your experience accurately, and participate without self-consciousness, you naturally become more genuine.

You're more alive. Life is happening now. The What skills bring you into contact with now—seeing it clearly, naming it accurately, living it fully.