Getting to the core of… Mindfulness
Mindfulness has become a bit of a buzz word and when you look on the internet many things will now be labelled as “Mindfulness” as it seems to be something which is selling at the moment. Without looking far you can get mindful colouring books, mindful jars, mindful jigsaws. Ultimately you can do anything mindfully, and it can cover anything from your every day activity to a mediation session which lasts for an hour.
Mindfulness is about how you control your focus of attention. When we are swept up in our every day, we spend a lot of our time either living in the past or in the future, we spend time worrying about what we did in the past, thinking about where we would rather be than here, things that we did, how we behaved and we also think about all of the things that we need to do in the near and distant future. We spend time worrying, catastrophising about things that could go wrong and trying to predict what the future holds and of course we try to do that, we are human and our brains are problem solving machines, so thinking about the past and the future is our brains way of trying to solve problems for us. It becomes unhelpful however, when we are spending more time thinking about the past and future than the present, when we notice that we are not engaging in what is going on in the here and now, this is especially evident at the moment as days merge into one big long lock down mush.
Mindfulness is about being able to recognise that your brain is spending too much time in the past or the future and being able to recentre your focus on the present moment. You can do this in many ways you can download apps such as headspace and calm and follow mindfulness practices that you like. Or you can build mindfulness into your every day, taking a short mindful moment when you feel like your head is too full, it can also help to start the day, or end the working day with a mindful moment to check in with yourself.
Ask yourself how you are feeling, notice the way that you are thinking and what comes up for you. Acknowledge it and let it go for the moment.
Move your body, stretch, breathe deeply, allow your out breath to be longer than your inbreath, feel how your breath feels in your body.
Ground yourself in the present moment, focus on your 5 senses, what can you hear, see, touch,taste and smell. You can do this with any activity, making a cup of tea, walking, taking off your make up, having a shower, watching a candle light flicker, listening to music. Keep checking in with all of your senses, whilst breathing at a pace that works for you.
Mindfulness has been proven to have positive benefits both on our mental wellbeing and on our physical wellbeing, it has been seen to physically alter our brain chemistry and can help to repair issues within our bodies such as heart disease and gut problems. Taking just 5 minutes of your day to have a “Mindful moment” can help to reduce your levels of stress and help with skills such as attention and productivity.
Written by Frankie