Mindfulness 8



This is my final post on mindfulness. The practises over the past few weeks have been about:

• Enhancing your awareness of your senses, your body and your thoughts
• Using that awareness to choose when to be in the moment, fully experiencing what is happening here and now or sitting with a problem listening to it like a friend, rather than always thinking ahead or problem solving
• Being kind to yourself in how you think of yourself and how you take care of yourself.

This is a good place to pause and reflect on what you have achieved in that time. And that is a good practise to take away with you: pausing each day to consider what you have completed and to enjoy the sense of satisfaction, even (and especially) from the small things. Therein lies happiness. Don’t put it off. Claim it now.

Try to practise some form of mindfulness every day to minimise stress, maximise happiness and to act as a safety net at a time of crisis when you feel the downward spiral starting. It doesn’t need to take up much time and give yourself credit for whatever you achieve. Here are some of the mindful practises that you could use depending on what feels most appropriate to you that day:

• Chocolate meditation
• Breathing meditation
• Body scan
• Sounds and thoughts meditation
• Mindful movement (yoga, pilates, qigong)
• Mindful walking
• Loving kindness meditation
• Choosing to spend time on an uplifting activity or with an uplifting person.

If you would like to explore mindfulness further, I can highly recommend Mindfulness: a practical guide to finding peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Danny Penman and Emotional Alchemy: how your mind can heal your heart by Tara Bennett-Goleman. For my Berkshire clients Karen Pounds runs regular mindfulness classes and workshops.