Let’s talk mindfulness
Mindfulness is a skill that changed my life because it trained me how to use radical acceptance to acknowledge your daily experiences without judging them. (We will go over this more in a later blog.) A balance is needed in order to live a fulfilling, healthy life. But for people with overwhelming emotions, balancing feelings and rational thoughts is often hard to do. The solution I have used through reading the book is to use “wise-mind” to make healthy decisions about your life. Wise mind results from using both emotion mind and reasonable mind together. Wise mind is a balance between feelings and rational thoughts. Being a mindful person allows you to acknowledge emotions without judging them or letting them run free.
All of these little skills are important to become a mindful person.
If you’re constantly judging yourself, your experience, or someone else in the present moment, then you’re not really paying attention to what’s happening in that moment.
Mindfulness is defined as:
the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something.
a mental state achieved by focusing one's awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one's feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.
Mindfulness is a quality that every human being already possesses, it’s not something you have to conjure up, you just have to learn how to access it.
Mindfulness is a skill I have really been working on. Usually, I would always be thinking about the past, or the unknown of the future, and I would drive myself crazy because I couldn’t process all of the thoughts. But while I was thinking these thoughts, I was missing what was going on in the current moment.
Time never stands still and each second of your life is different, Equally important, your thoughts, feelings, sensations, and action are never exactly the same in every situation, so they’re different too.
Mindfulness plays a key roll in being able to exist in the present moment because it allows you yo be aware of your thoughts, emotions, or physical sensations, and actions–in the present moment–without judging or criticizing yourself, others, or the experience.
Why are mindfulness skills important?
Mindfulness skills will help you focus on one thing at a time in the present moment, and by doing this, you can better control and soothe your overwhelming emotions.
Mindfulness will help you learn to identify and separate judgmental thoughts from your experiences. These judgmental thoughts often fuel your overwhelming emotions.
Mindfulness skills…
In order to become a mindful person, one must learn these critical “how” skills:
To focus more fully on the present moment
To recognize and focus on your thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations
To focus on your moment-to-moment stream of awareness
To separate your thoughts from your emotions and physical sensations
Mindfulness exercises
Focus on a Single Minute
This is the first exercise that will help you focus more fully on the present moment. It’s simple to do, but it often has an amazing effect. Its purpose is to help you become more mindful of your own sense of time.
Focus on a Single Object
Focusing on a single object is the second mindfulness skill that will help you concentrate fully on the present moment. Remember, one of the biggest traps of being unmindful is that your attention wanders from one thing to the next or from one thought to the next. And as a result, you often get lost, distracted and frustrated. This exercise will help you focus your attention on a single object. The purpose of this exercise is to help train your “mental muscle.” this means you will learn to maintain focus on whatever it is you’re observing. And with practice, you’ll get better at focusing your attention.
Mindful Breathing
Use a mindful breathing exercise to help relax your bind. I usually take a few deep breaths and listen to a podcast, or turn on some relaxing music and feel the air enter and leave my body.
Mindful Awareness of Emotions
Notice when you start to get warning signs of a potential overwhelming reaction. Notice when certain emotions flood your brain. Notice when your thoughts start to go negative. Acknowledge the feeling and change the train of thought.
The 9 Attitudes of Mindfulness according to Jon Kabat-Zinn
Non-judging.
Acceptance.
Patience.
Beginner's mind.
Trust.
Non Striving.
Letting Go.
Gratitude.
5 Simple Mindfulness Practices for Daily Life
Your day-to-day activities offer ample opportunities to call up mindfulness in any moment. These simple practices will breathe space into your daily routines.
Mindfulness has been shown to be very beneficial. In this guided mindfulness meditation you can learn to be completely present in the moment, letting go of your thoughts and achieving calmness.
Mindfulness. It suggests that the mind is fully attending to what’s happening, to what you’re doing, to the space you’re moving through. That might seem trivial, except for the annoying fact that we so often veer from the matter at hand. Our mind takes flight, we lose touch with our body, and pretty soon we’re engrossed in obsessive thoughts about something that just happened or fretting about the future. And that makes us anxious.
Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.
Yet no matter how far we drift away, mindfulness is right there to snap us back to where we are and what we’re doing and feeling. If you want to know what mindfulness is, it’s best to try it for a while. Since it’s hard to nail down in words, you will find slight variations in the meaning in books, websites, audio, and video.
