Mindfulness Embodied Living: Integrate your life to Achieve Wholeness
Mindfulness
Present Moment Awareness
“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally. And then I sometimes add, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn (American professor emeritus of medicine and Mindfulness pioneer in West)
What does mindfulness entail?
Mindfulness encompasses two key ingredients: awareness and acceptance. Awareness is the knowledge and ability to focus attention on one’s inner processes and experiences, such as the experience of the present moment. Acceptance is the ability to observe and accept—rather than judge or avoid—those streams of thought.
Understanding Mindfulness
To live mindfully is to live in the moment and reawaken oneself to the present, rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future. To be mindful is to observe and label thoughts, feelings, sensations in the body in an objective manner. Mindfulness can therefore be a tool to avoid self-criticism and judgment while identifying and managing difficult emotions.
What is the purpose of mindfulness?
The purpose of mindfulness is simply to improve your quality of life in some way. Mindfulness can help you understand how your mind works, what it tends to focus on, its habits, desires, worries, expectations, prejudices, insights, and more. Mindfulness is just the ability to notice those mental processes with clarity, before prioritising the thoughts and feelings that matter and separating yourself from the ones that don’t.
Mindfulness is used in mindfulness-based therapies, to address stress, anxiety, or pain, and simply to become more relaxed.
Developing Mindfulness & Mindful Living:
Mindfulness Benefits:
Present Moment Awareness
“Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgementally. And then I sometimes add, in the service of self-understanding and wisdom.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn (American professor emeritus of medicine and Mindfulness pioneer in West)
What does mindfulness entail?
Mindfulness encompasses two key ingredients: awareness and acceptance. Awareness is the knowledge and ability to focus attention on one’s inner processes and experiences, such as the experience of the present moment. Acceptance is the ability to observe and accept—rather than judge or avoid—those streams of thought.
Understanding Mindfulness
To live mindfully is to live in the moment and reawaken oneself to the present, rather than dwelling on the past or anticipating the future. To be mindful is to observe and label thoughts, feelings, sensations in the body in an objective manner. Mindfulness can therefore be a tool to avoid self-criticism and judgment while identifying and managing difficult emotions.
What is the purpose of mindfulness?
The purpose of mindfulness is simply to improve your quality of life in some way. Mindfulness can help you understand how your mind works, what it tends to focus on, its habits, desires, worries, expectations, prejudices, insights, and more. Mindfulness is just the ability to notice those mental processes with clarity, before prioritising the thoughts and feelings that matter and separating yourself from the ones that don’t.
Mindfulness is used in mindfulness-based therapies, to address stress, anxiety, or pain, and simply to become more relaxed.
Developing Mindfulness & Mindful Living:
- Choose a quiet moment, perhaps when getting into your car or resting at home. Sitting or lying down in a relaxed balanced position, follow a few deep breaths into your belly, then make some audible sighs out to release tension and observe. Feel the bottoms of your feet grounded, your lower body heavy and connected to ground, your back body relaxing into the support of your seat. Scan your body slowly upward, breathing into any areas of tension or numbness. Simply practice watching each sensation, feeling or thought pass by. If you find yourself hooked into a story, worry or memory, gently come back to observing your breath. You may be doing that every few seconds at first, but that’s OK. Remember, no judgment. Mindful living!
- Naming what’s happening, such as stomach relaxing or feeling worried or thinking “planning” thoughts. Then releasing each, allowing space for the next experience to arrive. Not trying to change anything! Just noticing and naming. There is no right or wrong. Simply being aware and curious in the moment for whatever arises for you, all on its own.
- We need to bring this enhanced awareness into our daily lives to make it part of who we are; developing a daily mindfulness meditation practice may become an important resource that is deeply beneficial.
- It’s really beneficial for mind and body when we combine breathing exercises with mindful meditation and, in particular through the movements of yoga, when we engage the body. The mind is eased into a calmer, more reflective, state that brings proven relief from stress, depression and anxiety.
- Paying attention to the presence of an issue in our lives rather than turning away from it helps to develop a relationship with the problem, which increases a feeling of effectiveness and the possibility that a problem can change.
- In these ways Mindfulness helps to develop skills that can support us in functioning and feeling better. These skills also help people to move through the subtle processes that lead to an exploration of core beliefs that interfere with achieving an authentic existence.
Mindfulness Benefits:
- The long-term benefits of developing a mindful way of being are considerable; it doesn’t come easily and requires disciplined practice.
- By being mindful we can catch our self in the moment going along well worn tracks that we now know do not serve us well and consciously choose to do something different.
- Mindfulness provides a way to introduce more acceptance and kindness into our life, a way to be less at war with who we are and where we are - which is paradoxically the best place from which to change.
- Mindfulness- based approaches are effective in reducing anxiety and depression, helping us to become more interpersonally effective, and in reducing the impact of stress. A different relationship towards our thoughts, emotions, behaviours and sensations helps to move the brain towards new, preferred patterns.
- It turns out that witnessing our internal experience without judgment is calming to the brain! And the more we practice it, the more our brain likes it and wants it. It quiets the chatter all on its own and becomes peaceful. That sense of well-being soon becomes a new way of being inside yourself.
- Mindfulness, as a way of being, is now recognised as a most effective and deeply satisfying approach to achieving balanced self-regulation in life.
- What ever depth we take mindfulness to it remains an invaluable way to be present with the fullness of who we are in a calm and kindly way.
- Mindfulness is a key to healthy, happy living. I practice it daily and it has changed my life!