What can Mindfulness Do for Me?
Mindfulness can be anything from a quick and simple tool to help us calm down, to a way of experiencing more joy and less stress, to a way of enabling deep spiritual practice and experience:
'To see the world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.’
~ William Blake
The practice of mindfulness can bring many benefits to our emotional and physical health, as well as to the relationships in our lives. Mindfulness is an amazing tool for stress management and overall wellness because it can be used at virtually any time and can quickly bring lasting results.
Mindfulness training develops our capacity to:
- Consciously act and respond with awareness and clarity rather than react out of a habitual pattern.
- Bring greater concentration and focus to all your daily activities.
- Monitor stress and distress levels and take effective steps to address them.
- Positively take action to renew our energy – physically, emotionally and mentally.
‘Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally. This kind of attention nurtures greater awareness, clarity, and acceptance of present-moment reality. It wakes us up to the fact that our lives unfold only in moments. If we are not fully present for many of those moments, we may /not only miss what is most valuable in our lives but also fail to realize the richness and the depth of our possibilities for growth, and transformation.’
~ ‘Wherever You Go, There You Are’ by Jon Kabat-Zinn. p.4 [ ISBN | Amazon.com ]
Rather than pressuring ourselves to change any state we are experiencing, accept what is, with an attitude of gentle and non-judgmental curiosity.
No need to set goals around Mindfulness, no need to feel that we are not good at it or compare ourselves to anyone else, we already have what we are looking for, we just need to connect to it, to cultivate it.
Mindfulness is cultivating an ability to just observe; noticing thoughts, emotions and the physical state--the art of conscious living. em>Mindfulness is experiencing life beyond thought. Mindfulness is experiencing life beyond thought.
Mindfulness for professionals
Findings from fifty-eight therapists indicated that higher levels of mindful attention and non-judgmental awareness are associated with cognitive and affective wellbeing, satisfaction at work and lower experiences of burnout.
Mindfulness Exercises
One of the quickest mindfulness exercises for calming down is to close your eyes and imagine yourself as a mountain. Imagine the weight, the solidity, the earthbound characteristic of the mountain. Feel that sensation in your body, sit with that feeling. You may also imagine that there is a storm going on around the mountain, the trees, bushes and flowers being thrown every direction by the wind. However the mountain, your presence, stays solid, strong and untouched by the external goings on.
Another simple practice is awareness of breath; imagine cold air in and warm air out. Whenever the mind strays come back to awareness of the breath.
‘The breath is the bridge from our body to our mind, the element which reconciles our body and mind and which make possible one-ness of body and mind.’
Thich Nhat Hanh
You can also pick a task; an hour or a day for mindfulness. Make it when you are having a treat, a coffee or tea; make it one hour in the morning during the weekend or while exercising. For instructions on this and to get a good sense of what mindfulness is watch our video clip on Mindfulness.
And to begin the enjoyment and sense of peace that mindfulness brings download our 10 Minute Wonders – short but potent mindfulness meditations!