[On-screen title] Mindfulness with the Roulettes

Mindfulness was something that was brought in by Flight Lieutenant Berryman. He goes "if you think you don't need mindfulness, because you're too busy, you're the person that needs mindfulness." 

So when we're out there low flying, there's a lot to think about out in the aircraft. You're flying at four to six hundred kilometres an hour. Some go flying 750 meters above the ground. You need to be wholly focused on that because you've really got about a 2 to 3 second window before you can catch any mistakes that you make. It's quite exciting but it's also very, very dangerous.

Mindfulness is something that can help with that because you can imagine if you're flying low level and then you start worrying about maybe your fridge is broken, or your rent might have gone up or you're getting evicted; you can't have those distractions occupying the front of your brain while you're trying to do all these really, really complex maneuvers. For example, with the Roulettes you might be doing low flying, but you're also in the middle of a formation, and there's a plane three meters either side of you, so you need to be really careful. 

But what we try and do is we just try and regather our thoughts; so a technique that you can use is you just focus on what is happening right now - "what am I doing, what can I control," and then you just work out from there. Some of the techniques you learn out of flying, being mindful and being able to wholly focus on a task that you're doing, is definitely applicable to not just flying, so if you're trying to work out you know major decisions or relationships and things like that, it's very good to be able to just get that focus and have a clear mind to be able to be able to make decisions.

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