Mindfulness: how spending little time to invest in yourself can change your life
by Desirée Cannata
Nowadays, we live in a world where everything seems to be in a constant rush. We almost feel the need to be doing something, and if we “dare” take it slow we might almost feel guilty for not being productive or quick enough. As a consequence, we end up being so overtaken by schedules, to-do lists and deadlines that we lose contact with reality.
Life, if we think about it, is a constant and personal flow of experiences: some of them hurt us, some teach us a lesson, some of them change our way of thinking and living.
Mindfulness teaches and reminds us of some notions that might sound trivial. In fact, we need these reminders in order to enjoy every single step of life.
What is Mindfulness?
In a few words, Mindfulness, which has its roots in Buddhist meditation, is the practice of acknowledging what we are feeling without judging the emotions or sensations as we’re experiencing them and without believing, for instance, that there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to think or feel in a given moment.
Why practice Mindfulness?
It helps to direct attention away from stress and supports mental health by giving a simple way to manage negative thoughts.
By practicing mindfulness, we learn better ways to manage our emotions.
We improve our relationship with friends and family, and we become able to handle conflict more effectively by becoming more present and self-aware. Being mindful makes it easier to savor the pleasures in life as they occur, helps becoming fully engaged in activities, and creates a greater capacity to deal with adverse events.
Mindfulness improves mental health. In recent years, psychotherapists have turned to mindfulness meditation as an important element in the treatment of a number of problems, including: depression, substance abuse, eating disorders, couples’ conflicts, anxiety disorders, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
How to practice Mindfulness
One of the biggest advantages of Mindfulness is that it can be incorporated in any way and any time into everyday activities. It includes different techniques and practices and everyone can have access to them.
Pay attention: focus on what we see, smell, touch around us in order to acknowledge each sense. This can help during those moments where we feel overwhelmed by our duties and risk losing touch with reality.
Live in the present: Sometimes, we tend to think and worry too much about the past or the future. Everyone has regrets and feels anxious about the future, but when we practice Mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we’re sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future. We learn that the mistakes that we made in the past have the only purpose of making our present better instead of dwelling on them.
Accept yourself: We are usually our own worst and severest judges. We tend to be so hard on ourselves to the point of forgetting that we are human and we can’t control everything around and inside of us. We should treat ourselves like we treat our loved ones to let go of all the pressure we put on our shoulders.
Build the beginner’s mind: We believe that we have heard, seen and experienced everything. However, this mentality brings forward the idea that life is ever changing. No moment is the same as another. The focus here is to not let our experiences become filtered by what we believe we already know, in order to find a lesson in every experience we live.
Some techniques to practice Mindfulness include our whole body:
Body scan meditation: lie on your back with your legs extended. Slowly pay attention to what you feel, pausing at every small area of your body: feel the pressure on the mattress, hear the little sounds, feel the texture of your clothes.
Sitting meditation: sit in a comfortable position, breathe through your nose and focus your attention on each breath. It might seem difficult at first, since our minds tend to overthink, make plans and lists, and worry about something we have to do. With practice, you will be able to build a little barrier that will protect you from these thoughts. They won’t disappear, but you will learn how to manage them and detect the right time to take care of them.
Walking meditation: by walking slowly, focus on the sensations our body feels while moving: we feel our feet striking the ground, the wind caressing our cheeks and all the small details around us that we never really noticed before.
It’s surprising how these little actions can change our way of seeing and reading even the subtlest details around us. Mindfulness is now being examined scientifically and has been found to be a key element in stress reduction and overall happiness.
With such positive potential outcomes, there’s no reason not to give it a try!