Mindful Mondays Blog Post Two: Introduction to practicing Mindfulness

Fiona_BCNA
Fiona_BCNA Member Posts: 75 ✭
edited April 2016 in Health and wellbeing

Image Source: http://www.nantien.edu.au/ 

In last week’s blog we discussed the benefits of mindfulness, and this week we will explore how to approach practicing mindfulness. Mindfulness is the ability to be present and aware of what is actually happening to you by not allowing your attention to drift off to what happened to you yesterday or might happen to you tomorrow.

Mindfulness meditation is the cornerstone of being able to apply mindfulness in all aspects of our life. Mindfulness meditation refers to those times of the day that we set aside to consciously practice being mindful rather than the informal practice of mindfulness where we simply practice within the flow of our daily activities.

You may have found this last week with the shower exercise, which informal mindfulness practice, it was easy to think about the smell of the soap, the noise of the water hitting and how your body felt under the warm water but it was much more difficult keeping your mind there. The answer is practice.

Mindfulness is like riding a bike, it is simple but not until you get the hang of it first. So this week let’s start mindfulness meditation with our training wheels on.

A good way to start is with 5 minutes of mindfulness meditation twice a day. Start by finding a quiet area, sit in a comfortable upright position. Gently let your eyes close. The aim is to be attentive, you don’t want to fall asleep. Begin by being conscious of the whole body then progressively become aware of each individual body part starting with the feet, and slowing making your way up to the face. Simply notice the sensation or lack of sensation in each body part. As often as the attention wanders from the awareness of the body, simply notice where the attention has gone and gently bring it back to the part of the body you were up to. It’s not a problem that thoughts come and go into your mind; it’s only a problem if you make them a problem.

The aim of the meditation is to cultivate a greater sense of awareness when we go back to our daily activities and re-engage with our lives.

References:

  1. McKenzie, S. & Hassed, C., Mindfulness for Life, Exisle Publishing Pty Ltd, Auckland, 2012.
  2. Killingsworth, M.A., Gilbert, D.T., ‘A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind’, Science, 12 November 2010, Vol. 330, no. 6006, p. 932, DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439
  3. Headspace Inc. 2016, ‘Get some Headspace’, https://www.headspace.com/, viewed April 2016.

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