The Benefits of Mindfulness Practice:
When we meditate it doesn’t help to fixate on the benefits, but rather to just do the practice, and yet there are benefits or no one would do it.
When we’re mindful, we reduce stress, enhance performance, gain insight and awareness through observing our own mind, and increase our attention to others’ well-being.
Mindfulness meditation gives us a time in our lives when we can suspend judgment and unleash our natural curiosity about the workings of the mind, approaching our experience with warmth and kindness—to ourselves and others.
8 Facts About Mindfulness:
Mindfulness is not obscure or exotic. It’s familiar to us because it’s what we already do, how we already are. It takes many shapes and goes by many names.
Mindfulness is not a special added thing we do. We already have the capacity to be present, and it doesn’t require us to change who we are. But we can cultivate these innate qualities with simple practices that are scientifically demonstrated to benefit ourselves, our loved ones, our friends and neighbors, the people we work with, and the institutions and organizations we take part in
You don’t need to change. Solutions that ask us to change who we are or become something we’re not have failed us over and over again. Mindfulness recognizes and cultivates the best of who we are as human beings.
Mindfulness has the potential to become a transformative social phenomenon. Here’s why:
Anyone can do it. Mindfulness practice cultivates universal human qualities and does not require anyone to change their beliefs. Everyone can benefit and it’s easy to learn.
It’s a way of living. Mindfulness is more than just a practice. It brings awareness and caring into everything we do—and it cuts down needless stress. Even a little makes our lives better.
It’s evidence-based. We don’t have to take mindfulness on faith. Both science and experience demonstrate its positive benefits for our health, happiness, work, and relationships.
It sparks innovation. As we deal with our world’s increasing complexity and uncertainty, mindfulness can lead us to effective, resilient, low-cost responses to seemingly intransigent problems.
How to Sit for Meditation Practice
Here’s a posture practice that can be used as the beginning stage of a period of meditation practice or simply as something to do for a minute, maybe to stabilize yourself and find a moment of relaxation before going back into the fray. If you have injuries or other physical difficulties, you can modify this to suit your situation.
Take your seat. Whatever you’re sitting on—a chair, a meditation cushion, a park bench—find a spot that gives you a stable, solid seat, not perching or hanging back.
Notice what your legs are doing. If on a cushion on the floor, cross your legs comfortably in front of you. (If you already do some kind of seated yoga posture, go ahead.) If on a chair, it’s good if the bottoms of your feet are touching the floor.
Straighten—but don’t stiffen— your upper body. The spine has natural curvature. Let it be there. Your head and shoulders can comfortably rest on top of your vertebrae.
Situate your upper arms parallel to your upper body. Then let your hands drop onto the tops of your legs. With your upper arms at your sides, your hands will land in the right spot. Too far forward will make you hunch. Too far back will make you stiff. You’re tuning the strings of your body—not too tight and not too loose.
Drop your chin a little and let your gaze fall gently downward. You may let your eyelids lower. If you feel the need, you may lower them completely, but it’s not necessary to close your eyes when meditating. You can simply let what appears before your eyes be there without focusing on it.
Be there for a few moments. Relax. Now get up and go about your day. And if the next thing on the agenda is doing some mindfulness practice by paying attention to your breath or the sensations in your body, you’ve started off on the right foot—and hands and arms and everything else.
Begin again. When your posture is established, feel your breath—or some say “follow” it—as it goes out and as it goes in. (Some versions of the practice put more emphasis on the outbreath, and for the inbreath you simply leave a spacious pause.) Inevitably, your attention will leave the breath and wander to other places. When you get around to noticing this—in a few seconds, a minute, five minutes—return your attention to the breath. Don’t bother judging yourself or obsessing over the content of the thoughts. Come back. You go away, you come back.
That’s it. That’s the practice. It’s often been said that it’s very simple, but it’s not necessarily easy. The work is to just keep doing it. Results will accrue.
Try This Beginner’s Mindfulness Meditation:
A 5-Minute Breathing Meditation To Cultivate Mindfulness. This practice is designed to reduce stress, anxiety, and negative emotions, cool yourself down when your temper flares, and sharpen your concentration skills.
“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally,” says Kabat-Zinn. “And then I sometimes add, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”
